Escape for New Year. Shirley Jump

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      “Would your wife care for a portrait?” the gentleman asked with a heavy French accent.

      Bishop smiled dismissively. He liked his privacy.

      “I don’t think—”

      “She’d love one,” Laura piped up, before sucking chocolate sauce off her thumb and sitting straighter. “She’d love one of the both of us.”

      Out the side of his mouth, Bishop countered, “Do you really feel like posing for half an hour?”

      “No posing,” Frenchie said, flicking out his squeaky easel and wedging the legs into the planks. “Eat, talk. Reminisce. While I—” he whipped a pencil out with a magician’s finesse “—create.”

      “I know what we can reminisce about.” Laura’s foot under the table curled around his pant leg. Bishop imagined her red painted toes as they slid up his calf. “Those amazing days we spent together sailing the Aegean.”

      He angled slightly down. Out of sight, his hand caught her foot and he tickled her instep. “How about that unbelievable night on Naxos?”

      “Please, please. Sit closer.” Frenchie feathered a pencil over the paper then stepped back to inspect his work so far. “This, I know, will be magnifique.”

      Bishop reveled in the sweetness of chocolate and honey vanilla while listening to Laura’s recollections of their honeymoon … what they’d eaten and when, the people they’d met, their private dance on their private balcony in the moonlight that last night. Curious that she’d forgotten their divorce yet could remember every sensual detail of the time directly after their wedding as if it were yesterday. While the Mediterranean breeze and their lovemaking had kept them warm, she’d whispered in his ear and made him promise to take her on a cruise every year.

      In between mouthfuls of cake, they talked and laughed. Bishop was so engrossed in their memories of Greece that he’d almost forgotten about the portrait until Frenchie set aside his pencil and announced, “It is done!”

      Now, in the shadow of the Opera House’s enormous shells, he dragged himself back to the present and reached for his inside jacket pocket.

      “How much do I owe?”

      Frenchie waved a blasé hand. “Your choice.” Then, obviously proud, he pivoted the easel around.

      Laura’s hands went to her mouth as she gasped. “Oh, Bishop, it’s perfect.”

      Bishop had to agree. It captured not only their images but the gay atmosphere of the night as well as their obvious affection for each other. It was like looking back in time.

      “It was a pleasure to work with a couple so very much in love.” Frenchie beamed.

      Laura’s eyes glittered in the flickering candlelight. “Does it show?”

      “Like a comet,” Frenchie enthused with a grand sweeping gesture, “illuminating a velvet night sky.”

      Laura’s expression melted and Bishop slid out a large bill. Frenchie might be a bit of a poet, but his description wasn’t much of an exaggeration. That’s how they must appear to others tonight. Head-over-heels newlyweds in love. While they’d talked and shared desserts it had felt that way, too. He would’ve liked nothing better to have sat here, like this, all night.

      By the time they finished up, it was late, so Bishop hailed a cab and her feet in their gorgeous heels got to rest.

      As they crossed beneath the crystal chandelier of their hotel’s grand marble foyer, the efficient-looking concierge—a different man from the one earlier today—glanced up from checking something behind his desk. A big grin etched across his face and he fairly clicked his heels.

      On their way to the lifts, Laura commented, “Very friendly staff they have here. You should tip that guy for that special welcome home.”

      His step faltered the barest amount before he slid over a smile. “It’s because you look stunning tonight.” With the portrait in its cardboard sheath under his arm, Bishop stopped before the bank of lifts and thumbed a key. “You’re glowing.”

      The lift arrived and she moved inside, smiling at his compliment, but deep down holding herself against a faint stab. Glowing was a term often bestowed upon pregnant women. Before that doctor at the hospital on Friday had informed her that she was mistaken—that she wasn’t pregnant—she’d actually felt as if she were glowing, even with that scrape and bump on her head.

      But she could well be glowing tonight. They’d had a wonderful evening out, and with Bishop playing hooky from office duties tomorrow, there were many more hours of “wonderful” ahead.

      As the car whirred up to the penthouse floor, she leaned on Bishop to balance as she eased off one four-inch heel then the other.

      Bishop took note. “You’ve shown them off enough for one night?”

      Performing, she twirled a shoe around her finger. “Oh, this is only the beginning.”

      His brows hitched and pupils dilated until the crystalline blue of his eyes was near swallowed by black. When the metallic door slid open, she sashayed out ahead, sandals draped provocatively over one shoulder. She heard his footfalls on the marble tiles behind her.

      “Guess you’re not tired,” he said.

      “You guessed right.”

      They entered the suite, a vast cream, black and crimson expanse, furnished with clean lines and minimalist finesse. She cast her shoes aside. Unable to hold back a moment longer, she coiled her arms around his neck and tipped her mouth up to meet his.

      The ballet had kept her occupied earlier, but when they’d sat by those sparkling harbor waters tonight, eating their cake and reliving those fantastic few days abroad after their wedding, there were times Laura had needed to bunch her hand in her lap to divert the energy she’d felt pulling her toward him. It was as if she were hooked on an invisible line and desperately wanting to be wound in … to let him kiss her with all the heat of emotion both their hearts could give.

      In the cab home, crossing the hotel foyer, riding the lift, she’d wanted to do exactly this … let him know with a touch of her hand, the stroke of her tongue, that she couldn’t live without him. With his breathing deepening now, his bristled chin grazing rhythmically against her cheek and his arms locked around her, the hot need inside of her only grew. Like a bulb without spring sunshine, she could survive without Bishop, but she would never know such true warmth.

      Such real love.

      That would never change. No matter what challenges they faced, they would always have this. An insatiable, natural need to be close.

      When he grudgingly released her, her heart was pounding so hard that the vibration hummed through her body all the way to her fingers and toes. Her hand filed up through the back of his hair as she breathed in the glorious scent he left on his pillow each morning.

      “Know what I want to do?”

      “How many guesses do I get?” His voice was low and husky with desire, his eyes lidded with want.

      “How СКАЧАТЬ