Page 76 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
Chapter Twenty-nine
Marlowe awoke, spooned within Angus’s arms, her head on an impossibly soft pillow, her legs tangled in impossibly soft sheets. She had been kidding last weekend when she said she’d do just about anything to finagle a way into Angus’s bed again, but now the joke held new weight. As she spun to face him, his lashes fluttered open and a sleepy smile stretched across his beautiful face.
Oh, yes,she thought.I could definitely get used to waking up like this.
While the thought lingered, she managed a husky, “Good morning.”
“Damned straight it is.” He nestled closer as his eyes fell shut again. “Unless you miss the vengeful owls and the murder carpet and the rancid sofa yak.”
“Definitely not the yak.” She drew curlicues on Angus’s collarbone while he let out a drowsy little murmur of contentment. She liked his little noises, the ways his joy or confusion or even frustration leaked past his often inscrutable demeanor.
He wrapped a leg over her hip, locking her against him.
“Tell me you don’t have to work today.”
“Cherry said she’d try to cover anything that comes up.”
“Remind me to thank her the next time I see her.”
“I’ll thank her for both of us.”
Angus let out another rumblymmmmbefore his hold slackened. Marlowe enjoyed the simple closeness for several minutes but she soon grew restless, reaching past him to grab the small stack of books on his bedside table. They included a collection of essays on art and artifice, a performance artist’s memoir, a pulp fiction murder mystery, and a worn-out copy ofAnna Karenina. All had bookmarks partway through their pages.
“Are you reading all of these at once?” she asked.
He yawned as he tucked an arm behind his head and watched her skim the covers.
“I jump around a lot depending on my mood. Sometimes light and fun wins out. Other times I’m looking for a deeper read. It’s nice to have options. But the books don’t make it to the living room shelves until I’ve read every page.”
Marlowe’s jaw dropped open. She remembered those shelves. She remembered the hundreds of books they contained, too. Fiction, history, philosophy, artistic theory.
“You’ve readallof those? And you’re self-conscious about your education?”
He shrugged as he danced his fingers over her bare shoulders.
“Assuming you’ve had at least some exposure to fan sites and tabloids, when was the last time you saw anyone mention my brain?” He added a light chuckle, but Marlowe knew him well enough now to recognize the hurt behind the laughter.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The world sucks sometimes.”
“Yeah, but it also put this incredibly sexy woman in my bed.” In a swift and unexpected move, he rolled her onto her back andpinned her underneath him. She could’ve wriggled away, but she was content where she was. Besides, she got called sexy as often as he got called smart. She was going to lean into it for a bit.
“Want to tell me the third thing you’re self-conscious about?” she asked. “Besides your education and your aversion to small talk?”
“Yeeeaaaaah, no. I think we ended the conversation in the right place last time.” He kissed her then, maybe because he was distracting her from the topic at hand, maybe because he simply wanted to kiss her. His evasion piqued Marlowe’s curiosity, but she wasn’t about to push. She had her own insecurities, and she didn’t always want to reveal them, even when she wasn’t in bed with a hot naked man whose thoughts were clearly straying in the same direction as hers.
For the better part of the morning, Marlowe and Angus let those thoughts lead where they would, in the bed, in the shower, and in his impressive walk-in closet, where getting dressed took an unusually long time. Eventually he pulled on a pair of jeans and she borrowed a crisp dress shirt. She could’ve retrieved her dress from the kitchen but the morning already felt like a fantasy. She might as well complete it by playing a glamorous, pampered lady who lounged around in her lover’s clothes when the butler wasn’t on site to notice.
The fantasy ebbed somewhat as Marlowe and Angus stopped avoiding the rest of the world and checked their phones. She’d turned hers off the night before, both to save the battery and to avoid the temptation to check messages. It was still powering up when Angus sank onto the bed with a pensive “Huh,” drawing Marlowe’s attention his way.
“Looks like season seven’s a go,” he said.
She sat down beside him. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s better than doing that action flick.” He continued scrolling, his eyes locked on his screen. “It’ll be weird, though. The producers waited too long to make a decision. Idi’s heading to New York to play Macbeth on Broadway. They’ll get him an understudy so he can fly back to shoot his scenes, but he won’t be around much. Kamala and Meg both have film deals, so their roles will also be trimmed. Whitman’s hoping to land a part on the nextTrek. Everyone’s deserting me.” He laughed as though he was hyperbolizing, but Marlowe knew there was nothing funny about loneliness. She also wished she wasn’t one more person deserting Angus, even if they’d work out a plan to stay connected.
She held out a hand, palm up the way he’d done for her, making a quiet offer he could accept or decline. He accepted, wrapping his fingers around hers.
“Bet Jake will finally sleep with his neighbor,” he said. “Then he’ll ditch the poor woman for a series of meaningless flings, burn down his childhood home, and smash up his bike in yet another drunk driving accident no one really addresses.”
