Your Love Came Late, I Chose Another novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Peaches

I sat up on the couch.

The jacket slid down into my lap, over the blue sundress I'd worn to the shoot.

My sandals were somewhere under the couch.

"Scared of what?" I asked.

"Of this." He gestured at the room, the files, me. "Of wanting a thing that gets on a plane."

"I'm not getting on a plane."

"You've got a year and a quiet divorce in writing."

"You wrote that part."

"I know." He rubbed his face. "I wrote it so you'd say yes."

The desk lamp buzzed.

Out in the courtyard, the fig tree scraped the window in the wind.

"Tell me about the peaches," I said. "Your side."

"You were there."

"I was there for my side. I want yours."

He leaned his head back against the desk and looked at the ceiling.

"Late August. Last week of the season. I'd been up since four and I wanted one good thing for the inn's breakfast." His mouth tilted. "I put my hand on that flat, and a woman in a flour-covered T-shirt put her hand right on top of mine and said, 'Absolutely not.'"

"I did not say 'absolutely not.'"

"You said 'absolutely not' and called me a cobbler murderer."

"That part's true."

"You talked for five straight minutes about peaches. How you'd do them. Burnt honey, a little salt, a crust that shatters." He shook his head slowly. "I'd never heard anybody talk about food like that except my grandmother."

My throat went tight.

"And then you said you had to go because your boyfriend was waiting in the car."

"Brandon."

"Brandon," he agreed. "And I thought, okay. That's it. That's all I get."

"You never said anything. A year and a half, and you never said a word."

"You were happy. Or you looked happy." He finally looked at me. "Then in March I saw Tara's flight on that old account, landing on your wedding day. And I couldn't watch it happen to you."

"So you proposed."

"So I made the stupidest offer of my life, in the market, holding a bag of onions."

"I laughed at you."

"You did. Very loudly."

"I saved your number, though."

He went still.

"As 'Mr. Ashe,'" I said. "Like you were my landlord. I looked at it about once a day."

"Noelle."

"Every day for a month. I'd open it and close it."

I put the jacket aside and got up off the couch.

I knelt on the rug in front of him, between the folders and the old ledgers.

He didn't move.

He looked at me like I was a burner he wasn't sure was off.

"I'm changing my terms," I said.

"Which one?"

"Separate bedrooms."

His breath went out of him slowly.

"Say it plainly," he said, very low. "I'm not guessing about this. Not with you."

"I want you to kiss me. Not for the guests. Not for a camera. I want you. Tonight."

He reached up and put his hand on my face.

His palm was rough and warm and smelled like old paper.

His thumb moved over my cheekbone once.

Then he kissed me.

Nothing like the wedding kiss.

Slow at first, careful.

I answered by fisting my hand in his gray T-shirt and pulling him closer.

He made a sound in his throat I felt in my knees.

The kiss went deep, then deeper, his hand sliding into my hair, my back pressing into the edge of the desk.

The menu fell off his lap onto the floor.

Neither of us picked it up.

When he pulled back, we were both breathing hard.

"Not here," he said against my mouth. "Not on my grandmother's filing cabinet."

I laughed into his neck.

He stood and pulled me up with him.

We crossed the courtyard in the dark, his hand wrapped around mine, the bricks still warm from the day under my bare feet.

The fig tree rustled overhead.

At the door of the kitchen house he stopped.

"Upstairs or down?"

"Down," I said. "Your room."

He opened the door.

He shut the door behind us and turned the deadbolt.

The click went through me, a small sound in the dark.

The window over the bed was open.

The fig tree moved against the screen.

I could smell the river and his kitchen, smoke and sugar and garlic.

Then he was close, his chest against my back, his hands on my hips.

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