The bouquet tipped to the side, and Albie peeked around it, which she would have found adorable if she wasn’t freaking out about the fact that he’d brought her flowers.
He said, “Hi.” And he might have blushed, at least a little.
Axelle said, “That’s a whole lot of roses.” And then wanted to kick herself. “Um, I mean – come in?” She stepped back and motioned awkwardly.
As he passed her on his way inside, she caught a whiff of something pleasant that wasn’t the flowers – a woodsy, leather-and-citrus scent that must have been his cologne. She didn’t remember it from London.
He’d brought her flowers, and worn cologne.
She took a second, after she’d shut the door and thumbed the lock, to stare at the wood grain, scrambling to get her thoughts in order.
Why the hell was she freaking out about this?
When she turned around, she saw that Albie had moved to stand awkwardly in the center of the room, behind the couch, roses held as carefully as a baby – or maybe a bomb. From behind, she could see that he’d made some efforts with his appearance: clean, new-looking jeans, and a button-up black shirt, tucked-in. His belt and boots gleamed, faintly: polished.
He’d brought her flowers, worn cologne, and dressed as nicely as he was probably able, given his wardrobe and profession.
That made it real, somehow. That made it a date and not just acquaintances having dinner. Which was what adults did. “Hanging out” was for kids afraid of commitment. Adults made an effort, brought gifts, and dated.
She could do this.
First things first: the flowers. Flowers needed water.
She headed for her kitchen. “Here, we can…” A quick look confirmed her fear that she didn’t own a vase. She cringed when she found a vessel big enough: a plastic pitcher she’d bought at Target with the intent of making sweet tea. She filled it with water at the sink, and tried not to wince too dramatically when she set it on the island and said, “They can go in here.”
Albie considered the pitcher, and then the flowers, the plastic wrapped around them crinkling. “I think you’re supposed to cut them, first.”
“Cut…them?”
“The ends. They came with this little packet of nutrient stuff you’re supposed to put in the water. And then cut them.” He juggled the bouquet into one arm and made a snipping motion with the fingers of his other hand. “Diagonally. That’s what she said.”
It took a team effort, both of them nicking their fingers on thorns; Albie accidentally shooting the rubber band that held the paper in place across the room. They nearly overfilled the pitcher, and, loose from the band, fanned out in a great, dramatic spray, Axelle felt sure that the slightest nudge would send the lightweight, now top-heavy pitcher crashing sideways.
They stared at their handiwork – or lack thereof – for a long moment.
Axelle finally groaned. “God, why is this so weird?”
Albie blew out a breath, shoulders slumping – but something like relief touched his face. “I don’t know. I guess it just seems…really official, now, or something.”
They looked at each, finally, fully. Solid eye contact.
Albie smiled, crooked but true, and she felt her lungs expand a much-needed fraction.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said. “I should have said that the second you walked in.”
He shrugged, charming and easy this time. And it wasn’t for effect; she found him charming, whether anyone else did or not, and that was what mattered. “I won’t tell anyone we’re hopeless at this if you don’t.”
She smiled, another bit of tension melting away. “Speaking of being hopeless: I’m not much of a cook, but there’s lasagna in the oven. And I’ve got wine.”
“Well let’s open a bottle, hm?”
~*~
He’d finally been given the greenlight to stop wearing the brace on his arm, he told her over their first glass of red, while she pulled the lasagna and he set plates and silverware out on the table. He had to go to physical therapy, which he made a face about, but Axelle noticed the faint tremor in his last two fingers as he placed a knife on a napkin, and made a mental note to bug him about it later if he didn’t go.
“How’s work?” he asked, when they were sitting across from one another.
“Less exciting than that shit in London” – he snorted – “but it’s alright. Mostly I just drive. I’m her chauffer. But Eden’s been sliding some things my way and asking for my opinion. So that’s kinda cool.”
“Just kinda?” he asked, picking up on the way her voice had gone up at the end.
She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t suppress a lick of excitement. “Okay, so, last week, we did a stakeout – cheating husband, right? But there were two women we thought might be the mistresses. Eden waited outside one place, and I took the other, and I got to be all Jessica Jones.” She set down her fork to mime snapping photos.
He grinned, and she grinned back – until she started to feel self-conscious, hands up and still holding a nonexistent camera.
She grabbed her fork again, and dropped her gaze. “So that’s…that,” she said, lamely.
Silence again, a beat too long, before she said, “Found a place for a shop, yet?” She glanced up in time to catch his own gaze dropping, frown tugging at his mouth as he used the edge of his fork to cut a bit of pasta into smaller and smaller bits.
“I’ve looked at some places,” he said. “Real estate’s more reasonable here than in London – but a shopfront is a shopfront, you know? You’re going to pay for the visibility. And I’ve not found one yet with room for my actual workshop.”
Axelle swallowed, and lasagna went down like lead. Because it was one thing to have stood in Albie’s shop, and seen him bruised, and beaten down in spirit, surrounded by silent furniture pieces and a whole storefront full of the kind of quiet misery that drove men to the bottle – and to the grave. One thing to see that, to stand in it, and know that he needed to uproot himself and go somewhere sunny and verdant where he could plant roots – and another to have him across the table from her, and know that he’d done just that…at her urging. To know that the shop he’d inherited, hand-crafted, and turned into a place all his own was gone, now, and that he was starting over, from scratch, because she’d told him he ought to.
