by Cathy Quinn
“We didn’t think you’d agree,” Holly chimed in.
“You take everything so seriously,” Eric said. “We figured it would all be easier if we didn’t give you any advance warning, but you were the only one we trusted with them.”
“We knew you’d do a great job.” Holly sat up, holding the covers to her chest. “Where are the kids? Are they okay? Is this the girlfriend you’ve been staying with?”
“The kids are fine. They have several qualified sitters at the moment.” Robert shook his head. “You’re both nuts. If I didn’t know that despite it all you’ve always been good parents to those kids, I would be calling the welfare people right now. I will be expecting you to pick up the kids in a few hours.”
“Robert?” Holly called before he could slam the bedroom door. “Wait.”
He paused with his back to them.
“We have plans tonight,” she said timidly. “Tomorrow morning? Please? We’ll owe you forever.”
Robert took a deep breath. He felt about to explode.
“Tomorrow at noon,” Linda called over his shoulder. “I leave for work at two o’clock, and you better be there by then. Call Robert for the address.” She closed the door, took Williams hand and pulled him to the door. “Let’s get those diapers and then go home.”
“Can you believe what they did?” he growled.
“Actually, I can,” she said. “Can’t say I approve of their methods, but during the last few days I’ve developed sympathy for people who are desperate to be alone together.”
He just growled.
“How old are they, anyway? They look terribly young.”
“Twenty-three. Old enough to know better.”
“Four kids at twenty-three. Wow.”
Robert viciously shouldered the garage door open, revealing a stack of diaper boxes that made Mount Diaperest look like a molehill. “Don’t try to defend them, Linda. I might find this funny around the time the kids are taking driving lessons, but not anytime soon.” He grabbed diaper packs and started stacking them into Linda’s arms. “I should have realized something was suspicious about this,” he fumed.
“Um, Bob?” a muffled voice said from behind a stack of diaper packages.
Robert moved the top three packages to reveal her face. “Did you say something?”
“We only need two of those until tomorrow, not a week’s supply.”
He paused for a moment. “You’re right.” He grabbed the stack from her and threw it back in a box. “We’ll take three, just in case. Okay, let’s go.”
In the car, Linda used the cell phone to call the nursing home. Everything seemed to be going great, and they were told not to worry.
“Don’t drive too fast,” Linda instructed him as he backed out of the driveway. “Nora and friends will be so disappointed if we picked the kids up so soon. They’re not expecting us for several hours.”
“We’ll take the scenic route. I’ll need the time to calm down, anyway.”
“They’re really desperate, aren’t they? They really should be able to find a sitter for the kids every now and then.”
“Maybe we could take them one weekend a month or something,” Robert mused. “Not that I’m in the mood of doing anything for those two for a while,” he added.
Linda’s head snapped around. “’We?’ You and me kind of we?” He looked at her, for a moment looking confused, then embarrassed. “Not that I mind the we,” she hastened to explain before he could backpedal. “I’ve grown quite attached to the kids, so I’d love looking after them every now and then.”
“I’m sorry.” He grinned sheepishly. “I guess after last week I’ve gotten used to thinking ‘we’.”
Shops lined both sides of the road they were passing, and something caught Linda’s attention. “Stop here!”
Robert pulled over in the nearest available parking spot. “Why?”
She reached across and switched off the ignition. “I noticed something. Don’t worry, we’re just going to peek in a window. Come on.”
Five minutes later, Robert was standing in front of a mirror, squinting his eyes while wearing large glasses with red frames. Linda was having one of her giggle-fits.
“Are we doing this just so you can laugh at me, or is there a deeper purpose?” he asked dryly as he returned the glasses and grabbed another pair.
It was even worse. Linda doubled over as he put them on. “Okay. Your old glasses could very well have been worse. But I still vote for contacts.”
“I told you, no-one pokes their finger in my eyes. Not even I.”
Linda sighed. “Stubborn man. Okay. But how about these?” She snagged gold-rimmed glasses on his nose and took a few steps back. The narrow frames changed his whole face, softened the angles and allowed the unique colors of his eyes to shine through. She’d never thought glasses could cause her stomach to go all fluttery, but these did. “Oh, Robert...” she sighed. “You look great in these. Definite hunk material. Honest.”
He smiled, and her heart did flip-flops. “Okay. I’ll buy them.
“What?” Disoriented, she shook her head. “Why? You don’t even know how you look in them.”
Not only had he not looked in a mirror, even if he had, he had made it quite clear he couldn’t even see his mirror image without his glasses. He cast her another smile and put on his old glasses, then strolled towards the attendant to make the purchase. She was still wondering about his sudden decision when he was whisked behind a screen, presumably for an eye test.
She shrugged and started looking at sunglasses while she waited.
Robert emerged again, wearing his old glasses. “They’ll mail them to me after the weekend,” he said as they walked out of the store. His arm was over her shoulders again, warm and heavy, and his fingers, once again, had tangled themselves in her hair. He really did seem to have a thing about her hair.
“Why did you buy them?”
