“Won’t know until the breaker’s back on, but I found some loose wires. If this doesn’t work, I’ll come back tomorrow to check the switch. You want me to turn off this switch so you’re not blasted by light when they come back on?”
Another yawn threatened to slip out, but Penny held this one back. “That would be nice.”
Once Lil was out of the room, Penny stretched out on the couch next to a purring Screech. His soft rumble made her eyelids heavy. She let them close. Once again, she felt comforted by the sounds of Lil in the bedroom. She moved with such confidence, such self-assurance.
Penny pulled the throw blanket from the back of the couch and tucked it in around herself and Screech. What was she doing making a date with someone she’d just met? Again she wondered if it actually was a date. Maybe Lil just felt sorry for her. That seemed more likely. Who’d want to make a date with a sloshed crybaby obsessed with peas?
She woke briefly when Lil blew out her candle and slipped out of the apartment, clicking the door softly behind her. At some point in the night, Penny made her way to her bedroom where she slept uninterrupted until noon.
She awoke feeling refreshed, and excited, and a bit nervous about her date.
Once out of bed, she checked the light. Sure enough, the flicker was gone. She made her way to the kitchen where Screech rubbed up against her leg as if she might forget to feed him. “Okay. Okay. Hold your horses.” As she reached for the cat food, she noticed a note on her counter weighted down by the pot of peas.
Miss Penny,
If you’ve changed your mind about today, call me. 335-3700. Otherwise I’ll see you at 1:00.
Lil
She smiled. No one had ever called her Miss Penny before.
As a reminder not to get her hopes up, she dumped the loose peas into the garbage disposal, then filled the pot with water to soak the rest of them out. You barely know her.
At one sharp there was a knock at the door. Penny glanced in the mirror. She’d been unsure how to dress so had chosen casual: jeans, her favorite tank top that showed just a strip of midriff, and sandals. She was glad for her choice when she opened the door. Lil was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and work boots.
“You still up for this?” Lil asked.
Penny picked up her purse. “If you promise it’ll keep me from eating those gross peas.”
Lil laughed. “I can’t promise, but I have a hunch.”
As they walked down the stairwell, Penny couldn’t help but feel sheepish about the night before. “Thanks for fixing my light.”
“No need to thank me,” Lil said. “It’s my job. Besides, it was my pleasure.” She unlocked the passenger side of an old pickup. “And this is my chariot.”
Penny slipped in. The interior was spotless and smelled as if it had recently been wiped down with something slightly citrus. “Nice,” she said when Lil came around the other side.
“Thanks. She might not be fancy, but she’s paid for.” With that, Lil turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the light Saturday stream of traffic.
A wave of panic passed through Penny. She barely knew this woman, and now here she was in a truck with her going to God-knew-where. She tried to think of something to say. “So, what was wrong with the light?” was all she could come up with.
“The usual. A few of the wires were loose. It can happen over time.”
“Especially when you have a guy upstairs who jumps rope.”
“In his apartment?”
“Monday through Friday. Six a.m. Right above my bed.”
“You shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
“What choice do I have? He pays his rent just like I do.”
As Lil seemed to be mulling this over, Penny sat back, trying to appear casual, and observed her driving.
She moved through traffic with confidence, like she belonged on the road. And she stopped for pedestrians. This was something Penny appreciated as she herself did not have a car so was often walking. And yet there was something about Lil’s confidence that also frightened Penny. Where was she taking her? Just as she was about to ask, Lil said:
“I’m going to talk to Mr. Baratelli.”
“The landlord?”
“Yup. He and I have a pretty good rapport. I’ll let him know that the reason your lighting fixture needed work was because of unnecessary physical activity upstairs.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. I hate the thought—” Lil slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting a blue Mazda that ran a stop sign. Her arm instinctively reached across to protect Penny. “You okay?”
Shaken, Penny said, “Fine.”
When Lil removed her arm, an unexpected longing passed through Penny. “My dad used to do that,” she said.
