by Sara Whitney
“I’ve been training for that my whole life. Zesting, not so much.” She connected her iPhone to the speaker in her kitchen and thumbed through her music list, settling on Kate Nash. She then seated herself on a stool at the countertop and hooked her bare feet around the rungs to watch as he prepared a chicken for roasting, sliced potatoes for a gratin, and put the zester to good use on lemon-infused asparagus.
“No dessert?” Mabel faux pouted. “Slacker.”
“As if I would leave you with no dessert,” Jake scoffed. “Check the bag to your left.”
“Is this…?” Mabel extracted a glossy white box with the words Have Your Cake Bakery printed on the top.
“Cupcakes from my friend’s bakery in Chicago, yes. I brought some back with me for a taste test.”
“You remembered!”
“That you once described cupcakes as orgasmic? I did. That kind of imagery tends to stay with a guy.” Jake turned away from the stove. “Okay, the chicken and potatoes go in the oven now, and we hit the asparagus at the very end. Want to give me the official tour of the house?”
“Yeah, you didn’t get to see very much other than the homeowner being a hot mess the last time, did you?” she said wryly, hopping off the stool.
“A cute hot mess.” He followed her out of the kitchen and through a house that proved to be cheeky and comfortable and perfectly Mabel, with its explosion of purples and greens, corals and blues. At her bedroom door, she gestured to the cat sleeping at the foot of her bed. He cracked open one yellow eye, stretched, and repositioned himself for more sleep.
“You remember Tybalt?”
“I do,” Jake said gravely. “He and I bonded that night. Oh hey!” He gestured to the pot of delicate purple orchids on her bedside table. “I truly thought these would’ve been mulched to fertilize your garden the day you got them.”
She tucked her loose hair behind her ears with a rueful laugh. “They almost were. I sent them home with Dave, and he kept them safe until I asked for them back a few weeks ago.”
A spurt of pleasure raced through him. She hadn’t trashed them, and when she got them back, she put them where she’d see them as she began and ended her day. She really had been thinking about him as much as he’d been thinking about her.
They left Tybalt to his nap, and Jake ducked into the kitchen to check on the food. Then they ambled back to Mabel’s living room, where she settled cross-legged onto one end of the couch and pulled him down onto the cushion next to her.
Now was as good a time as any for a big pronouncement.
“I didn’t come right out and say it last night, but just so we’re clear: I’m all in.” He draped an arm over the couch and watched her absorb his words. Too much, too soon, too demanding—he didn’t care. They’d been doing this dance for far too long for him not to lay his cards on the table.
Still, his whole body tightened as she looked down for a long moment at her fingers laced together on her lap before taking a deep breath.
“Yeah. Me too.” Then she looked up and smiled, and his breath caught in his chest. “Let’s see where this goes.”
Before he could respond, she launched herself at him, latching her arms around his neck and sliding down his body until they were both reclined on the couch with her warm weight on top of him.
“Wait. Wait, Mabel,” Jake said through her kisses. It killed him to stop, but he was doing things right this time, dammit. “If we’re going to do this, I don’t want to keep anything from you about your job.”
“It can wait.” She slid her hands under his shirt and scratched his stomach lightly with her nails.
He grabbed both her wrists. “No. No surprises this time.”
She stilled, body sprawled on top of his, hot eyes on his.
He gulped and made it quick. “As part of my oversight of the station’s financial health following the buyout, I asked my sister to commission a marketing company to do a focus group on the different shows at your station. That will provide some qualitative data to go along with the listenership numbers being released in January.”
“This is weird pillow talk,” she muttered, pulling herself upright to straddle him.
It took effort, but he ignored the hot pleasure of her pressing against his fairly serious hard-on. “Long story short, because you’re killing me with your wiggling, we’ve convened the focus group four times so far, and people chosen to participate rate your morning-show performance incredibly high, and they hate the rotating cast of women on the air with Dave. I haven’t shown the results to Brandon yet, and I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but it’s something.”
Her lazy movement stilled. “Four times? How long has the research been going on?”
“Since October,” he said, wrapping his hands around her hips. “They listened to shows with you and Dave, with Dave when he was solo, then Dave with the other cohosts. They listened to the other shows too. They like you on afternoon drive, but not as much as on mornings.”
She blinked. “Since October,” she said slowly. “So when I was ignoring you and keeping it professional and being generally obtuse, you were still fighting for my old job?”
He tried to keep his shrug casual. “Somebody’s got to look out for the financial health of the station. And taking initiative looks good to the partners.”
Of course, if he impressed the partners too much, he’d find himself back in the Chicago office with a promotion and a raise. But that was ages away, and who could say what would change in his life between now and then? He’d find a way to make it work, but at this moment, Mabel’s glassy eyes were his priority, and his heart clenched when a tear broke loose and streaked down her cheek.
“Oh, sweetheart, no. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He sat up to brush the moisture away.
“I’m not sad.” She sniffled. “Nobody’s ever commissioned research for me before! This is the nicest thing, Jake.”
He started to repeat his warning. “Again, I don’t know that Brandon will—” But her lips cut him off as she renewed her assault on his mouth.
