She settled back into the sofa, her legs tucked underneath her, and sipped her coffee waiting for Nicholas to reappear. When he did, haloed in yellow light from the bathroom, she couldn't believe her eyes. Her stomach did a little flip-flop. The backlight shadowed his scuffed and bruised face and touched off the sunlight in his hair. He was dressed in perfectly pressed gray flannel slacks and a navy blue blazer with a gleaming, white shirt and a paisley tie in shades of maroon. There was a twinkle of gold at his tie clip and cuffs and his shoes glinted with high polish.
"Presentable?" he asked, turning to give her a view of side and back.
She teased him with a long, low wolf whistle. "Gorgeous."
"Didn't think I had it in me, did you?" he smiled, and disarmed her with that wink again. The mischief of it and the warm brown struck with gold of his eyes made her giddy inside. "Where's Augusta?"
"She... umm, didn't want to disrupt the honeymoon. She said you could talk to her later."
Nicholas moved the table closer to the sofa and sat down beside her. "Unfortunately, I have to go to work and the honeymoon has to end before it ever gets started." He tipped his juice glass to his lips and peeked at her out of the corner of his eye. "But I did enjoy sleeping with you last night, Teresa Marie."
When she noticed her coffee jiggling in her cup, she set it down hurriedly and grabbed a cinnamon roll. It was warm and sticky and heady with spice. She had to lick the glaze from the tips of her fingers before she felt composed enough to speak. "I won't put you out of your bed, Nicholas."
He looked puzzled by her answer and, indeed, she did not know what meaning she meant to convey by it. There were certainly several interpretations, all of which flashed through her mind along with the abashing certainty that similar thoughts were occurring to him. She munched silently on her roll while he sliced some banana on his cereal and splashed on some milk.
His voice was crisp and businesslike when he spoke again. "We will have to discuss sleeping arrangements at some other time. This morning, there are other details that have to be worked out."
"You have to go to work," she sighed, resigning herself to being without him for a while.
"Do you have someone you can call about your classes? You don't want to fall behind if you can help it. I can stop by and pick up assignments or whatever. You can tell them I'm your -- I don't know -- uncle maybe? Don't look at me like that. You may think it sounds fishy, but what else could I be?"
"My concierge?" she suggested brightly.
He cast her a quelling look and continued. "Ask for enough for a week. By then you should look and feel well enough to--"
"Wait, wait, wait." He was going too fast. And this wasn't just playful teasing. He was seriously suggesting she go back to school. "What are you talking about? I can't go back. I have to get a job to help pay--"
"No. A job now is out of the question. I'm not rich, Trissa, but I'm not destitute. School first. That's the most important thing. When's the semester over?"
"It's supposed to be May twenty-second, but I'm missing exams. I don't know if they'll let me--"
"Nonsense. Accidents happen. They have to realize that. Maybe I should talk to them. You call and say I'm coming and I'll explain when I get there.
"But my books are at--"
"Your books are right over there on the desk. Your mother gave them to me. If she forgot some, let me know and I'll fetch them." Nicholas finished his cereal and his coffee. He left the second cinnamon roll on the plate and pushed it toward Trissa.
Her lips still frosted sweetly with the first, she reached out eagerly for it. She needed the sugar to steady her flittering nerves. "It's on Lindell," she said.
"What?"
"The Academic Services Center. You can park in the lot behind. I could call Miss Royal, my advisor. She would probably help me out. Her office is in that building."
"Perfect. I'll ask for Miss Royal then." Nicholas went to rinse his cup in the bathroom sink then returned it to the cabinet where Trissa had found it. "I want you to get some rest today, Trissa. I'll have Augusta check in on you once in a while. She knows where to reach me if something comes up.
"And make yourself at home. I put your stuff away in the top drawer of the chest and the left side of the closet. There's a television downstairs in the back parlor. I'm sure Beverly will welcome your company. I believe she's off today and I think she gets lonely when she's on the night shift at the funeral parlor. The telephone is in the hall to your right by the stairs. I've put some change in the dish by the coffee pot. Oh, and I'll talk to Augusta about lunch. I'd like to have dinner alone with you though. We'll go out if you feel up to it."
