His dark eyes shone so sincere. He wanted her with him. Didn’t that say it all, wasn’t it what she wanted so desperately to hear? She was still so afraid of getting hurt, and moving in with him had somehow come to represent that total surrender, the final act of putting herself out there, at risk, but in that early morning moment of weakness, she could no longer turn him down. “Okay,” she said, letting out a breath, realizing she was really doing this, really accepting his invitation. “Yes, okay.”
Lifting one hand to her cheek, he lowered his mouth on hers, kissing her long and hard and passionately. Then he whispered, “I never want you to be afraid of anything again.”
* * * * *
As Jack ate a sandwich at his desk that day, working through lunch, he felt more at ease than he had in a week. He couldn’t deny the reason why, which was two-fold. Liz was going to move in with him, which meant Todd could no longer bother her. And it also meant that this woman he’d fallen for so quickly and completely was coming into his life in a whole new way. Dare he think a permanent way? That was probably too far ahead to be thinking, so for now he’d just be happy with what he had—Liz in his apartment, his bed, full time. He’d wake up with her in the morning and go to sleep with her at night. They’d eat together, shower together…hell, just be together.
Wadding the deli wrappings and tossing them to the garbage can beside his desk, he turned his attention back to his work. He had some surveillance videos to look through, and even fast forwarding through them when nothing important was happening still took a lot of time—and he wanted to get through them all as quickly as possible and get home early today. He intended to show up at Lynda’s house with a bunch of empty boxes and get Liz out of there and into his bed tonight.
* * * * *
Liz called in sick for work. She’d driven home in a pair of Jack’s gym shorts and one of his T-shirts with every intention of changing into a suit and making her way to the ad agency, but by the time she’d showered, she realized that if she was really going to move in with Jack, she needed to just do it, today.
For one thing, if she had all day at work to dwell on her decision, she might talk herself out of it. And even if it was scary as hell, she didn’t want to change her mind. She realized now that she wanted desperately, madly, to live with her lover, to give him a chance to fall as deeply in love with her as she was with him. Maybe, despite all her fears, she had a chance at real happiness with a man who truly understood her and accepted her and encouraged her to be her own woman.
The very idea of living with him filled her with crazy naïve schoolgirl wishes. She wanted to see him all the time, wanted to cook for him, wanted even to do inane things like fold his socks and underwear for him. She just wanted to delve as deeply into him as he would allow her to, and if she was going to do this, she had to do it the way she’d done everything else the last week or so—she had to go for it completely.
That led to the other reason for skipping work today. She could go to Todd’s while he was at the office, gather more of her things, and start moving stuff into Jack’s place before he even got home tonight. He’d already given her a key, and he always said he loved her surprises, so she hoped he’d love this one, too. She wanted to be there waiting for him when he walked in the door after a long day of investigating. She thought she’d greet him in a baby doll nightie with a glass of wine. As exciting as last night had been, now the idea of just making love to him at home, alone, sounded perfect to her.
Dressed in shorts and a tank top suitable to the hot day of hard work that lay ahead, she’d gathered a few boxes from Lynda’s garage, then ate an early lunch before getting to work, since she didn’t want to be interrupted once she started the business of moving.
Now she made her way around the hedges to the house she used to share with Todd. She still had her key, so she only needed to gather her stuff and go. There would still be big things, like furniture, but she could take the smaller things she’d contributed to their household: her CDs, her books, some new sheets she’d bought but not yet opened, the small painting she’d bought in Paris when she’d vacationed there with girlfriends during college. They weren’t things she needed this very minute, but they were things she wanted. Things which, once she had them back in her possession, would help her feel less and less connected with Todd and the farce of a life they’d shared.
Stepping in the front door, she noticed how things had been let go in her absence. The floors hadn’t been swept or vacuumed, fast food wrappers and white napkins lay strewn across the coffee table. Even the couch cushions seemed in disarray.
But none of that was her problem—it only made her even more eager to get her belongings out of there.
Taking one of the boxes to the bookshelves in the corner, she began methodically scanning the shelves and retrieving the volumes that were hers. The stereo set next to the bookcase, so after closing up a box of books, she reached behind her for another box and repeated the process, finding the CDs she’d brought into the relationship, and loading them neatly inside.
