16
“They’re multiplying,” Tom said, peering suspiciously through the inn’s open front door the next morning. Snow Wolf and the Great Puffin were still there with Boyd, now accompanied by several other young people with laptops, tablets, and large iced coffees. Almost a dozen of them, ranging in age from late teens to midtwenties, none of them answering to names known to the Social Security Administration. “Like…gerbils. Stuffed animals.Gremlins.You know? Did you ever see that movie? You got the little creature wet and new monsters sprouted.”
When Rose woke up today, Tom had been down in the kitchenette in his underwear, brewing coffee and slicing fruit. Her pounding hangover was buffering her from any tender, uncomfortably wistful feelings this display of half-naked domesticity might otherwise have engendered:This is for me?
“Did Boyd say who they were?” Rose asked.
“I don’t think Boyd really knows. He said he came backfrom his first morning jog and they were all here helping the first two tape the baseboards.”
Boyd was in the center of the group, head and shoulders taller than most of them, looking like clickbait:Great Dane adopts lost ducklings! He’s a great dad!
“They must be Snowy’s or Puff’s friends,” Rose theorized. It was hard to remember the precise events of the previous day after the first or second bar, but both girls had made loud promises of assistance with the inn renovations once it became clear to them that Boyd planned on sticking around. “They must be here to help.”
It was like someone else’s package had been delivered to her door, but instead it was someone else’s life. A week ago she’d thought this place would be full of her family instead of Boyd Kellagher’s fangirls. A decade ago she’d thought she was going to have her family love her instead of Tom. It was a good thing she’d decided to embrace the unexpected, because she might otherwise have been reeling.
“They’re shippers,” Tom said dourly. “People with funny ideas about me and Boyd.”
Rose surveyed the crowd inside. Several of them were casting inquisitive glances out at Tom, who was looking particularly handsome this morning in a fadedRentcast T-shirt that clung to a lot of places he hadn’t had as a college junior. He had several days’ worth of stubble, as he seemed to have forgotten shaving equipment while packing for this trip, but it only highlighted the strength of his jaw and the fullness of his mouth.
Rose was probably of less interest in her cable-knit sweater and comfortable corduroys. She wondered what Puff and Snowy had said about her. She’d responded to every personal question the previous day with a lengthy and entirely fictional account of her relationships with both men. She’d rescued Boyd from sex slavery in Peoria; she and Tom had been go-go dancers in Sugar Land and war buddies in Korea.
Served them right for doubting the very boring backstory that she’d met Tom in line at the registrar when he’d needed to borrow a pen.
Tom saw her expression tighten.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, just remembering that Puff and Snowy seemed to doubt that a classy lady like me would ever have been seen with schlub like you,” she said lightly. “Even if you’re making an effort these days.”
It was fine that nobody else’s erotic fantasies revolved around thirty-four-year-old investment managers.
Tom cut his eyes to the fangirls, frowning. “Did they say something? I’ll throw them out.”
“It’s fine. I’m sure you’ll do something unexpectedly sexy, and they’ll realize what I ever saw in you,” Rose said.
“Hmm,” Tom said, appearing to ponder the proposition deeply, though it had been a throwaway tease. He poured the rest of his coffee into the grass and set his mug aside on the vacant concrete planter at the end of the walk.
Before Rose could recognize his intentions, he’d seized her around the waist and swiftly tugged her against the full length of his body. He wrapped his second arm around her shouldersand hooked one of her ankles with his heel so that she toppled back into a theater clinch.
He held her like they were onstage, but he kissed her like they weren’t. He held the curtain-drop position effortlessly, but he smirked right against her mouth and gave her a little aren’t-I-clever pause he’d never have allowed a paying audience to see before he pressed his lips to hers.
Tom always did kiss with his whole chest, his kisses marking rare moments when he wasn’t thinking of something else or doing three other things at the same time. He couldn’t sing while his tongue was in her mouth, she supposed. Couldn’t fidget or wander away with his hands supporting her. He was only kissing her, kissing her like there were no other things to do in the world. Rose dug her hands into the fabric of his shirt, off balance from the sudden shock of Tom’s full attention.
He pulled back long enough to check whether he was going to be slapped for his presumption, then kissed her again, rubbing his stubbly face against hers hard enough to chafe her chin and bruise her lips. It didn’t occur to her to be angry at him; it wasn’t as though she’d ever wished hewouldn’tkiss her like she was about to step onto the last plane out of Casablanca.
When he pulled back and set her safely on her feet, Rose held on to him, feeling absurdly as though she ought to have done something cleverer herself. Something interesting with her hands or tongue—she couldn’t think of what. Something other than clinging to him like an understudy ingenue who hadn’t learned her lines.
Still, she couldn’t help but grin back at him, because hisexpression invited her to be in on the performance with him. She was costarring today.Thank you, everyone, we’ll be back for the two o’clock matinee.
“Sorry if today wasn’t a kissing day,” Tom told her, sounding anything but apologetic. He waved at the fangirls, who were all gaping in varying degrees of shock and consternation to see Tom rub faces with a random office lady, all except for Boyd, who was beaming like a gymnastics spectator who’d just watched a Ukrainian teenager spin three backflips and stick the landing.
Boyd extricated himself from the crowd of admirers and came outside, his phone in his hand.
“I just heard from my publicist. I told him about the inn, the basement bar, the whole idea, and he’s going to pitch the feature to some magazines. He asked if we could send him a few pictures today.”
“Oh my God,” Rose said. “Are you serious? What magazines?”
“People,Entertainment Weekly,House Beautiful…”
