I took the number she scribbled on a corner of an envelope, thanking her, and making my apologies for interrupting. “I’m sorry to have been wandering around your castle—it’s really amazing, I have to say—but I got a bit lost and there are no signs on this floor.”
“This is private,” Alice said, following me to the door. “The ground floor is where the turistas flock. No, no, that wasn’t meant as an indictment—you’re welcome to look around wherever you like, isn’t she, Elliott?”
“Until the family returns, at which point she will be likely to have several unpleasant surprises should she wander unexpectedly into any of the boys’ rooms.” He donned an expression that could only be described as martyred and started tapping at the keyboard.
“The boys range in ages from eighteen to late thirties,” Alice said, blowing her husband a kiss before closing the door on him, and gesturing to the left. I walked down the hall admiring the paintings. “Did Gunner tell you that Lady Ainslie—their mom—adopted a butt-ton of kids from all over the world? They have seven brothers and two sisters, and all of them are crazy as loons. But in a good way. Lately, Elliott and I have been working at getting them all settled.”
“Settled how?” I asked, following her down a long flight of stairs, which led to the familiar small kitchen.
“I’m in need of some cinnamon toast and tea.” Alice filled a toaster with bread, and got butter and some sugar and cinnamon out of a cupboard. “Well, gainful employment mostly, although with the older ones, I’ve decided it’s my job to help them find the happiness that Elliott and I have.”
I sat when she gestured, my eyes widening. “You’re matchmaking?”
“That’s such a stigmatized word.” She flipped a switch on an electric kettle, and got out a teapot, rinsed it, and spooned in some loose tea. “I prefer ‘happiness enabler.’”
“If you think you’re going to matchmake Gunner and me—,” I started to say.
“But that’s the good thing!” she interrupted, spinning around to grin at me. “You guys did it all yourselves without my having to intervene! That’s so awesome, even if it does mean that I won’t get to count Gunner as one of my successes. Still, I’m happy to have him settled even if I didn’t have a hand in it. Do you like milk in your tea? I can’t understand how the Brits like it like that, but maybe you feel differently.”
“No milk.” I felt suddenly weak, as if all my energy had drained away. “Do you happen to know when Gunner will be back?”
She cocked her head a minute, then smiled. “I’d say in about three minutes. That sounds like his bike.”
“Good lord, he has a motorcycle?”
“Of course. Didn’t you guess he would?” She set a few cups on the table, followed by plates, teapot, sugar, cinnamon, and, as an afterthought, a small pot of marmalade. “He’s totally the motorcycle sort of man. Did he tell you how he broke his ankle?”
“Doing something foolish,” I said, wondering what on earth I’d gotten myself into.
Alice nodded. “It’s just the sort of thing we expected him to do.” With that, she turned to the door and smiled. “Hello, Gunner. Look at you with two feet in shoes.”
Gunner peeled off a leather jacket as he entered the room, a helmet in one hand and a cane in the other. He smelled like the outdoors and sexy man, and the instant that scent hit me, I wanted to throw myself on him and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.
“I won’t show you what’s under my sock, though,” Gunner said, giving me a grin as he sat down next to me. “The skin on my foot looks like the underbelly of a fish that has lurked in the depths of Loch Ness. Are we having tea? Oooh, cinnamon toast? Lorina, would you believe that the Ainslie family never had exposure to such delights as cinnamon toast before Alice arrived to save Elliott from becoming a curmudgeon?”
“I heard that, you pestilential blight.” Elliott strolled into the room, sniffing appreciatively. “I hope you were planning on bringing me some toast and tea while I was slaving away trying to put food in our respective mouths, Alice. A man cannot survive on a mere sandwich for luncheon.”
“You ate three sandwiches, and half of the pasta salad I was going to save for dinner, so don’t try to guilt me.” Alice ruffled his hair affectionately as he sat down. “As a matter of fact, I was planning on a nice little chat with Lorina to explain to her what a mad wonderland she’d stepped into, but I guess that will have to wait. More toast coming up. Help yourselves to tea.”
Elliott reached across the table for the sugar and poured himself and Alice each a cup of tea. He paused, giving me an odd look. “Lorina.”
I started guiltily, and stopped trying to ogle Gunner out of the corner of my eye. “Yes?”
“That’s your name.”
“Yes, it is. Is something the matter with it?”
He set down his toast and frowned, as if he was thinking hard. “What’s your surname? Little?”
“Not quite—it’s Liddell. Sounds almost the same, but spelled differently.”
To my surprise, he started laughing, pulling Alice down onto his lap when she arrived with another plate filled with toast. “Wonderland is right.”
“What on earth are you cackling about?” Alice asked, giggling when he obviously squeezed her on the behind.
“Lorina Liddell. Alice.” Elliott looked from her to me to Gunner. We all stared back at him. “Have none of you ever read the classics?”
“Classic what?” Gunner asked.
“Alice in Wonderland. That Alice’s sister was named Lorina Liddell.”
“Oh,” I said, the penny finally dropping. “Yeah, my mother was a big Lewis Carroll fan. That’s why she named me Lorina. She never liked the name Alice. Oh, sorry. No offense intended.”
