Wolfie put his paws on her chest and touched her nose with his. “Don’t drink. It’s bad.”
“It’s gone.” She turned her glass upside down, drowsy now. “See?” His brown eyes were so anxious and his little face was so tense that she stroked his head and added sleepily, “It’s okay, Wolf. I won’t drink any more.”
Wolfie relaxed and licked her cheek. “Good girl. Sweet baby. Love you forever.”
“Love you forever, too.” Shar turned out the light and snuggled down under the covers, her head spinning as Wolfie burrowed under the duvet to curl up beside her. She slipped into sleep, images racing by in fast forward: pale, thin Abby gathering up huge, sweet Bowser in her arms; organized Daisy spinning with frantic Bailey; fierce little Wolfie, pacing back and forth on the bed like a black-and-gray lion, muttering, “Bad, bad”; Kammani, raising her arms at the altar, Bikka and Umma dancing by her side …
“Wake up!” Wolfie barked.
“’s okay,” she murmured to him in her dreams.
“No, it’s bad.”
She tossed her head and was back in her bedroom again, but now the half-forgotten patterns painted on her ceiling and walls glowed, the big symbol carved into the wall opposite the bed hummed, and the room began to shake.
Wolfie whined.
“Shhhh,” she told him, “it’s a dream.” She reached for the flashlight next to the bed and found the Taser box instead. Why don’t they make Tasers with flashlights? she thought through the fog and rumble of the dream as she fumbled the box open. Then you could see who you were disabling. And maybe a bottle opener—
A blinding light whooshed up in front of her and she screamed.
A man was standing at the foot of her bed, huge and translucent, glowing silver as he stretched out his arms.
“Run,” Wolfie yelped, shooting out from under the covers and hitting the floor with a splat, but Shar caught her breath, looking at the man, broad and bare-chested, his eyes closed, towering above her bed as Wolfie howled, “Get out; get out!” from the hall.
The man opened his eyes and his form grew less transparent as he spoke in an ancient language, and Shar thought, Oh, hell, more damn Mesopotamia, and lunged forward and Tasered him, sending silver sparks everywhere.
FIVE
The man collapsed, and Shar looked over the foot of the bed at his glowing, unconscious body, now almost solid and covering a lot of her floor.
“Sorry,” she said to him, “but I spend all my waking hours on Mesopotamia; I’m not going to dream about it, too.”
“Get out!” Wolfie yelped.
“It’s okay, honey,” she called out. “I got him.”
The man looked very real lying there almost naked as the glow around him faded. He looked good, too, broad and well-muscled. Strong. Lots of stamina.
“I’ve been looking for an interesting man with a little age on him,” she said to his beautiful, unconscious face. “But thousands of years? No.” She looked around for her significant other. “Wolfie?”
Wolfie slunk back in. “I peed.”
“It’s okay, honey; it’s only a dream.”
“On the rug.” He pawed at the gray rag rug by her bed.
“It’s a dream rug.” She picked up the rug and went around the end of the bed, stepping over the man to get to the door that led out onto the wide deck, dropped the rug out there, and then came back and looked at the man again.
Hooded eyes, strong nose, thick curly black hair that crossed his forehead like little commas … She reached down to smooth the curls and then realized who he was. “I’m dreaming about the bas-relief,” she told Wolfie, whose tail was lashing now as he stood back from the god, growling. “I’m having erotic dreams about a stone wall hanging.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right. This hardly qualifies as erotic. Maybe I shouldn’t have Tasered him. It might have gotten interesting.”
That was just bluff and she knew it—she wasn’t a woman who would sleep with a guy who just showed up in her bedroom, even in a dream—so she picked Wolfie up and put him on the bed and climbed in beside him. “Tomorrow when we wake up, we’ll paint the kitchen.”
”No, he’s here; we should go.” Wolfie went down to the foot of the bed to look at the god on the floor.
“Leave him alone, Wolfie,” she said, settling back, “he’s just a dream,” and as she drifted off, she heard Wolfie growling at the god.