That was a helluva lot of guilt to hit her all at once.
She reached for her wine glass and drained it. “Sorry.”
He glanced up, brows lifted. “There’s more wine.”
Not sorry for that, she thought, miserably.
~*~
Albie had thought, stupidly, that it would be easier than this. That once he was here in Tennessee, once he’d made that first, huge, scary step, all the rest would fall into place.
He was savvy enough to know that Axelle was interested; he hadn’t imagined the way she’d softened toward him in London, the way she’d looked at him; the real hurt in her eyes, at his shop, when he’d turned her away like a fool. But things weren’t easy, still, and he felt like he was sliding backward down a hill, losing traction on mud, unable to come up with one line, or gesture, or the proper look to have her relaxing into the moment.
Whatever they had, whatever bond they’d developed, it had developed in a moment of crisis.
How did they transition that into something that endured in the quiet moments?
Because he’d realized, somewhere between her goggle-eyed look at the flowers, and the first sip of wine, that this – being here, with her – was worth all the shop-hunting and awkward-adjusting it would take to settle into this American city. He could build a life here.
If he could only stop spinning his wheels and start already.
She topped off his glass, and he reached for it. The lasagna was good, but his appetite wasn’t up to its usual standard.
“I like your flat,” he said, with an inward wince – though he did. It looked cozy and unpretentious, eclectic. He hadn’t been able to form a mental pictur
e of the sort of home she’d make for herself, but this suited, somehow. Quality, but not obnoxious about it; worn at the edges, but welcoming. Like her car in that way, he supposed. She liked the American battleships, with big blocks and mag wheels; what was a rambling old Victorian with faded rugs and attic nooks if not the muscle car of American East Coast architecture?
That’s a stretch, Cross, he thought to himself.
“Thanks,” she said, casting a look around the place, her gaze narrowing a fraction, like maybe she was scrutinizing it the way a stranger would. “Apparently, one of the old ladies lived here for a while, several years ago.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That’s what Maggie said.” She sent him a cautious look. “She’s…”
“Impressive?” he suggested.
“A boss bitch.”
Their gazes locked.
He kept his own features carefully schooled, staring at her guarded expression.
Then her mouth tugged at the corners. Her eyes brightened.
He felt his own smile threaten.
They started laughing at the same time, together.
Leave it to Maggie Teague, Lean Dog Queen extraordinaire, to finally break the ice for them.
“Albie, oh my God.” Axelle braced her elbows on the table, and put her head in her hands, smiling rather helplessly. “I was starting to think I understood the way things work with the London Dogs – even if it is kinda fucked up – and then I come here, and it’s starting all over again, but even worse. I don’t…there’s this whole pecking order. There’s rank and shit, with these old ladies, and I’m not one of them, and they look at me…” Her smile faded. “Everyone’s been perfectly polite. But. They don’t like me. I can feel it. And I don’t care. I mean, obviously…”
Except, she did care, enough to have worried about it – quite a lot, if her tone was any indication.
Albie took a breath and parsed through what she’d said. One thing stood out to him the most, but he decided to put a pin in that one. Too big too fast, and he didn’t want to backslide anymore.
“They’d don’t dislike you,” he said, and that he felt sure of. “In case you haven’t noticed, this lot of girls are of the practical variety. You’ll fit right in.”
Her expression tightened, eyes widening – confirming his initial worry. I’m not one of them, she’d said. Did she feel excluded? Or did she not want to be one of them?
“The thing you’ve got to understand about Maggie,” he explained, “is that – while a very sweet woman, from all I’ve seen and heard – her first worry is for her family, and that includes club family. It’s a family that does a lot of not-so-legal things, yeah? So she’s not quick to trust new people, is all.” He frowned. “No one’s said anything untoward, have they?”
“No,” she said, quickly, expression softening. “No, it’s just…” She bit her lip, and glanced at a spot on the tabletop. I don’t belong, the downward sweep of her lashes said. The set of her shoulders; the downward curve of her mouth.
He had a feeling she’d never felt like she had, not anywhere.
“I’ll tell you something else,” he said, quietly, and her lashes lifted, her eyes nearly seafoam in the low light. “There’s nobody in this club who’s judging – nobody’s got any right to. Not when they’re all misfits and scoundrels and outlaws.”
She arched a single brow. “And you think I’m one of those.”
“Love, we’d never have met if you weren’t.”
After a beat, she smiled, slowly, close-lipped. Tipped her head a fraction in concession. Then she picked up her glass and tapped it gently against his with a chiming salute to the truth.
Six
They rolled away from one another and toward the nightstands nearly in unison, both overheated, and still trying to catch their breath. When they rolled back, lying side-by-side on the mattress with all the sheets kicked down, cool winter air delicious on naked skin, Eden had her phone in her hand, and Fox was taking the first drag off a cigarette.
“Ugh, don’t smoke in bed,” she complained, but her gaze was glued to her phone screen, so his only concession was to snag the ash tray off the nightstand and rest it on his chest.
