How to Tame a Silver Fox novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Chosen

We left through the front door, past a dozen investors and a string quartet that had forgotten how to play.

My father shouted my name from the dining room once.

Arlen put a hand low on my back, and I didn't push it off.

It was the first time he had touched me in front of anyone.

We were halfway down the drive when I noticed my mother's emerald dress, still pinned at the hem.

I had a pharmacy bag in my fist.

"I have no shoes," I said.

"You have shoes."

"They're in the closet."

"Then you have no shoes."

He opened the passenger door of his sedan, and I climbed in, and for a minute neither of us said a word.

"I just lost my house," I said.

"You lost a room in it."

"I lost the studio."

"Not yet. I haven't signed anything." He started the engine. "And you've got a lake."

"It's your lake."

"It's a lake. It doesn't care who it belongs to."

The cottage smelled of woodsmoke and rain.

He gave me a flannel shirt that came to my knees and a pair of wool socks.

I sat at his kitchen table, small and out of place.

In the morning I tried to buy eggs.

The cashier at the general store swiped my card twice and gave me a sorry little smile.

"Declined, hon."

I tried it again.

I tried the other card.

I stood in the dairy aisle with my phone and watched my balance go to zero, which my father had arranged between dinner and dawn.

"He froze everything," I told Junie on the phone, and she said a word I had never heard her use.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. How much do you need?"

"I don't want your money."

"I wasn't offering my money. I was offering the money of a woman with three scarves."

"My professor?"

"She loved that painting. The man on the pier."

"And?"

"She says if you sell it, she'll write a check today and hang it in her office."

I thought of the figure on the pier with silver at his temples.

I had never intended anyone to see him.

"Tell her yes," I said. "Tell her it's not for sale."

"Which is it?"

"Both. Tell her yes."

The check was for four thousand dollars, and it cleared by afternoon.

I walked back to the cottage with two bags of groceries and my own money for the first time in my life.

Arlen had not offered me a cent.

He had given me the key to the back door and a list of what he didn't eat.

Then he had gone back to his laptop.

It was the most respectful thing anyone had ever done to me.

I cooked, which was a mistake.

I'm good at oil paint and bad at sauce.

The tomatoes caught on the bottom of the pot, and the smoke alarm went off.

Arlen came in from the porch and found me flapping a dish towel like a surrendering soldier.

"You're burning the dinner," he said.

"I'm cooking with passion."

"You're cooking with a fire hazard."

"Then take over."

"Is that an order?"

"It's a request."

He crossed the kitchen in three strides and lifted the pot off the burner.

His hand brushed mine on the handle, and the whole room tipped.

He set the pot in the sink.

He turned, and I was against the counter with my back to the cabinets, and he stood very close.

"Round three," he said.

"We're not counting."

"I'm counting."

"What's the score?"

"I've lost everything since the pantry," Arlen said, and kissed me.

The kiss started somewhere in my spine and ran down to my knees.

His mouth was on mine before I could breathe. His hands were already under the flannel, sliding up my ribs until his thumbs found the wire of my bra.

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