The ping of her phone startled her in the quiet of the night, and Leah flinched as she reached for it. Speak of the devil…
Still at work? Teddi.
Unfortunately, yes. How are you?
The bouncing dots. Then: I sent you something. Did you get it?
Leah furrowed her brow. You did? I haven’t seen anything. What was she talking about?
Left it with your secretary.
That was weird. It was very unlike her secretary not to let her know she had a delivery, despite the fact that Leah had closed her office door to get some quiet. In this job, timing was super important, so every delivery was handled immediately. Even personal ones. Hang on, she typed. Gonna check.
Muscles protested as she stood, letting her know she’d been sitting way too long. Leah allowed herself a moment to stretch her legs and reach her arms over her head. Wow, everything felt so tight.
Shrugging her shoulders up and down as she moved, she crossed her office and opened the door to see if there’d been anything left on her secretary’s desk—and stopped in her tracks.
“Oh my God.” She blinked several times, then literally pressed her fingers into her eyes because she didn’t trust what she was seeing.
“Hi,” Teddi said, enormous smile on her face, a small thermal bag on her lap and a plastic grocery bag by her feet, as she sat primly and properly in one of the chairs in the waiting area.
Leah was hit with so much at once. Absolute joy, disbelief, low coping skills because of how tired she was.Her eyes filled with tears as she returned the greeting. “Hi, baby.” Her voice cracked.
“Oh no.” Teddi stood quickly, set down her bag, crossed to Leah. “This is supposed to be good. Not make you cry.” She laughed softly and wrapped Leah in her arms.
Thanking her stars above that she was able to not openly sob, Leah held on to Teddi, let herself sink into the feel of her warm body, take in the scent of her perfume—something woodsy and deep today—absorb the fact that she’d traveled to Leah’s office at night in the dark, in the snow and cold, to bring her… “What’s in that bag?” she asked, pointing at the couch.
“Oh.” Teddi let her go, grabbed the bag, unzipped it. “I brought you some stew.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, you said you were going to be working late, and I know you have a habit of either not eating a decent meal for dinner or, better yet, not eating at all, so I decided to bring you some of the stew I made for myself.” She made a worried face. “Do you even like stew?”
“It’s eight at night and I’m still at work. I haven’t eaten since…” Leah stopped and squinched up her face to think. “Since I can’t remember when. It’s cold and snowy outside. What’s not to love about stew? Especially if you made it and then sent a hot chick to deliver it to me.”
Teddi’s face brightened. “Good.” A few minutes later, in Leah’s office, she had dished out thick beef stew—which was still hot, thanks to her thermal bag—into a bowl she’d brought. From a smaller plastic bag, she pulled a foil-wrapped package that contained two thick slices of what appeared to be homemade bread. Also still warm.
Leah sat at the small table in her office and just stared. Awed. And a little bit in love, though she kept that to herself. “This…” She shook her head slowly as she picked up a spoon. “This is amazing, Teddi. Thank you so much.”
Teddi smiled, shifting on her feet as if she’d suddenly become slightly uncomfortable.
“You okay?” Leah asked. A spoonful of stew and lots of humming followed. “This is friggin’ delicious.”
Teddi was slowly wandering the office, hands clasped behind her back, looking at the various photos and framed certificates and such placed around the room.
“Teddi?”
“Hmm?” Teddi turned that gorgeous face to her, eyebrows raised in question.
“I asked if you were okay. You’re kind of quiet.” Leah watched her carefully, watched as she seemed to school her expression.
“I’m fine. It’s just a little weird to be in this building.” Teddi didn’t look at her, just continued to peruse.
For a moment, Leah was puzzled, but then it hit her. “Oh! Oh, right. I didn’t think about that.” And she hadn’t. “You were never here, though, right?”
A shake of the head. “No, but I became very acquainted with the address from all the paperwork. Plugging it into my GPS was surreal in a way.”
Leah wasn’t sure what to say or how to act or what to think, so she stayed quiet. Ate her stew. Watched Teddi’s orbit around the room.
