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“We’ll figure it out,” I muttered and shut down my computer. “You working late?” I asked him, hoping the subject change would stick.
“Nah, not tonight. Hannah has some kids’ culinary class she’s teaching. I told her I’d go along and be her TA,” he said through an enormous, genuine smile while closing his office door. “I’ll walk down with you if you’re ready.”
We parted ways out front when he ducked into the same SUV that drove us home from the airport.
Christ, was that just yesterday?
I gave the driver, Lorenzo, a quick wave and hustled to my own car in the parking structure. I figured I could text Agatha while the engine warmed up on my road-worn car.
Leaving downtown now.
See you in 30.
It’ll take at least 90 this time of day.
Want to make a wager?
What do I get when I win?
Hmmm, let me think about it.
Don’t you mean if you win?
Traffic already looked horrendous when I made the first turn onto a freeway frontage road. If there had been an accident earlier in the afternoon, every artery leaving the hub of the city going west toward Brentwood would be clogged. I flipped on the podcast I started last week and tried to finish the episode. My brain protested any sort of concentration when thoughts of the woman at the end of my commute took center stage instead.
It had been a year since I had someone to look forward to going home to. Even then, the fire in my relationship with Kate had fizzled out long before. Most days, when I walked in the door, she either wasn’t home or couldn’t be bothered to even look up from her nonstop texting to say hello. Looking back on it now, we stayed together out of habit. Nothing more. It was easier to be miserable in routine than to be brave and move on.
With that as my only comparison, these feelings I had for the golden-haired storm were puzzling. Intense and exciting but confusing at the same time. How could I be so into her already? Maybe it was the newness of the relationship? Maybe the challenge of making our marriage mistake work was the exciting part and not my feelings for the woman herself. That would be completely out of character for me, though. I was a planner. I liked things to happen in a prescribed order and at the expected time. Surprises weren’t my thing. Basically, I was a by-the-book kind of guy.
And boring. So fucking boring, I put myself to sleep when I thought about my day to day. Lately, I’d been especially unmotivated regarding my future. Before meeting Agatha, at least. Now, I couldn’t wait to see where this crazy adventure would take us. I just had to get her to buy in on making the effort too. With the amount of energy the woman possessed, we could really turn things upside down. We could have tons of fun doing it, too.
I turned into the Farsey driveway exactly eighty-two minutes later. Damn traffic wouldn’t cut me a break no matter how many side streets I wove through. I probably added to my commute time with all the zigzagging I did to get to her place, but whatever. I just wanted to move on with this whole ordeal and get her settled at my place.
From outside the front door, I could hear the doorbell chime through the house. Her folks were probably stuck in the same gridlock I just endured, because Agatha’s car was the only one parked in the driveway. If I weren’t completely opposed to our first time being a quickie, we could probably sneak one in before they came home.
Goddammit. Now my dick was swelling to an obvious bulge, and I’d left my sport coat in the car. Elijah didn’t insist I wear a coat and tie every day, but I usually kept one in my car in case he had an appointment with someone important. Similar to what I was wearing currently, a button-down shirt and slacks were my daily norm.
It took the woman forever to answer the damn door. By the time she swung the rustic rectangle open, I had my phone in hand, ready to call her. The door dwarfed her as she inched the enormous hardwood panel open. Through squinted eyes, she recognized me, said nothing, and then turned at once to trudge back into the house.
“What, no kiss for your husband?” I teased after the skulking zombie that was masquerading as Agatha.
There might have been some sort of hand gesture from the woman after my remark, but it was too hard to tell while chasing behind her.
From the hallway outside her room, I thumbed over my shoulder back toward the foyer. “Don’t worry about the door. I locked it behind us.”
Even though I launched a second snarky comment, I still didn’t get a response. She face-planted into her disheveled bed without a single word.
A banker box filled with random office supplies sat at the foot of the mattress, and I grabbed the framed picture off the top. It was my beautiful lady and her sisters in a candid shot from a Christmas celebration. If I had to guess, the photo was a couple of years old, because the youngest of the brood, Clemson, still wore braces in the shot.
Looking around the messy room, I asked, “I thought you spent the day packing. Where are the other boxes?”
Had she been sleeping all day? Since we spoke this morning about her job termination?
“Don’t start with me, okay?” a muffled voice came from beneath the covers.
I didn’t even see her burrow under the blanket pile, so her soft-though-still-clipped response took me by surprise. But damn if the raspy edge of her bite didn’t stoke my arousal.
Clearly I would have to spend some time jerking off before being enclosed in any space with this woman. My only saving distraction was the general state of her bedroom. It looked like a tornado whipped through the place at some point in the past eighteen hours. We were in this room yesterday. Granted, I wouldn’t have described the space as tidy then either, but this was next level.
