She ran her mouth lightly along the stubble on his cheek. “I haven’t seen you asking for a drink lately though.”
He read the subtle comment just as she’d meant him to. “I can’t make any promises, Clarie. I am a fuck up. But I’ve started to try to write again and since you came into my cabin, I…well, I can’t think straight. I don’t know. But I’d like to come out of my hibernation long enough to actually take you to a movie and dinner, if you were serious about that.”
The casual way he said it, the assumption he would want to see her again, filled her with a quiet sense of wellbeing. She said, completely honestly, “I was serious.”
She was about to add that any university would be thrilled to have him teach again. If he wanted to. Even NYU.
But she didn’t want to rush it. New York was not so very far away. And they had time.
He kissed her. “There is one thing I absolutely have to venture out to do, though.” His hands wandered down her thigh. “I have to buy some condoms.”
She laughed. “Just so long as you only use them with me.”
“I promise.”
And he did.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Clarie fanned herself at the open window of her apartment with an old copy of the Atlantic. The ventilation in this fourth-floor walk-up was crap. If there was one thing she was going to buy with her first honest-to-goodness paycheck—once her fancy degree finally landed her a job, that is—it was going to be a window air conditioner. Or else a one-way plane ticket to Alaska.
New York in the summer gave a girl thoughts like that.
The buzzer to the front door of her building sounded, announcing that she either had a visitor or else somebody was trying to sneak in.
Dropping her makeshift fan on a nearby table, Clarie pushed the button to the intercom. “Yes,” she said in her toughest New Yorker voice, in case it was the latter. “Who is it?”
“Uh oh. You don’t sound like you’re in a good mood.”
Clarie laughed at the familiar voice on the other end of the intercom and said, “I am now,” before buzzing him in.
She hadn’t expected Liam until the weekend, but more and more often lately he had been surprising her, showing up in the middle of the week and staying longer and longer each time. Now that it was the summer, though, she intended to reciprocate so he wasn’t always the one who had to travel. Besides, she missed the little mountain cabin that she thought of as their own personal love nest. It had been too long since she had sat on that awful plaid couch and watched the fire with Liam.
Although she would get that man a television if it was the last thing she did.
At the knock on her apartment door, she opened it right away.
“Hey, you.” She kissed him, noting the four flights up hadn’t left him the slightest bit out of breath. Running in the mountains was good training, as it turned out, for a Manhattan walk-up.
God, would she ever get over the thrill of seeing this man—even better since he was her man?
Liam slid one arm around her waist, keeping the other behind his back, and kicked the door shut.
She tried to look around him. “What’s that?”
Grinning, he darted away so that she couldn’t see what he held behind his back.
“No, no, no,” he admonished. “You have to sit down first. I have a surprise for you.”
He wore khakis and a dress shirt—the sleeves rolled up—which for Liam was tantamount to wearing a suit. In this weather especially, it was out of character for him.
“What’s going on?” she asked, sitting down at his request on her couch, which was IKEA student chic, but a step up from the plaid if she did say so herself.
“Well, first let me ask whether you know what day this is?”
“Ah, Wednesday?”
“No.” He laughed and she smiled, knowing very well what he meant, but surprised that he knew it. It warmed her in a way not even this humid summer day could. She wanted to hear him say it, though, so she waited.
He looked at her expectantly. “No guesses?”
“Tell me,” she murmured.
“Well, you unsentimental little Generation X-er, it’s the sixth-month anniversary of the night we met.”
He hadn’t had a drink in all that time as far as she could tell and their relationship had gone well beyond the dinner and a movie that she originally had said she wanted from him. But she had asked for no promises, and he had offered none, so she didn’t suppose a sixth-month anniversary would resonate with him.
She was touched that it had.
“And you brought me flowers or candy or something?” she asked tentatively. “That’s so sweet.”
“Something even better than that for a bona-fide English PHD.” He whipped his surprise present out from behind him and held it up for her to see.
Smiling, she said, “The Atlantic? Gosh. Thank you, Liam.” She only hoped it was the new issue and not the one she’d swiped from the student center—fully intending to return it, of course, after she was done reading and fanning. But either way, it was the thought that counted.
He sank down next to her and handed it to her.
“Oh, it’s the new issue. Great. I haven’t read that one.”
He kissed her and said, “Better than that. It’s an advance copy. It hasn’t even hit the stands yet.”
“Really? Wow.”
He chuckled. “I better be sure to ask you what you want for all of our special occasions in the future. I can see that you’re absolutely horrible at faking enthusiasm.”
She laughed, wrapping her arms around him and climbing onto his lap. “No, it is sweet. I mean it.”
He reached to take the magazine from her hand and flipped it open to a certain page. Then he held it out to her.
It was a short story. The Snow Girl. When she read the byline, tears almost came to her eyes. “You wrote a new story, Liam? That’s wonderful.”
She hugged him tight and he urged, “Read the first few lines.”
When she complied, she actually did cry. Wiping her eyes, feeling silly, she said, “Oh my God, Liam.”
“I wrote it about you, Clarie. About meeting you. About us.” He flipped to the next page and handed it back to her. She absorbed that byline, the whole piece, with awe. She stared back at him, not sure what to say.
“I used to think that the first time a person sees their work published—really published—it’s the greatest thing in the world,” he said. “What you’ve shown me, Clarie, is that it’s not. That being with someone you love is more important. Is better.”
“Oh my God.” And she wasn’t saying that because the Atlantic was publishing excerpts from her thesis on Liam alongside his new story. It was because he said—or she thought he had said—that he loved her. “Oh my God,” she repeated, and then kissed him, long and hard. “I love you too, Liam,” she whispered when they finally broke apart.
He grinned, pointing at her name in the magazine. “But being published is still pretty cool.”
She laughed. “Incredible.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Oh, but Liam, they’re not just publishing it because you’re making them, are they?”
“See, that’s why I wanted to present it to you as a fait accompli. But unfortunately, the lawyers got involved and I guess they can’t push the print button unless they have your written permission to publish it. So that’s why I had to tell you now. But in answer to your question, absolutely not. Believe me, nobody makes a magazine like that do anything they don’t want to do.”
“Not even for a new Liam Conner story?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “There you go idealizing me again. But, no. The truth is I went to Friedman and asked him to choose some excerpts from your thesis to go as a companion to the story. We went to the Atlantic together. If anything, he’s probably the one who convinced them.”
“Well, he is the foremost authority on you.”
“The bastard…” L
iam laughed. “Speaking of which, I know you have your heart set on a teaching post at NYU, but what would you think of Berkeley?”
“Berkeley? How about I’d kill for it?”
“How about Friedman recommended you for it and you got it? He wanted to tell you himself, but fuck him.”
She laughed. “No thanks. I think I’ll stick to you.”
“Good. Because I can get a lot of writing done in California. I’ve always wanted to live there.”
“Me too.” She kissed him. “But we have to make it back to the cabin once in a while.”
“We will. But only in a snowstorm. Now, let’s go out to dinner and a movie to celebrate.”
“Later…”
He kissed her back. “Much later…
About the Author
Angela Claire’s first love was romance novels, but she resolved to give them up temporarily for law books (which were considerably less fun). In a quest for a “responsible” career, she headed off to Harvard law school, obtained her diploma and settled into a corporate law practice in New York City—which she hated! After staying in the rat race long enough to pay back her massive student loans, Angela returned to her roots in the Midwest and is working as a lawyer at a more leisurely pace than big city law firm life would allow. A multi-published romance author, she writes in her spare time and finds romance in real life with her husband. Angela would love to hear from you.
Angela welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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