by Alyssa Kress
"There." Cherise pointed out the windshield. "Behind that blue Toyota. You can park there."
"Here?" They were in a high-density suburban neighborhood. Judging by the three-story, brick and stucco buildings, they were deep in condo territory. With a sinking sensation, Kenny realized where she'd led him.
"This is your place," he pronounced, feeling betrayed. Tricks were his department. She was supposed to play it straight.
Cherise made a pleased, humming sound. "Is there a problem?"
"No." To reply otherwise would have been gutless. "But I thought we were going to an art show."
"Oh, we are." Cherise clicked open the car door. "But it hasn't...started yet."
Kenny opened his own door. He had about a thousand questions, but none of them regarded whether or not they were here to make love. The answer to that was pretty obvious.
Cherise waited to be helped from the low-slung car. With queenly dignity she then led the way through a locked wrought iron gate and up three flights of stairs to a white paneled door. Kenny grew increasingly nervous as he waited for her to unlock the door.
She turned the knob and gave him a frightening smile. "Come on in."
Kenny was used to white. His own condo was white. But his was that color due to an unwillingness to paint, buy furniture, or hang artwork. Furniture and artwork made moving a hassle. And Kenny was constantly moving.
When he walked into Cherise's pristine condo he could see right away this was a different kind of whiteness. This was planned, and maintained with rigorous discipline. Dirt and disorder were not permitted.
"Nice," Kenny commented, and felt a profound burst of lust. A woman who could sustain this kind of perfection was just begging to be ruffled. On the other hand... "Uh, what are we doing here?"
She'd waltzed behind a granite counter into a kitchen. With the flair of a dancer, she opened the refrigerator. "Oh, I thought we'd have dinner first."
Did you?
Cherise stepped back from the refrigerator, holding a head of green lettuce. She swiveled and thrust the lettuce over the granite counter. "Think you can handle making a salad?"
Kenny met her eyes. In them was clear challenge. Could he handle the small responsibility?
He supposed he ought to say no. He ought to laugh and scoff at the idea of being able to help prepare something so practical as a meal.
"Actually," he told her, "I make one heck of a salad." He smiled as he took the head of lettuce. "Assuming you have something more than this to put into it."
She looked away. Not wanting him to see her surprise? "Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge. I'm going to grill a couple steaks."
Kenny came around the granite counter. While Cherise began unwrapping the meat, he opened the refrigerator. Only with great difficulty did he suppress a gasp of delight. Well-stocked didn't begin to describe Cherise's refrigerator. Not only did she have every condiment, sauce, or cream one could desire, but everything was arranged.
Kenny felt a flash of heat, as if her refrigerator arrangement was a call to sexual arms. Reminding himself this was merely an illusion, he pulled out tomatoes, mushrooms, and a variety of other farm-fresh vegetables.
Cherise was expecting him to make some dumb move. Instead, he'd make a salad to knock her socks off.
"So your dad's a doctor," he said conversationally, as he moved from the refrigerator to open the pantry.
"Neurosurgeon," Cherise corrected. She sliced skillfully into a white onion. "My mother is a professor of medieval French literature."
Kenny slanted her a glance. Her pantry was as well-stocked and arranged as her refrigerator. Perhaps that wasn't too surprising, given two high-achieving parents. "They must have expected you to become a doctor, too," he remarked, "or a professor."
Cherise's hands didn't hesitate in her deft chopping of the onion. Above the action, she snorted. I.e., yes.
"But you didn't," Kenny observed.
Cherise lifted her eyebrows as she swept the onions into a frying pan. "My grades weren't good enough for med school — or a PhD program."
Kenny laughed.
Cherise turned to stare at him.
"Baloney." He reached into the pantry for a can of garbanzo beans. "If the person exists who knows how to get what she wants, it's gotta be you, sweetheart. If you didn't go to med school or after a PhD it's because you didn't want to." Along with the garbanzo beans, he pulled out a can of sweet corn.