“None taken,” Alice said. She was about to say something else, but evidently changed her mind, because she slid off Elliott’s lap and picked up a tray on which she collected one of the two teapots, a plate of toast, and a couple of cups. “My darling, I think I’d rather discuss this fascinating insight you have into classical literature upstairs. In your office. In private.”
Elliott stood up slowly, frowning as she took the cinnamon toast from him. “Why? I’m quite comfortable here.”
She gave him a look that had him examining first Gunner, then me, and finally nodding. “Ah, yes. I see your point. Privacy with cinnamon toast is much desired.” He took the tray from her and, without a look back, left the room, Alice in tow.
“That was subtle,” I said when they were gone. “Do they expect us to have sex right here on the kitchen table?”
Gunner, who was chewing a piece of toast, paused, considered the idea, and then shook his head. “Too messy. We’d get sugar everywhere. Plus, Cressy might walk in, and then I’d have to get her a second horse.”
“Don’t tell me she’s already wrangled one horse out of you?” I asked with a little laugh.
“Not yet, but she’s made me promise to get her one when she turns eighteen in six months.”
“She’s a fast worker,” I said with approval.
“Truer words were never spoken. Now.” He dusted off his hands, wiped the crumbs and sugar from his lips, and smiled. “About that lovemaking you mentioned. Shall we go upstairs?”
I would like to say that I didn’t hesitate to disabuse him of the notion that I had been hinting I’d like to get down and dirty with him, but the sad fact is that I actually thought about it for a few seconds before remembering why it was I wanted to see him.
“As a matter of fact, we don’t have time,” I said, ignoring the desire to jump him right then and there. “Paul found another mouse stone, but his translation seemed a bit iffy to me, and now Roger is off on some tangent about a pointing statue, and I might have confronted Paul about Sandy.”
I had hoped to slip that last bit in there without him noticing, but damn him, that’s w
hat he chose to pick up on.
“You confronted him?” he asked in the middle of putting cinnamon sugar on another piece of toast. “I thought we were going to do that together? I hoped we could come up with a reasonable plan, a thoughtful plan, a plan that wouldn’t be tantamount to slander, and then proceed from there.”
I slumped in my chair. “I know. We were. And I meant to wait for you, but Fidencia was there accusing him of having crabs, and then one thing led to another and I was telling him about Sandy, and he absolutely denied he had HIV. Which, of course, we knew he would, but still, he’s got balls looking me dead in the eye and lying like that. And then he said the most heinous things about Sandy, which had to be him trying to smear her name in the dirt, and after that, I just kind of lost control.”
He set the toast down. “Do I want to know what happened?”
“I slapped him.” I hung my head for a second, hoping the appearance of sorrow would keep Gunner from being annoyed with me, which just annoyed me, because I shouldn’t care if my actions don’t make a man happy.
But I did care.
Dr. Anderson would tell you that it’s more important to approve of your own actions than to worry if others approve, my inner self pointed out.
Shut up, I told her. Dr. Anderson doesn’t know everything.
Mmmhmm. You’ve got it bad, don’t you?
“I really hate internal monologues,” I said with a sigh.
“Conscience getting the better of you?” Gunner asked a bit archly, which I resented for about ten seconds.
“I’d say yes, but then you’d have proof that I listen to the voice in my head, and that just sounds too crazy for words. Oh, Gunner.” I put my elbows on the table and my chin on my hands. “What am I going to do? Paul swears he didn’t give Sandy anything. He says she was basically the equivalent to the camp ho, and that if she picked up HIV anywhere, it was not via him.”
“Hmm.” Gunner tore the piece of toast in half, and gave me some before popping the rest into his mouth and chewing while he thought. “What we need is a blood sample.”
I shook my head. “He says he already had a battery of tests, including HIV, and that he’s negative.”
Gunner eyed me. “Could it be possible that he’s telling the truth?”
“Sandy isn’t like that. She’s not promiscuous. She’s barely had two boyfriends the entire time I’ve known her, and even when she was seeing someone, she never had him over at our apartment overnight.”
“I don’t know what to say, then. On one hand, we have Paul swearing he’s clean and that your friend was a tart, and on the other, you know your friend well, and say she’s not likely to have picked up the disease from anyone else.” He frowned at the teapot. “I just don’t see that we’re going to get very far unless we have proof of what he claims—that he doesn’t have an STD.”
“And I doubt if he’s going to be willing to hand over his test results to prove it,” I said sadly, feeling the full weight of the burden I’d set on my shoulders. “It’s too bad Daria’s husband isn’t here.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s a lab tech. Evidently he does all sorts of health testing, and he’d surely be able to tell us if a sample of Paul’s blood was infected or not.”
“That would imply we had a sample to be tested.”
I waved the fact away that I had yet to figure out how to get said sample. “So what are we going to do?”
“About Thompson?” He got to his feet, winced briefly, and carried our plates over to the sink. I gathered up the tea things and took them to the counter. “I’ll talk to him later and see if it’s possible to get a glimpse at his test results, not that I believe he carries them around with him. There’s a chance he might show us the results in order to shut us up.”
