I don’t remember Dom coming downstairs, let alone us going out to the van. Next thing I knew I was driving down the street with Dom seated beside me. I managed to pick up all the kids I was supposed to, but in the wrong order. Then I took them to the wrong school, which made them late for the right school. And I didn’t notice that they’d all buckled themselves in upside down until the school monitor opened the van door and gasped.
I gave her a wan smile. “A gravity experiment—”
I managed to maintain enough focus to make it home, pulling the van into the garage and slipping upstairs to my apartment without checking in. It was possible my mother had pulled herself together. And I hadn’t yet.
Work had gotten me through past trials, so I tried to work on my latest Cochran, but it wasn’t easy, wondering when the police would arrive to arrest me for aiding and abetting a murderer. Would they believe I thought he was one of the good guys because he had a cute dimple and a nice butt? And what about the round-headed man? Where did he fit in?
I quit pretending to draw Cochran when I realized I’d given him Kel’s head. It’s a bad habit, this absent-minded sketching of mine. I thrust my pencil away and turned to Elvira, my computer. But Kel invaded my romance novel, too, turning my burly and boring hero, dashing and slightly preppy. I reread the love scene I’d just written and decided I needed to cool off. It was amazing what I’d picked up in just one night. My agent, Marion would be pleased…unless I had to finish the book from jail.
I whistled for Addison, taking him for a walk seemed preferable to sitting and gently simmering in front of a computer, and a brisk walk might clear my head.
* * * *
Addison and I have this system worked out, whereby he chooses where we go and I follow him. Then he will trot along beside me like I’m in charge. It works pretty well as long as no small, foreign cars drive by, flashing their mirrors at him.
Not a surprise when he led me to the same park in which Kel and I had played “drive and shoot” last night. I let Addison off his leash and he took a moment to poke his head down a hole, before romping off to play with a couple of small children near the swings.
I stood with my hands shoved in the pockets of my soft, baggy jacket, the slight, chilly breeze ruffling the edges of my skirt, and looked around. The grass, brown and damp from last night’s precipitation, still showed the crisscrossing tracks we’d made. The pale, winter sunlight gave the whole park a forlorn air which suited my merry-go-round thoughts about last night. I followed our tracks around the playground, my mind replaying each turn and jolt.
What was I going to do? I should go to the police, but what could I tell them that wouldn’t get me locked up? I didn’t have answers to the ethical or the practical questions and finally put them aside. Which freed my brain to do a homing pigeon to what I really wanted to think about.
Kel. Would I see him again? Did I want to? Okay, I did, but did I dare see him again? I made it as far as the slab of cement, the smooth surface marred by two sets of tire tracks.
Addison bounded up and covered my face with huge, wet licks, almost knocking me over. I knelt down and buried my face in his smooth coat for a moment, letting the warmth of his body seep through to my chilled, scared center. When he wriggled to be free, I got up and clipped his leash back on. As we turned to leave, a familiar voice called my name.
I looked around and saw Flynn Kenyon waving at me as he walked across the grass. Sunlight achieved a moment of radiance by glinting off his soft white hair, cut expensively and brushed back from pale eyes capable of glowing hot. He was a tall, thin man with the patrician manner of the old-fashioned politico or salvation salesman. He sold business machines, which seemed a waste of his saintly aura.
When he wasn’t selling typewriters, he was tirelessly devoted to community service. His statuesque, pedestal-like virtue might have made him insufferably stuffy if it weren’t for his old world charm.
I liked him, though it seemed an impertinence.
“Good morning, Mr. Kenyon.” Respectful vacuity. It’s my special gift. I brushed at the grass clinging to my skirt, trying to bury my unease. Flynn used to be Rosemary’s father-in-law and still is the grandfather of her children. I wasn’t sure what that made him in my life.
“Why so formal? Just because Dag left his family, it doesn’t mean I have.” His voice was deep and rich, like New Orleans bread pudding drenched in rum sauce. His eyes twinkled like Santa’s.
“Being called Isabel makes me feel formal.”
“Ah, that explains Muir’s singular lack of progress.” The twinkle deepened. “He was disappointed not to see you last night.”
“I was helping out with the youth choir.”
“So he said.” Addison sniffed his shoes and Flynn studied him thoughtfully. Addison returned the favor, only with his tongue hanging out. “So this is The Dog.”
Muir and Addison didn’t like each other.
“He was walking me,” I proffered, still lost in vacuous.
“Does he still bite off side mirrors?”
I smiled. “I told Muir he should buy American. Addison’s a very patriotic dog.”
Flynn laughed, throwing his head back until the sun put a halo around his white hair.
Without thinking, I asked, “Are you sure Muir is your son—Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He shook his head, the smile still lighting his eyes with unfamiliar warmth. “Don’t apologize, Stan,” he emphasized my name, as if to let me know he followed my wishes, not his own, “I’ve had the same thought myself from time to time. He’s very like his mother.”
“I’m sorry.” Didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“So was I. Often. But it all worked out.”
She’d died, I recalled, several years ago.
“And just lately Muir has surprised me—with his knack for these computers. Very useful.”