Emitting another snort, a more annoyed one, Cherise picked up a brush and began slathering something on the steaks.
So that was a hit. Kenny glanced her way again as he searched the drawers for a can opener. "Now I wonder," he mused, "why you didn't want to." It was digging too deep, perhaps, for a man determined to keep things fun and games, but he was interested.
Cherise didn't satisfy his curiosity with an answer, but instead shot him a narrow look and asked, "What about you? As a little boy, did you dream of playing poker for a living?"
The dig was intentional, but glanced right off Kenny. "Actually, I never dreamed of being anything." He applied a can opener to the can of garbanzo beans. "I only went to college in order to please my grandmother. She's the one who dragged me through high school, so I thought it was only fair I drag myself through college. Poker happened quite by chance." He'd always been good at math, which he'd studied in college. He'd been pleased and surprised to find that poker was a game where the more flaky you appeared, the better you could succeed. It had been a perfect fit. "It was fun," he now told Cherise.
"Fun," she repeated, flat.
Finding a sharp knife for the vegetables, Kenny grinned at her. "Yeah. Fun."
"You said your grandmother got you through high school. Does that mean your parents died?"
"Oh, no. They're alive, alive and kicking." Kenny started in on a hunk of zucchini. "Vigorously so."
He was hoping that would be enough for her, but she was like a shark who'd scented blood. "Then why were you living with your grandmother?"
Kenny concentrated on the zucchini, which was hard and crisp, the way he liked it. Circular slices fell off the knife. "My parents are...volatile. My mother writes poetry for high-class magazines. Has a temper on her. My father plays violin for whatever orchestra hasn't figured out he's a major pain in the ass. Their marriage lasted about five minutes." Kenny looked up and grinned. "But a productive five minutes."
Cherise frowned. "So, once they divorced they couldn't settle on custody," she guessed.
"Ah." To put it mildly. On top of the custody disputes, each of his parents tended to relocate every couple years. There hadn't been a whole lot of geographic stability in Kenny's childhood — not that he was complaining. He'd seen most of the United States and parts of Europe, all by the ripe old age of fifteen. That had been an education, in and of itself.
"When I hit tenth grade, all parties decided if they didn't get serious I wasn't going to get a high school diploma. So, home was grandma, and only one school for three whole years." He lifted a shoulder and drew the red pepper beneath his knife. "I got my diploma."
Cherise gave him a strange look. "You make it sound like a difficult achievement."
"Um — " In many ways it had been. Only a deep sense of gratitude to his grandmother had prompted Kenny to knuckle down enough to bang out some passing grades.
Meanwhile, Cherise tilted her head toward her front door. "Seems to me there's a Ferrari parked out there, and I don't think you're renting it. Not exactly the trick of a stupid fellow."
Kenny coughed and applied himself with vigor to his next vegetable, a mushroom. Stupidity had never been the problem. While he didn't mind flashing the fruits of his labors, he was never comfortable discussing his I.Q. Hiding his smarts, especially the math ones, had been an essential survival technique during the years of constantly changing schools and having to make new friends. "Oh, that was the result of one lucky hand," he now claimed, making paper-thin slices of fresh mushroom.
Cherise sno
rted again. "You can't make that much money by luck. You must be brilliant."
Brilliant? Standing by the cutting board, bent over another mushroom, Kenny felt like his skin was too small. "I couldn't have gotten into medical school," he claimed, an offensive strike, since the way he said it made it clear Cherise could have.
The tactic worked. Cherise dropped the whole thing, announcing, "The steaks are nearly done. How is that salad coming?"
"Just need to make the dressing." Kenny tossed the sliced mushrooms into the salad bowl.
"I'll set the table."
While Kenny crushed garlic for the salad dressing and Cherise laid out colorful ceramic plates on the polished dining table, neither said a word. Détente, Kenny supposed. Neither of them wanted to get fried again.
