Chapter 12: Born on Your Money

He had rented the loft the Friday before, without telling anyone.

It was on the third floor of an old flour mill on the river.

It had brick walls, a wall of windows, and a grand piano alone in the middle of the floor.

"I didn't want to live in a hotel," he said, unlocking the door.

"I didn't want to live anywhere. But I wanted to see the river."

"Is it a good river?"

"It's the Mississippi. It's always good."

Agatha had Ellery for the night again, by decree.

She had told me that if I came home before breakfast, she would take it personally.

I stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the lights on the water.

My whole body hurt.

Seven years of the wrong story had gone out of me in one morning, and what was left was raw and clean.

"I don't know what to do with this," I said.

"With what?"

"With being angry at the right person."

He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

His chin settled on top of my head.

"Be angry at me too," he said. "I should have looked for you. A man who loved you would have looked."

"You thought I'd sold you."

"I thought it too easily. That's on me." His mouth moved against my hair. "I'll spend every day proving it."

I turned in his arms.

I put my hands on either side of his face and kissed him, hard.

I felt the tremor run all the way down his body.

"Take me to the window," I said.

He lifted his head.

"I want to see the river while you do it."

He made a low sound, almost a laugh, almost not.

He walked me backward to the glass.

The window was cold against my back when he pressed me to it.

The heat of him in front of me was the opposite of that cold.

He peeled my sweater off and let it fall.

Then my bra went, and his mouth was on my breast, his tongue hot.

I threw my head back against the glass and gasped.

Keep reading free with an account. Start When Love's Sorrow Plays Again from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.