Talking about her parents was a turn-off she didn’t need, but she was interested in seeing where he was going with it.
He smiled and nuzzled her neck; he loved her long neck. “I said write. They should write a book about raising smart, well-balanced kids. Although now I’m wondering if well-balanced young women suggest bathing with strange old men.”
“They do if they look like you. I’ll go run the water.” She tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let go.
“You strip and I’ll make the water. I can get out of my clothes faster.”
“More practice?” she asked as he walked away.
Her words, intended to be playful, stung him. Yes, more practice, he said to himself, and he regretted every woman he’d ever slept with who wasn’t her.
In the tub, she tried to remember an article she’d once read in a woman’s magazine. It was about bathing with men. The only two points she remembered where about not making the water too hot because women could tolerate much hotter water and something about letting him take the faucet side.
Ian knew a better way: he got in first and told her to sit in front of him. They couldn’t face each other, but both of them were able to lean back comfortably. For the first ten minutes they soaked in silence.
“This was a good idea,” he told her.
“Umm hmmm. If I don’t fall asleep.”
“Go to sleep, Nesta. I’ll bathe you.”
“Will you?”
“Yes, I’ll start here.”
She moaned. “Oh Ian no, don’t start there, but mark that spot for later.”
He laughed. “Where did you get that wicked sense of humor?”
“Do you really think so? My friends accuse me of having old folks’ wit, like I was raised by grandparents.” She rubbed her back from side-to-side against his front.
“You feel like you’re carved out of wood.”
“I wouldn’t think you could feel that with your shoulders.”
“I was talking about your. . .okay, we’re going to need a mirror if I this is how we’re going to bathe. I can’t tell when you’re serious.”
“Yeah, Fox has that problem too. He calls me a smartass.”
“Do you two get along?”
She was taking her job seriously. She soaped his legs as they spoke.
“I don’t know how to answer that. He says he likes me, but I can’t say he shows me any favoritism. In fact, he messes with me every chance he gets.”
“That’s a sure sign.”
Ian laughed. “Of what? That I’ll die at his hand?”
“No, my father never went into detail about what he did for my uncle, but he said when he first started Uncle Ogo gave him hell.”
“Really?”
“Really. They laugh about it now. I’ve actually heard Daddy say that he only bothers the best.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better.”
“No, I mean, yes, I want you to feel good, but I heard Ogo say he has employees who see him so rarely they barely recognize him when he visits.”
Ian laughed in earnest. “I wish I could say that! Until recently I thought he lived in Sacramento.”
There was ambient music in the air. Neither questioned it. Nesta was coming to believe Ian came with his own background music. Ian didn’t think she could hear it. She thought it sounded like drums; he heard a French horn.
She reached behind her back and cupped him.
“Umm, you’ve lost. . .interest?”
“We were talking about Fox. You wouldn’t expect me to maintain an erection with him on my mind, would you?”
“No, I guess not.” She put her soapy hand to work. “Let’s see what we can do to change the mood.”
“Yes, that works.” Again he nibbled her ear and drank in her lavender scent still present in spite of the soap smell. “Let’s get out of here.”
She was hoping he would say that. She didn’t realize how tired she was until she sat down. Nesta finished her own washing and tried to use the washrag to rinse the soap from her body.
“Stand up—we can rinse off in the shower,” he said.
“How do you keep reading my mind like that?”
“I wish I could take credit for that, but I always shower after a bath.”
“Me too.”
She got out and put on the hotel’s soft, thick robe.
Telling herself she would let the robe absorb a little of the water while she stretched out for a moment on the edge of the bed, she was asleep in seconds.
He dried her while she slept. By his body clock it was still early. It wasn’t often that he craved alcohol, but he wanted a drink. A strong drink. The old South American melancholy was trying to set in. Why now? he asked himself. He had the thought that he would go out to a nearby bar he’d visited when staying at the Swissôtel. The next thought was that she would awaken and find him missing. He didn’t want to upset or scare her.
His mind flashed on his negative feelings during the ride from the airport to Valparaiso. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Who said that? He’d heard John Lennon quoted as the author, but he seemed to remember hearing it long before Lennon. He finished by towel drying her hair.
He picked her up and put her lengthwise in the bed. She looked so young. Again, the dirty old man guilt ran through his veins, and he wondered if he would ever overcome it.
