Blue Dahlia (In the Garden 1)

"Now wait a minute. " This time he gestured with his fork. "Where's the chaos? There's barely a frigging thing in the place. "

"Exactly!" She jabbed a finger at him. "You've got a wonderful kitchen, a comfortable and stylish bedroom - "

"Stylish?" Mortification, clear as glass, covered his face. "Jesus. "

"And empty rooms. You should be tearing your hair out wondering what you're going to do with them, but you're not. You just - just - " She waved her hand in circles. "Mosey along. "

"I've never moseyed in my life. Amble sometimes," he decided. "But I never mosey. "

"Whatever. You know wine and you read comic books. What kind of sense does that make?"

"Makes plenty if you consider I like wine and comic books. "

"You were married, and apparently committed enough to move away from your home. "

"What's the-damn point in getting married if you're not ready and willing to do what makes the other person happy? Or at least try. "

"You loved her," Stella said with a nod. "Yet you walked away from a divorce unscarred. It was broken, too bad, so you ended it. You're rude and abrupt one minute, and accommodating the next. You knew why I'd come here tonight, yet you went to the trouble to fix a meal - which was considerate and, and civilized - there, put that in the C column. "

"Christ, Red, you kill me. I'd move on to D, and say you're delicious, but right now it's more like demented. "

Despite the fact he was laughing, she was wound up and couldn't stop. "And we have incredible, blow-the-damn-roof-off sex, then you bounce out of bed as if we'd been doing this every night for years. I can't keep up. "

Once he decided she'd finished, he picked up his wine, drank thoughtfully. "Let's see if I can work my way back through that. Though I've got to tell you, I didn't detect any geometric pattern. "

"Oh, shut up. "

His hand clamped over hers before she could shove back from the table. "No, you just sit still. It's my turn. If I didn't work the way I do? I wouldn't be able to do what I do, and I sure as hell wouldn't love it. I found that out up north. My marriage was a failure. Nobody likes to fail, but nobody gets through life without screwing up. We screwed it up, didn't hurt anybody but ourselves. We took our lumps and moved on. "

"But - "

"Hush. If I'm rude and abrupt it's because I feel rude and abrupt. If I'm accommodating, it's because I want to be, or figure I have to be at some point. "

He thought, What the hell, and topped off his wine. She'd barely touched hers. "What was next? Oh, yeah, you being here tonight. Yeah, I knew why. We're not teenagers, and you're a pretty straightforward woman, in your way. I wanted

you, and made that clear. You wouldn't come knocking on my door unless you were ready. As for the meal, there are a couple of reasons for that. One, I like to eat. And two, I wanted you here. I wanted to be with you here, like this. Before, after, in between. However it worked out. "

Somewhere, somehow, during his discourse, her temper had ebbed. "How do you make it all sound sane?"

"I'm not done. While I'm going to agree with your take on the sex, I object to the word 'bounce. ' I don't bounce anymore than I mosey. I got out of bed because if I'd breathed you in much longer, I'd have asked you to stay. You can't, you won't. And the fact is, I don't know that I'm ready for you to stay anyway. If you're the sort who needs a lot of postcoital chat, like 'Baby, that was amazing' - "

"I'm not. " There was something in his aggravated tone that made her lips twitch. "I can judge for myself, and I destroyed you up there. "

His hand slid up to her wrist, back down to her fingers. "Any destruction was mutual. "

"All right. Mutual destruction. The first time with a man, and I think this holds true for most women, is as nerve-racking as it is exciting. It's more so afterward if what happened between them touched something in her. You touched something in me, and it scares me. "

"Straightforward," he commented.

"Straightforward, to your maze. It's a difficult combination. Gives us a lot to think about. I'm sorry I made an issue out of all of this. "

"Red, you were born to make issues out of every damn thing. It's kind of interesting now that I'm getting used to it. "

"That may be true, and I could say that the fact your drummer certainly bangs a different tune's fairly interesting, too. But right now, I'm going to help you clean up your kitchen. Then I have to get home. "

He rose when she did, then simply took her shoulders and backed her into the refrigerator. He kissed her blind and deaf - pent-up temper, needs, frustration, longings all boiled together.

"Something else to think about," he said.