Page 27 of Binding Their Hearts

He leaned against the seatback. Watching Alice ranked among his favorite pastimes, even when she wasn’t naked. Gorgeous. Capable. Strong. And so fucking brilliant that if smartness was a race, she’d lap him twice before the finish. Maybe they’d find a house with an office, and she could telecommute. Four hours they’d been out with the real estate agent Sunday and come up with zilch again.

Alice spun her hand in a hurry-up gesture and rolled her eyes as she listened to whoever was on the other end. “I’m at lunch, Travis. Is Eric there? Get him to check your numbers. If he can’t find it, I’ll look before the quarterly at three.”

Bonnie set the food in front of them, and Jay gave her a big grin and a double thumbs up. As he doctored Alice’s iced tea with half a packet of sugar, she blew him a silent kiss.

Henry had expanded their search area, saying they’d exhausted Beacon Hill for now, so they’d toured homes near their apartment in Brookline. Any of the six would’ve suited him fine, except they hadn’t had the right kitchens or studio spaces for Henry, and some had been too far from a T stop for Alice. Some had dark, cramped bathrooms and slanted ceilings in the bedrooms that would for sure cause bruises during playtime. But he didn’t need much, just a corner where he could toss his stuff and the guarantee of two partners satisfied that the house ticked all their boxes. The house didn’t matter as much as the people in it. And the someday people who might join them with little personalities of their own—flailing fists and good lungs and all.

Alice dropped her phone into her purse. She’d lost all the ground she’d gained, back to being the cover model for exhaustion. “They were fine as coworkers, but now that I’m the boss, I just want to fire them all. You manage people—is it supposed to be this hard?”

To be fair, his dispatcher did the day-to-day interacting with the messengers. He didn’t babysit them in headsets or step in unless Carrie gave him the nod that somebody needed their head pulled out of their ass.

“Firing people is easy.” No, he’d struggled with letting riders go when they were doing their best but couldn’t hack it. The shits who thought they could get away with coasting, though, that was on them. “Easier, I mean. Managing them is hard, because they’re all different, and you don’t know what’ll work best. What motivates them, you know? Once you find that, you’re golden.”

Maybe he could motivate Alice to do their room check tonight so he could take care of her. Henry would approve of that. Get her undressed, toss a soft sheet over the bed, crack open the massage oil, and unknot every muscle until she fell asleep under his hands.

“You and Henry, you are—” She sipped the tea and bobbed her head, her smile creeping back. “Thank you, Jay. You are both incredibly wise about people, you know that? Soft skills. If I want to move up, I’ll have to get better at them.” Stretching across the table, she gripped his fingers. “Good thing I have you both in my life.”

He sought out her feet with his, and they played footsie while they ate. Faster than usual, with less talk, but he managed to bring out her smile a handful of times. Making Alice less stressed made him less stressed, too. At least until the jangly ringtone sounded again while he was helping her with her coat.

“It figures.” She answered the call and held her free hand out to him. Hands clasped, she led him down the aisle to the door and outside into the speckled sun and shade as she mm-hmmed into the phone. “I’ll be back in ten minutes, and I’ll look then. Just step away from it. You’re over-solving.”

Tucking the phone away, she leaned into his chest and bonked her head against his shoulder. He squeezed her tight, her jacket crunching like fallen leaves underfoot. “You want a ride back to work?”

Giving her a lift would get her there faster, but mostly he just wanted to keep hold of her a little longer. Offer her some service, any service, of value in her day.

“I would love a ride back.” Her voice came out muffled, seeing as how she’d pressed her face into his neck.

He got her outfitted with the spare helmet and unlocked the bike, and off they went. Five too-short blocks, but she splayed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his chest, and that made them the best five blocks he’d ride all week.

Cold hit him as she hopped down, the snug weight of her already an absence he’d miss all the way back to the garage. Straddling the bike, he bent and stowed her helmet.

She reached for his chin strap.

“What—”

“Gimme a second.” She rolled his helmet forward, peeling it off, and set it dangling on the handlebars. “I want to say a thing.”

He left his head bowed, her solemn tone impossible to ignore. Yes, Mistress sat on the tip of his tongue.

Slim hands cradled his face.

“Thank you, Jay. For lightening my mood. For knowing I needed that. For your management advice, which I will try to take. And for not complaining about me stealing time from our lunch to deal with work. And most especially”—she rose on her toes and kissed him, a soft parting kiss, but a real one, right on his mouth not twenty feet from the entrance to her office building—“for grounding me with your touch the whole time. You are a fabulous partner, and it’s some quirk of quantum physics that lets me love you a bajillion times more than my heart can hold, only it does.”

“The bajillions law.” He struggled to get the words out, driving them up and over the warm flush of gratitude commandeering his throat. “Seems legit.”

“It is.” Stepping back, she handed him his helmet. “Ride safe, stud. I’ll see you for dinner.”

He snapped the chin strap in place. “I love you too. Bajillion-style.”

She was laughing as she spun and disappeared into the building.

He refastened his fingerless gloves and set a foot on the pedal. A simple push and he’d be on his way—

His phone rang.

He snagged it from the zip pocket on his joggers. Maybe Alice missed him already.

The lockscreen read Peggy.

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