Clearly Boo didn’t object to a new presence in the house.
Vance’s eyes moved to me and I climbed into bed as gracefully as I could (which I feared wasn’t graceful at all). Then I crawled to the opposite side, as far away from Vance as I could get, and got under the covers.
I laid back, stared at the ceiling and wondered what Vance had on under the covers, if he had anything on at all.
At the final thought, my breath went funny.
“Jules.”
“What?” I said to the ceiling.
“Come here.”
I thought about fighting it and decided against it. Don’t ask me why but it had been a weird day, in fact, it had been a weird four months. With my work, my training and my nightly patrol and now my head-to-head battle with Vance, I was tired and I simply didn’t have it in me.
I scooted closer. Vance’s arm came around my back, curled me into his side and I had no choice but to rest my head against his shoulder. I laid there, body tense. I didn’t know what to do with my hands so I tucked one arm underneath me and stroked Boo’s side with the other.
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
“I’ll live,” he answered.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault you got shot.”
“It isn’t your fault Sal Cordova is a moron.”
This was true. I went silent.
Vance reached up and turned out the light. In the darkness I felt his heat seeping into me and my body began to relax.
I laid there for awhile and listened to Boo purring. I stopped stroking him and rested my hand on Vance a few inches below my face. I was getting the impression that nothing was going to happen at this juncture to continue the night’s sexual activities. Vance was action man, if he meant to make a move he would have done so by now.
I took a deep breath and let it out and my body relaxed more.
“I ruined our second date,” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything.
I went silent again.
Then for some bizarre reason, I started talking.
“I told you I went there for my sixteenth birthday. Nick took me.”
He still didn’t say anything.
I kept talking. “It was five and a half months after Auntie Reba died. We had been…” I hesitated, “it wasn’t good. She died sudden, unexpected. It seemed the clouds over our lives would never clear.”
Vance still stayed silent.
I went on. “Nick wanted to make the day special. The sixteenth birthday, for a girl, is important. He bought me a dozen pink roses, because they’re my favorites, and gave them to me in the car. Made me take them with me to the restaurant so people would know it was my day. He had them bring me a cake with sparklers on it.”
Somewhere along the line, while I was talking, Vance started stroking my back.
I relaxed deeper into him. “We had fun. It was the first time since Auntie Reba died that we forgot the hole she left for a couple of hours and enjoyed ourselves. We even laughed.”
Boo got tired of being petted, walked across my waist and settled in a kitty curl at the base of my spine.
“As a present, he gave me a diamond necklace made from Auntie Reba’s engagement ring.”