Laura gasps at the touch alone. She breaks the kiss long enough to pant against Amelia’s cheek. “Please.”
Just for her.
She thrusts up, and the grunt and the needy pressure around her fingers—touching Laura like this is better than any profession.
Amelia pushes her back onto the bed and falls alongside her. Every ministration brings about some new gasp or keen.
She kisses Laura slowly. Teasingly. Draws the pleasure out of her like strands of sugar drawn out of something molten. Her chest hitches and she reaches for Amelia, her hand clumsy. She kisses Laura’s palm. Nips at her flesh.
When Laura comes, it’s fluttering breaths and a warm pulse against Amelia’s hand. It fills Amelia with all kinds of wonder.
And Laura stares at her with what might be a similar kind of wonder. It could be, but only if they keep this moment long enough between ’em.
She kisses Laura’s thumb as it grazes her lips.
This moment isn’t gonna last. None of them can.
Because, eventually, they’ll be back in DC, and Laura will have her family and her fears. Amelia will have the wreckage of her career, and the disaster that they might be together will be behind them.
So, she slaps Laura’s thigh as if she’s some kind of beast of burden and announces that she’s famished and ready to eat a proper dinner.
She sees how confused Laura is as she saunters to the bathroom to clean up, and she’s very careful not to apologize.
Because that would just invite the disaster they’ll inevitably be.
They eat Oysters Rockefeller. Laura makes a joke about the real risk to their lives being consuming seafood so far inland. Amelia smiles pleasantly but doesn’t laugh.
There are more jokes with the main course. Little self-deprecating asides. Laura tears herself down over and over again, always shyly watching Amelia for a response. A smile or a laugh or even a roll of the eye.
It’s such a bizarre place for Amelia.
When they lived next door to each other, it was Amelia who pursued Laura, begging for scraps and praying for her to do nothing but stop by. Now she’s the one sipping Old Fashioneds with a face set like a statue. She’s making Laura work for something she knows she can’t give her.
God, she’s turned into an asshole.
“Did you always want children?” she asks.
An enormous asshole.
Laura stabs at her ham steak and seems surprised by the question. Amelia feels a little proud—on account of Laura being a fancy spy and all.
“I don’t…I suppose I never thought about it… until I had them.”
That’s a lie. “Every girl thinks about kids.” She’s done with her own meal, a real steak that was too salty and green beans steeped in pork fat. She pulls a cigarette out and lights it. Orders another drink. “We start somewhere between learning to walk and potty training.”
Laura’s face is so still as to be unreadable. “Twice then,” she finally admits.
“Gerard.”
Laura nods. “And you,” she says softly.
“Me?”
“We would have adopted. Officially they’d be yours.”
“Like Crawford?”
“But more likable.”
Fair.
“I’d keep a separate bedroom and be your ‘good friend.’ We’d periodically engage in high-profile romances with the most masculine men.”
“John Wayne.”
“Exactly. And we’d grow old. And fat. And happy. And your mother would love me despite my sex because there’d be grandchildren.”
“Very important to her.”
Laura nods, because yes, she knows how important grandchildren are to Ma Maldonado.
“Sounds as if you worked it all out. Was it you faking your death or marrying Michel that ruined the plan?”
It’s meant to be a low blow, to spread around a little of the hurt Amelia’s feeling, but Laura smirks. “Both, wouldn’t you say?”
Didn’t they order dessert? Amelia looks around for it. She’s positive, even though she’s about five drinks into her evening, that they ordered dessert.
“You hating me helps,” Laura says conversationally. “As does this Wallace Beery impression.”
Amelia sets her drink down. “I am offended.”
“Your liver’s probably more offended.”
Her liver wants to punch her in the gut.
Cool fingers slip around her wrist and an insistent thumb sweeps across the inside.
They’re in the middle of this nice restaurant. While her hair’s changed and her makeup is different, she’s still Amelia Wright, Oscar-winning actress on trial for treason. And Laura’s holding her… looking at her… like a lover would.
She looks at Amelia, and the rest of the dining room doesn’t matter. It’s just the two of them again in a car riddled with bullet holes on the side of the road in New Jersey.
She can still hear the rain beating against the roof and see it slipping through cracks in the window.
“I’m terrified,” Amelia says quietly.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. I’ve already done the most terrifying thing I can.”
“What?”
“Leave you.”
They don’t stick around for dessert.
Amelia’s not gonna look at the clock, but she knows it’s later. Knows dawn’s around the bend. And she knows she couldn’t care less.
Laura’s leaning against the headboard, sitting cross-legged with a cigarette dangling from her lips. She’s got Amelia’s list in front of her and is scanning it as if it’s a bit of James Joyce.
Amelia runs her hand up and down Laura’s thigh, real slow like. Drawing her nails across a plane of smooth skin that turns to goosebumps in her wake.
“I’m more partial to Finnegans Wake,” she says, punctuating it with a kiss to Laura’s knee.
