“Fucking hell, you’re good at that,” he mumbled.
o0o
He woke up when Kathleen pulled his beard.
“I have a feeling I might need my coffee before I see what’s out there,” she said.
“You might be right,” he yawned and pulled her closer. “Give me five minutes.”
“Okay,” she said and sat up. “I’ll just bite the bullet and hope that no one tries to talk to me. I’m in a stabby mood.”
“You been awake long?” he asked with a laugh. Kathleen started to get ‘stabby,’ as she called it, if she didn’t get coffee within thirty minutes of waking up. Sex could push it for another half hour if he was lucky, but then she needed coffee. “I’m naked, you know, and you said I was sexy.”
“At the moment a cup of coffee is about ten times as sexy as you,” she said with a smile. “If you’re nice, I’ll get you one, too.”
“I’m very nice.”
He went to the bathroom to put his contacts in, and by the time he came back outside she was already back, and there was a cup on the nightstand. She was smiling while sipping the coffee.
“Is it okay?”
“First couple of cup could be motor oil, and I’d still be okay with it.”
“How bad was it out there?”
“Not too bad. I’ve seen worse.”
“Really?” he asked when he sat down next to her on the bed. “Where?”
“College.” She leaned against him. “It wasn’t bad, and I had fun. No need to worry.”
He gave the top of her head a kiss. “Even okay with the sweetbutts?”
“You said you’re my guy, and I trust you.” She turned her head and kissed his shoulder. “I’ll keep trusting you until you prove me wrong.”
“I won’t prove you wrong.”
“Good. Then there really isn’t much to talk about.”
In all honesty, he hadn’t thought she’d be bothered by it. She just wasn’t the kind of woman who was bothered by those kinds of things, but it was still nice to have it confirmed, and it was good to know she was okay with them around and that she’d seen what it was like. It wasn’t something he felt like explaining to her or hiding from her. This way she knew, and he knew that when she said she trusted him, she knew what she trusted him with.
“I guess there isn’t,” he said with a smile and emptied his cup. “You’ve had your coffee now. Got the calm in you to stay an hour or two in bed with me?”
“I think so,” she said and slid closer to him, circling him with her arms. “I might be a bit twitchy. I drank one cup before taking one in here.”
“So you’ve had two cups in less than ten minutes?”
“Yes.”
“Undress.”
“What?”
“Undress. I’ll fuck the twitchiness out of you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That’s Reassuring
o0o
THE NIGHT AT THE clubhouse had been pretty much what Kathleen had expected it to be. She understood why Mace wanted her there; it was to introduce her to the club, but also so she’d know what it was like, what he was about. She’d already known that, though. If his male best friend was the only person a fifty-one-year-old man had introduced to his mom, he was either gay and dating said best friend, or he fucked around like there was no tomorrow. Kathleen was sure Mace wasn’t gay, so she had assumed he’d been fucking around with the biker groupies, and that those groupies hung around at the clubhouse.
She had talked to Sisco quite a lot that night, or at least until he’d wandered off with one of the girls. When they’d dropped by at his place before the first dinner, she’d had the feeling that the visit to some extent was to evaluate her, but at the clubhouse it had been more about getting to know each other, and she’d really liked him. She wasn’t surprised he was Mace’s best friend, and she wondered if they’d always been similar people, or if they’d become similar from spending so much time with each other. Mel had pointed out that they sometimes acted like an old married couple, and Kathleen had noticed the same thing. What she’d also noticed was that Sisco seemed honestly happy for Mace. He wanted her to feel welcome as much as Mace did.
It still surprised her when Sisco was waiting outside her house about a week after her night at the clubhouse. He sat on the steps outside her door and looked up from his phone when he heard her pull up into her driveway.
“Hi,” she said when she walked up to stand in front of him. “I’d tell you he’s not here, but then I have a feeling you know that.”
“I know that,” Sisco confirmed and took a big flat package he’d had leaned against the wall and stood up. “I got something for you.”
“For me?” Kathleen asked and then opened the door for him. “Come inside.”
“Thanks. He mentioned you didn’t have anything personal in your house.” He looked around once he stepped inside. “Fuck. He was right. Even his place has personality compared to this.”
“Maybe I just don’t have much of a personality,” she said and threw her keys on the table. “You had something for me?”
“Yeah. Here.” He handed her the package. “And don’t kid yourself, you’ve got plenty of personality.”
It looked like a painting, and she dearly hoped it wasn’t the Trudy Evans painting he’d had on his wall, because she had no idea how to react if it was. Or why the hell he’d give it to her.
It wasn’t.
It was one of the paintings from her Red Series, one of the more popular of her periods, and Kathleen happened to know almost exactly how much they were worth. The one he was trying to give to her was one she hadn’t seen before, though, and she couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Are you shitting me?” she asked. “You bought me this? That’s… kind of… strange.”
“No. I had it.”
“You just happened to have a Trudy Evans painting lying around?”
