He cleared his throat. “Guess that makes me a lucky guy.”
Her grin flashed. “Lucky comes later. Pour the wine, will you?”
He filled her glass. “How’d the writing go today?”
She paused cutting the bread, like he’d surprised her. “It’s going.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yes.” She picked up the bunch of grapes. Put it down. “I had... I guess you’d call it a breakthrough,” she confessed, almost shyly.
“What sort of breakthrough?”
She looked at him doubtfully. “We don’t have to talk about my work. Most of what I do, writing... It’s kind of boring if you’re not another writer. You don’t have to be polite with me.”
Yeah, he did. He was sleeping with her. That entitled her to be treated with respect. But more than that, he was genuinely interested. He’d read her book—her first book—but he still didn’t know what made her tick. She was a puzzle to him.
He’d always liked puzzles.
He put some cheese on some bread and offered it to her. “If you were a cop,” he said, “and you told me you caught a break in a case, I would know what that meant. But I don’t know what a breakthrough is for a writer.”
“Well.” She swallowed. “I don’t see the end yet. But for the first time, I can see how I might get there.”
He frowned. “How do you know you’re on the right road if you can’t see the destination?”
He wasn’t talking about her book anymore. Not entirely.
And she knew it, too. She smiled her funny smile. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“Life’s about the journey, not the destination?” he asked with heavy irony.
“Since we’re all headed to the grave, then, yes. ‘Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.’”
He liked the way she talked, her attitude, her optimism. Maybe he liked them all a little too much. “What is that, poetry?”
She nodded. “Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress.’”
“Yeah?” He grinned sharply to cover a sudden sense of inadequacy. “You know the one about the girl from Nantucket?”
She didn’t get pissy. She laughed. “All I’m saying is, life’s too short. When you’re not sure of your destination, you might as well enjoy the trip.”
He didn’t entirely agree, but he liked talking to her. He couldn’t imagine having this conversation with the guys back home. Or Renee.Marvell. Jesus. “You religious, Lauren?”
“I believe that what we do in this life, the choices we make, matter,” she said carefully. “But whether they matter to some afterlife... I don’t know.”
Not Ma’s Catholic girl.
“So how does this thing with us fit into your travel plans? You’re a pretty girl. Smart. Well educated. A couple of book deals under your belt. What are you doing with a thirty-eight-year-old divorced cop from Philly?”
“Well, if I’d known you werethatold...” She trailed off teasingly, trying to make a joke.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t know what he was asking. Why he was pushing her the way he’d push a suspect in an interrogation, trying to get her to confess... What?
Her big, dark eyes fixed on him. Her take-no-shit therapist’s look, shrewd and warm at the same time. “I want to be with you, Jack. Don’t you think you deserve that? To be wanted? Desired? Loved?”
O-kay.
She’d turned the tables on him, turned the interrogation on its head. The talking portion of the evening was over.