“Is this your dad?” Teddi asked, holding up a frame.
“Yeah. From graduation.”
“You don’t talk about him much.” Teddi turned her head, met her gaze.
“True. He lives downstate with his new wife and her kids. I don’t see him very often.”
“No? How come?” The photo back in its place, Teddi sat down across from Leah.
Leah dipped her bread, bit, chewed slowly. There never seemed to be a quick and easy edit to the story of her dad, but she liked to do bullet points, so to speak. Maybe because of her job. This, this, this, and here we are. Teddi leaned her forearms on the table, her interest obvious, her attention steady. “He and my mom split when I was young and Kelly was tiny. It was super messy. My mom had never really worked outside the home because my parents married young. I think she had a cashier job at a grocery store when she was in school, but once they married, she was a housewife. It was all she ever wanted to be, a mom who stayed home and took care of her family. So when my dad decided he wanted out of the marriage and left, he took the income with him. Sure, there was child support—which he complained about incessantly, always a great way to make your kids feel wanted—but no alimony. He had a great lawyer, and my mom did not. He left my mom, my sister, and me with very little. We ended up having to move, change schools, go on public assistance for a while. My mom had never had a job and suddenly had to find one. She was a wreck for a while, and I did my best to hold it all together while my dad was gallivanting and sowing his wild oats because he’d never had a chance to.” She made air quotes as she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, Leah, that’s awful.” Teddi’s expression had changed, a divot forming above her nose as her eyes studied Leah. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was rough. But it also helped me plan my future.” How to say this, how to approach it? Leah chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “I always wanted to be a lawyer, but seeing what my mother went through made me sure. I wanted to help people that were in her position. I wanted to make sure that divorces were…” She hesitated, but pushed on. “Financially fair.” She clenched her jaw and waited. For an outburst? The storming out of the office? She wasn’t sure.
Teddi sat quietly, scraped at a spot on the table with her thumbnail. Finally, she said, her voice quiet, “I get that.” A subtle nod. “I get it.”
Leah chose her words carefully. “It’s not about punishment or taking sides—though, believe me, I’ve seen enough horrible people to want to take sides—but it’s about fairness. Plain and simple.”
More quiet from Teddi, who gazed off into the middle distance. Leah slowly ate the rest of the stew as she waited.
“Sometimes…” Teddi’s voice was barely above a whisper, and Leah got the strangest feeling that listening and understanding her were very important in that moment, so she set down her spoon, wiped her mouth, and simply focused on the gorgeous woman across from her. “Sometimes, you just need time, I guess. Or a person to walk into your life at just the right moment? I don’t know.” Back to the spot on the table. “I was pretty sure I’d never be able to get past my divorce. It wrecked me. I didn’t want to meet someone new. I didn’t want to date. It was fine. I was fine. Bitter at times with everything a little dimmer than it was, but fine. And then you walked in, and things suddenly started to light up a little bit. And then I realized who you were, and I was pretty sure I’d never be able to get past the role you pl
ayed in my disaster.”
Leah swallowed, not at all sure which direction this was going. Heart hammering in her ears, she folded her hands together and white-knuckled them.
“Look, I don’t know if you were meant to show up when you did or if I was meant to have this crazy attraction to you or how the hell it was all meant to go. What I do know is that my attraction, my feelings for you have grown and eclipsed everything else. You were doing your job. That’s all. Julia wasn’t happy and needed to get out. That’s all. I created a successful business and she helped me do it. That’s all.” Those dark eyes were wet now as Teddi settled her gaze on Leah’s. “It’s time for me to let go and move forward, and I so want to. I’m so ready to. With you.” As soon as she closed her mouth, her eyes went wide, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just said. As if the words had escaped on their own, and she’d been powerless to stop them, and now she was completely freaked out.