His brisk efficiency baffled her. It was as if her life had become part of an internal checklist of his. She had not had the time or the energy to think about anything but the minute that followed the present one, while he seemed to have the schedule plotted until June. He took over, and, for now, she was very content to let him.
Nicholas rose and went to the closet for his coat and she pattered after him like some bewildered, stray puppy dog. She knew there were a dozen questions she should be asking him, but only one came to her. "Nicholas, how did you happen to me?"
"It's very simple," he said, as he tilted her chin up to him on the crook of his finger. "You were my mission." He brushed her lips with a whisper of a kiss that tasted of cinnamon and bananas. "I'll be home about five, wife."
As he closed the door, she found herself still on tiptoes as she had been when she reached for more of the kiss. Smiling, she lowered her heels and wondered how the prim and spinsterish Miss Royal would respond to the definite charms of Nicholas Brewer.
Olympia Royal was a shrewd and sharp-tongued woman whose suspicious nature was honed by twenty years as a physical education teacher, twenty years of counting laps for students prone to overstating their own tallies, twenty years of hearing and dismissing tales of cramps and monthly miseries that would make a gynecologist cringe, topped by five years of advising hundreds of students out of their dreams and into something to fall back on like nursing or pharmacy or optometry. Somehow, Trissa doubted even Nicholas could melt her stony heart.
"Oh, no," she thought suddenly and yanked open the door. "Nicholas! Nicholas, wait." She dashed down the hall toward the stairs and found him already turned at the landing and headed back to her.
"What's the matter?"
She waited until he was close enough to hear her urgent whisper. "You need a name."
"What?"
"If you're going to be my uncle, we need to agree on a name."
"Right. I didn't think of that."
"My mother's maiden name is Mickle. Like pickle with an M."
"Mickle. Got it." He turned to leave.
"No. Wait. Nicholas Mickle, that sounds awful." She screwed up her face as if she had just tasted a very sour pickle with an M. "We'll have to think of a different first name, too."
He folded his arms and chuckled at her. "What do you suggest?"
"Oh, I don't know. Pete? Yeah, Pete Mickle is ok."
"Great."
He was down four steps before she hissed for his attention again. "Pssst, Nicholas."
"What?" This time when he turned, he had to grab her shoulders to keep from bowling her over, she had crept so close behind him. She was one step up from him and their eyes were nearly level. He leaned even closer to hear her conspiratorial whisper.
"I thought, since we're out in the hall where anyone could see us, maybe we better kiss goodbye again. You know, appearances?"
"Wife, you think of everything."
She closed her eyes and waited. His lips touched hers while his hands slid with sizzling slowness from her shoulders to her waist. He drew her closer as he whispered "Open." against her mouth and without hesitation, she obeyed. His tongue played against hers sending delicious shivers to her toes. She responded by following his retreating tongue into his mouth and thrilled as he moaned softly. When he let her go, her buttery knees mad
e her sink to her seat on the step.
"Think that will satisfy any peeping Toms?" He laughed as he bounded away from her.
"You've had a lot of practice at kisses, I take it?"
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, arching his brow to look up at her. "You have apprenticed yourself to a master, Sugar Lips."
"Oh, go to work," she ordered.
"Regrettably, I must." With a flourish, he tipped an imaginary hat and was gone.
*****
Her mouth full of straight pins, Augusta mumbled something that sounded like "Turn," and Trissa dutifully and carefully turned about thirty degrees. From her slightly dizzying perch atop the sturdy trestle table, Trissa looked down at the warm, busy kitchen where Augusta pinned up her hem, Beverly stitched a button on a cream angora sweater, and Ruth, the cook, peeled potatoes for a stew whose browning meat, onions, and spices already teased Trissa's hunger with their aroma. She was happy that the stew was for tomorrow's evening meal.
