Angels Fall

toast beside it.
    "I didn't mean it. You are rude, but it works for me. You're not selfish, or what selfishness you have seems awfully healthy from where I stand. I don't want you to go to hell."
    "That one may not be your choice."
    "I can't remember it I said anything else I should apologize for, being drunk at the time. If you want me out, I'll go."
    "If I was going to kick you out, why did I spend all this time and trouble making you my mother's famous soup?"

    She stepped to him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest."I fell apart.
    "No, you didn't." He couldn't help himself, just couldn't stop him-self from lowering his head and pressing his lips to the top of her head. "You had a drunken tantrum."
    "Several tantrums, and only the last one was alcohol-driven."
    "Sounds like interesting dinner conversation." He steered her to a chair, then poured himself coffee before sitting down across from her.
    She spooned up soup and confessed all.
    "I blasted everyone. Fortunately, it's a small population so there weren't many who came in range. But my spree's left me without a job, very likely without an apartment. If he wasn't so thick-skinned, I'd guess it would have left me without a lover."
    "Do you want them back? The job, the apartment?"
    "I don't know." She broke off a corner of a piece of toast, crumbled it onto the plate. "I could take today as a sign—which I'm big on—that it's time to go."
    "Where?"
    "Yeah, that's a question. I could prostrate myself in front of Joanie and swear a blood oath never to mention fresh herbs again."
    "Or you could go back into work tomorrow and fire up the grill, or whatever it is you do back there." She looked up, confusion in her tired eyes. "Just like that?"
    "It wouldn't be the first shouting match to play out in Joanie's. What do you want, Reece?"
    "To push rewind, I guess. But since I can't, to deal with the consequences." This time when she broke off a corner of toast, she ate it. "I'll talk to Joanie tomorrow, see where I go from there."
    "That's not to the point. Do you want to go or do you want to stay?" She stood, took her bowl to the sink to rinse it out. "I like what I see everywhere I look when I walk around town. I like having people wave as they drive by, or stop to talk when I'm walking. I like hearing Linda-gail laugh when she's taking orders, and the way Pete sings when he washes dishes." She turned, leaned back against the sink. "The air feels good on my skin, and any day the flats are going to bloom. But there are other places with beautiful views and friendly people. The trouble with them is they're not here. The trouble with them is you're not in them. So I want to stay." He rose and went to her, and in a gesture more tender than she'd ever expected from him, brushed the hair hack from her face. "That's what I want, too. I want you to stay." When he kissed her, gently, very gently, her arms slid up to wind around his neck. "If you wouldn't mind—I know you've already gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf today—but if you wouldn't mind, maybe you could show me what you want."

    Now she rubbed her lips against his. "If you wouldn't mind." Together, they circled their way out of the room, lips brushing, bodies wanning.
    "Indulge me," she told him.
    "That was my plan."
    "No." She chuckled against his throat. "Indulge me and say it again. Just say you want me to stay."
    "Women always want a man to grovel." He found her mouth again, turned her toward the living room. "I want you to stay."
    Oh yes, she thought, better than Keats. And held him close when he lowered her to the couch. The fire he'd lit as he did most nights had gone to simmering red em-bers. That's what she felt inside her, felt from him, the warmth and the simmer instead of the flash of leaping flames. She could bask in it, stroking his hair, his skin, letting her mouth surrender to his. Tonight she could be soothed by his hands and know the quiet glow ofcontentment. He'd made her tea and soup, and he wanted her to stay.
    Love washed over her in slow, swamping waves.
    As she reached for him. as she offered, he wanted more than to take. He wanted most to comfort her, to smooth out all her troubles. Then to lift her from them. No one else had ever reached that tenderness inside him, no one else had ever coaxed it out until it drenched him. He could give her that, that tenderness. And every soft sigh she offered back only enhanced his own pleasure.
    As he undressed her, his