Chapter 18: Her Own Kitchen

At noon the judge refused Margaret's emergency order.

She wanted my grandmother declared unable to manage her affairs by lunchtime.

The judge looked at the nurse's chart, the neurologist's letter and Eleanor's own handwritten note, and set a full hearing for Friday at nine.

Margaret walked out of the courtroom without a word.

I had been awake thirty-one hours.

Jack drove me home to the Bronx, because I couldn't remember where I'd parked.

The stairwell smelled like someone's dinner.

A neighbor's door opened a crack on the third floor, and closed again, kindly.

I unlocked my apartment and stood in my own kitchen with the lights off.

Jack stood in the doorway.

"I'll go," he said. "You need to sleep."

"You took Mr. Brantley's pulse on a Newport lawn before dawn."

"Yes."

"You haven't slept either."

"No."

"Then stay."

He looked at the narrow kitchen, the two chairs and the radiator that knocked.

"It's not the penthouse," I said.

"It's the first place you ever hid from me."

"I wasn't hiding."

"You were." He smiled. "I was glad."

I crossed the floor and took his face in both hands.

"I'm not hiding now."

He kissed me against the refrigerator, slowly.

Then it wasn't slow.

I pulled his jacket off and dropped it on a chair.

He unbuttoned my blazer with unsteady fingers and slid it down my arms, and the torn cuff caught on my wrist.

"Leave it," I said.

"Gladly."

I got his shirt open.

His chest was warm and solid under my palms, and he shivered when I dragged my mouth across it.

"Bedroom?" he said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Groom Chose His Mistress, Not Knowing I Was the CEO from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.