"Stew's always better the second day," Ruth had instructed her when she expressed her regret that she and Nicholas planned to eat out that night. "I always plot a day ahead. It's pork chops and applesauce tonight you'll be missing."
Like the boarders, Ruth had accepted her without a blink at the extra work she might cause. "Shoot, what's one more plate to wash?" she had scoffed. "She can't eat more'n a bird, I expect." In the Ozark Mountains where she came from, she told them, nine at the supper table would make a body darn near lonesome. When Trissa had offered to scrape the carrots, Ruth had clucked and fussed over her as if she were peeling away gold leaf from a national treasure. "Watch out now, lambie, you're gouging out half the viteymins there. Jest skin it. Don't whittle it."
There had been little time for the rest Nicholas told her to get, but she did not miss it. Shortly after he had left, Augusta had come bustling in to clear away her tray and ask her what she wanted for lunch. Trissa did not know what Nicholas had told her when they had their little talk before he left for work. Whatever it was, Augusta seemed pleased that Trissa was not in the fragile state she apparently expected.
When Trissa insisted on helping with the dishes, she had taken her downstairs to meet Ruth who had the breakfast mess so well in hand that Augusta and Trissa were left with the happy chore of finding Beverly so they could spend the rest of morning playing "dress-up," This game involved rooting in Augusta's cavernous closets for any bit of clothing that might be altered to fit Trissa. The more Trissa protested, the faster the skirts, blouses, and sweaters flew off their hangers. In a half hour, there were three piles which came up to her knees, wool skirts, silk shells, a camel's hair coat, a Chanel suit, embroidered linen blouses, and Trissa had wriggled in and out of more clothes than she had tried on in her lifetime.
Augusta was a bit taller and broader shouldered than Trissa, so most of the garments needed alteration. "No problem. Before I married James, I was a showgirl at The Dunes in Las Vegas. And before that I worked the costumes all summer with my mama at the Municipal Opera. I can still whip up a hem and pop in a dart faster than a Hong Kong tailor. By the weekend, Baby, you will have a trousseau that will make Audrey Hepburn look threadbare. These clothes may not be trendy, but they're classic. Chanel will never go out of style."
Less nimble-fingered but no less willing, Beverly had bent her head over needles and pins and tape measures as well. Most of the early afternoon, they had spent in the back parlor where Beverly's stories on the television had provided the background noise with Beverly stopping once in a while to fill in the background on a character.
"That's Joanna. Her husband is supposed to be dead but he ain't really. He faked his death so he could run off with his secretary and Jo could have the insurance money to pay for the baby's operation. Course, the baby ain't his but he don't know that and Joanna ain't really sure. Something's going to happen with the blood; you wait and see. Little Marky's going to need a transfusion, and it'll turn out that nobody's blood will match. Then Jo will have to go to Doctor Mike and confess everything."
"Confess everything?" yipped Augusta, who rarely watched the shows. "If Mike's the father, what's she got to confess? He didn't do it blindfolded, did he?"
"Well, no. But he was drugged. Ramona put something in his drink at the hospital benefit ball, hoping to lure him into bed. But he got so disoriented that he took Jo instead. She was wearing a harlequin costume just like Ramona's."
"And what about Jo? Was she drugged, too?" asked Trissa.
"No, but she's always had a secret yen for Mike, and she just couldn't resist."
With silly banter and busy fingers the day flew by. When the first tantalizing sniffs of the stew meat browning wafted out to them, Augusta suggested they move to the kitchen. One by one the boarders would soon be coming home, and Augusta said she liked to see them come in the back door and ask them about their day.
Hattie Kenyon was the first to return. She came fuming in bemoaning the ignorance of her students as if it were a conversation that had been interrupted just moments ago. "Never in my life have I seen a less prepared bunch of louts. They sit on their brains and ponder nothing more monumental than the probability of being able to pick their noses with their elbows. And they consider themselves intellectuals." Everybody pretended to listen, nodding and clucking their tongues, until she had finished and gone off to grade her Chaucer essays.