“He didn’t want anything to happen to his precious cargo.”
“I don’t know about precious.”
Lil glanced at her briefly before returning her attention to the sudden cluster of traffic. “I do.”
Penny looked out the window and said, “Thank you,” very softly. Who was this Lil? And why was Penny still apprehensive?
A few minutes later they pulled up to a row of Victorians that had been split into apartments. “Mine’s the blue and gray one,” Lil said. “I’d invite you in, but one of my roommates is down with the flu. No need exposing you to that.”
Penny cocked an eyebrow. “So why did we come here?”
Lil smiled. “You’ll see. Now follow me.” And before Penny knew it Lil was out of the truck and making her way down a small dark walkway between two Victorians.
Penny hopped out of the truck and trotted behind. What was this girl up to?
The walkway opened up onto a large community garden.
Lil stepped to the side of the entrance made of marvelously twisted wood, bent slightly at the waist, and swept her arm wide. “After you.”
Penny, acting all serious, pretended to lift a heavy ankle-length skirt, tilted her chin toward the sky, and stepped through the arbor, then stopped dead in her tracks. The garden was stunning. Rows of raised beds, each meticulously kept up, filled the quarter-acre plot. And there were little sculpted sitting areas here and there—and wind chimes.
Penny walked over to a bed lined with luscious green. “Is this butter lettuce?”
“The best in the world.” Lil grinned. “And completely organic.” She broke off an outside leaf. “Want a taste?”
Penny opened her mouth and Lil tucked the crisp leaf between her lips. The back of her hand gently brushed the side of Penny’s cheek.
Was that on purpose? Penny wondered. A slight shiver passed down her spine as, with great care, she closed her mouth around the lettuce leaf. It would be the freshest thing she had ever eaten and she wanted to savor it.
“Oh my God. It’s so…”
“Buttery?”
“It is! Store-bought never tastes like that.”
“Taste this,” Lil said, ripping off a dark green leaf from another plant.
An impossibly sweet burst exploded in Penny’s mouth. “What is that?”
“Italian parsley.”
“Parsley? I thought parsley was just something you got on the side of your plate at a restaurant.”
Lil popped a sprig into her own mouth, “I use it for a breath freshener,” then walked over to a raised bed full of beets and carrots. “Soon we’ll be putting in the summer stuff. You know, tomatoes, squash, eggplant.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Penny asked, suddenly praying it wasn’t a girlfriend.
“Our collective. But I’m one of the main ones. I work out here almost every day.”
Penny watched as Lil tenderly inspected the underside of a broccoli leaf. “I had no idea broccoli grew like that,” she admitted.
“Isn’t it beautiful? The heads are actually flowers.”
The thought of eating flowers delighted Penny. She brought her nose to the broccoli head and inhaled. It didn’t smell like a flower, but had a
rich musky scent. “Yum.”
“I’ll make you up a bag of produce before you go,” Lil said, taking Penny’s hand. “But now let me show you why I brought you here.”
Penny let herself be led to the back of the garden, loving the feel of her hand in Lil’s. They fit so perfectly, Lil’s larger, stronger hand wrapping around her smaller softer one. “Thank you for blowing out my candle last night.”
Lil gave her hand a squeeze. “Seemed like you were having a pretty rough night.”
They rounded a tall trellis covered in climbing green vines.
“Voilà!” Lil said. “My pride and joy.”
Penny laughed. The vines were covered in pea pods. Of course! She stepped in for a closer look and noticed threadlike tendrils reaching out from the vines to curl around to the slender bamboo rods of the trellis. Along with the pea pods, each vine was sprinkled with the most delicate white flowers. Apparently peas started out their lives as flowers.
“Now these are birthday peas,” Lil said. “Go ahead. Pick as many as you want.”
Penny glanced at Lil, her grip on Lil’s hand involuntarily tightening. “You expect me to eat these?”
“Why not? You were going to eat those crappy burned ones last night.”