Robert stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He was laughing. With a finger under her chin he tipped her head up. For a disorienting second she thought he might kiss her, but unfortunately his lips had only words on their agenda as his smiling eyes gazed into hers.
“Because you called me Robert.”
Gazes locked for a while, but she recovered eventually and even had the fortitude to step back. “I see. You mean that was like positive reinforcement or something?”
“Something,” he agreed blandly, eyes twinkling.
“So, you’re going to condition me like one of your lab animals? Mold me into the perfect woman?”
He laughed. “The perfect woman? What makes you think I want a perfect woman? Haven’t I made it quite clear I’ve been lusting after you for weeks now?”
Linda stuck her tongue out at him. She couldn’t decide if to kiss him or punch him for his teasing, but she was pretty sure she was absolutely dying to touch him. She settled for butting his chest with her head, and then grabbing his arm as they walked towards the car.
It was quite nice to be lusted after.
“Well, Bob,” she said, as she linked her arm through his, emphasizing the unwelcome nickname, “If we ever get to that kiss, I think that might be one whopper of a reinforcer.”
Robert looked around. “I don’t think I’ll risk it right now,” he muttered. “Too many potential accidents just waiting to happen.” He opened the car door for her and kissed her forehead. “But you’re only safe until we’re alone, in a locked room, with no kids in the house. Consider yourself warned.”
With all their dawdling along the way, it was early evening when they returned to the retirement home. As they left the car, Linda grabbed a package of diapers, in case a wet horde awaited them.
Far away from the chaos they had expected, the wing was quiet and calm. The four children were fast sleep, two and two together in a couple of beds. Besides them, three ladies and one gentleman sat, every one of them knitting.
The man noticed Linda staring at him. “Never seen an old man knit before
?” he cackled, holding up what seemed to be an embryo of a small sock.
“Just let them sleep here,” the head nurse whispered. “You can come get them in the morning.” She chuckled. “By then, they’ll probably have a whole new wardrobe.”
“We couldn’t do that,” Robert said. “They will keep everybody up half the night.”
“A lot of our people have trouble sleeping. They’re quite ecstatic to have someone to look after during the night. And I’ve got a three-year-old and a five-year-old sleeping at home myself, so I know the drill.” She all put pushed them towards the elevator. “Go home. You probably haven’t gotten any sleep yourselves forever. Come get them in the morning, just around the time they usually wake up.”
“Well,” Linda said lamely when the elevator door had slid shut. “I guess we’re not wanted. We should have left them here Monday and had the week off.”
The elevator slid open again, and presently they were back in the car. Robert put his arm along the seat, and looked out the back window as he backed out of the parking place. They were nearly out of the lot when he spoke for the first time since they’d been kicked out of the home. “Do you know what?”
“What?”
“We’re alone.”
Chapter 8
Her stomach suddenly felt as if it had kicked off its gravity boots. She looked around. “Well, what do you know, you’re right. We are.”
“I guess all we need now is that locked room.”
“The locked room or that cave. Sounds good.”
“Does it?”
She knew what he was asking. Now was the time to define their relationship. Had what they’d been doing lately been nothing but blithe flirting, or was it something more? Were they really heading for a locked room, or had that just been a safe joke?
Robert stopped the car outside her house. He killed the engine and for a moment neither of them moved, then their gazes met and both started to laugh. He tilted his head back to rest on the edge of the seat, and smiled at her. “I guess I’m wondering if I can stay here tonight, even though there are no babies to look after.”
“How about if I promise to wake up three times tonight and demand a lullaby?” she asked, heart pounding, but no doubt in her mind.
He ran his fingers through her ponytail, twisted it around his hand and shook her head gently. “Are you sure? With no horde of babies standing between me and your ankles, I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself.”
She smiled back at him. “I’m counting on it. My ankles are dying to meet you.”
They held hands as they walked inside, and when the front door closed behind them, Linda moved into his arms for a hug. “Kissing time?” she suggested, but he shook his head.
“No way. Locked room first. No argument. I’m not taking any risks.”
She giggled as she followed him upstairs. “Your room? George’s in my room, you see. We wouldn’t want to do anything to traumatize him.”
He turned around, hands on hips and looked quite appalled. “My room doesn’t even have a real bed, just a cot that collapses if I so much as sneeze! George can be moved. I’ve taken enough grief from that rodent, I refuse to let it usurp me in your bed.”
She couldn’t stop giggling while he took George’s cage from her room and moved it to the playroom. As he returned and smiled at her before turning to lock the door, she sobered up. There had been nervous giggles; now there was nervous silence. She was tense. It had been quite a while, and she’d never really been very good at this whole thing in the first place. This was for real now. And this was Robert. Robert’s eyes, sometimes green, sometimes blue, probing hers for answers. Robert’s hands gentle on her face, his body close enough to warm hers. It was special. It needed to be special.
He was framing her face in his hands, frowning as his thumbs stroked her cheeks. “Are you okay, Linda? You look worried. Cold feet?”
“You know, I never expected to get to this stage with someone I hadn’t even kissed,” she blurted out. “Nose, cheek and forehead kisses don’t count.”
“I thought those were quite nice.”
