Offensive Behavior

When he turned back around she launched herself at him. “I’m happy. I’d be happier if I knew what I was doing for work, if I didn’t feel like I was being kept by my rich boyfriend.”

“But I want to keep you. Forever and ever.”

Hard to stay angry at anything.

“You’ll find a job, but it wouldn’t be so bad if you focused on school and what you want to do after.” After was a haze of impossible dreams, inspired by a French woman who made success from wild creativity, business nous and surgical precision.

“I’ll get fat and lazy.”

He laughed and slapped her rump, then his thumb moved to its favorite resting place in the dimple of her sacrum. “You know what I think about that.”

He wouldn’t kiss her because he’d tumbled into bed without showering and needed a shave and a toothbrush. But he wanted to. “Come get ready with me.”

By which he meant, let’s waste a lot of water while we have some fun.

She gave him a head start and when she went to him, he’d shaved. He stood under the shower water, his arms braced on the tiles, head down so the spray pelted his neck and broad shoulders.

The first time they’d showered together she’d given herself a head start then rocked his world. He’d been a workload of jitters and awkward expectations he’d embarrass himself, and she’d been high on having him in her care. He still made her feel high, but they were equals in the pleasure stakes, knowing exactly what to do to please and surprise each other.

She stepped into the water, wrapping herself around his back. “Maybe one day I won’t adore seeing you like this.”

“Wet, soapy and desperate?”

She traced his spine with her index finger and he flexed under her hand. “The desperate part is the best bit.” She enjoyed his body. She loved his uncensored reactions. No one had taught him to be guarded physically, to try to be too cool. He’d shown her what he felt from that first night and that hadn’t changed.

Smoothing her hand over his hip and across to an impressive start to the morning, she said, “Did I dream you came home at 4 a.m.? Do I dare take advantage of your weakened state on two hours sleep to do unspeakably depraved things to you? Will you do ravishingly bad things to me?”

He turned his head to look at her, narrowed eyes, wicked lips. “Yes, and yes please.”

She put her teeth to his shoulder blade and wrapped her hand around him, making him groan, then scooted under his arm to face him. “I miss you.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She tried to cover it by pulling on his neck for a kiss, which he gave in to. She was being silly, as if she was the one who’d not had enough sleep.

“I’m right here, Flygirl, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Except to work where he’d spend the best of himself, leaving her with this. But this, the sex, was good so she pushed the thought aside as she slid her body against his.

They wasted a lot of water and there was no time for breakfast.

It was another week before they ate a meal together.

And a month before Zarley got the news about Lou. She meant to tell Reid but as she’d found work in a sports warehouse and was back to juggling college and her retail shifts, and he was still working crazy hours, their time together was precious. They didn’t often use it for talking. Not with words anyway.

She kept meaning to tell him, but he had a string of presentations to give which had him on the road traveling for weeks and even though she wanted his advice, he was tense about facing stockholders for the first time since his flame-out without Owen or Kuch at his side. She didn’t want to distract him. Besides she had Cara.

Until Cara decided to move out.

“It’s not that I don’t love Reid’s place. It’s not that I don’t love he’s never there and you are. But I’m living with a couple and you do a lot of coupling, and that’s not my idea of a good time.” Cara said that as she inspected the oven in their old, entirely renovated apartment above what was now a craft supply store. No more Kimchi. The possibility of random glitter. “And wi

th the rent break I don’t even need to share.”

The idea of Cara moving out shouldn’t have depressed Zarley but it did. Cara was moving on with her life too.

“You should do it, Zar.”

Cara meant talk to Vi about her idea for Lucky’s. It made her gut churn. “It’s okay telling you my bright ideas. Different talking to anyone else.” And Vi would be better off selling her inheritance from Lou to a developer. That’s what the financial advisor and the lawyer told her. And real estate developers had come knocking, waving big fat promises. Who’d have guessed Lou owned not only the property Lucky’s was in, but the two buildings beside it. Vi was now a wealthy woman and Zarley had been happy to help her work through what that meant.

“How’s it different? What did Reid say?”