Jamie shook his head slightly, then zipped up the stairs, leaving Marc limping in his wake. The light illuminated the landing a moment later, and then the creak of the library door reached Marc.
And then silence. Marc heaved himself onto the landing and joined Jamie in the doorway. “You said you liked books.”
Jamie turned his wide eyes on Marc, his face as wonderfully young as Marc had ever seen it. “I thought you’d have Andy McNab and a few sneaky Mills & Boon stashed away. Not the entire British Library. What is all this?”
“My mother’s hoarding habit. There’s four rooms up here, and they’re all stuffed with a different type of junk.”
“This isn’t junk.”
“It is when the staircase is as steep as mine, and you haven’t got the time or the legs to deal with it.”
“Your mum’s dead.”
It wasn’t a question, but Marc nodded anyway. “A few years back, but I only came back here permanently eighteen months ago. I was all over the show before then. Couldn’t settle, but you know all about that, right?”
Jamie hummed, but Marc could tell his attention was on the books. He gave Jamie a gentle shove. “Help yourself. No one else is using them.”
“What are you going to do with it all?”
“The books, or the whole lot?”
“Either. Both.” Jamie drifted to the nearest shelf and pulled out a book by an author Marc had never heard of. “There’s loads of contemporary stuff here too. Your mum must’ve been collecting till the day she died.”
“She was. She had a stroke in the garden after she’d been to her bridge club. No one expected it, least of all me.”
“Were you close?”
“Not especially. My dad’s been dead twenty years, so it was just her and me, but we didn’t talk much. I hadn’t seen her in two years when she died, and I don’t think she cared. We weren’t that kind of family.”
“Who is? I don’t know anyone who has a family like you read about in these books.” Jamie held up a different title. It was old, and American, and looked likeLittle House on the Prairie. “I’m sorry she died, though. She sounds kinda cool.”
“She had her moments, but I only ever really came home for her homemade jam. Another thing she used to hoard. I’ve got jars and jars of it downstairs. You hungry?”
“For jam?”
“I can probably swing to some toast too.”
“What flavour jam is it?” Humour danced in Jamie’s eyes. “’Cause if it’s strawberry, I’m going to have to pass. That shit is disgusting.”
“It’s greengage, actually.”
“Green what?”
“Fucked if I know. But it ain’t strawberry, so it won’t do you any harm.”
Marc turned away to hobble back downstairs, but Jamie appeared beside him so fast Marc was fairly sure he’d dreamed it.
“Do you need help getting down?”
“Nah, you’re all right.” Jamie’s close proximity was making Marc’s head spin. “I’m not usually so slow. It’s just a bad movement for me, and I can’t compensate with my bum leg because of the surgery wound.”
“The surgery you had in Chicago?”
“Yeah. It was a nerve graft. A minor one. But it’s still a bit sore.”
“Okay.”
Jamie didn’t move. Marc sucked in a shaky breath, his hands twitching as he fought the urge to touch Jamie, to trail his fingers down Jamie’s smooth cheeks, to smooth his thumbs beneath Jamie’s shadowed eyes. The desire to kiss him again was there too, but it was a slow simmer, and one that could wait. For now, Jamie needed sanctuary, whether he knew it or not.