Walsh had grumbled about it, because that was just his way whenever Charlie was concerned, but, since he had a big, mostly empty, rambling house, he and Emmie had put up Eden and Axelle their first few nights in Knoxville. Walsh had always liked Eden, and Axelle was too much like his own Emmie for him not to have liked her – but it had meant Fox was around, and that he hadn’t liked, and hadn’t been shy about proclaiming. Emmie had swatted him in the arm, biting back a smile, and told him to get over himself. But the situation had only been temporary. Eden didn’t like to lean too heavily on the kindness of others, and she’d wasted no time finding a house for herself, the wheels greased along by Ghost, Fox suspected, though Eden didn’t know that.
She’d been saving up, since they’d last been together in any sense – that, and money stretched farther in the American Southern suburbs than it did in the heart of London. She’d landed a lovely place, a two-story red-brick colonial with a narrow porch flanked in white columns, and blue window shutters. The inside was all done up in overwrought Victorian wallpaper and elaborate curtains that she’d vowed to take down, strip, and revitalize. So far, all she’d managed was to have the carpets pulled up on the first floor, and new hardwood laid.
Moonlight filtered through a gauzy new pair of curtains, its bluish light illuminating the floral wallpaper and lending the pale pink carpet a silver look – an improvement, Fox thought.
He’d come over at her invitation. Making pasta, she’d texted him earlier, after his fruitless conversation with Ten. Come over?
He’d turned up with a bottle of white, already noting the new pansies planted out front and planning to tell her that they really improved the overall look of the house, but she’d opened the door in a pair of leggings and a too-big sweater that wanted to fall off one shoulder, and pasta and pansies and niceties had been the last things on his mind.
Her gaze had been welcoming at first, and then narrow with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Brother shit.”
They’d made it to the kitchen, and even poured the wine, trading glances; his openly admiring, hers assessing, trying to figure out what kind of “brother shit” he meant without asking.
Finally, she’d taken the water off the burner – it wasn’t boiling yet anywhere – switched off the oven, and they’d gone clumsily upstairs, already tangling together.
The sex had been good: heated, and fractious, and hurried, and a welcome distraction.
But, now, as the glow of orgasm faded, and he nursed his cigarette, he found himself frowning at the ceiling. All their sex seemed to feel like this: a frantic crashing together, over too soon…and, a flaw he’d never thought to find bothersome in his own sex life before, unemotional.
Had he…ever taken his time over it? With anyone? For any reason?
No. Sex was an urge, same as any other.
So why did he feel so hollow about it now?
“Axelle texted,” Eden said. “Albie just left.”
Fox turned his head so he could check the clock. “Left? It’s not even eight yet.”
“It was only their first date.”
“So?”
“So not everyone’s as unsentimental and basic as you, Charlie,” she scolded without any heat.
Did he want there to be heat? For her to be disappointed?
“Did he at least kiss her goodnight?” He rolled his head toward her, so he could see her profile thrown into glaring blue relief by her phone screen. “Tell me he kissed her.”
“Hold on.” The touchscreen clicked as her thumbs tapped out the message. A moment later, there was a ding of an incoming text, and Eden’s face went carefully blank. “He didn’t.”
Fox sat up, nearly dumping ash all over himself. “Oh, bugger him,” he muttered, crushing out the last of hi
s cig and setting the tray aside on the nightstand. “Is he bloody stupid? You have to have the kiss goodnight. Got to leave ‘em wanting more, you know? Otherwise she’ll set her sights on someone with the balls and the brains to actually court her properly.”
She glanced toward him, face still blank – dangerously blank. That uncanny look that gave the impression of staring at a wall, left stewing in your own words, examining everything you’d said, while the face of the person opposite gave no indication whether or not you’d just stepped in it royally.
It was a look he gave to others, often.
“Keep them wanting more,” she said flatly. “Do you honestly believe women are that simple-minded?”
He opened his mouth – and shut it. Opened it, and shut it. “No,” he finally said, just as flat. “Of course not.”
“Hmm. Lucky for you, saying that.” She turned back to her phone. “Axelle’s a pretty girl,” she continued. “She’s tough, and she’s not shy, and she loves cars, and beer, and all the things blokes like. She could have a blowhard idiot American man who believes in keeping them wanting more if she wanted one. She likes Albie. I don’t think a first date kiss is going to make or break anything.”
“Would have for you,” he retorted, quietly, just to be contrary.
The look she tossed him then was curious, brows arched. “You think awfully highly of your kisses.”
On paper, it was a playful conversation; the good-natured ribbing of familiar lovers who’d moved past the honeymoon phase and settled into something comfortable.
Only, there was something prickly about it, and it didn’t leave him flushed with fondness, but, rather, wary. And wondering.
Eden sighed, set her phone down, and sat up, shaking out her finger-tangled hair with both hands. She stretched, spine popping audibly, and though his eyes followed the movements of her lithe, naked body, the sight didn’t stir him. Not now, so freshly satisfied.
A small voice in the back of his head informed him that something was wrong with his life – or maybe with him. But he ignored it.
Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7) Page 3