In silence, Kenny brought his salad to the table and Cherise put a steak on each plate. They sat down and silently started eating.
But then, abruptly, Cherise put down her fork. She stared at Kenny. "This salad — it's fantastic."
Kenny wasn't sure whether to be relieved or insulted that she sounded so surprised. "The steaks are great, too," he offered.
"No." Cherise waved a hand, low. "I mean five star, gourmet level, whatever you put in the dressing."
Kenny raised a shoulder. "I like to cook. Don't do it too often, though." He grinned. "Takes too much planning ahead." He shot a glance over the granite counter. "Your kitchen, though...cooking would be no problem."
Cherise picked up her fork and plunged it back into the salad. "How many other secret talents do you own?"
"What?"
"Poker, cooking, what else?"
"Huh. Wouldn't you like to know?" Kenny wiggled his eyebrows.
Cherise tilted her chin to look askance at him. "It makes you uncomfortable."
"What?" He'd been trying to make her uncomfortable.
"Having someone notice. Having someone take what you do seriously."
"What?"
Cherise smiled. "You don't want anyone to take you seriously."
"I — Well, why should I?"
Still smiling, she shook her head. "Why should you, indeed? If you let anyone take you seriously, then you might actually have to come through. And you wouldn't like that. Anyone counting on you."
"I — Um — " Kenny's mouth felt like a rubber band. There was an uncomfortable element of truth to her accusation. So uncomfortable that he found himself taking a deep breath and claiming, "People can count on me."
"Huh."
"I simply make sure not to promise too much."
Cherise's elegant, huffing breath said what she thought of that.
She might as well have slipped a needle under his skin. Kenny felt an impulse then, a strange and novel impulse to show her. He could be counted on. To his real friends, he was true and loyal. Setting his jaw, he stabbed into his salad. "When are we going to this art show?"
Cherise delicately picked at her own food. "When we're done eating."
Kenny glared at her, at the perfectly groomed nails of her hands, the cleanly pressed lines of her dress, the immaculate precision of her coiffure. Despite his irritation, he could feel a resurgence of his oddly-derived lust. Maybe they would make love, after all.
But first, he was going to show her.
He was the real deal.
~~~
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
As Cherise stacked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, she was much too aware of Kenny, tall and male, putting the food away in the refrigerator. Maybe she ought to reconsider her planned 'art show.'
"Is it okay if I throw out the leftover half lemon?" Kenny asked. "It loses flavor in the refrigerator."
"Fine." Cherise heard the lemon plop into the trash as she fit the last dish into the dishwasher. She had to decide.
Dare she show Kenny her paintings?
Doing so could very well rid her of this unhealthy infatuation. A man who didn't know how to respond to her art, her deepest self, could not possibly maintain an emotional hold on her.
But she'd learned a few things about Kenny during dinner. He wasn't quite as one-dimensional as he'd led her to believe.
Not that she thought he could handle her paintings. She slid a glance at him. He was wiping the dining room table, humming some top 40s hit. Looking like a dumb white jock. And, okay, so she now knew he wasn't exactly dumb, but he was still basically frivolous, a person who didn't like to take things seriously.
Not someone to expose yourself to, warned a voice in Cherise's head.
But exposing herself, and facing his ridicule, would be the best way to get rid of him.
"We're ready for the art show now," she announced.
He looked up from his task, the sponge halting in the center of the table.
"Follow me," Cherise directed. Portraying more certainty than she actually felt, she strode briskly through the dining area and down the hall leading to the bedrooms. The skin on her back seemed to shrink as she felt Kenny follow her.
She opened the door to the master bedroom, though no bed graced the room. Instead a two by three foot canvas was set up on an easel by the north-facing bay window. Shelves of supplies lined the walls that might otherwise have housed bookcases. The rest of the walls served as supports for the dozens of canvases Cherise had completed over the past twelve years.