Being honest in a relationship was a good gambit, he decided thirty minutes later as they shrugged back into their clothes and devoured their dinner at Mabel’s kitchen island, talking nonstop and eating the food right out of the pans.
“You’re staying tonight, right?” She licked a dollop of cupcake icing off her lower lip, and his eyes followed the movement of her tongue the whole way.
“Yep. And I’m planning to be here in the morning when you wake up.”
“You’d better be.” Then she stood and led him by a belt loop to the bedroom.
The next day he learned that Mabel was as warm and pliant in his arms first thing in the morning as he’d always imagined. He moved poor Tybalt off the bed and made love to her slowly, languishing attention on every millimeter of her body.
Afterward, he tucked her against his side, but thoughts of work that day, and all the days moving forward, crowded his brain and pushed aside the post-sex glow.
“What gives?” She stroked a hand lightly over this chest. “You’re supposed to be basking.”
“Oh, I am.” He pressed a kiss into the top of her hair, relishing the warm weight of her against him. “It’s just work. I think… I’ve used it as an excuse over the years.”
She looked up at him with a frown that matched his own, so he elaborated.
“Nobody asks questions if you say your long hours are the reason you’re not going home with that girl from the bar. ‘Sorry, my dick’s just not interested’ is a much longer conversation, and it’s not one that most women appreciate having. People expect men to always be up for it, and if they’re not, it becomes an issue. It’s exhausting.” He sighed. “And sometimes it was easier to tell myself that work was more important than investing time in…”
He didn’t finish his thought, and Mabel reached out to twine her fingers around his.
“Time in yourself?” she asked softly. “In finding a person to care
about?”
He nodded and squeezed her hand.
“I do it too,” she said after a moment of silence.
“Yeah?” He faced her again, some of the bleakness draining from his heart to be talking this easily about the things that had made sex and love so complicated for him for years.
“Yeah.” She kept her eyes on their hands as she spoke. “I lost my first radio job when things went south with the boss’s son, and I haven’t seriously dated anybody since. For my own protection, and for Dave’s, right? Except…”
He rolled over and wrapped his free hand around their entwined fingers, pressing tight so she’d know he was listening and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Except I was terrified of getting hurt again. Of trusting anybody again. And then you came along.”
He raised their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m so glad you took a chance on me.”
When she looked at him, tears danced along her lashes. “I’m so glad you took a chance on me.” Then she smiled and tossed her hair over her shoulder with a flourish. “So are we going public with this or what?”
“Hey, I already let you parade me around the food carts downtown like a piece of meat. How much worse can it get?”
She huffed out a laugh. “Well, there’s somebody who’s been rooting for you this whole time, so if we’re letting people know…”
She reached over him to snag her phone off the table on his side of the bed. It put her in the perfect position for him to suck one of her rosy nipples into his mouth, which of course he took advantage of, which of course distracted them both for longer than they expected. When they came back up for air, he pointed to her phone.
“Got plans for that?”
“Hmmm,” she said dreamily, then snapped out of it. “Oh yeah. Something tasteful.”
She turned the phone toward them and snapped a photo of their grinning, tousled heads sharing one pillow.
“I may as well let Dave know that his lobbying on your behalf finally paid off.” She hit Send on the picture only, with no explanatory text added, and her phone immediately buzzed with Dave’s typically understated reply: About time.
Jake kissed her temple, thrilled that she’d told her best friend about them. “Tell him I owe him a beer.”
“One beer? That’s all I’m worth to you?”
Jake kissed along her neck as he amended his offer. “A six-pack. A case. A keg. A lifetime supply.”
She shivered. “Lifetime, huh? I’ll let him know.”
“He can wait.” Jake grabbed her phone and dropped it on the bedside table. “Now get over here and make your case for why I should buy him something fancier than PBR.”
Laughing, she pushed him back on the bed and did just that.
Thirty-Three
“Are you asleep?”
The sun wasn’t up yet, but Mabel was, and she wanted Jake to be too.
In response to her whispered query, his arm snaked around her waist, pulling her backward to nestle against his chest.
“Of course I’m asleep,” he finally said, voice creaky. “No normal person is up this early.”
Mabel gave a humph and tucked her feet under his leg. Her habit of waking up at five a.m. was much more tolerable with Jake lying next to her. They hadn’t spent every night of the past three weeks together, but it was often enough that on those mornings when her eyes snapped open without the benefit of an alarm, she usually found all kinds of lovely ways to fill her time with the willing man next to her.
“I was thinking we should host another dinner party,” she whispered. Her bedroom was dark, but she felt his chest quake in a laugh. “What? I was a great chef!” she huffed.
Jake brushed aside her hair and pressed his lips against the nape of her neck. “Correction: I was a great chef. My pork loin was a hit. But I don’t think Robbie’s recovered from your curried vegetables yet.”
“He liked them,” Mabel grumbled.
“He was being polite. Now hush. One of us is trying to sleep.” He made a show of snuggling deeper under the covers.
Oh, he thought so, did he? She wiggled and gave a little stretch. “Hmm. What do you think about hitting the gym?”