They sat in silence for a beat, the only sound in the room the ticking of the clock on Leah’s wall and the distant, barely audible clacking of a keyboard that told them somebody else was also working late. How did Leah feel? Surprised? No, that was too gentle a word. Stunned was more like it. She reached a hand across the table, captured Teddi’s, which was cool, slightly clammy, and Leah felt a tremble run through it.
“I can honestly say when I opened the door and saw you sitting there, I was surprised and thrilled and so glad to see you, but never in a million years did I expect things to go down this path.”
Teddi wet her lips but said nothing, and Leah could tell just by looking at her face, just by feeling that tremor still running through her, that she was bracing, and Leah wanted only to let her off the hook. Wipe that worried expression away.
“There is nothing more I want than to walk that path with you. I’ve never felt like I clicked with somebody the way I click with you. Despite our differences. Despite the fact that you make fun of my rom-coms.” That got a smile. She waited until those deep brown eyes were locked on hers before she said the next thing. The big thing. “Let’s find out where this goes. Wanna?”
Leah searched for words to describe the way Teddi’s face lit up, the enormous grin that blossomed on it, the sparkle that appeared in eyes so dark, the color that flushed that smooth skin, but nothing seemed expressive enough. Instead, she stood up just in time to catch Teddi in her arms, and it didn’t matter that Leah was shorter, smaller. It didn’t matter at all because she held on tight. She held this woman, this beautiful, kind, trusting woman in her arms and vowed right then and there that she would never, ever do anything to hurt her. Ever.
“God, I didn’t really plan to come here and spill my guts like that,” Teddi said, still in Leah’s arms, as she covered her eyes with one hand. “I’m not a mushy person, and that was way mushy.”
“I like mushy,” Leah said. “Mushy is good. I’ll take mushy any day.”
“Well, don’t get used to it. I’m a hardass, you know.”
“If you say so.”
And then came the kissing. And it was different somehow. Deeper. More important. They hadn’t exactly made promises to each other, but Leah knew they’d come close. She’d been with Teddi long enough to know that she didn’t go around pouring her heart out to any woman on the street. This was big. This meant something. She said she has feelings for me. This was leading them in a very specific direction…
Stop. Stop it right now.
Not wanting to get ahead of herself—or jinx anything—she focused on Teddi’s mouth instead. The warmth rapidly turning to heat. The softness that was also firm. The way Teddi’s hands held her face, again with the soft but firm. Leah gripped Teddi’s waist, her fingers clutching the silky fabric of her top.
There really was nothing in the world like kissing Teddi. Leah became sure of it right then, in the moment Teddi pressed her tongue into Leah’s mouth and she was sure her entire body had melted. Gone boneless. That Teddi’s hands on her face were the only things keeping her standing as electric arousal shot through her veins, through her very being. Lost. That’s what she was. Lost, in a good way. Lost in that kiss, in that heat, in that woman.
My God, when we get there, we’re going to set the bed on fire.
Soon. It was going to have to be soon. Leah wouldn’t survive otherwise. But it couldn’t be now. Not here in her office. Not now when she had a big case to prepare. Reluctantly—so reluctantly!—she gently broke the kiss but stayed close, stayed holding tightly to Teddi’s body. It didn’t seem possible for Teddi’s eyes to get any darker, but they were nearly black as she looked down at Leah, her face completely flushed pink, her chest rising and falling fast.
“If it was any other night…” Leah began.
“I know. Me, too.”
“Sunday? Maybe?”
“Sunday definitely. Come to my place?”
“Deal.”
More kissing, sporadic kissing, as they gathered Teddi’s things and Leah helped her into her coat, walked her into the admin area. One more kiss—this one lingering—and Teddi was gone.
Later that night, when Leah was finally in bed and replaying the evening—which she’d done about a thousand times so far since Teddi’d left—she remembered that last conversation. How they’d spoken in a sort of shorthand about Sunday, both knowing exactly what the other meant. Leah tried to think of any time in her life when she’d been around somebody who got her that easily. Who understood her thoughts. Who would likely get to a point where they finished her sentences.
Never.
That’s the last time she remembered that happening. It was never.
