Page 83 of Binding Their Hearts

“In all that time, I have seen him show kindness and thoughtfulness—a steadfast love—for everyone and everything around him. But I have only seen him in love twice, and it is an extraordinary quirk of fate that his loves also love each other.”

Perhaps the closest thing to a miracle he would find in this world or any other.

“May the three of you be one another’s strength and succor in a society that prizes conformity, and may you always know that you have a family of friends to support and shield you should you but ask.”

The robust chorus of seconds was music to carry them into the new life ahead.

Chapter forty

Alice

Hands down, the best part of winter was the sweaters.

As a kid, Alice would’ve said the snow. Not because kids were so goofy and innocent that they don’t know how much work snow was. Hell no, she’d been a kid in South Dakota with her butt out in the driveway shoveling first thing. But after the shoveling came the snowmen and snow forts and packing up snow and running the hose to make ice slides. Snow was amazing.

Except not quite as amazing as discreetly wearing a rope harness under her sweater at work. That shit would not fly in a thin summer blouse. A sweater with a mock turtleneck, though? So roomy and forgiving.

She hoped.

With the rope hovering on the edges of her awareness, she suspected every colleague of being on the verge of noticing. That stare—was Derrick looking at her or spacing out as he rotated an invisible design in his head? She almost texted Henry to accuse him of making her his live art installation, but if she didn’t get the ha-ha tone exactly right, he might refuse permission for a repeat, citing her elevated stress. Couldn’t have that, no sirree. Then she’d miss out on his all-day embrace.

After a couple of hours, her pulse settled down. Her pod members couldn’t conceive of her as a person who had…unusual passions. She was Alice, the jumped-up desk-jockey engineer kicking back flaws in their designs and running the brainstorming sessions. Not the woman who sat half-naked on a kitchen table while one husband dined on breakfast burritos and the other wound rope around her torso and across her shoulders.

As she shut down the project sprawled across her monitors, her phone chimed with the reminder to get moving if she wanted to be on time for lunch with Jay. She always wanted to be on time. This was day three of her new life and the first opportunity to test that resolve.

Bending over, she swung out the bottom drawer in her desk and grabbed her purse.

“Alice, hey girl, you got a minute?”

She rocketed upright. Even if her sweater had ridden up, the rope was at bra level. Totally, absolutely, completely not at all visible. If her brain could give her heartbeat that message, that would be swell. Standing, she subtly tugged her top into place. “Jen, hey, is it something we can tackle after lunch?”

“Sure, just a consult.” Jenika’s cheery pep slid into a through-gritted-teeth whisper. “You-know-who is having a hissy fit day.”

You-know-who being Jen’s team leader, a guy who never failed to mention that Alice was only an interim team leader. Consult could mean a request for actual advice on a project design or a vent session on a break. “I’ll text you on my way back from lunch, and you can meet me out front for a brainstorming stroll.”

“Perfect.” Jen scanned her head to toe, her head cocked intently to one side. “You’re different today.”

“I brushed my hair.” She fluffed with her hands to sell the distraction. Nothing to see here, move along. “Good, right?”

“Holy—is that what I think it is?” Making grabby-gimme hands, Jenika dragged Alice’s arm toward her. “Girl, are you engaged?”

Her fingers tingled. First time telling someone outside the club circle. None of the guys in her pod had noticed the ring yesterday; they were oblivious to anything but their own fixations. “Well, I—”

“Al, I ran the numbers again”—Travis rolled his chair into the aisle two rows down, his elbows up, hands gripping the headrest behind him—“and I just don’t see these angles working. I’m gonna toss it to you and grab a break.”

The bane of her existence. He’d already interrupted one lunch with Jay in the last month with his annoying phone call for a problem that could’ve been solved without her. She took a deep, steadying breath, and the rope gripped her ribs with a solid hug. This space belonged to her. “We’ll look at it together this afternoon. Right now, I’m about to be late for a lunch date.”

The usual clatter in the room dropped to the hum of the environmentals and the bursts of thrash metal leaking from Derrick’s earbuds in the back. Faces peeped around the sides of massive monitors.

“Ooooh,” Travis singsonged. “Boss lady’s got a midday snack.”

Jen, releasing Alice’s ring hand, raised both eyebrows and whispered, “With taste like that, he must be one fine snack.”

Alice took her time slipping on her coat and settling her purse across her body. Deliberate, calm, unaffected—those moves came straight out of Henry’s playbook, and it was astonishing how well they worked. Confidence seeped into every cell, buttressing her structure with strength.

She strode straight for the door, so tall she could’ve plucked a cloud from the sky.

“I’ll give my husband your regards.”

---