Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

and dropped quickly out of the tree, brachiating like an orangutan and back on the ground before I could be sure I wasn't drooling. He took his coat and shirt from Mallory and threw them over his arm. "Now then," he said, pointing at the house, "TO THE COOKIES!"
    "Charge!" Mallory yelled and ran with him. Tania and T'Pau shook their heads at each other before strolling towards the house.
    "Aren't you coming?" Tania asked when I didn't follow.
    "I… thought I'd call the rest of the dogs and run off some of their energy."
    "White people," Tania said with a small smile. "Always hanging out in the sun."
    "Save me some cookies if you can," I told her. She waved over her shoulder as she walked away, taking T'Pau's hand before they'd gone far. I whistled for the other dogs and started flinging the Frisbee. Twiggy, then Crikey the Australian shepherd got a turn, and Midas the golden retriever, then Twiggy… Javert, the old bloodhound, wasn't doing any such thing as chasing a silly bit of plastic, but Warhol tried and tried to outrace the bigger dogs.
    I threw ’til they were all panting, even Javert from watching, and still the feeling wasn't going away. I thought of Alan sitting at Lilia's table with lemonade and cookies, cracking his smartass jokes with that look at me grin, and I wanted to march in there and drag him upstairs. Literally drag, if I had to; the sight of Alan's hips was bringing out the caveman that I'd never even known I had in me.
    I thought of when he'd jumped on me in fear of Warhol, of his arms and legs around me, and I had to resist taking the dogs to go scare him again.
    Our project… had just gotten a lot more complicated.
    I took yet another deep breath and tried to think. Okay. Maybe… it wasn't as bad as I thought. I'd known him a week, and though he had knocked me for a loop that first time in the library, I hadn't reacted to him since. Maybe it would go away, and maybe I could just… be really careful to hide it if it came back.
    Acting on it wasn't an option. I had a dozen good reasons for that, of course, starting with his dislike for me and progressing through the fact that my life-plan had me settling down and starting a family in about seven more years if I had the financial stability to do so, but definitely not before then, and also family .
    Not wanting to come out was the smallest, most insignificant reason on my list, but it was there, and tainted the rest of my reasons with the hint of rationalization.
    I wasn't rationalizing, I told myself. I was reasoning. Thinking. I was a thinking man, not a damn caveman. I thought with the big head, not the little one, and the little one could just pout its way into some cold showers if it didn't want to listen.
    Oh, hey. That was an option. I'd definitely worked up a sweat. No one would find it odd if I grabbed a shower while Lilia had them entertained. And the dogs were worn out anyway. "Lazy beasts," I told them all and led back to the house. On the way I stopped to scrub the grill clean, to be extra certain I needed a shower.
    When I came into the hall, the girls were in the dining room with two of Lilia's friends, muttering over a book on the table. I told Mallory I was grabbing a quick shower and walked on. I caught a glimpse of Alan's shirttail in the kitchen, but I didn't look to see what he was doing. It didn't matter that I didn't look. As I walked up the steps, Lilia said something I couldn't make out. Alan laughed, and I found out what it went straight to my dick meant. Only reminding myself he really didn't like me kept me going up the steps.
    God help me, it wasn't going away .
    My shower was long and cold, and it helped.
    "God, your skin is ice cold!" Mallory exclaimed when I entered the dining room after and she grabbed my arm. "Did something happen to the water heater?"
    "I was hot," I told her. "Now I'm not. What did you guys find?"
    "Mrs. Brooks," Mallory nodded at the lady, a dimpled baker of pies who I knew to be a sharp poker player, "lives in that pretty white house we could see from the old churchyard. And…" she paused, grinned, "…her great-grandmother used to tell her stories of the night the church burned."
    "That's… amazing." Well, that clinched the ghost stories, didn't it? Looked like this project was going to be one long frustrating experience.
    Unaware of my thoughts, Mrs. Brooks nodded happily. "Gramma Birdie sometimes didn't know me," she said. "She lived to 107, and in the last few years she got to