And right then, even if he was not in a suit but looked justas f-i-n-e,finein a V-necked, dark-bluesweater that did things to his eyes that, if I wasn’t ticked aboutSteelMagnolias, would have done things to mycoochie,and dark-wash jeans, he had to know that.
So I unlocked the deadbolt, slapped open the latch, andyanked open my own damned door.
“You’re interruptingSteel Magnolias,” I snappedtetchily to Marcus Sloan.
He burst out laughing.
He really shouldn’t have done that.
He really shouldn’t have laughed.
Really.
He was handsome, for sure, just as he was.
But laughter took years off his face.
Years.
I didn’t know how old he was.He looked in his mid-thirties(and I wasn’t going there seeing as he clearly had established his place inDenver at a young age which said something about him and what it said, to agirl like me, wasallgood).
But right then, he looked like the boy you hoped would neckwith you (and you’d let him get to second base) after he took you to a movie.
Though, it was more.
The deep sumptuousness of his laughter felt like everything.
Every diamond in the world laid at your feet.
Every fur piled deep.
Every gold necklace a tangle of beauty twenty feet deep.
Still chuckling, he turned to the side and jerked his headtoward my apartment, “Set it up.”
Without a choice, I shifted out of the way as a tall, blondman wearing a black suit, white shirt, and thin black tie walked in carrying apaper bag by the handles in one hand and balancing a baker’s box in the other.
Following him came a heavyset man dressed the exact sameway.He’d lost most of his steel gray hair and was for some reason wearingsunglasses even though the sun had gone down, not to mention, he was indoors.He had two bottles of champagne pressed to his chest in one arm, two delicatechampagne flutes dangling from the other with…
I narrowed my eyes at them…
Beautiful peacocks engraved in the glass.
Really beautiful peacocks.
Perfection.
Damn him to hell.
I turned my narrowed eyes to Marcus as he moved in, puttinga hand to my waist, and this time he used it to guide me where he wanted me togo.
Right smack dab into the middle of my living-slash-diningroom.
I let this happen mostly because I was beginning to smellsomething.
Something so good it forced all of your attention to it.
Which meant I saw the first guy opening lids on foodcontainers, the aroma of what was inside beating back the scent of flowers andfilling the room.