“I know what you’re partial to, and it isn’t literature.”
“I have diverse interests.”
“I noticed. Not just American, but German, Swedish—Ow!”
So maybe Amelia bites her. It’s not a real hard sort of bite. Just a light nip that has Laura yelping and tossing the list on the bedside table so she can scoot around to lean over Amelia.
“You bit me,” she says.
“Very observant, Agent.”
“Officer.”
“Officer Wright.” She squirms against Laura and gets the exact result she was looking for. A blush that starts on her cheeks and trails down her chest. “Plan to do something about it?”
Her lips—no, definitely her teeth—graze Amelia’s lower lip, and Amelia’s got to say that the feeling in her belly—one she’s been having a lot this evening—is pretty fantastic.
Toe-curling almost.
And then it’s shattered by a light knocking at the door that has Laura up with gun in hand so fast, Amelia’s likely to confuse her with a character out of the funny pages.
She keeps both hands on her gun, barrel all steady and aimed at the door. Her hair’s in her eyes, and she’s stark naked, but Laura doesn’t even notice.
If Amelia’s heart wasn’t about to beat out of her chest, she’d be just a little aroused at the sight.
The knock comes again.
“Closet,” Laura snaps, and Amelia doesn’t have to be told twice. She tosses Laura her coat just before she crams her naked self into the closet.
Laura shoulders the coat on, aim never drifting from the door. With coat closed, she moves closer. Flinches when there’s another knock.
With a quick, worried glance back at Amelia she whips the door open and slips out into the hall.
Then.
Silence.
Well, not actual silence.
Amelia’s bare-butt naked and huddled in a closet. Her breath rattles off the door and every minute shift seems to have her brushing against the hangers, which are loud as klaxons in the confined space.
It’s not like being sixteen again.
Back then, all the waiting was done in a car, one foot on the gas, the other on the brake. Back then, the waiting was tolerable. It helped that she was always too dumb to really be worried. At least, she was before her brother lost his leg.
Back then, it was those same kind of nerves she got when she’d kiss a girl. She always felt light. Felt as if she was vibratin’ full of something.
Now, sitting in a closet, the nerves are another kind. An anchor pulling the whole mess of her down into the floor.
She should get a gun. Or get Laura to get her a gun.
Then they’d both have guns, and she could learn to do more than close her eyes and squeeze the trigger and pray.
She ought to be able to do more than sit in a closet too.
With the boys, she was part of the plan. She cased the escape route and knew how to keep them alive.
With Laura, she’s the damsel waiting in the wings, and she wants to wallop something with a bat.
Laura does come back. Eventually. Gun pocketed. Hair messier than before. Wearing a smeared shade of lipstick Amelia doesn’t recall either of them having.
Followed by Judy goddamned Hayseed, smirking. And would you look at that shade of lipstick.
Amelia wraps her knuckle against the closet door because that’s easier than yelling.
“It’s all right,” Laura says.
Amelia’s pretty sure it isn’t, but she steps out of the closet in nothing. “Wow,” she says. “Judy Hayseed back from the dead. Wait till the other girls hear.”
Judy has a tight smile that reminds Amelia of a rabid dog baring its teeth. “Amelia,” she says too sweetly. “It’s so wonderful to see you still alive. And still firmly in that closet.”
Laura clears her throat. “Judy’s been doing some of the legwork for me and has come to help out as she can.”
Clearly been doing plenty of other things, too. Amelia feels like thumping herself because she never figured Judy for the lavender set, and she’s usually real good at that.
“So you two… work together?”
Laura’s got a look on her face as if she just farted. Judy smiles in a real irritating way. “Is that what she told you?”
“We haven’t had a lot of time to talk about work. Doing other things.”
“I know the feeling.”
Now Laura closes her eyes.
And Amelia feels as if she’s useless and back in the closet again. Also as if she wants to smack herself in the face. Especially with the way Judy—Judy from Iowa!—is smirking at her.
“So…” She claps her hands together. “Seeing as I’ve got to get up early and continue fleeing across country, trying not to get killed in the process, I’m going to go to bed. You two have fun with your little Hitchcock thriller, okay?”
She shoves ’em both out of the room and moves robotically to the bed—which doesn’t look nearly as enticing as it did earlier. Especially the sticky spots.
God.
She’s an idiot.
A big dumb idiot.
Judy from Iowa is some kind of hyper-capable spy, and Amelia gets paid to cry on command.
She hides away under the covers and reads the James Joyce to feel superior. A little later, she hears their voices in the hallway, followed by someone laughing and a door shutting.
She has to pull her pillow down on top of her head. Partly to avoid hearing any sounds she doesn’t want to hear, but mainly just on the off chance that, if she dies, the assassin won’t get to see how silly and mortified she looks.
But, when she’s still not asleep because she’s too busy in a pillow pity party, her door opens. And closes. When she peeks out from under her pillow, she finds a worn out Laura, gun drawn, trying to make herself comfortable in front of the door.