In truth, gym wasn’t the kind of cardio she was angling for that morning. Her pestering paid off when a pair of strong hands clamped around her waist and hauled her on top of him, where she discovered that at least a part of Jake was wide awake. She rocked against him once, and he responded with a gentle bite to her shoulder.
“Too early for the gym. I’m thinking breakfast in bed. French toast?” he asked hopefully.
“You know you lost your french toast privileges.”
Jake had gotten creative with maple syrup during a breakfast delivery last Sunday, which resulted in Mabel having to wash every last scrap of her bedding. Worth it though.
“No gym, no french toast,” he mused. “Good thing I have a couple of other ideas for how to pass the time.”
An hour later, Mabel left a well-satisfied Jake in bed and went to forage for coffee. While she waited for the Keurig to heat, she glanced around her kitchen, taking in his stack of work files on the counter, his tie folded on top, his running shoes neatly placed in the corner. He’d invaded every corner of her house, and she loved it. In fact, sometimes she had to remind herself that this beautiful life was her beautiful life.
She was grabbing the creamer from the fridge when the man in question padded into the kitchen, Tybalt twining around his ankles. He yawned and settled onto a stool at the island.
Mabel set his coffee in front of him and kissed his bare shoulder. “Wanting to get into the office early, as per ushe?”
He looked her up and down with warm brown eyes. “Say the word and I’ll blow off work to take you back to bed for round two.”
“Deal,” she said. “But after coffee.”
They sipped in silence until Jake gestured at the radio on the island. “Do you want to…?”
She sighed and flipped it on, tuning in just as Dave and Thea greeted the early-morning listeners.
“She’s gotten a lot better,” Jake said. “All that coaching paid off.”
Mabel stirred her coffee but didn’t answer. Every scrap of her soul still hated hearing someone else with Dave, but at the same time, she’d spent hours working with Thea to get her more comfortable on air. Her protégée had taken to the morning show like a perky duck to water, and Mabel felt a weird mix of pride and resentment every time she tuned in. How confusing.
Thankfully, Jake recognized the conflict on her face and hustled her into the shower, where they used up all the hot water until he was forced to rush out the door so he wouldn’t miss his first scheduled call of the day.
That evening the chime of Jake’s phone interrupted their post-dinner viewing of a Barbarian Time Brigands rerun.
“It’s my mom,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all!” Mabel paused Netflix and hopped up to carry their empty plates to the dishwasher.
But when she returned to the living room, the sight of a sixty-something woman’s face on Jake’s phone screen halted her in her tracks in the doorway.
“Where are you right now, sweetie? I don’t recognize the background.”
He caught Mabel’s eye and silently asked the question they hadn’t discussed yet: am I telling my mom about you? To her surprise, the answer that clawed its way to the surface was hell yes. She nodded, and he rewarded her with one of his big, for-her-only smiles, which was fast becoming one of her favorite things in the world.
He turned back to his phone and said, “I’m, uh, I’m at Mabel’s actually,” and the tiny bit of bashfulness in his voice traveled straight to Mabel’s heart.
It clearly had the same effect on his mother too, because she gasped and pressed her fingers to her mouth and breathed, “You’re at Mabel’s!”
Jake had inherited his brown eyes from his mother, and hers were busy scanning the parts of Mabel’s living r
oom visible over Jake’s shoulder. Hmm. When was the last time she’d dusted?
“C-can I say hello to her?” his mother asked tentatively.
Another questioning glance from Jake, but this one found her straightening in alarm. “I’m not cute!” she mouthed at him, looking down in dismay at her sloppy sweatshirt and leggings and slapping her hands over her makeup-free face.
But he looked at her with his usual steady warmth and murmured, “Always beautiful, remember?”
Then he jerked his head to summon her over, and she joined him on the couch without a second thought. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her temple, and then she turned to the face on the phone.
“Hi, Mrs. Carey. I’m Mabel.” She gave a little wave.
“Call me Shannon, honey. I’m so glad to meet you. So glad. Jake’s told me…” She blinked rapidly and swiped at her eyes. “Well, let’s just say that Jake’s been waiting for you for a long time.”
Mabel felt tears threaten too, and she turned to look at the man on the couch next to her. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that he found me.”
He smiled back at her, and for a moment she forgot that they had an audience as she let the warmth of his gaze wash over her. But his mother’s sniffle pulled her out of the moment, and she looked back at the screen to find Shannon beaming at them.
“I’m just so happy. So happy he’s happy, that you’re both happy.” The older woman sniffled once more, then brightened. “So Jake says you’re a deejay?”
“I am!” Mabel chirped, nervously aware that this was her first chance to impress the mom. “Face for radio and all that.”
She laughed a little awkwardly, and Jake nudged her. “Yeah, such a burden to look at every day.”
Shannon’s own face, ruddy-cheeked and creased with lines under her brutally short salt-and-pepper hair, glowed as she looked between Mabel and her son. “Are you joining us for Christmas? We’d love to have you. Have you met Jake’s sister yet? She’ll be there with her boyfriend. I’d love to have all of you come.”