It sounded like, “Bite you, bite you.”
“No biting,” she said, and then she fell asleep.
Someone was licking Abby’s feet, and it tickled. Normally she didn’t like to be to be tickled, but she’d been up till 3:00 A.M. going through the wondrous contents of Granny B’s boxes. She’d managed a last-minute shower and fallen into bed stark naked, ending up blessed with the most amazingly erotic dreams of her entire life, and the thought of someone licking her was perfectly acceptable.
“Wakey, wakey,” a familiar/unfamiliar voice said from the end of her air bed. She sat bolt upright, half-expecting to be staring into Christopher Mackenzie’s deep blue eyes.
Instead she saw Bowser, his tongue hanging out, looking expectant.
She moaned, flopping back on the leaking air mattress. It was just after six in the morning, she was exhausted, and if she had to spend another day hallucinating while trying to bake enough goodies to feed hungry mathematicians—and, she hoped, a room full of paying customers—she couldn’t afford to stay in bed. She looked at Bowser. “You’re not going to be talking to me today, are you?”
He didn’t say anything. Of course he didn’t; it had all been her imagination. She sat up again, yanking the loose sheet around her body, and rolled out of bed. She reached for her jeans, then hesitated. She needed to do a load of laundry, and Granny B’s colorful clothes looked like they’d be about her size. She pulled out a turquoise skirt and a chartreuse tank top and dressed quickly, not bothering with underwear, and went to the window overlooking the narrow street. It was going to be a lovely day, with the nighttime mist just beginning to burn off in the early sun. Not a soul was moving around, except some insane jock running….
Bowser had pushed his nose against the window, leaving a big wet slobber smudge. “He’s back,” he woofed.
Abby didn’t know what annoyed her more, the fact that Bowser was still talking to her or that he was right. “Who says he’s back? He’s just going to run right by… .”
Christopher Mackenzie had paused outside the front door of the coffeehouse beneath her.
“Go away,” she said under her breath.
“Me?” Bowser said, clearly offended.
“I wasn’t talking to you. And I’m not going to talk to you—you’re a figment of my imagination.”
Bowser pushed his nose against the window again.
“He hasn’t even—” The doorbell interrupted her. She threw Bowser an annoyed glance, wondering if she dared dive back into bed and ignore her unwanted visitor.
“Coward,” Bowser said.
“Dogs should be seen and not heard.”
She pushed open the window and leaned out. “What do you want? It was six-thirty tonight, not this morning.”
Christopher … Professor Mackenzie looked up at her, and she suddenly remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra. She smashed a restraining arm against her boobs and tried to look nonchalant.
“Come down,” he said. “I’m not going to hold a conversation at the top of my lungs.”
“I’m not going to hold a conversation at all. Go away.” She shivered in the cool morning air.
“I have to talk to you.”
“Can’t it wait till later?”
“You’re awake; I’m here. Why wait?”
“Ah, logic,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”
She didn’t hurry, half-hoping he would have given up by the time she made her way down the back stairs to the kitchen and through the front coffeehouse, but he was still looming over the glass door, the rising sun
behind him looking like a halo.
Ha.
She unlocked the front door, then pushed it open a crack to look up at him. “Yes?” she said in her frostiest voice.
He looked uncomfortable. Well, not physically—he was dressed in an artfully torn T-shirt with the logo almost unreadable, and a pair of gym shorts that had seen better days. His hair was rumpled, his glasses were off, and he was the picture of glowing, sweating health.
“I wanted to apologize.”
Oh, shit. It was so much easier to ignore how gorgeous he was when he was acting like an asshole. “For what?”
“For making such a big fuss over the cookies. You’re right: I should have just ordered some from elsewhere. I was rude.”
She just stared at him through the partially open door. Bowser was behind her, trying to push past her to greet his new-found buddy, but Abby refused to move. “No problem.”
“I don’t suppose you have something to drink? I forgot my water.”