He covered her with just the sheet and leaned over and kissed her forehead. He certainly understood Kingsley’s concern. “I’ll admit it, I’m not good enough for you,” he whispered. He ran his hand through her hair and watched the curls return to their original shape.
He picked up the telephone to order a bottle of cognac.
“I’ll bring it, open the door,” a voice said before Ian said a word.
Ian sighed. “Why do I need to do that, Fox?”
Fox appeared. “Actually, you don’t, smartass!”
Ian looked over at Nesta.
“Don’t worry, she won’t wake or hear us.”
Ian nodded, resolved that he was about to have yet another unwanted visit.
Fox whispered, “Let’s go in the other room and have our drinks.”
“Are you the reason I’m craving Courvoisier?”
“Courvoisier? Please, you know me better than that. Or is it your purpose to insult me, Hunter?”
Ian smiled. “Of course not. What’s wrong with Courvoisier?”
Ian looked at the bottle and two empty glasses on the table in the room they were entering.
“It’s not my brand, but I’ll tell you what, you drink your Courvoisier.”
Ian noticed that one of the glasses was now half filled with an amber liquid. He wondered if he was supposed to consider himself punished.
“I hope you don’t object to drinking your cognac in hand blown crystal, some of the best in the world.”
Ian smiled. “No objections.”
Fox picked up his glass, held it to the light and smiled. “Listen to this.” He thumped the glass, and it made a tonal sound that wasn’t unlike any other crystal glass Ian ever heard thumped. He looked at Ian and waited for a reaction. Ian nodded, but he didn’t know why the sound made Fox so happy.
Fox placed his glass down back on the table, and it was immediately filled.
“What’s in your glass, dude?”
“Louis XIII Black Pearl. It was released in March from the Rémy Martin private family reserve, but this isn’t what I drink at home. What I drink alone is one of three bottles in the world. And if you ever call me ‘dude’ again, I will have your tongue when I leave your presence.”
He wondered if the slip would be addressed. “How much is that stuff?” Ian asked, nodding his head toward Fox’s glass.
“In dollars, about six hundred an ounce.”
Ian refused to let Fox see his reaction, but he felt his heart jump—six hundred a freakin’ ounce?
Fox took a drink. He closed his eyes and smiled.
“Ian
?”
Ian’s eyebrows shot up in silent response.
“I’m sorry I threatened you. You can call me ‘dude’ if that suits you.”
Ian put his drink down. “What’s in that stuff, heroin?”
Fox smiled. Ian stared at his teeth as he tended to do on the rare occasions that he’d seen them. Fox had the nicest teeth Ian had ever seen. One incisors was just a little crooked, but Ian knew in his heart that Fox made it so to keep them from looking false.
“Stop staring at my teeth and talk to me!”
“About what now?”
“About this weight I’m feeling around my neck that pulled me to you.”
Ian took a sip. He found himself fighting tears. He would have bet every penny he had in five different banks that the words and the implication of them would never have come from Fox.
“You feel it when your Hunters hurt?”
“I’m talking about you, fool!”
He heard Fox’s voice crack. Ian looked at him, and Fox looked down at his drink.
“I swear I’m seconds from kicking your young ass.”
Ian laughed. “Only you could call me young.”
Fox took an exaggerated look around the room. “Is anybody else here? Tell me what’s wrong. I left a pool shoot with Apollo to come talk to you.”
“Okay, that explains why you’re dressed like that. I figured you were opening for Lionel Ritchie tonight.”
Fox was wearing a skintight black shirt and black leather pants cut like jeans.
“You wish you could pull this outfit off. Ian, I thought all that woe is me stuff stopped after you moved north. Are you sorry about your time with Nesta?.”
“Of course not. She’s wonderful. I dread leaving her at the end of the week. . .”
“Then take her with you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“How can I ask her that?”
He put down his glass and leaned toward him. “There are four words in English that you can use. If you can’t figure out what they are, you are a bigger fool than I thought.”
“You think I should ask her to marry me? What are you talking about? Is this some kind of trick? One of your Jedi mind games?”
Fox cracked up. “I like that, Jedi mind games,” he repeated. He produced a cigar between his two fingers. It lit as he brought it to his mouth. “Would you like one?”
“No, thanks.”
“They’re Cuban.”
“I’ll pass, but feel free.”
Fox made a face that let Ian know he was thinking about Ian giving him permission to smoke.
He decided to let it go. He took a drag on the cigar and released it into the air. “Don’t worry, she won’t smell it,” he said a second before Ian got up to close the connecting door.
