Page 116 of At Her Pleasure
She’d chosen belted boot cut jeans and a short-sleeved gray shirt with a loosely laced V-neckline. The words Rock and Roll printed on the shirt were surrounded by red roses. Her square-heeled boots had a strap and silver buckle at the ankle. One leg was bent, knee leaning against the door, her elbow braced on the window as she looked over at him, still holding her hair back from her cheek and mouth. “No picture taking.”
“I keep my pictures here.” He tapped his forehead.
“None on your phone?”
“Not of people.”
So no one could piece together his movements or real identity. Or hurt people he cared about.
“In this line of work, you have to stay two or three steps ahead of the bad guys,” he said, confirming her thoughts.
“So there’s nowhere in the world you store a photo album with pictures of your parents? Old report cards or a teddy bear from when you were a kid?”
“No,” he said seriously. “I burned it all or gave it away. Everything I own is in this camper.”
“So what’s with the Precious Moments collection?”
“I visited the chapel once, when I was passing through Missouri. Those half dozen pieces…they’re just innocent, feel-good stuff. It’s the Untouchables movie line. ‘Some part of the world still cares what color the kitchen is.’ It's a reminder, why I do what I do. Call it a meditation focus. They ground me when I get a little uneven.”
He nodded at the glove compartment. “Closest thing I have to a photo album is in there, if you want to take a look.”
She found a sizeable stack of postcards. As she put them in her lap and flipped through them, she saw they were from all over. No personalization, no handwriting on the backs.
“When I first started doing this, I thought about figuring out where you’d landed,” he said. “I was going to send them to you as I made my way back and forth across the country, into Mexico, Canada, South America. My handler told me that was a really bad idea. But I kept buying them, putting them there.”
He lifted a shoulder at her look. “A lot of nights, when I’m eating dinner and don’t feel like TV, I take those out and flip through them. Imagine you in each one of them.”
He said such things so casually. She made herself match the tone, even if the confession rocked her.
“How long have you been doing that?”
“Since I had about a dozen of them. I’d had a particularly bad day. I was in a hotel room that night—this was before I bought the motorhome. I put them on my chest, held them there. Then I started to look at each one and picture you there, and the kind of stuff we might have done together.”
That half smile returned. “The good news is now I don’t have to feel like a perv, having those kinds of thoughts about someone who still looked like a teenager in my head.”
Every moment they spent together was going to make parting more difficult. But…fuck it. She unfastened her seatbelt, crossed the space between them, and put herself in his lap.
“This is unsafe,” he said. But he shifted his legs so she could settle deeper into his lap and put her head against his neck, her arms around his shoulders. She propped her chin on one and gazed into the back of the camper.
“You aren’t usually the affectionate type, Mistress.” A rough note was in his voice.
She wasn’t. But she wanted to touch him, often and a lot. And she could, because he belonged to her. At least for now.
She stayed in that position for a half hour, just resting upon him without saying much as the miles passed under the wheels. When he told her they were close to the festival town, she went back to her seat. They cruised down Main Street, passing under a banner that proclaimed Welcome Orchid Lovers. Eighth Small Town Orchid Enthusiast Festival.
“STOEF,” she noted.
“Yeah. The people who organize it call themselves Stoeffers.” He winked at her. “It moves around. Whoever wins top prize for their orchid gets host town location for the next festival. So this is home to last year’s winner. It’s become more popular with each one. Which, given how niche this is, means a few hundred people instead of a few dozen.”
“There’s no way you know this off the top of your head,” she decided. “You’ve met your contact at one of these before.”
“The moving around is a plus, and he really likes his damn flowers. Like someone else I know.”
She arched a brow. “Is he married? Good looking?”
“Solidly married and looks like a mud puddle. Oh, and he’s at least a hundred years old.”
“I like older men.” She gave him a look. “Perv.”