Bowser pushed past her, shoving the door all the way open.
“Sure,” she said, defeated, stepping back. “Follow me.”
She didn’t want him inside her kitchen, but telling him to stay put would have been rude and a waste of time. Bowser would probably clamp his big jaws around the professor’s wrist and drag him in.
He stopped just inside the kitchen door, frozen in place as he looked at her. “You’re wearing Bea’s clothing,” he said, his voice flat.
“How would you know?”
“I used to stop here every morning on my run and she’d feed me cookies.” He looked around him at the counters. “Those smell amazing.”
Cakes and cookies were piled everywhere in neat white boxes, tied with amber-colored ribbon. He was right—the scent of cinnamon and sugar and lemon and fresh-baked bread was almost orgasmic. She hadn’t even noticed when she’d dashed through to get the door, but now, back in the kitchen, with the professor’s tall presence, her senses were suddenly overwhelmed, by the scent, the sight, the feel of warmth and heat and sweetness. Granny B’s bright, colorful clothes seemed to float against her skin like a subtle caress, and she looked at him, at Christopher, and wanted to rip off the remnants of his T-shirt.
He was looking equally dazed, but she had no doubt it was from the food. She turned her back on him, trying to control the sudden hunger that had surged through her, and opened the refrigerator. “You can have tap water,” she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. She wasn’t going to offer him her precious stash of Diet Coke.
“The tap water in this part of Ohio tastes like industrial waste,” he said, his voice rough. She gave him a look. “It’ll be fine,” he added hastily.
She watched him swallow, followed the long line of his throat, and she wanted to put her teeth against his neck, wanted to lick the sweat from him. She was out of her freaking mind. She took a step away, only to come up against Bowser, who was watching them both.
Christopher drained the glass, set it down on the counter, and looked at her like she was a cornered rabbit and he was a hungry fox. And then he shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it. “Maybe I should be going,” he said.
Abby was way past thinking. Her nipples were tight, her stomach was knotting, and considering that she wasn’t wearing any underwear, it wouldn’t take her any time at all to push him on the floor and climb on top of him. What the hell was happening to her?
“Told you,” Bowser said.
“What?” She turned to stare at her dog.
“I said I should probably be going,” Christopher said. Her skin was on fire, he was standing way too close, and if he was going to go, then he should just leave, not stand there talking about it while her hormones seemed ready to burst into flames. Bowser was beside her, leaning against her, practically herding her in Christopher’s direction. And it would be so easy to go.
Abby swallowed. “You probably should. Look, don’t worry about the damned cookies. They’ll be ready on time. I have my grandmother’s reputation to live up to.”
He looked at her without moving, and she had the uneasy feeling that he was surveying her, sizing her up in comparison to Granny B, and she wasn’t coming out any too well.
“I don’t know if you can,” he said. “Bea had a certain … air about her. She lived life to the fullest, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. That was one of the things I admired about her.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Abby said, taking a small step backward.
He said nothing.
She was pretty damned sure the surge of desire was only going in one direction. Maybe Granny B’s lusty spirit was haunting the clothes she’d grabbed. He looked as uncomfortable as she was. Why didn’t he just leave? If he were the slightest bit sensitive, he’d know what kind of effect he was having on her, irrational as it was. Fortunately, Christopher Mackenzie seemed the epitome of insensitivity.
She needed to get rid of him. Long enough for her to take a cold shower and put all this insanity in perspective. Get out of these clothes and into something more sensible. “Don’t let me keep you from your classes,” she said, wondering if she could shoo him out the door without getting any closer.
“I don’t teach today.”
“Lucky you,” she said. “I’ve got baking.”
“I should at least sample what you’ve got.”
She turned so he couldn’t see the color flood her face. “No.”
“Give him a cookie, Abby,” Bowser said.
“No cookies,” she said.
“Another glass of water?” Christopher said.
“Hell, no,” she said flatly. “I have work to do, even if you don’t.”
