it.
It was natural.
It was like bickering with him practically the minute he first walked into my apartment. It was like giggling at him being sexy and flirty and playful over brunch. Or sitting next to him at Mexican last night, Mag with his good arm around my chair, both our chairs tucked close, me with my boyfriend, him with his woman, and we’d only really had one date.
It was us.
I didn’t know if I’d ever been an us with anybody, not even my ex.
But Mag and I had been us since the beginning.
On this realization, I relaxed against him and enjoyed the moment.
That was, I enjoyed the moment until he tightened his arm around me for a second and muttered, “Gotta clean up. Be back.”
I slid off and he slid out of bed.
I found my panties in the sheets and had them on by the time he got back.
He stood, naked and beautiful, in the dawn’s early light beside the bed and donned his shorts and sling before he got back into bed and claimed me, pressing me down his healthy side.
“Do you need a pill?” I asked.
“No. Before bed only,” he answered.
“But if you’re in pain…” I let that trail.
“Got a high threshold for pain,” he told me. “But even if I didn’t, I need sleep to heal, I need the pain gone to sleep, so before bed only and only for a few nights. Painkillers will fuck you up and my life just took a good turn, not gonna let dick fuck it up.”
Oh my.
He’d been shot yesterday, and he thought his life had taken a “good turn.”
That turn being me.
Oh man.
I liked that.
A whole lot.
“Okay, then I’m going to make breakfast in bed for you.”
His body started shaking so I took my head off his shoulder, pushed up and looked down at him.
Yes, he was laughing.
“What?” I asked.
“No fair. I get shot for you, and you get a leg up on the breakfast game.”
My face must have registered my thoughts because his arm moved in its sling, he winced, then he took his other arm from around me and cupped my cheek.
“You didn’t shoot me,” he said softly.
“Danny—”
“Stop it. Now.”
I closed my mouth.
“I don’t blame anyone but Fletcher Gumm for this,” he declared. “And I won’t ever blame anyone but Gumm for this.”
“It could have been worse.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It could have been catastrophic.”
He slid his fingers back into my hair, pulled my face to his and said low, “It wasn’t.”
I took in air and nodded.
“We done with that?” he asked.
“I reserve the right to feel bad, freak out or otherwise react to it for the foreseeable future. Though you’re allowed to get angry about me doing that if that lasts longer than, say, ten years.”
He burst out laughing, doing so pulling my head further down, which meant my body went down with it, and he tucked my face in his neck.
He then rounded me with his arm, tensed it and kept it that way to hold me close.
When he got control of his hilarity, he agreed, “Okay. Ten years. Starting now.”
I smiled against his skin.
“So, today, breakfast, your turn ’cause I wanna make a few calls, and you’re right, I should take it easy. Then we’ll hit your pad to get your vinyl and anything else you wanna grab—”
“Danny—”
“It’ll fuck with me, but you can carry,” he grunted.
Okay, I could do that.
I said no more.
“We’ll grab some lunch, hit the grocery store and stock up then back here to take a load off.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Evie?” he called.
“Hmm?” I answered.
“Baby,” he said in a much different tone, and I closed my eyes. “You had a big day yesterday.”
I opened my eyes.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“I…don’t think so.”
“If you do, not sure you can miss it ’cause you’re layin’ on me, and I won’t be much farther away all day, so just sayin’, I’m right here.”
God.
He was just…
So nice.
I turned my head, pressed a kiss to his shoulder, then pushed up again to look down into his extraordinary eyes with his amazing curly lashes.
“It’s soon,” I whispered, “but I don’t care. Fair warning, if by some awful happenstance Lottie needs a kidney, I’m giving her one of mine.”
“Only if mine isn’t a match,” he whispered back.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
I liked that too.
A whole lot.
There he was, my boyfriend.
There I was, his woman.
This being so, I kissed him.
It was sweet, and it was wet, and it lasted a long time.
But it didn’t go anywhere.
Because Mag had been shot the day before and