She waltzed into the room and then swiveled. With more effort than she liked, she steeled herself for Kenny's reaction.
Which, at first, was nonexistent. He stopped a couple feet inside the room, the corners of his eyes just barely tightening.
Poker, Cherise reminded herself. The man played poker for a living. He made a profession of disguising his reactions.
But it was coming. Every muscle she owned tensed as she waited for some stupid comment, some subtly disparaging remark.
He took two more steps into the room. His head turned slowly as his eyes made a circuit, starting with Cherise's earliest canvases, some admittedly unsuccessful attempts at formal landscapes, and moving over the less formal, more personal abstracts and portraits. She was so tightly strung, she was trembling.
This — what he was looking at — was why she hadn't made an effort to get into medical school, or any other time-intensive profession. She hadn't been willing to give up this, her outlet and passion. Oh, she didn't fool herself she had talent. She'd never shown her art to another human being, let alone tried to sell it. But, even so, it was her life blood. She had to paint.
Kenny stood there, simply looking, for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, he moved.
Cherise watched with narrowed eyes as he went toward the far wall, where she'd placed what she privately called, "Origin." He picked up the canvas and moved it three feet to the right, next to a painting she called, "Next."
Frowning, Cherise watched Kenny move around the room, slowly selecting canvases and then rearranging them. What the heck was he doing?
It took some time before she got it. It took another long while before she could believe it. Then she simply stood there, incredulous.
She could see, looking around the room, emotions building and then cresting, subsiding and stewing, all according to the moods in which she'd wielded her paintbrush. The order in which Kenny was putting her canvases told a story of the world of her soul, its ups and downs, struggles and triumphs.
Surprise had Cherise immobilized. Frozen, she watched him refine the story he was building, and sharpen its effect. A voice in her head chanted over and over: he got it. He got it.
He could see into her paintings. He could see what she hadn't always been able to understand, herself.
Placing a night vision of a cyclone beside a turquoise dream of paradise, Kenny took a step back. His shoulders rose and then fell, as if he'd taken in and released a deep breath of air. He turned.
Eyes the color of cobalt met hers. A bolt of lightning zigzagged through Cherise, leaving her stark naked, body and soul. He got it. He understood.
But if s
he felt naked, he appeared to feel exactly the same way, as if afraid she might strike him down.
Oh, God, Cherise thought. This was no frivolous fluff-head of a man, someone she could easily dismiss. He got it. He understood.
Just when she was wondering what disaster might happen next, he took another step back. Away from her. "I — I think that's enough," he whispered.
"Yes," Cherise agreed. Her voice cracked. She stood there, paralyzed, as he swiveled and left the room. Several stunned minutes later, she discovered he'd left her condo altogether.
Apparently, he'd been even more frightened than she.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Roy was coming to town again.
As Valerie walked out of her next-to-last patient exam at Valley Pediatric, she could not prevent the shiver of excitement this thought brought. Roy was coming again, after their last strange visit — after their last strange farewell — less than a week ago.
"No big deal," Valerie muttered to herself, and checked her watch as she stalked down the hall. So, yeah, things had been strange on that last visit of his, the one where she'd laid down the law: no hanky-panky. Roy had taken that way too meekly, in Valerie's opinion. She'd been suspicious he was up to something, but he'd gone the whole three days of his visit without any funny business.
He'd been downright subdued, in fact.
And their parting at the end of the three days had been...thought-provoking. Valerie stared unseeingly at the chart in her hands as she remembered.
"You'll take care of yourself?" Roy had said this like a question, not an order, as he'd stood outside her door, looking at her with something almost like diffidence.
Valerie had given him a bright smile. "Of course." It wouldn't do for him to see how depressed she felt at the sight of him leaving.
Roy had hesitated then.
Valerie had stilled, her heart suddenly beating a mile a minute. Their eyes had met and she'd felt very certain he wanted to kiss her. Not as a sexual prelude, but just a kiss, to say goodbye, to say —