Page 13 of Nash
"Your half-smiles. You're at three for the week. If you hit five, I win a prize."
His eyes cut past me to the front window. The street. The alley. Street again. Then they come back to me and stay, holding mine over the rim of the mug. My stomach flips. My hand tightens on the ceramic until I think it might crack.
"Bold of you, Sergeant-at-Arms. Looking away from the threat like that."
"Who said I looked away?"
My fingers press into the ceramic. I take a sip of coffee that I absolutely taste and don't just use to buy time. His eyes stay on mine.
The afternoon runs warm and slow. He adjusts his stance to track the sun through the window. I catch his reflection in the glass and pretend I was checking the street. My pencil moves a little less predictably over the flash sheet with every hour that passes.
Frankie comes back from her lunch break with two coffees and hands one to Nash without a word. He takes it. She catches my eye on her way back to her station and mouthshe's intensebehind his back. I mime dying, one hand clutching my chest, one hand reaching for the sky. Frankie snorts into her coffee.
"Something funny?" Nash asks from the wall.
"Your posture," I say. "It's giving 'statue with commitment issues.' I'm taking notes for my thesis."
Frankie flips the sign at seven. I pack up my station. Nash has been on his feet all day.
"You can sit down, you know." I shove a sketchbook into my bag. "Chairs exist. There's like three of them right there. It's in the Constitution. The right to bear chairs."
"I'm good."
"Your knees are going to file a formal complaint with HR." I zip the bag. "HR is me. I am also Legal, Payroll, and the Department of Stop Glaring At My Clients."
His mouth twitches again.
"Four," I say. "You're at four."
"That one didn't count."
"Scoring system's discretionary."
He walks me out to the Harley and I swing on behind him, arms around his waist, chin hovering near his shoulder. The ride home is short and sun-warmed, and I press my forehead between his shoulder blades for one block because I can blame the wind.
He parks. Walks me up the exterior stairs to my second-floor landing. Waits while I dig out my keys. The upstairs hall smells like the neighbor's dryer sheets. I get the door open.
"Goodnight, Sergeant-at-Arms." I turn in the doorway. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Lock the deadbolt. Check the windows."
"Yes, sir."
It comes out lower than I intended; the teasing is gone from my voice before I can catch it. His eyes hold mine. The beat between us stretches longer than any beat between a bodyguard and his assignment should.
"Goodnight, Trouble."
There's low warmth underneath his voice that he'd deny under oath.
I close the door. Slide the deadbolt. Lean my back against the wood and listen to his boots descend. The Harley starts up andidles at the curb, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three, before the engine kicks up and the sound pulls away.
After I kick off my shoes, I shower until the water runs cold, then pull on sleep shorts and a tank top. Hair wet down my back. I pad to the kitchen in bare feet and pour a glass of water, drinking half of it standing at the counter.
I turn toward the hallway and stop.
My bedroom door is open, which is how I left it. My sketchbook is open on my bed, which is not.
I cross the hallway in four steps. The sketchbook is the one I keep in the bottom drawer of my desk, the one with the designs I never take to the shop. It's open to a drawing of Nash. Side profile. His jaw set, arms crossed, the line of his shoulders under the cut. I drew it at two in the morning with a glass of wine going warm on the nightstand and shoved it back in the drawer.