“He helped me buy mine.” I tried not to sound depressed. I’d wanted to buy a word processor, but Muir wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted that I would want record keeping capabilities and a host of other things, failing to take into account that fact that I am a writer, pure and simple. I leave my bookkeeping to accountants, and the other things I don’t have time for. “He’s studying modems for me. He wants me to have the latest.”
This time my lack of enthusiasm did register with him.
“Don’t you want a modem?”
“I’m not sure I want Elvira talking to strange computers. I saw a movie once where a computer took over this guy completely, right down to his love life. And what if she gets one of those viruses—what would I give her?”
“Elvira?” Flynn arched an elegant brow at me.
“My computer. I named her that because she’s better built than I am.”
This time he surprised me by grinning. It made him almost human, which didn’t suit him. Some people aren’t meant to be human.
“I always liked you, you know. It would have been much better if Dag had married you.”
“Better for who?”
“For Dag, of course. Rosemary is a charming girl, and very lovely, I like her very much, but she was too intense for Dag. He needed someone with a sense of humor.”
I wanted to point out that no one could be happy with Dag because he was a toe rag and that having a sense of humor wouldn’t have made him any more palatable, but I held my tongue—for once. It seemed time for a change of subject. All there was the slab of cement. I rubbed it with my toe.
“What do you suppose this is for?”
“The pig.”
“The pig?” Surely I hadn’t heard him right.
“An M114A2.”
“A what?”
He grinned again. I wished he wouldn’t.
“It’s a howitzer. Artillery gun, towed.”
“They’re putting a howitzer in a park?”
“It’s to be part of a memorial for the members of my Guard unit that died in foreign wars.”
“Oh. Well, I
’m sure it will be very…nice.”
“The dedication ceremony is next Tuesday evening, part of a rally for our troops. Some of my former unit has already shipped out to the Gulf.”
“Is this the God Bless the USA rally?”
He looked surprised. “Are you going to be there?”
“I play keyboard with Star Dust, you know, your back-up band for Lee Greenwood,” I prompted.
“You play keyboard with young Jerome? Well, well. It ought to be an interesting evening, don’t you think?” He smiled again, but this time the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He stared into the distance as if he saw something besides a rally in a brown little park.
I stared, too. It was a good thing the howitzer hadn’t been there last night.
* * * *
When I got to Macy’s a bit past the agreed upon time, I found Rosemary assessing long skinny tubes that looked like white Simpsons, but turned out to be the body shapers.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, consciously casual. “I stopped to buy a new dress for my date.”
“Since when do you buy clothes for Muir?”
I thumbed through a rack of mega bras. “Not Muir. Mike Lang.”
Rosemary pulled me away from the bras. “Who?”
“Addison’s vet.”
“Really? Cute?” I nodded. She pulled a girdle off the rack. “We’d better get you shaped up for it, then.”
I thought about Mike in his sigh-popping robe and nodded. “So how do we do this?”
“It all depends on what we want,” Rosemary said. “If the problem area is the stomach, then we choose this one.”
“What if it’s everything?”
“We take this total control model that covers from boobs to knees.”
I looked at the skinny tube, trying to figure out how to get it on. “Does it come equipped with a safety valve? I don’t want to end up in a Dave Barry column about exploding girdles because my cellulite breached containment.”
Rosemary grinned. “With any luck it will push the flab up into the bra where we need it.”
“It might do it for you,” I said. “I’ll just wind up with a fat neck and knees.”
“Would you like to try that on?” a glacial voice asked behind me.
I jumped and found that what I’d thought was a mannequin was the sales clerk.
“She would,” I said. Sometimes it was nice being identical. No need for both of us to squeeze into a three-inch tube in a hot, tiny dressing room.
I retreated to a sale table filled with filmy panties in neon colors. Everyone has to have a vice. Underwear was mine. I’d picked up a handful when I heard the spine-tingling voice that I thought had passed from my life forever.
“There you are. Weren’t you supposed to be here by one?”
I wanted to see him again, but not across a mound of neon panties. Sometimes it didn’t pay to fall out of bed in the morning. It didn’t help that he looked more relaxed amid the lingerie than I did. I could see several women, including the mannequin sales clerk, giving him a twice over.
He did look fine, with no sign of injury visible to the naked eye. The color was back under his suntan and where his full length, navy coat fell open I could see soft gray pants elegantly hugging lean hips. His pristine white shirt, neatly buttoned and tie-wrapped, made him look clean, crisp, and very heroic.
Looking at him brought back all sorts of memories and feelings. My Sunday school teacher said we should hum hymns when faced with temptation.
Unfortunately, a “hallelujah” chorus, the only song that came to mind, did nothing to blunt temptation.
“What are you doing here?” I asked on a sigh. It was hard to see him as a ruthless killer of schoolteachers when he was surrounded by under garments.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Oh?” Could he tell the heat turning my face into a beacon was for him? I peeked from under my lashes just in time to be on the receiving end of his hundred watt smile. The next thing I knew the panties I’d forgotten I was holding shot out of my hands as if launched by a slingshot. A purple pair landed on his shoulder. He snagged a scarlet pair out of the air.