She rolled onto her side and felt Lizzie’s tiny paw smack at her foot before Lizzie settled in the crook of Leah’s knees and began to purr. Her eyes grew heavy.
That night, she dreamed of make-out sessions, sex-tousled dark hair, and beef stew.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday lunch with the girls was always different—i.e., better—than lunch during the workweek, simply because there was more time and relaxation. Nobody had to hurry back to work. They could drink if they wanted. Everything was casual and comfortable. Bonus: Today, JoJo didn’t have to get home to her kids because they were spending the weekend with her mother.
The Blackbird was a neighborhood bar and restaurant, something you might pass up as you drove by, but was actually full because people who lived nearby knew how good the food was. Leah had found it by accident one day and suggested it for a lunch, and now it was in their regular rotation.
“How are things with Little Miss Social Work?” JoJo asked Tilly as their meals arrived. Tilly blinked rapidly and looked down at her plate, which made JoJo gasp. “Are you blushing?” She turned to Leah. “Did you see that? Am I imagining it?”
“You are not. That was definite blushing. Judges?” Leah looked around the restaurant at the other patrons, who were paying her zero attention. “Yes. Yes. The judges say definite blushing was seen.”
“Fuck both of you,” Tilly said, but a half grin was forming on her face.
“Oh no, sounds like that’s reserved for the tiny girl.” JoJo was having way too much fun, and Leah couldn’t help but laugh.
Tilly made a way exaggerated horrified face. “How dare you?”
“Please. You were merciless when I first started dating Rick.”
Leah watched her friends go back and forth in sheer happiness. The zingers always hit home, but were never mean. And never less than any of them deserved or had given to another at some point.
“I like her,” Tilly said, and her voice was quiet enough that JoJo and Leah exchanged wide-eyed looks. “She gets me.”
“Really? So she’s a psychological genius in addition to the social work?” JoJo sipped her dirty martini and grinned over the rim.
“Funny.” Tilly took a slug of her beer. “I don’t know how to explain it. Jen just…we fit. You know?”
“Oh my God,” Leah said and sent another shocked glance JoJo’s way. JoJo loo
ked the way she felt.
“What?” Tilly said, looking from one to the other in confusion. “What?”
“Her name is Jen.” Leah leaned forward. “You rarely give us a name. Of anybody you’ve dated.”
“What? That’s not true.” Tilly made a face. Scoffed.
“Rarely,” JoJo said.
Tilly blinked at them, and Leah could almost see her going through her brain, through the people she’d dated in the past, trying to figure out if her friends were right.
They were and Leah knew it. She reached across the table and grasped Tilly’s arm, gentled her voice. “No more teasing. We’re just so glad things are going well for you. And Jen.” She emphasized the name.
“No more teasing for the moment,” JoJo clarified as she popped a French fry into her mouth. “For the moment.”
For half an hour, they talked about Jen, and Leah was so happy for Tilly that she tingled. Tilly dated. Both men and women. And while there had been one or two that had lasted longer than a few months, Tilly had never been so obviously happy. It was nice.
“What about you?” Tilly asked as she and JoJo both turned to her. “How are things since the big New Year’s Eve kiss?”
Leah tried to hide her grin and looked down at what remained of her salad.
“Oh my God, both of you? Both of you are blushing today?” JoJo’s volume went up enough for a few patrons to glance at them, and Leah swiped at her with her napkin as JoJo laughed. “Your turn. Dish.”
“Okay, but be nice to me. I’m freaked out enough.”
“We’re always nice,” JoJo said.
Leah shot her a look. “I mean it. No teasing, or this conversation is canceled.”
JoJo looked at Tilly, who shrugged, then sighed. “Fine. No teasing. God, you two take all my fun.”
“Thank you.” Leah sipped her beer, took a deep breath, and dove in. She filled them in on everything from New Year’s Eve forward. The pizza date. The aquarium. The movie watching at home. She ended with two nights ago when Teddi had come to her office with dinner in a bowl and her heart in her hands.
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