“But they’re not cooked.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had fresh peas off the vine.”
Embarrassed, Penny shook her head. Until last night, she generally avoided peas altogether.
Lil let go of her hand and plucked a pod off the vine. “Promise to keep an open mind?”
Penny nodded. What choice did she have? This woman, who she was finding herself more and more attracted to, was offering up what she called her “pride and joy.”
Lil slid her finger down the seam of the slender pod and cracked it open, revealing six perfectly round peas. “Take one,” she said as she stepped in close enough for Penny to smell her clean, parsley-scented breath.
Much as Penny was excited by the sudden intimacy and Lil’s obvious delight in the peas, she couldn’t help noticing a mild nausea heating up her belly. What am I doing? I hate peas. But she couldn’t refuse, not after all the trouble Lil had gone to. So she braced herself for yet another disappointment, and said, “Okay. I’ll try.”
She chose the plumpest one, right in the center, and tugged lightly. The round orb popped out easily. Now she’d have to eat it. Or at least put it in her mouth. Lil’s hopeful gaze was giving her no choice. She slipped the pea between her lips. The small hard ball rested on her tongue, so innocent, so devoid of expectation. She rolled it around in her mouth a couple of times, testing, then without another thought bit down.
“You like?” Lil asked.
Penny thought for a moment, and, to her surprise, found she wasn’t the least bit repulsed. It was sweet. Fresh. Nothing like the bland peas of her childhood. She took the whole pod from Lil and, using her tongue, flicked the rest of the peas into her mouth.
Lil laughed. “I guess the answer is yes.”
Penny wanted to say the answer was more than yes and that this was the best birthday present she’d ever received—in her whole life—even if it was a day late. But before she could put this thought to words, Lil pulled another pod from the vine, popped it open, and let the peas tumble into her palm; only this time instead of offering them up for eating, she just let them rest there. “It just blows my mind that inside each of these peas is the beginning of a whole plant.”
“Kind of like people,” Penny said softly. “Each one of us is full of so many things that nobody knows about. Like you with this garden.”
Lil picked up a pea and pressed it to Penny’s lips. “I’d like to know more about you. If you’d let me.”
Penny let her lips curl around Lil’s fingertip and linger for a moment, then took the pea into her mouth and circled it with her tongue before biting down and swallowing. “I should tell you, I’m not always easy. I can be kind of like…”
“A princess. You told me. But from what I’ve seen, you’re the real thing.”
An icy wall inside Penny began to melt, releasing a single tear. She brushed it back.
Lil let the peas in her hand drop into the rich soil, then rested both hands on Penny’s shoulders. “What’s more, I think real princesses deserve to live happily ever after.”
The warmth of Lil’s hands made Penny’s knees go weak. “I’d kind of given up on that whole notion.”
Lil cocked her head. “You’d given up on peas, too. So what do you say we give this princess thing one more try?”
Merry Shannon grew up a military brat. An avid reader with a deep love of language, Merry began writing at the age of seven and completed her first novel-length story when she was thirteen. She graduated in 2001 with a BA in English and currently resides in Colorado with one very noisy cat. Her Bold Strokes novels include the romantic fantasy Sword of the Guardian and the romantic adventure Branded Ann, a 2008 ForeWord magazine Book of the Year finalist.
The Whisper
Merry Shannon
Yawning, Jordan Gray shuffled into the kitchen, reached for the coffeepot, and winced as the movement sent a bolt of pain through her shoulder. Another tough night, she thought ruefully, and considered the glass pot in her hand. How easy it would be to send it floating over to the sink, to fill it up and empty it into the coffeemaker without having to move another aching muscle. The idea was incredibly tempting, but Jordan pushed it away with a sigh. She’d sworn long ago to never use her telekinetic powers frivolously. Frivolity was recklessness, and recklessness was how a person got caught.
So instead, Jordan carried the pot to the sink herself and prepared the coffeemaker by hand. When it was ready, she even pushed the little start button with her finger.