“Me too. But the other kind is sort of a requisite intermediary between them and what we’re about to do, and since we haven’t done that yet I sort of feel we’re making this quantum leap between kissing cheeks and doing bedroom acrobatics, not that I necessarily want to do any acrobatics, just standard things would be quite enough, but anyway, my lips have been tingling for a week because they haven’t gotten to kiss you yet.” She pressed her face into his sweater. “Am I babbling? Stop me anytime if I’m babbling.”
“I’m nervous too,” he murmured directly into her ear. “I’ve wanted this for so long. I want it to be...”
“Special,” she supplied, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“Yeah. Very special. In fact...” he pulled back to smile at her, kissing both eyebrows on the way. “I want it to be perfect. And you know how I feel about the word perfect.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah. I know. The same way you feel about me. Recipe for disaster.”
He laughed. “I’ve taking a liking to disaster.” His chest swelled against hers as he took a deep breath. “Okay. We’re alone – except for George, and the door is locked, but I’m still afraid that if I try to kiss you, you’ll run away once again.”
“I’m afraid that if I make the first move, the ceiling will fall down on us.” She snuggled even closer in his arms. “I promise not to run away,” she whispered. She raised her hands to his shoulders, gently rubbing the woolen material of his sweater. “See? I’m not running. In fact, you’ve got three seconds, then I’m pulling you down by the ears and risking that roof coming down on our heads.”
She should have known better than to give him an ultimatum. The three seconds passed and his ears were within reach.
A heat wave consumed her. This was right. The warmth of him so close was right, the scent of him, the slightly rough feeling of his jaw under her fingers, the pounding of his heart against her.
His hands were in her hair, pulling at the elastic until her hair fell loose around her shoulders. He buried his hands on it, and then cupped her face, the softness of her own hair warming between his skin and hers. “I love your hair,” he whispered. “So soft. It feels different out of the ponytail. I didn’t know it would feel so soft.”
She laughed, a crazed sound of joy and anticipation. “You feel pretty good yourself,” she breathed.
His grasp on her hair tightened and his face lowered to hers and she was going quite crazy with waiting. She stood on tiptoe to meet him halfway, then remembered there was something else that must be said.
She clamped her hand over his mouth half an inch away from her lips. “Wait.”
He bit her hand not so playfully and released her. “I knew it. It was too good to be true.”
“I’m sorry. It’ll just take two seconds.”
“Excuse me? Two seconds? Isn’t that a rather pessimistic estimate?”
She refused to let him interrupt. “What I’m going to say will just take a couple of seconds, darn it. There’s just something you really need to know before we go any further.”
Robert drew back and looked at her. His face told her he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. She wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this either. Heck, she wasn’t sure she wanted to say it, but she was determined to get it out in the open anyway.
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, but Robert interrupted her. “Is this in line with the ‘I don’t want any children’ disclaimer? Something I need to know so I can’t complain about it in the distant future should the subject ever come up between us?”
“Well, yes. Sort of.”
“Let me guess: You don’t believe in sex after marriage?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Very funny. No, it’s not quite that.” She shifted, not sure how to go about this. “I’m...” Ugh, this was embarrassing. But he should know, then there wouldn’t be
any trouble later. Honesty was her new rule. She squeezed her eyes shut and just said it. “I don’t have orgasms, okay?”
“I see,” he finally murmured after a silence that approached eternity as it pounded into her eardrums. Linda finally opened one eye again, then two, but still didn’t dare look him in the eye to see if indeed he did see. Instead she kept her gaze firmly on the front of his sweater. Snowflake pattern. Quite pretty. “I see,” he repeated. “Is that a matter of principle?”
“Of course it’s not a matter of principle,” she snarled, feeling utterly stupid. She didn’t dare look up at his face in case he was laughing. “It’s a matter of biology, Mr. Ph.d. Some women are just not... orgasmic.”
“Oh.”
She squirmed. “Anyway. That’s it. My deep dark secret. I don’t believe in faking. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you. I do. I mean, orgasms aren’t everything.” She dared one look up and then turned her attention back the snowflakes. “I just wanted you to know. So you wouldn’t ...” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Sulk or feel bad about it or anything. It’s my responsibility, my problem, not yours, and your ego shouldn’t factor into this.” Oh, Lord help her, she was babbling like a drunk sex therapist. She covered her eyes with one hand, then with both, then grabbed a cushion from the bed and pressed it against her face. “Oh, God. This was a mistake. This is even worse than the baby disclaimer, isn’t it?” she moaned into the dusty fabric.
“It’s certainly more intimidating,” he agreed. “I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with this information.”
She heard him move around the room, but didn’t look from behind the cushion. She was nuts. This plan had sounded mature and sophisticated when she first dreamed it up, but it must have been the chocolate speaking. This was absolutely nuts. What had she been thinking, blurting that out?
That was it. Honesty was out. She would go back to being a liar and faker. Now, if she could just find the door out of this room without lowering the cushion. She wanted to lie down on the Playroom floor next to Mount Diaperest, do her very own rendition of the primal scream and be buried in an avalanche.