Page 32 of Charmed and Alarmed

At some point, Holden and Ellis wander off to meet another group at the door, but I stay in the kitchen with Jo, busying myself with arranging the cocktail napkins in a spiral formation. She nudges me with her elbow.

“He came to dinner last week and wouldn’t stop talking about you.”

I bite my lip, keeping my gaze on the napkins. There is no denying the way her words make me feel, no way to explain away the butterflies that erupt at the thought of these new, complicated feelings not being totally unreciprocated.We hadn’t even slept together last week.“It’s complicated,” I admit at last.

Jo snorts, shaking her head as she taps her wooden spoon against the side of the pan. “I definitely know complicated.”

“Yeah?”

She glances at me, a slight smirk curving her lips. “Ellis and I fell in love when we were living in France for a year. I went as his nanny and came home as his wife.”

I feel my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “So, you’re not…”

“Zoe’s mother?” She shakes her head. “No. I’m not. Her biological mother isn’t super involved, unfortunately, so I try to fill that gap as best I can.”

Something tells me she succeeds.

Jo waves away the conversation, an eager glint in her eye. “Anyway. Less about me. I’m boring and married now. Are you guys together, or…”

That’s a really good question. I fiddle with the kitchen cabinet knob and make a noncommittal noise. “It’s still really new. I thought it was supposed to be a sex only thing, but that’s not what it feels like. It would just be such a shit show. He and my father are business partners.”

Jo is beaming at me, not put off by this in the least. “Ellis works for my mother. Next excuse?” She pushes off the counter as the new arrivals come toward us down the hall, talking loudly. “I went through all this, Leni. Trust me. Giving in is so, so worth the shit show.”

Despite his claims that we don’t have to stay long, Holden and I stay at the Delvaux home until nearly midnight. At one point, Jo disappeared to put Zoe to bed, then came down while Ellis went up. After that, we sat around the kitchen table with their eclectic assortment of friends, drinking Italian wine and playing a card game that made me laugh so hard I cried.

Jo and I exchange numbers and hug before we finally go, promising to get together again soon, while Holden and Ellis try to appear less pleased about the entire situation.

“Come here,” he murmurs in my ear when the door closes behind us, scooping me up into his arms, right on the front walk.

I yawn, looping my arms around his neck. “I’m very capable of walking twenty yards to the car.”

My heart flutters when he presses his lips to my temple. “I know you’re capable, Lenora. Let me take care of you, anyway.”

His chest is warm and solid and smells exactly as I knew it would. Somewhere in the past few weeks, the scent of him has burrowed into my subconscious and become a familiar, comforting thing. Probably because Holden makes me feel good.

“We’re in big trouble, huh?” I yawn again, pressing my face into his neck.

He kisses my temple before setting me back on my feet in front of the car. “I’ve been in big trouble for a while, Len.”

13

HOLDEN

When I woke up this morning, my very first thought wasenough of this shit.

I want to be in a relationship. A serious, monogamous relationship, the kind that I have never been even remotely interested in until Lenora Vogel came back into my life.

Even if I could manage to convince myself I didn’t want exactly that, I certainly couldn’t pretend the thought of her moving on past this arrangement of ours is something I can stomach. Hell no. Even braving Bram’s inevitable fury seems worth it if it means I can hold on to this incredible person who, by some miracle, seems to see me the same way I do her.

When Leni looks at me, I don’t feel like I have to grow up or become something I’m not to fit the mold of “responsible adult.” She doesn’t only want me for my money or my dick or a good fucking time. And, paradoxically, this has me takingmyselfmore seriously.

Last night, sitting around my old friend’s kitchen table with my arm thrown over her shoulders, watching her drink wine, laugh, and chatter away with Ellis’s young wife as if they’d been friends for years without a hint of the shadows that have clung to her since she started at E&V… The thought had been lingering at the back of my mind for weeks, as a tiny“what if”I couldn’t quite shake. In the wake of that night, I have a much clearer visual of what my life might look like if I made Lenora Vogel mine permanently, and I want it. Badly.

By the time we arrived back at my house, it was past midnight, and I led her straight upstairs, where we went to bed. As in, we didn’t have sex. At all. Not even hand stuff.

Now, Leni is passed out on her stomach, her breathing slow and deep as the warm morning sunlight floods in through the high windows lining my bedroom. She’s dressed in a borrowed T-shirt, which has gathered up over her hips, exposing a pink pair of panties that cut halfway across the cheeks of her perfect, round ass.

I’m not looking at that, though, I’m looking at the surgical scars marring the back of her right calf. I’ve seen them before, of course, kissed them our first time together and touched them others, without ever stopping to dwell on what they meant.

---