She calls Laura’s name and feels a little less embarrassed when Laura freezes.
“I thought you were asleep,” Laura says, rising back up.
“Too busy feeling like an ass to sleep.”
Laura comes over to take a seat on the edge of the bed, her pistol settled in her lap. “You weren’t an ass.”
Amelia glares.
“You were a little bit of an ass. But it’s been going around an awful lot lately.”
She has to duck her head and grin because Laura’s not wrong. She reaches over and scratches at the fabric of Laura’s coat. “You gonna explain why you’re camping on my floor.”
“Judy thinks we’re sleeping together.”
“We are.” She wants to act as if she gets it. She really doesn’t.
Laura sighs. “And I don’t trust her. Ever.”
Oh. Right. She feels a little cold all of the sudden. “You think she’s gonna kill me?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.” Laura can admit stuff like that casually. “But, Amelia, you must know, whatever her intentions might be, I won’t let her hurt you.”
“You’ve been making that promise a lot lately.” Amelia says it reflexively. Not as if she means to hurt Laura. She just feels as if she’s got to say it.
She regrets it when Laura flinches. So she reaches out before Laura can apologize or stand up, and she pulls her so she’s half on top of Amelia. The gun ends up close to her head, and she’s surrounded by the tang of gun oil.
She kisses her. All careful and slow. Just until Laura stops feeling so skittish against her.
“Might be safer if you’re in the bed then—remember?”
Laura smiles against her lips.
They don’t do anything more than kiss. A possible assassin one door over kind of cools any ardor Amelia might have lurking. But Laura does lie in the bed, and she pulls Amelia over until her head’s resting on Laura’s breast. She wraps an arm around Amelia and keeps the other close to that gun.
“I’m surprised,” Laura says softly when they’re both near passed out.
“What for?”
“You haven’t ribbed me for clearly kissing her.”
Amelia snuggles closer. “Cause hers isn’t the room you’re spending the night in.”
“She was the one that kissed me.”
“Laura.”
“Amelia?”
“Shut up.”
There’s no faster way of feeling like an ass than waking up in bed, half naked, and a little bothered, only to find your lover fully dressed and sitting on a chair opposite you.
With her legs crossed.
Laura makes it a habit of making Amelia feel like the ass.
She’s clearly been up a while. Just sitting there. Waiting.
“This,” Amelia motions to all of Laura, “is never a good sign.”
“We’re going back to DC.”
Amelia sits up and hunches over the side of the bed, tugging at the half ruined curls of her hair. “We just left.”
“Because we didn’t have a choice. Now we do.”
As only one thing’s changed since the night before, Amelia asks, “Judy?”
“Judy.”
“How does a former assassin change things? She gonna murder half of HUAC?”
It’s the first time, Laura smiles, and it softens the hard lines of her face. “She’d like to. But I was planning on her staying at your hotel with you. If she’s there, other assassins won’t be. And while you’re protected, I can sort out this mess.”
“Sounds a little Father Knows Best to me.”
“I’m very good at
sorting.”
“Right. You save the day, and I sit holed up in a hotel with an assassin. Can’t say I like that plan.”
“It’s that or keep running. And we both know you don’t run.”
“Sure. Running is your forte.”
“Amelia.” Laura sounds so weary.
“I just…You come back into my life, tell me you love me, and you want to throw away your marriage to be with me. Then trouble shows up, and you’re running again.”
“I’m not running.”
“The only difference is, you didn’t dope the pastries—”
“It was coffee! And what exactly would you like me to do? You went and promised to out half of Congress. I have to find who’s trying to murder you, convince them to stop, and then convince everyone else you’ve ever spoken to that you’re not a threat. All while getting HUAC to drop the inquiry!”
“Yeah, that’s a lot to do. Which is why you need help.” She gets out of the bed. “So let me help.”
Laura stands too. Only she looks as if she wants to run. She even turns away.
“Otherwise, what’s the point,” Amelia says. “It’ll just be forty-six again and again.”
“I won’t fake my death—”
“But you’ll leave me in order to protect me. It’s what you’re doing right this second.”
“I’m really not.”
“You’re asking me to sit idly by while you save me.” She comes closer but hesitates to actually reach out. Laura can turn skittish like a deer so easily. “I hate to break it to you, Laura, but I only play the damsel in the pictures.”
“If anything we do goes sour—”
“We’ll deal with it. Together.”
Laura hangs her head. It’s as good a victory as Amelia will ever get, tempered by Laura saying, “You’re a fool.”
Amelia slips her arms around Laura’s waist, pulls her close, and presses a kiss to her shoulder blade. “A fool you’re in love with.”
Laura turns around in her arms, and her smile is broken. “Madly,” she says, and she’s being honest. Amelia can see it, can taste it in her kiss.
The Lavender List Page 19