“You don’t want to marry her?”
“Fox, that’s not a fair question. I’ve only known her a few days. Are you saying I have to marry her?”
“Of course not. Just tell me what you feel.”
“I feel like I want to wake up beside her every day for the rest of my life. I want to keep smelling the floral scent of her hair, hearing her music and touching that. . .”
“I get what you’re saying. Is this the way her hair smells?”
Ian felt as if somebody was pushing a flower in his face. “That’s it. You make her smell like that?”
“Why would I do that? You really think I spend my day doing asinine things, don’t you?”
“No, not really, I’m sure there’s some value in playing pool with Apollo.”
Fox let out a puff of heavy smoke that formed a hammer that floated across the table and hit Ian on the hand resting on the armrest. Even though he watched it happening, he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it. It hurt just a little less than a real hammer.
“Hey!” Ian shrieked.
“That’s my fighting hand!”
“Then you’ll be at a disadvantage because of your mouth, won’t you?”
“It puts me at a disadvantage protecting Nesta too,” he said, as he rubbed his hand.
He saw the wheels in Fox’s head turning. About half of the pain went away.
“Answer me about the flowers,” Fox said, using their native language.
It was music to Ian’s ears to hear his home tongue. Fox rarely used any language except English and French.
“That’s exactly what she smells like. I don’t know flowers; what is it?”
“It’s a flowering lavender found mostly in East Africa,” he said in English.
Ian nodded. He wondered why it was so important to Fox.
“You’ve never heard the story about lavender?”
“What story?”
“There’s an old legend: Dogons will smell lavender when they meet their life mates.”
Ian’s expression became as serious as Fox had ever seen it. “Is there any truth to it?”
“I don’t know, hence the word ‘legend.’”
“How can you not know?” Ian didn’t realize he’d raised his voice until after Fox answered.
“Calm down. I’ve heard of it working as often as not. Her parents are lavender mates.”
Ian nodded.
“And I know happy lifelong mates who claimed they’d never smelled it. It’s a question that comes up often at our weddings, but you have to be hanging out with the ladies.”
“What about the music?” Ian asked.
“What music?”
“I hear music when I’m with her.”
Ian saw a reaction; it was slight, but it was there. He wouldn’t have been able to swear what the reaction was, maybe a twitch of an eyelid or a hand quake, but his inner Hunter noted it.
“Describe the music.”
“It’s just some deep background noise, not anything recognizable.”
“Instruments, a voice, a choir, what?”
“Just a single silly French horn.”
“Wow.”
“What does it mean, Fox?”
Fox laughed. “It means you’ve finally lost your damn mind.”
“Hey, that’s not very nice!” The voice was feminine.
Ian jumped up. In the split second it took to look at the chair where Fox had been sitting, he was gone. Ian looked across the room, at the doorway where Nesta stood. Fox was standing behind her. She screamed, nearly losing the sheet she’d wrapped around her.
“It’s me, Nesta. Uncle Ogo.” He engulfed her in his arms.
Ian got an immediate sharp pain in his right temple.
“You scared me. Why did you do that?”she asked.
“You surprised us.” Fox looked at Ian and told him to be quiet. “Neither one of us would have expected you to be able to sneak up on us.”
She laughed. “Ian said the same thing earlier.” She tucked her sheet a little tighter. “I wasn’t sneaking. I heard voices.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, if we woke you.”
“That’s okay. What did I interrupt?”
“Nothing. I need to leave. I’ve got all kinds of things I need to be doing. We’ll spend some time together this weekend.”
She gave a hug and a kiss.
“Take care, Ian,” Fox said.
It was the first time Ian remembered Fox saying the equivalent of a goodbye.
“What are you drinking?”
“Nothing anymore. I’m turning in. But there’s a corner of good cognac and better cognac here if you want.”
“What I want is you back in the bed.”
“Then you’re in luck, pretty lady.”
* * * *
“What’s wrong with you? Why did you bring me down here?”
Fox paced the laundry room, which wasn’t easy to do considering the room’s size.
“Dot, I love you and I don’t want to hurt you, but you’d better not lie to me.”
“About what, Ogo? What’s wrong?” She was already crying. He was scaring her. She knew he could make her die, disappear, or an
ything in-between with less than a blink of the eye.
Scented Dreams ((A Dogon-Hunters Series Novel)) Page 22