“No. I have about twenty of them lying around,” he said. “She was my wife.”
Kathleen stared at him. “Trudy Evans was your wife?”
“Yeah. ”
Trudy Evans was one of her favorite artists, and she knew quite a lot about her, so she knew she’d been married. But what came to mind was that Trudy Evans had been hit by a car while she was pregnant—both Trudy and the child had died. She’d known she was married to a man named Lance, but… she’d never…
“You’re Lance Evans. I mean, I know your name is Lance Evans, but I never… She was your wife?”
“Yes,” he confirmed again with a nod. “We met when we were just kids, married a few years later, and we were still married when she died. I actually sold all her paintings back then, but it was a friend who bought them, and a few years ago he gave them all back. It was her private stuff, so he didn’t want them… Well, anyway. I got them back, so I have a few.”
He kept his eyes on the vivid red pattern while he was talking, and Kathleen felt like an asshole.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he shrugged.
She looked at the painting. “You’re giving me this?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to do an interview about her.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.” She ran her fingertips over it. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.”
She looked up again, and Sisco was still staring at the painting. There was one thing she wanted to be really damn sure about before accepting it, though.
“You’re not hitting on me, are you?”
His eyes flew up to meet hers, and his face broke into a big smile before he laughed. He had a really great laugh.
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that. But I have all those paintings, and sometimes I give one away. Usually to charity for kids.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I give them to Jane, and she passes them on. I try to stay out of… all that.”
“Jane Phelps?” She was one of the bigger art dealers in the northwest. Kathl
een’s mom had bought a lot of her modern art from her. When Sisco nodded, she shook her head. “Aren’t you full of surprises.”
“I’m from Seattle, I know most people who were involved in the scene during the Nineties. So it’s not that strange.”
Kathleen nodded. She knew that, because she’d known who Lance Evans was, she’d just never for a second suspected that Sisco was the same Lance Evans as the Seattle Lance Evans. Maybe she should have, considering he was a biker with a famous piece of modern art hanging on his wall, but she hadn’t even considered it. He’d been mentioned sometimes regarding the music scene and as Trudy Evans’ husband. Again, it seemed stupid now that she hadn’t figured it out, but the thought had never even crossed her mind.
She looked at the painting again, and then shook her head. It was beautiful, one of the best she’d seen in the Red Series, but…
“I can’t… I can’t accept this, Sisco. It’s worth a fortune, and… don’t you want it?”
“I have the only painting I want. I’d like you to have it.”
“What would Mace say?” she tried.
“He’s my brother, and my closest friend, do you really think I wouldn’t okay it with him first? I suggested he give it, but he thought it would be dishonest. Not sure what the fuck you’ve done to him.”
“Not sure either, but whatever it is, he’s doing it to me, too.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Are you sure about this?” she asked again, and the closer she got to accepting it, the more she fell in love with the painting in front of her.
“Yeah. It was never about money for Trudy, and she hated that the suits bought her art without understanding it. I think you do understand, and I know you like them. I like it when art stays with the people it was meant for, and she’d like you having it, too.”
Trudy Evans’ art had reminded her of Bikini Kill’s music. It was girly, cute, and angry as hell at the same time. It didn’t make any apologies about anything, but was just an ‘in your face’ attitude that she loved. Kind of like ‘this is me and I’m not gonna fucking apologize for anything.’ But Trudy’s art was also fragile and really, really beautiful. The Red Series had a lot of that fragility in them, and some of them were scary. They were bodies tangled together, and if you were in a good mood, they looked like they were having sex, but other times, the same painting was just horrifying and painful. She’d once read that the facial expressions for pleasure and pain were almost the same, and the paintings in the Red Series reminded her of that.
“I’ll take care of it,” she mumbled. “And I promise I won’t sell it to a suit.”
“I know you won’t. Take care of my guy, too,” he said.
“I’ll do my best.”
She offered him coffee, but he declined and left after a long hug. Once he was out, she hung the painting on the wall, and then she sat down on the floor in front of it and just kept staring at it. She couldn’t believe she’d just been given it—that she owned a Trudy Evans painting.
When she heard Mace arrive, she met him in the hallway and threw her arms around his neck to pull him down for a kiss.
“Hey, Hotshot. How was your day?”
“Sisco came by, and he gave me a painting.”
“Did he now?” Mace asked and lifted her up with a firm grip of her ass. “Which one?”
“One from the Red Series. I put it up on the wall in the living room.”
“Opposite the window?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. I was gonna put a flat screen there.” He gave her a kiss to stop her from protesting. “I guess I’ll have a monument of the dying feminist movement shoved in my face on a daily basis instead.”
He let go of her and went over to the menus on the counter. Kathleen stood still while trying to get her brain to connect the two things that had started to tumble around in her head because of what he’d just said. It had triggered a memory of something someone else had said, but she couldn’t make the connection.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Think we could go out?” he asked instead of answering her question.
