She reminded him of the coffeehouse. Of watching her from the back of a car on the street opposite Beans 4 U, where she’d had the same relationship with an espresso machine she’d named Barbara. The same gentle coaxing. The same earnest encouragement. “Come on, Barbara, I know you can do better than this. I believe in you.” And when the machine finally cooperated, the same profuse gratitude, thanking it like it had done her a personal favor, apologizing for doubting it.
He had fallen in love with her somewhere between the apology and the gratitude.
“You’re negotiating with it again,” he said.
She spun around. Her cheeks flushed. They always flushed when he caught her doing something she considered undignified. The blush spread from her face down her neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt, and he wanted to follow its path.
“I’m not negotiating. I’m...encouraging.”
“With a machine.”
“Mariano responds to positive reinforcement.”
“Mariano responds to the left button, not the right one. I’ve told you this.”
She stared at him. Then at the machine. Then she pressed the left button and the espresso poured out smooth and dark and fragrant, and she turned back to him with wide, betrayed eyes.
“You could have told me that a week ago.”
“I could have.”
“You let me beg Mariano for a week.”
“It was informative.”
“Informative.”
“I learned a great deal about your persuasion style.”
She threw a dish towel at him. He caught it without looking. She made a sound, half frustration, half laugh, that hit him somewhere behind the sternum with a force he hadn’t been prepared for.
He was across the kitchen before she could blink, taking the coffee from her hand, setting it on the counter, and kissing her. Not gently. Not with patient restraint. With hunger. With the specific, targeted intensity of a man who had discovered that his wife’s outrage tasted better than anything the espresso machine could produce.
She melted against him. She always did. Her body’s response to his was the most honest thing about her, instantaneous and absolute. Her fingers found his shirt and gripped, and the small sound she made against his mouth sent a jolt through him that he felt in his spine.
When he pulled back, her eyes were glazed.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered. “You can’t just kiss me to win arguments.”
“I didn’t kiss you to win the argument.” He picked up her coffee and handed it back. “I kissed you because you called the espresso machine Mariano and I found it intolerable.”
“Intolerable?”
“You named it after a beautiful Italian man.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. The flush climbed her cheeks again.
“Are you...” She bit her lip. “Are you jealous of the espresso machine?”
“Drink your coffee. We’re late.”
He was not jealous of the espresso machine.
He was, perhaps, mildly territorial about the fact that his wife had given an Italian name to a kitchen appliance and spoke to it with more tenderness than she spoke to most humans, but this was an entirely rational response and did not constitute jealousy.
Zia was grinning behind her coffee cup. He could see it. He could also smell it, the bright, warm spike of delight that bloomed from her skin when she was pleased with herself.
She was pleased with herself frequently. It was extraordinary.
