“Thank you, sweetheart,” Battle replied, his voice slightly thick, but he was hanging in there.
I shifted my attention to Tempie to see she was swirling her olives in her martini.
And she was smiling.
Broadly.
The man practically ran me off my heels when we were trying to escape Chelsea.
But post-dinner, after we’d been apart for four days, and I wasn’t teetering in heels, did he drag me to my room?
No.
We strolled there like we had all the time in the world.
We were headed to my room because, during pudding, I’d leaned his way and whispered, “Your room or mine?”
To which he’d found my ear and whispered back, “Considering I intend to fuck you in every room in this house, we might as well start now. Yours.”
After that, I made a mental note to initiate no more, even minimally sexy talk in front of his sisters, because my body reacted so strongly to his words.
Fortunately, when we made my door, Battle stopped messing around.
He did this in order to start messing around.
As such, he used his hand in mine to whirl me whereupon I slammed against his chest, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me deeply as he backed into my room, taking me with him.
I was all in to win (in other words, all over him), when he sat on my bed, also taking me with him, only immediately to stand, break the kiss and turn his head to look down at my bed.
In more than a bit of a haze, I looked too.
There was a book there.
The cover was beautifully imagined swirls and flourishes in which were hidden dragons and ridiculously handsome men with wings on their backs, all of this in greens, blues, purples and shades of gray.
And in the middle of all of this, in silver foil, there was the title Into the Gilt Frame.
Under it, it said, Written and Illustrated By Prudence Talyn.
I gasped and my hands flew to my mouth.
From behind them, I asked, “She’s been published?”
“No,” Battle replied. “Chassie took one of her books and had it printed and bound as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.” He reached and nabbed a sheet of thick, soft gray stationery with an artsy, blocky monogram of PJT (Prudence’s middle name was Joanna) at the top that was lying beside the book. “There’s a note. Addressed to you.”
Excited, I took it from him.
And read it aloud.
“Vivi. You liked Battie’s portrait so I thought maybe you might want to see this. It’s an early thing, not very good. If you don’t like it, that’s okay. But I thought you might want to see it. Love, Prue.”
With big, happy eyes, I looked up Battle.
He smiled indulgently and stated, “I suppose we can have sex in the morning.”
Gah!
He was so great.
