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Mary didn’t see anything except the color. The rug was chocolate and cream, just like the quilt, but with splashes of what she called popsicle orange.
Sure. Why not?
***
Once she taught him about huggling, he couldn’t get enough of it. He loved to do it for hours, whenever they could manage it, with not a single thought of Van Deventer Ventures for him, and, he knew, a total blank on freelancing and bestselling books for Mary.
Huggling meant getting naked, lying on your side and snuggling, sort of like spooning face to face. He would open his arms and tuck her head into the hollow at his neck. She would sprawl half across his chest and curl her legs between his while he curled his around her. He gloried in bringing every inch of skin together.
Sometimes they drifted, sometimes they stroked, sometimes they murmured about this, or that, or anything else under the sun.
Van had never held anyone so close who was so warm and soft and fit so perfectly, whether in huggle, snuggle or cuddle.
Of course, he’d never huggled a woman at all before, since it was one of the many warm and wonderful things he’d discovered with Mary. Maybe he’d never even snuggled or cuddled before, either. He was sure, now that he knew what the real things were like, he’d never done them properly.
He and Mary would wrap around each other, waiting for the fire to give off its next hiss or crackle. Every time it did, they unwound their limbs enough to let their lips cuddle for a while instead.
Itwasagametheyplayed.Onecrackleorhiss,one lip cuddle. The game had resulted in them buying firewood only by the armful. He’d once made the mistake of buying a cord, which made it harder to find the dampest, hissing-est and crackling-est logs he figured could still burn.
The TV was on low as they huggled this time, but they barely noticed the heavy shelling and random machine gun bursts from the war movie that came on after the astronomy program they hadn’t watched either.
“You’ve been quiet,” Mary murmured against the hollow of his neck. “Is our second-husband fiasco bothering you? Or are you trying to decide whether to work on a new Puppy Palace or a sculpture?”
“You noticed, huh? That I haven’t started on the marble?” He didn’t like thinking about it, much less talking about it. Or did he? Talking things over with Mary didn’t feel like it usually did when he thought abouttalkingtosomeone,didn’tfeellikebreachinga wall and spilling his guts into the opening. Not quite, anyway.
“You haven’t touched the marble at all since you set it up on the revolving pad in the garage,” Mary said.
Vanstirreduneasily.“Idon’tknowwhyIdidn’tsend it straight to the farm. It looks like I need my studio there to get serious about marble.”
“And the Puppy Palaces?” she probed gently.
Yeah, that was Mary. Asking, not trying to tell him what to do.
“I love doing them,” he admitted. “My hands itch for them. But I don’t know. Maybe I should do the serious work first.”
Marypulledhimcloser,ifthatwaspossible.“When my typing fingers itch, it’s time to just go for it, whatever they want to write. When my hands feel full, it’s time to take a break. And you know what else? Sometimes, if I find it too hard to start, it’s because I haven’t figured out yet how to start it right, so it will be something I want the world to see. Sometimes it’s because I shouldn’t be working on that thing at all, and I should go on to something else.”
“Huh.Maybethestarting-rightthingispartofwhat holds me back with the marble.”
“You’ve never held back with Van Deventer Ventures, and turning that company around took a lot of creativity. Does it bother you to think of people seeing what you’ve done with the company? Or with the Puppy Palaces?”
“No. Neither of them matter to me in that way.” Van took the time to roll the why of that around in the part of his brain that told his hands what to do. “I never thought what I did at the company was the least bit creative. In a way, the Puppy Palaces feel a lot like the company. They’re beautiful, and my hands know that, but the whelping boxes are useful too. They’re fit for their purpose. They do exactly what they should do — keep babies warm and safe. They’re exactly what they have to be. It doesn’t matter what people think of them. The sculpture — maybe that’s something else altogether.”
“I care about what people think, and I wish I didn’t,” Mary said. “Sometimes it makes it hard to write. I’ve had to learn to block it out, but I can’t claim it’s easy. I didn’t know you cared what people thought about anything.”
“I didn’t either, not until we started talking about it. That keeps happening with you. I find out things I didn’t know I thought.”
Her smile grew as wide as wide could be.
It warmed something deep inside him. “Maybe I will start the new Puppy Palace. In fact, there’s only one thing I’d rather do at this moment.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Exactly what we’re doing right now.”
Her smile grew even wider than wide could be.***
Van needed some of his power tools for the roughing-in work on the Puppy Palace he had promised. He and Mary — and the dogs — headed over to his apartment for the first time in weeks.
