Her reaction made going through the effort of singing such a poorly worded song worthwhile as he scooted the chair back some and continued to recite a few more words. There was evident amusement in those eyes focused on her and somehow, like he usually did with those perfect manners, he was only gazing at her face. Though he had every right to spy those endowments he relished getting his hands or mouth on whenever she was inclined for it. “Come on,” laughter followed the remark with his hand sliding palm up, gesturing, “it’s not that bad.” Abel leanen back with his lips parting as if he’d sing some more before laughter won out and he doubled over. Sometimes he killed himself with it rather than anyone else. Being so at ease with her made the act of being eternally polished and refined fall apart. Roxy was able to see the man behind the pristine appearance regularly, a rarity as far as anyone was concerned. Outside the house, he was all manners, as was expected of him before. She wore him down at the edges, but old habits were hard to break.
Monetarily, Abel didn’t mind spending excessively on her or maintaining their living style. It was within his limits, though he wasn’t and wouldn’t have spent some eleven thousand dollars on a bottle of whiskey for her. Not when there were a great many other things she could and would have loved more. The house had come from him selling the other one Melisande Wyndel had rented from him and a portion of his dividends after the Haskel mansion was sold too. Abel used it all as a down payment and then some on their house by the shoreline. He had requested a few favors to ensure the shoreline didn’t wear away over time, that there’d be no disaster of water washing up and sweeping the house aside. Things that he feared mother nature would get involved in. Therefore, with magic at hand, the house was safe from those types of issues and the property itself was sustained by a combination of hard work and his own talents. One of her presents was ironically a Roomba after she showed him a video of a cat sitting on it while it cleaned the house. There was a note that said, ‘Please don’t bat it around, Love - Abel’.
“Then we’ll make a show of it,” he laughed when she pointed at herself. “You can go with me, tell them all about my supposed horrible skills at picking out cats, and we can come home and break the news to Thomas that he has to share.” He nudged the feline who was still out cold. “Let’s keep it a secret from him in the meantime so he can’t whine about it to me until then.” Devilishly smarmy, the look he gave the cat meant nothing but trouble. When it came to women, Abel didn’t go for the sort she imagined he would. Roxy shared a great many interests of his, from opera to vintage style clothes, and permitted him to lavish her at times with his attempts of gifts. Make-up had gone terribly wrong. He was not accustomed to a woman who didn’t want to wear a little make-up at times and had wound up back tracking all over the place when she got on him about it. In the wrong ways. Truly, if she had just straddled him, he’d have been okay with that.
“Better that than jets, the tub is gone,” he said once more without any indication he was teasing about this jealousy over the tub. Her question earned a look that was enough to answer her. He tended to favor legitimate jewelry that wasn’t the cosmetic sort. Each one bore a warranty and receipt though the perk of dating a wizard was never having to go to the jewelers to have her presents cleaned.