“Yeah?”
“You have a beautiful body, too.”
I smiled.“Thanks, sugar, that’s sweet.”
“You’re welcome, darling,” he said warmly.“But what I’msaying is, you have that body.You also have three packets of bacon, and onlybecause I cooked up the last of the opened one yesterday, so before, you hadthree and a half.”
“This is true,” I confirmed, like having four packets ofbacon (and I made another mental note for my grocery list that I was one down)was the most natural thing in the world.
Because it was.
“And you don’t work out?”he asked then added with his armsgiving me a squeeze, “Every day?”
“I strip.Then I practicestrippin’.Then I help the other girls practicestrippin’,doin’ it byshowin’ them somegood moves.”I paused before I finished, “And I power walk.”
“Ah,” he murmured.
“I also have to cart around thesebazungas,”I shared, deciding not to take my arm from around him (because I liked my armsaround him) in order to gesture to saidbazungashecouldn’t exactly miss since he was lying on them.“And that burns somecalories, believe you me.”
He was still murmuring, and his eyes were still twinkling,when he said, “I bet.”
It was then I decided to remove an arm from around him butonly so I could put a hand to his jaw and rub my thumb over the dark stubble onhis cheek.
It rasped against the pad of my thumb and felt nice.
Realnice.
And I watched the twinkle in his eye disappear but only sohe could replace it with something I liked just as much.
I kept doing this with my thumb as I said softly, “I needsome aspirin, baby.I got me a little hangover from last night and it’s allgood with youlookin’ hot on my couch andbein’ hot whilekissin’ me thenbein’ sweet whiletalkin’ aboutpancakes.But that’ssettin’ in again so Igottaget ondoin’ somethingabout it and thenfeedin’ my hot guy.”
“You have an extra toothbrush?”
My eyes rolled back to study my bangs for a second as Imentally inventoried my bathroom drawers then I looked at him again and said,“Yeah.”
“You get me that.I’ll get you the water and aspirin.Thenyou can start cooking.”
I grinned at him.
“Deal.”
We were sitting at my dinette and I was shoveling inpancakes while envisioning the dining room table I was going to buy when I gotmy new place (this in an effort not to envision what Marcus’s shoulders lookedlike under the shirt he’d put back on—he was fine in that shirt—he was finerout of it).
Marcus was shoveling in pancakes too.Though, he wasclassier about it.
“How’d you get all classy?”I asked.
“Sorry?”he asked back.
I circled my fork with its hunk of pancakes dripping syrupat him.
“You said you didn’t have muchgrowin’up.Your daddy played the ponies.Your sister was a stripper.But you look andact like a Kennedy, except hotter, and withoutforgettin’how to pronounce your R’s.”
“Got a job at a country club to help my sister out when Iwas fourteen,” he shared.
I nodded.
“Some of the adults were all right.The rest acted like Ididn’t exist.The kids were jackasses.”