His face blank, he removed the purple, held it and the scarlet up. A careful and endless examination followed before he looked at me.
“Very nice. Do you want them?”
The ground refused to oblige me by opening at my feet. A disorderly retreat was clearly in order. “I…no, thanks.”
I turned and crashed into a rack of bras. With diabolical swiftness Kel closed the distance and caught me against his chest. The rack was less fortunate. It went down with a crash, flinging bras everywhere. My heart gave an ecstatic leap, then settled into an unruly “Ode to Joy” because I was back where I wanted to be. His heart thumped as wildly as mine, but I didn’t know if it was for me or because he’d just leaped over a table full of panties into a storm of bras.
“You shouldn’t…what about your…”
“I’m fine,” he cut me off.
He smelled good in an aggressively guy way. I inhaled him until my head spun, opened my eyes in a feeble effort to get my balance and saw us in a full length mirror. The bra caught in my hair was better than a cold shower.
The sales clerk minced up. Kel set me back on my feet and began scooping up white mounds, tossing them onto the table with the neon panties.
I removed the bra, looked up and saw Kel watching me with humor, and something I was afraid to identify, sparking in his blue eyes.
I’d probably have stood there until I drooled, but the clerk said, coldly, “Were you going to buy that?”
I held it up. It was at least a 38D. “Yeah, right.”
I handed it to her and walked away, chin up, spirit dragging. Kel caught up with me just as I was clearing the sexy nighties.
“Bel—”
The diminutive made my heart clutch. Only my dad had called me that. “Please just go away.” I would have been okay if I hadn’t stopped and faced him. It put me at an immediate disadvantage because he was closer than I thought. His personal space wrapped around me like his arms had last night.
“It’s important.” He looked serious and sober.
“Look…”
“Stan?” Rosemary poked her head out of the dressing room and beckoned to me. I didn’t see him fade away. He was just gone. My heart jumping, I stalked over to Rosemary.
“What?”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Guy?” I couldn’t explain Kel without revealing what I’d almost done to her car, so I had to play dumb.
“The guy you were talking to.”
“I was talking to a guy?” I usually do dumb really well, but Rosemary’s brows rose, her expression turned skeptical.
“You do know that men who hit on women in Lingerie are probably wearing it?”
“Of course.” My gaze was bouncing around like a ping pong ball trying to spot him. I caught it and directed it her way. “I’m gonna go get something to drink.”
“Bring me a Coke, would you?”
I nodded and found the escalator. I thought I was looking out for him, but he still managed to sneak up on me.
“Buy you a drink?” he whispered in my ear.
I jumped. My ear was delighted. My nerves less so. “I wish you’d quit doing that.”
“Doing what?” He leaned against the side and grinned. He kind of reminded me, I decided, of a young Cary Grant. Not in looks, he was too yuppie and far too American. It was more an aura of reassuring rakishness and maybe something in the way he moved.
“Sneaking up on me.” I tried to stay miffed, but it wasn’t easy when he looked at me as if he liked what he saw.
“What did your sister say?”
I stepped off and turned to look at him, hands on my hips.
“That a man who hits on women in the Lingerie department is probably wearing it.”
He chuckled. “Only one way I know for you to find out.” He took my arm and steered me toward the food court.
“Did she tell you I started to pick her up? You could be twins.”
“We are twins.”
“That would explain it.” He stopped by a table under a red and white striped umbrella, pulled out a chair and eased me into it. “Gave me quite a jolt when she turned around. Thought I was having a flashback from dog drugs.”
“You knew she wasn’t me?”
“Shouldn’t I have?”
I shrugged, obscurely pleased. “Most people have trouble telling us apart. Even her ex-husband claimed he couldn’t.”
“He was probably just trying to get a little on the side.” His eyes seemed to say, they understood why. “What’ll you have?”
I told him, he started to turn away, then stopped. “Wait here?”
It sounded like an order, but his gaze holding mine, made it a request I couldn’t refuse. I nodded. I had nothing to lose but my pride.
SEVEN
The table was barely big enough to hold two cold drinks and our knees rubbed together when Kel edged his chair in and rested his arm on the back of my chair.
Back in his personal space, I couldn’t breathe or look away as his intense gaze drew me into a place that was both safe and terrifying. I remembered feeling like this the first time I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The camera zoomed in for our first good look into Robert Redford’s blue eyes and I turned into a puddle in the plush seat. To a lesser degree I also felt it the first time I saw Dudley Henderson, the star quarterback of my high school football team.
Neither of them had noticed me, but that hadn’t stopped me from feeling so alive, I thought I’d die. I knew now people didn’t die from a crush, but that didn’t mitigate the dizzying sensation of rushing headlong into a terrifying unknown. It also didn’t blunt the memory of how it felt when the object of desire didn’t return the longing. Just because Kel had been all over me last night, didn’t mean he wanted me. He was drugged to the eyeballs, so last night couldn’t be entered into evidence.
Today his gaze was a laser pinning me in place, but I still didn’t know what it meant. I decided to ask. “What?”
The Spy Who Kissed Me Page 6