“Sure, but what did you say? Dying feminist movement?”
“Yeah… I did.” Mace looked at her while holding his breath before slowly letting out the air. “Are we going to fight now?”
They’d had a few fights, but they both fought in the same way: they exploded, yelled, and then they were done. They were usually short things that ended with them fucking. It worked pretty well for Kathleen. The only thing she couldn’t stand when it came to fighting was sulking or people holding a grudge, something Mace never did. If he had a problem with her, he was in her face about it, and she was the same. Which was why he simply asked if they were going to fight, because if he’d pissed her off, her answer would’ve been ‘yes’ and then they’d be at it, but he hadn’t pissed her off. What pissed her off was that she couldn’t make the connection her brain was screaming at her to make. It was so frustrating, like having something at the tip of your tongue but not being able to spit it out.
“No. Dying feminist movement. Why did you call it that?”
“Fuck,” he muttered and threw down the menus. “It’s kind of stalled, isn’t it? It was a thing in the Seventies, died during the Eighties, had a brief comeback again, but now it’s declining. There’s loads of chick who keep calling feminism silly or how they don’t want to be victimized… or something. Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m talking about. This is all from Eliza, she had an explosion at the clubhouse last week.”
Eliza! That was it—that was the connection and the two thoughts collided with a bang inside her head. Eliza had mentioned how the response-addicted girls at her school didn’t think feminism was necessary because they’d never felt like they were treated differently, and Mace’s comment about the dying feminist movement being shoved in his face. People, young girls, who didn’t think something existed, or even had happened, unless they had it shoved into their face. Kathleen was a feminist, but she’d never been much of a feminist reporter, but the decline and bashing of the feminist movement pissed her off.
And that was when it happened, the raging storm started up at the back of her head, and the more she thought about it, the louder it got.
“You need to order in,” she said and started towards the office. “I need to check a few things.”
“Fuck! Kathleen, what did I say?”
“Nothing bad, a good thing, and I had an idea.” When she turned around, he was still standing by the menus looking completely perplexed, and she ran up to him to give him a kiss, before once again heading towards the office. “Love you.”
“Hey! Stop,” he laughed and grabbed her hand to pull her back. “What did you say?”
“I had an idea. You gave me an idea for something to write.”
“Great, but that’s not all you said, and you don’t get to drop the L-bomb on me and run out.”
“Shit…” She hadn’t realized she’d done that. “I was saving that.”
“For what?”
She stood still. “I’m not sure. I love you.” She gave him a kiss. “If you want to get a TV for here, this would be a good time to do it.”
“Why?”
“I think I’m going to be occupied.”
“Okay. Just so you know, I love you, too. And I’m getting that TV.”
She was halfway to the office before she turned around to look at him again, and what just happened hit her. Not that she’d had an idea, but what they’d said. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d hadn’t been present for the conversation they’d just had. Which had been a pretty serious thing, so she should probably try to… do something to remember it.
Mace was leaning against the counter again, flipping through the menus while pulling his beard, and she looked at him. Really looked at him. Then she went over and leaned on her elbows next to him. He put down the papers and smiled.
“I’ve never had this,” she
said.
“Had what?” he asked.
“What we’re having. I’ve never managed to get to the point where the overwhelming need and lust settle into this… I actually don’t know what this is, but I like it. Sometimes it just hits me, how I feel about you, and it’s… big, terrifying, and overwhelming—but I like it.”
“I know what you mean, and I like it, too.”
“And I’ve never been with a guy who would do what you just did.”
“What did I do?”
“I told you I loved you, and that you should get a TV because I’ll be occupied, since I had an idea, and you just… said okay.”
“I’ve never had this either, so I think I might be confused, but did I do something wrong?”
“No, that’s the thing, you do everything so fucking perfectly. You’re… you, and you let me be me without any judgment. So you’re the most chauvinistic guy, and at the same time the most supportive guy, I’ve ever met. It’s confusing and great.”
“I’m great?”
“You’re great,” she confirmed with a nod. “And I do love you. I didn’t just say it so you’d leave me alone. It scares me, but I like that, too.”
“Not to alarm you, Hotshot, but you’re sounding pretty fucking schizo right now,” Mace said with a wide smile. “And you’re usually really sure about yourself, so what’s up with that?”
She thought about it. “I think I’m nervous I might have freaked you out.”
“You didn’t,” he said and tipped down his head to give her forehead a kiss. “Not even close, and I love you, too, so I’m gonna stick around to see where that leads.”
“Good,” she smiled and kissed his upper arm. “I’ll see you later.”
“I’m getting that TV,” he said when she was at the door to the office. When she turned around, he was still leaning against the kitchen island on one elbow, and he eyed her. “And cable.”
“Get food, TV, and cable,” she said with a nod.
“If you want me to leave you alone, you shouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Bite your lip to hide your lopsided smile. That move turns me on every fucking time.”
Speed of Light (Marauders #3.5) Page 16