The scent of brewing coffee brought her roommate stumbling sleepily into the kitchen, curly hair wisping across her forehead.
“Oh, thank God.” Dana plopped onto a stool at the breakfast bar, eyeing the coffeepot with anticipation as she automatically flipped open her laptop. “Jordan, you’re an angel.”
Jordan felt her cheeks warm. She didn’t drink coffee herself, but her favorite part of every morning was the way Dana’s pretty blue eyes lit up at that first sip. Not that she would ever tell Dana that, of course.
“Ah, she was at it again!” Dana shrieked delightedly.
“Who?” Jordan asked, though she already knew perfectly well. Just once, she wished she could take care of business without every reporter in the city clamoring about it the next day.
“The Whisper, of course! She’s all over the news again this morning. Looks like she saved a bunch of people from an apartment fire last night.” Leaning closer to the computer screen, Dana read aloud. “‘At approximately two thirty a.m., a fire broke out in the Sage Hill Apartment Complex. Several people, including three small children, were trapped on the upper floors. Witnesses say the mysterious silver-clad heroine, known throughout Twilight City as The Whisper, entered the blazing building through a window. She levitated all eight victims safely to the ground just before the roof collapsed. No bodies were found in the debris, and authorities believe that The Whisper survived the collapse.’” Dana snorted. “Well, of course she did!”
Hiding a grimace as her sore shoulder protested, Jordan set a steaming coffee mug on the breakfast bar and retrieved her toast, Dana took the mug absently and raised it to her lips, then closed her eyes with a look of bliss. “Mmm.”
Jordan was careful to quell her smile before Dana’s eyes reopened.
“Look, the Twilight City Gazette posted a picture!” Dana swiveled the laptop around to show the blurry digital image of a shiny silver silhouette zooming toward the smoking apartment building. Jordan took a cursory glance and shrugged, and Dana let out a puff of exasperation. She turned the computer to face her again and gazed at the photo dreamily. “Have you ever seen anyone so completely, utterly sexy?”
Jordan choked on a mouthful of toast. “What?”
“Oh come on,
even under all that quiet butch stoicism, I know you have the same fantasies as every other lesbian in this city. Telekinetic superpowers, heroic rescues, and will you just look at that body? I mean, those thighs…that ass! Just makes a girl wanna strip that mask off and…” Dana made a sexy noise in the back of her throat that raised goose bumps on Jordan’s arms.
“I never really thought about it,” Jordan said, embarrassed.
“If you’d ever been in her arms, you’d get it. She’s so…damn, she even smells good. And when she whispers in your ear it’s like warm honey poured right down your spine.” Dana shivered, looking starstruck. “Best night of my life.”
Jordan stared at her. “You were almost assaulted that night!”
“And saved by the most delicious woman on earth!”
Jordan turned to put her empty plate in the dishwasher, hoping Dana wouldn’t notice the flush creeping steadily up her neck. “I gotta get to work.”
“See you later,” Dana mumbled, already absorbed in the computer again.
*
“Mornin’, Gray.” Manny Lopez greeted Jordan with a friendly punch to the shoulder that made her gasp.
“Ow, Manny, watch it.”
“Oh. Sorry, I forgot.” He did sound apologetic, but there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “So tell me, how’d that little hottie you live with enjoy the morning news?”
“Not in the mood today, Manny.” Jordan grabbed her hard hat from her locker and banged the door shut. She knew Dana would be attached to her laptop most of the day, posting articles to the various Internet blogs she wrote for, and the majority would be glowing commentary regarding The Whisper’s latest exploits.
“That bad, huh? Gotta be just killing you that you can’t tell her the truth. She start going on again about how the incredible Whisper saved her from those punks?” He fluttered his lashes as they walked to the construction site. “Ooh, The Whisper is sooo strong and brave. Ooh, how I’d like to get that yummy, shiny superhero between my—”
Radclyffe & Stacia Seaman - Romantic Interludes 2 - Secrets Page 7