She tried to skirt past him to open the door, but Bowser got in the way, and she tripped. Christopher caught her, pulling her up tight against him, and a wave of hot longing swept over her, like nothing she’d ever felt before. She froze, staring up at him, and he was just as startled. And then his head moved down toward hers, and she closed her eyes, waiting for him to kiss her, waiting for the feel of his mouth, the taste, the desire sweeping through her—
Someone knocked on the front door of the coffeehouse, and he released her so abruptly, she almost fell as the door opened, its little bell jingling a warning. She looked past him, blinking, as a woman in a sensible gray cardigan walked in, saying, “Yoo-hoo!”
“What?” Abby said, wanting her dead right there in front of the cookie case.
“Whatever you’re baking smells wonderful!” the woman said. “The aroma is all over the street. Whatever it is, I want some.”
“We’re not open,” Abby said, not meeting Christopher’s eyes. “Come back tonight at seven.”
“Oh, please.” The woman’s plain, simple face was pleading. “Just one or two of whatever that is. Or a dozen. Whatever—”
Abby grabbed one of the boxes and shoved it in her hands. “Come back and pay for it tonight.”
“Oh.” The woman put her nose close to the box and sniffed. “Oh, yes, this is it.” She smiled up at Abby and then saw Christopher. “Christopher! What a surprise! Did you come for the cookies, too? I didn’t think you were interested in anything but math.”
“Hello, Lucille,” Christopher said.
Abby took Lucille by the arm and guided her firmly to the front door. “Seven o’clock tonight,” she said. “It’ll be ten dollars.”
“And worth every penny,” Lucille said, and Abby shoved her outside. “What are these called, any—”
Abby shut the door in her face and went back to Christopher.
“Did you think I was going to kiss you?” he said.
“Of course not!”
“Why did you close your eyes?”
“So I didn’t have to look at you?” she suggested.
He stared at her for a long, thoughtful moment. “I’ll see you at six-thirty.”
He was gone before she could think of anything to say, and she heard the front door close behind him, the small bells jing
ling.
“I like him,” Bowser said.
Abby picked up Christopher’s glass and headed for the sink, and then on a strange impulse she put the glass to her own mouth, where his mouth had been.
“See you,” Bowser grumbled.
Abby ignored him. Life was hard enough to begin with, further complicated by the unwelcome presence of the first man she’d ever seriously lusted after. She didn’t need talking dogs to make life harder.
Bowser retreated to his cushion by the stairs in dignified silence, but his reproving glance said all that needed to be said. She pulled one of the boxes of cookies toward her, slicing through the amber ribbon with a knife. They lay in plump, perfect little rows, honey-butter cookies with suns stamped on them, and she picked one up and tossed it to the drowsing Newfoundland, who must have sensed it flying through the air. He caught it neatly, and Abby grabbed one for herself, letting her tongue savor the rich pastry. And then she took another. And another.
By 7:00 A.M., the first box was empty and Abby was back to cooking. The smells were delightful; the taste of the cookies was orgasmic.
And yet all she could think of was Christopher Mackenzie in his ratty, sexy T-shirt, with the troubled eyes and gorgeous mouth. And how close he’d come to kissing her.
Daisy pushed through the heavy wooden door of the humanities building, hung a right, and headed down the hallway toward her office, clicking on her favorite pen as she planned out her day. First order of business: get coffee. Click. Second order of business: get Lucille to let her take a half day. Click. Third, she’d get her highest priority work done and be off to the coffeehouse to help Abby get ready for the open mike.
And fourth, she would see Noah again. Click click click.
She felt herself flush at the thought of him, the memory of his quick humor and the feel of his body between her thighs as she rode …
Hoo boy, she thought, and clicked her pen again to bring herself back to business. A warm breeze blew through the hallway; some kid must have propped the emergency exit door open again. Oh, well, not her problem. She reached Suite 108, slid inside, and tried to tiptoe past Vera, the department secretary. Her success rate at getting past Vera in the morning was pathetically low, but a girl had to try….
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