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  “What’s that?”

  “Someone who’s not sure there’s a God, just hopes so.”

  We both laughed again. I contemplated this, thinking of how sometimes friendships erupted in unlikely places and for unexpected reasons. “My dad’s hardcore Catholic. My mom’s become an observant Jew. When I was growing up they weren’t anything. They left it for me to decide when I grew up. And now…when I want something, I can’t decide what to believe.”

  “Really?” Chad frowned. “See, that’s what I tried to tell Luke, but he’s not convinced.”

  We both glanced over to his partner, a handsome black man with a shaved bald head and loud, infectious laugh. I looked at Chad. “You want my opinion, from my experience?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Give her something, one way or the other. When she’s grown up, she’ll make her own choices no matter what you’ve taught her. But if you give her nothing, she might not know.”

  He nodded again, slowly. “Thanks, Olivia.”

  It was easy advice to give, though it didn’t do me a damn bit of good. “I think my parents both would like it if I picked what they are, but they’re both a little…”

  “Fierce?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. Scary.”

  He nodded. “After my dad died, my mom started in on church in a big way. She’d always gone, but after he passed away, wow. You’d have thought the Pope himself had sent her an engraved invitation to weekly Mass.”

  “Cake!” Devon shouted, and the screaming, writhing horde of children stampeded into the dining room, while Chad and I leaped aside.

  “How’d she accept your sister converting?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing she could do about it, right? Like you said, my sister made a choice.”

  “How’s your mom with it now?”

  “I think it helps that she likes my brother-in-law. But I know she’s lit many a candle for my sister’s soul.” His tone was slightly mocking, a little sad. “Hell, mine, too. Not that I think either of us needs it. Hey. You should meet my sister.”

  My expression must have shown my bemusement, because Chad laughed. “She’s not scary.”

  Chapter

  16

  Harrisburg International Airport is tiny and yet every single person who came down the stairs to the luggage area was not Alex. Little old ladies in Las Vegas T-shirts hugged squealing grandchildren, and suit-wearing businessmen checked their BlackBerry devices in a frenzy of thumb-typing. I hated every one of them for not being Alex.

  I finally saw him at the top of the escalator and his name tried to leap from my lips. I was saved from embarrassment by the lack of air in my lungs; I’d been holding my breath. I took a few steps toward him, gave a mental “fuck-it-all” and ran.

  He caught me and twirled me around, just like every sappy couple in every romantic movie ever made. He buried his face against my neck and nibbled. He squeezed me. I stepped back to look at him. It had been only a week but he looked different. A little tan, his hair mussed. Instead of the familiar long, striped scarf, he wore a colorful scarf in a woven Mexican pattern.

  “For you,” he said.

  I draped it around my shoulders. That first kiss after being apart for a week was soft, then hard, quick turning slow. I’d been hungry for this meal, his mouth. His tongue. We were making a spectacle of ourselves but nobody seemed to care.

  “Fuck, I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you, too. How was Mexico?”

  “Lots of tequila and Dos Equis.”

  “Oh, torture. What did you have?”

  “Tequila. And Dos Equis.”

  He didn’t sound teasing, and I held him off at arm’s length for a moment to study him. I’d never seen him really drink. I’d never asked him why. Now I wished I had.

  “And I still spent two days shitting my guts out, but I blame the fish taco.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Ew. Gross.”

  Alex grinned and pulled me closer. “I was glad to have my own room, let’s just say that.”

  “Alex!”

  We both turned. A young man dressed in the blue uniform of the airline, his blond hair spiked and frosted, waved a long, striped scarf. He crossed the baggage area to press it into Alex’s hand. “You forgot this on the plane.”

  “Thanks, man.” Alex took the scarf. “I didn’t even notice.”

  Blondie and I stared each other down before he backed off. Did I know for sure he was flirting with my boyfriend? Hell, yes. Did he know enough to back the fuck off?

  Hell, yes.

  He shot a slightly woeful look tinged with regret at Alex, who’d turned his back after taking the scarf. Then he headed back the way he’d come, taking the stairs two at time. He stopped again on the overhead bridge to look down at us. I waved.

  “That was nice of him,” I said benignly.

  Alex laughed. “Yeah. Cuz I so couldn’t buy another one of these at Abercrombie & Fitch.”

  I hadn’t heard him sound like that before. Smug and offhand. It wasn’t flattering.

  “Lots of people would be upset to have lost a fifty-dollar scarf.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, but blondie’d disappeared. “I figured he’d keep it. He liked it enough.”

  “They’re probably not allowed to keep things left on the plane.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to offer hand jobs instead of cream with the coffee, either.”

  My lip curled and I took a step away from him. At once he looked contrite. He caught me before I could retreat farther.

  “Baby, I’m sorry. That was a shit thing to say.”

  “Yes, it was!” On a few levels.

  “I’m sorry.” His sly, wicked “I know how charming I am” smile was back. I hadn’t seen that one in a while. I hadn’t missed it. “I didn’t take him up on the offer.”

  I snatched my hand away. “I didn’t think you would.”

  He took it back. Pulled me close. His voice softened, the smile eased into something more familiar and sweet. “I’m sorry. I was making a joke. A bad one. I’m an asshole.”

  It’s never easy to see someone you love as less than shining, even if they admit to it. I gave him a grudging nod. He kissed me. I kissed him back.

  “Fuck, Olivia, I missed you so much.” His words, whispered in my ear, had heat that transferred directly to my clit. “I didn’t even jerk off once the entire time.”

  I put my arms around his neck and turned my face to breathe into his ear. “I made myself come every single day, thinking of you.”

  Every muscle tensed against me. “Really…?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck me,” Alex said. “Christ, that’s fucking hot.”

  I hadn’t, but I was glad I’d told him the small white lie. “Take me home and I’ll show you how I did it.”

  We didn’t make it home. Alex got me off in the front seat of my car in the parking garage. The car filled with the smell of sex and the sound of our mingled groans. The weather was too warm for us to steam the windows, and I’d parked in the middle of a long line of cars everyone leaving the garage had to pass.

  We sat, feigning chatter, his hand between my legs where nobody could see. His fingers in my panties, my skirt hiked to my thighs. I couldn’t reach his cock without making it obvious what was going on, so he took it into his fist and pumped it slowly beneath the cover of his scarf. Nothing about his movements gave us away.

  I opened my legs for him and said his name when he fucked his fingers inside me to get them wet, and when he drew them up over my clit in small, tight circles that made me wild. He kissed me just once when I was finished, when he’d come with a groan and low cry into the softness of his scarf.

  “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “I love you,” Alex said.

  The phone call came in on my cell as I was watching late-afternoon TV and reading my mail. I’d had the early shift at Foto Folks and Alex was off somewhere, doing whatever he