May Lassiter floated in next, playing a concerto in her head, smiling and nodding at them all, a bit startled to see Trissa towering over her as she stood on the table for hem pinning, then greeting her warmly with sudden recognition. She expected a piano student shortly and hurried away to prepare. Scales and chords and snatches of melody soon filled the air.
Beverly, too, had to leave to get ready for work. Ruth wrapped a pork chop sandwich for her to take and put some of her homemade applesauce in a baby food jar so she could eat it later at work.
"I think I'd better go get dressed soon, too," Trissa suggested as Augusta finished the hem and gave her a hand so she could step down off the table. Trissa pulled on her jeans under it then carefully removed the pin-filled skirt. "Nicholas said about five."
"Yes, mustn't keep the groom waiting," Augusta teased. She shook out the cream sweater and handed it to her and folded the skirt to hem later. When she looked up and smiled, it was with such a merry twinkle in her eyes that Trissa felt warmed by it.
"Oh, Augusta, I don't know how to thank you. This has been like Christmas and homecoming and birthday all in one."
"Don't forget honeymoon."
"Yes. I haven't been so happy in... in all my life." Impulsively, she gave Augusta a quick hug, and Augusta responded by wrapping her in her warm embrace and kissing her on the forehead. Like a mother might. When the moment ended, Trissa turned quickly, blinking away tears, and raced up the steps.
She was to wear the cream sweater and a softly pleated chocolate wool skirt. Both Augusta and Beverly pronounced them their favorites of the alterations they had completed that day. Beverly had tightened the pearl buttons down the back of the sweater, and the skirt had required only shortening and a little nip at the waist to fit her perfectly. Augusta loaned her some pearl drop earrings and a pearl and rhinestone clip for her hair.
When Trissa went to the closet to find her shoes, she was astonished to see how they reflected their new shine back at her. She did not remember their gleaming so, even on the day she had bought them.
Nicholas. Pair by pair, loafers, flats, suede pumps, she brought her shoes out into the light. Each pair was polished and buffed or brushed to perfection. Even the old ankle boots she ratted around in but hadn't worn anyplace beyond the woods in two years shone like brand new. She marveled at the time he must have spent on them. She reassembled them in their straight little row and shut the closet door just as Augusta called her from below.
Nicholas was home. She slipped on her pumps, grabbed her purse and coat, and flew down the stairs.
But it was not Nicholas.
&n
bsp; "Dr. Edmonds." Her pace slowed with the shock of seeing him and she was unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.
"Miss Kirk."
The name brought a quick look of puzzlement to Augusta's face. Trissa guessed he had not used it when he gained admittance to the house. "It's my maiden name, Augusta," she said, "I guess Dr. Edmonds forgot that." She cast a chastening look at Edmonds who seemed oblivious to it.
"You may use the front parlor, if you like, Trissa. I will tell Nicholas where you are when he arrives." With a frown of disapproval at Trissa's visitor, she added, "Which should be any moment now."
"Thank you, Augusta."
"And you look lovely, dear." Augusta relieved her of her coat and purse so she could attend to her guest.
"Thank you."
Like someone used to barging in and thus immune from any criticism of it, Dr. Edmonds strode ahead of Trissa into the parlor. He turned to face her as she crossed the threshold. "She's right, you know. You look very nice. Except for the bruises and abrasions, of course."
"And aside from your stubbornness and boorish behavior, you might be very nice as well. I haven't had much chance to judge that yet, Doctor."
"Please call me Bryant." He studied her for a moment with that odd half-smile-half-frown she remembered from the emergency room, then without being asked, he removed his coat and lay it across a chair. "I'm not here as your doctor."
Simmering with irritation, Trissa snatched his coat from the chair, then realized she had no idea where to take it. Rather than stand stupidly holding it, she took it to the hall and yanked open a door she assumed would be a guest closet. It was the stairs to the cellar. She tossed the coat on the top step and returned to the parlor. With his hands clasped behind his back, Edmonds was strolling the room studying the portraits on the wall.
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