Sympathetic Magic(31)
“Not a problem,” he said. “I take it black anyway.”
Her nose wrinkled, but she just nodded and filled one of the mugs, then the other. As she busied herself adding so much milk and sugar that her coffee was probably more like coffee-flavored ice cream than the real thing, Lucas repressed a smile and took the mug clearly intended for him, wrapping his hands around it to get rid of the last of the chill from the rainy walk over here. With no milk to cool it down, the coffee wouldn’t be drinkable for a while, but he didn’t mind. That simply gave him more time to linger on the couch here with Margot. At the moment, he couldn’t think of anyplace he’d rather be.
He couldn’t say the same for her, though. Now that she was done doctoring her coffee, she perched on the edge of the couch a few feet away from him, blowing on the steaming contents of her cup in what seemed to him a desperate attempt to avoid conversation.
It’s not that easy, Margot, he thought, although he blew on his own coffee a few times as well, just to be companionable. “I really didn’t mean to barge in on you,” he began.
“Here, or at Rachel’s?”
“Both, I suppose, although that one’s all on Rachel as far as I’m concerned. I just wanted to talk to her.”
“Behind my back,” Margot said with some bitterness.
Lucas shifted on the couch so he was almost but not quite facing her. “What else was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t talk to me. Believe me, Margot, I’ve been with women where there just wasn’t any chemistry, and I walked away. But with you? With us? There’s something. You can ignore it, but that won’t make it go away. And when I come across something like that, I’m not willing to let it go that easily. So yeah, I went and talked to Rachel. Maybe it was a junior high school kind of thing to do. I don’t know. I just couldn’t figure out what else to do.”
No reply at first. Her eyes were still downcast, seeming to study the pale tan contents of her coffee mug, but he could almost hear the gears turning in her head. “You’re right.”
“I — what?” he said, shocked that she was agreeing with him.
“It was a junior high school kind of thing to do.”
Damn. He knew he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. “All right, so I have the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old.”
Her lips quirked. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
“What would you say?”
She took a sip of coffee, gave an almost-wince, then replied, “I’d say if your current strategy is to keep at me until you wear me down, then it might be working.”
At first he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “It’s…working?”
“Well, I’m certainly getting tired of trying to fend you off.” Another sip of coffee, and she added, “I suppose I’m vaguely curious as to what you’re expecting out of this pursuit you’re currently engaged in. Are you just out for a quick lay, or are you looking for the house with the 2.5 kids and the dog?”
He’d known she was a no-nonsense sort of person, but for some reason he’d never thought she would state the matter quite so baldly. “If I only wanted a quick lay, I could’ve gotten that any time in Flagstaff without having to resort to all these extreme measures.”
“Too bad.”
“Excuse me?”
This time she actually smiled, then set her coffee down on a slate coaster. “That would be easier, wouldn’t it? Just sex? I mean, there aren’t really any logistics involved in that sort of thing. Just scratch the biological itch and get it over with.”
Had he slipped into some sort of alternate reality? Was Margot proposing that they have sex and then just walk away? “I — ” He cleared his throat. “I’m not so sure about the 2.5 kids, but I guess I’m leaning more toward that side of the spectrum than mindless sex, Margot.”
“Well, that makes it a lot more difficult, then, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think it has to.”
The half-amused expression disappeared abruptly, and she glanced away, seeming to stare into the dancing flames within the hearth. After a long pause, she said, “I assume if you were picking Rachel’s brain about my past, then she probably also told you something about what it means to be an elder.”
“Some, yes.” At last he lifted the mug to his lips and drank. The coffee was good — better than he’d expected from someone who claimed she didn’t make it very often. “Do you think that’s really enough to scare me off?”
“It should.”