“You think he really is innocent?” I asked, a bit dumbfounded.
“I don’t know.” Gunner rinsed out the teapot. “But I don’t like to judge people until I have all the facts.”
“I hate it that you’re more principled than I am,” I said, shooting him a little glare. “I’ve always prided myself on being a nice person, and here you are making me look like a heel. All right, we’ll ask him nicely for the test results.”
“After I see this latest stone,” Gunner said, pulling me up against his body, and speaking against my lips. “Unless you’d rather go upstairs and indulge yourself in some hot, steamy lovemaking first?”
“You are incorrigible,” I told him, gathering my things and sashaying out the door.
His laughter followed me, making me feel simultaneously happy and worried.
What was I getting myself into by indulging in a relationship with Gunner? He made me intensely happy, and yet at the same time, I had a desperate feeling that I was about to take a start down a path from which I wouldn’t be able to return. The problem was that I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.
“Why isn’t life simple?” I moaned to myself.
Chapter 18
“It’s a ring.”
“Where?” Lorina glanced around her.
“Not a physical ring—this.” Gunner waggled the latest puzzle stone at her. “The answer to the puzzle is a ring. The kind with a seal on it. It’s another famous riddle. This time, I came prepared.”
Lorina watched with interest as he pulled out a small Latin primer and flipped to an appendix. “Let’s see, it should be . . . ah, here it is. The English translation is, ‘I cling to an extremity. You might say I’m part of it, so little do I weigh. My face makes good impressions every day.’ And the answer is a ring with a seal on it, the kind used to seal letters and such with wax.”
“‘My face makes good impressions’ . . . ha.” Lorina looked smugly satisfied. “And it has nothing to do with a pointing statue. Roger is totally off track.”
“He is if he’s expecting this puzzle to tell us where a treasure is.” Gunner thought for a few minutes. “I have to admit that I’m not seeing where the clues are leading us. A ship, a greeting, a roof tile, and now a ring.”
“Maybe the ring is the treasure?” Lorina suggested, examining the stone.
“Ring? What ring?” Roger bustled into the storeroom. “You found a ring?”
Lorina explained about the stone.
“Oh.” Roger was clearly disappointed, but recovered quickly. “Well, ring . . . statue . . . it doesn’t matter what it is so long as it leads us to the treasure. How’s your foot? We’d like to get a piece filmed later with you explaining to Lorina why the dig has shifted to the castle cellar.”
“My foot is fine, although I’m supposed to use this cane when I do a lot of walking.” Gunner indicated the implement leaning against the wall. “And I’d be happy to do the piece, so long as Lorina isn’t busy molesting me.”
Lorina’s eyes widened for a moment before she narrowed them with a warning of later retribution. It just made him smile. She was so easy to tease, so delightfully open with her expressions.
He thought of telling her right then and there that he was becoming quite serious about keeping her in his life, but decided that what she needed most at that moment—other than him—was space. She obviously had some emotional issues to work through, and although he’d love nothing more than to help her master them, he’d be patient and let her deal with them in her own way.
He was feeling very noble until he realized that Lorina was chatting with Roger about some plan for dressing them all up as Romans to reenact the burning of the villa.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “If I told you that I’m aware you need time to process the emotional ramifications of our relationship, would you gawk at me for my singular ability to understand your innermost self, kiss me because I am thinking only of you, or punch me in the arm because you’re so overcome with gratitude that you can only express yourself by a slight physical attack?”
She spun around and gawked at him. And then punched him in the arm before turning back to Roger. “That sounds fascinating, Roger, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do the pieces in front of the camera with Gunner as well as play dress-up Roman and still have time to take pictures—”
“Of course you will. We will make sure you have the time,” Roger said, giving them both a toothy smile. “And perhaps Gunner would care to be—”
“Lorina is the lady of the manor, and I am captain of Lorina’s guard,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her in a way that he hoped signified that he’d be captaining her guard just as soon as they were alone together.
“Are you?” Roger frowned to himself for a few moments before bobbing his head in acquiescence. “That would work. There were bound to be some guards at the villa, after all. Very well, we’ll do the piece for the camera first; then we’ll start the reenactment of the villa burning.”
“Won’t that take time away from the dig?” Lorina asked, sliding Gunner a look when he wrapped an arm around her and hauled her up to his side. “I would think that was the first priority.”
“It is, of course, but the digging will be done by then. It’ll be dark, you see. Torches! We must have plentiful torches. I’m sure the Romans had torches. I wonder if I could buy some locally. . . .” He turned on the radio and demanded, “Someone find me a torch shop.”
Gunner watched as Roger bustled out of the room making a note that someone would have to get hold of the wardrobe department of the network. “There goes one very single-minded man.”
“I know, right? I’ve tried to point out the obvious to him—well, you heard me just now—but he just gets an idea and goes full bore with it.” She dug her elbow into his side. “And what’s with this emotional ramification business? If you’re trying to pressure me into something, I should warn you that I do not pressure well.”
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