“Yes.”
“I’ll bet it’s a Beemer, isn’t it?”
“No, baby, it’s a hog.” I chuckled. “Harley-Davidson all the way. It’s the newest model. They’ll deliver it to the dealership here in the spring.”
“You. Bought. A. Bike.”
“And I’ll probably get one of those badass leather jackets. Leather chaps. Biker boots. I’ll put my wallet on a chain and attach it to a loop and shove it in the back pocket of my Levi’s. You might get off work next summer and see me waiting for you, resting against the bike, in my leathers, sunglasses on, face unshaven, smoking a cigar. If you saw me like that, would you let me take you for a ride?”
Lennox rolled on top of me. “I’m thinking you could take me for a ride right now.”
I laughed. “So me being a biker dude does it for you?”
“Brady. You do it for me in a bad way.”
“Does it scare you that I’ve admitted I’m thinking long term with you?”
Her body stiffened. She stared at me for several silent moments. “No, it doesn’t scare me.” She paused. “And that terrifies me.”
My eyes searched hers. “Why?”
“We haven’t been together long. And neither of us has been in a long-term relationship.”
“Do you want to slow down?”
She shook her head. “But I don’t want to go any faster than this right now either.”
I banked my disappointment.
She noticed it and kissed me. “I see your confusion. I feel the same way, so I can’t explain it. I’ve never felt like this. I shouldn’t trust it. But I do. I trust you.”
“That’s all I need to know, Lennox.”
She stretched out on her belly with a sigh. “I love this big bed.”
“I love having you in it.” I swept the hair from her shoulder and let my knuckles follow the birds tattooed down the back of her neck. She’d told me they were starlings, not blackbirds, which had intrigued me enough to do a little research. “Did you know a flock of starlings in flight is called a ‘murmuration’?”
“Yes, I did know that. Have you seen the footage of them? It’s an aerial ballet as they shift and move as one, as if they’re of a single mind instead of thousands.”
I kissed the bird right below her hairline. “What do starlings mean to you, Lennox?”
“Adaptability,” she said softly. “Starlings exist all over the world, but they’re unique to where they live. They’re monogamous—most pairs mate for life, which I found highly romantic at age eighteen when I got the tattoo. They’re mimics, which goes back to their adaptability. And they’re not sexually dimorphic, which means the males and the females have the same color of plumage. I saw a special on them when I was a kid and the images stuck with me.”
I brushed my mouth across the next tat, strangely touched by her practical and yet oddly sentimental reasoning, mostly because it fit who she was so perfectly. “And yet you have the tattoos in a place where you can’t see them and enjoy them.” I traced the largest one with the tip of my tongue. “So perhaps enjoying them and admiring them should be my job.” I nipped the nape of her neck and was rewarded with a deep body shudder. “You know how seriously I take my job. So relax, because this will take a while.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lennox
‡
Usually, whenever I have a bad day, I get the urge to ask the universe what else could go wrong? Bad idea today.
Bad, bad idea.
It wasn’t even a Monday.
When I arrived at work thirty minutes late, I got stuck with phone duty again, but this time at the security desk on the first floor. Working in the main reception area meant everything was amplified. Shoes clicking and squeaking across the tile. The constant ding-ding from the bank of elevators. Conversations were loud and carried up the set of escalators to the second floor.
So far it wasn’t noon and I’d already had ten people yell at me.
One woman spilled her coffee on the reception desk and chewed me out for it because I’d asked to see her ID.
When I called upstairs to talk to Sydney to see if I’d somehow pissed Lola off, Sydney told me that Lola had been in meetings all morning.
For lunch I grabbed a quick bite at the deli around the corner and checked my messages to see if Brady had tried to get in touch with me.
Nothing.
But two missed calls from Maxie.
That wasn’t like her. I ducked around the concrete pillar and called her.
She picked up on the second ring. “Lenni? I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. We got to drinking and—”