Damon, Lee (16 page)

Kitt and O'Mara watched them for a minute, and then turned to each other with quirked eyebrows.

"He should patent that technique," O'Mara said thoughtfully.

"If we were smart," Kitt mused, "we'd be getting this whole courting routine on film, complete with sound. We'd make a fortune."

"Hmmm," murmured O'Mara, standing and bringing Kitt to her feet facing him. "At the moment, I'm more concerned with my own courting problems." His eyes gleamed as he watched the flush deepen on her cheekbones, and he took her hands in a loose clasp, gently tugging until she stepped close to him. He smiled slightly, watching her trying to evade his eyes, but he finally captured and held her gaze. "Kiss me?" he asked in a whisper.

She hesitated, her eyes searching his for any hint of demand, but all she could see was warm anticipation, undemanding, leaving it up to her. Finally, she leaned forward, tilting her face up, and he bent his head so she could touch his mouth with hers. It was a tentative kiss, very light, and she seemed poised to back off at any second. He could feel the tension coursing through her, and he held totally still, letting her decide where she wanted to take them. When she tipped her head slightly to shape her mouth more closely to his, it took all his control to remain relaxed and keep his hands loosely entwined with hers. It only lasted for a few seconds before she drew back and looked up at him in a mild daze.

"I did it," she said wonderingly. "I really did it."

His mouth widened in a slow smile that had more than a hint of satisfaction in it. "Little acorns," he murmured.

Suddenly, her tension was gone, and she laughed joyously. "I'm not at all sure I want to be a mighty oak tree. Couldn't I be a willow or a lilac?"

"More like a monkey puzzle tree." He chuckled, starting toward the stairs with her beside him. "You're every bit as mad as old crazy bear there."

"I'm working on it," she said blandly. "It's all suddenly coming back to me. Wonder why?" She slanted a teasing look at him and felt joy bubbling through her at the promise in his eyes.

"Sassy, too." He laughed, kissing her fleetingly on the cheek. "We'll see you later. Oh, by the way, we're all eating out tonight. No, I'm not telling you where." He paused behind Midge, enclosed her small waist in his long hands and plucked her out of Ez's arms, swinging her around and setting her down beside Kitt. "Enough, Ezekiel. You can continue this dalliance at a more propitious time. Besides, much more of such carrying on and you'll both be tumbling down the stairs." Laughing and pushing Ez ahead of him, he called back, "Stay out of mischief, you two. We'll be back around five."

A moment later, a piercing whistle sounded from the parking lot, and Hero leaped from his chair, dodged between Kitt and Midge and scrambled down the stairs.

"Why do I keep thinking that's my dog?" Kitt asked of the blue sky.

"Well, you know, man's best friend. I never heard anyone mention woman's best friend." Midge chuckled as they gathered up the coffee cups and headed inside.

Chapter 10

Kitt and Midge did manage to compile a checklist of the deficiencies in the paperback fiction section, but they had little time during the afternoon to work on the order which Kitt would need to take to the distributor's warehouse. It had turned into a golden spring afternoon, and half of the population of eastern Massachusetts seemed to have decided to "take a ride to Maine" for the day.

"Don't they have bookshops in Massachusetts?" groaned Midge in mid-afternoon.

"Of course they do, but it's more fun to drive two hours to romantic Maine to pick up a book on exotic plants than it is to walk four blocks along dirty city streets," explained Kitt with a straight face.

"Romantic
Maine?" Midge squeaked disbelievingly. "Have you ever spent a winter here? Try jogging around at twenty below with a sixty-mile-an-hour gale whistling in off the ocean and snow up to your bippy, and then tell me about romance. You're nuts, truly nuts," she declaimed positively.

"Why would you be jogging around in weather like that?" asked Kitt with great interest, turning her head to hide the glint of laughter in her eyes. "I thought all you Maine-iacs hibernated in the winter." She turned back to Midge, her eyes widened in alarm. "You mean I've got to go
outdoors
in a mess like that? Oh, dear, I thought now that everyone had inside plumbing—"

Kitt began to chuckle as she watched a puzzled Midge slowly catch on to the joke. It was the last break they had for the rest of the afternoon. After the last customer left at ten past five, Kitt collapsed across the cash register with a "Whew" of relief, while Midge dropped bonelessly to the floor in the middle of the main aisle, spread-eagled on her back and looking as if she were about to melt into the carpet.

"Lordy," Kitt moaned, "if it's like this on a Sunday in April, what's it going to be like in the summer? I swear, at one point there must have been fifty people in here climbing over each other."

"Um," Midge mumbled. "Try to concentrate on the money you've made. And don't even look at the kids' area."

"I'm trying not to look at any of it. Do you know any psych, majors? They could certainly find all the base material here for a study on why people don't put things back where they found them. Just look at that reading table. It's covered a foot deep with stuff from all over the shop."

"Far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way until morning," Midge said emphatically. "And before you get the idea that I'm dumping all the cleanup on you, remember that I don't have any classes tomorrow. I can be here any time after eight, and with both of us fresh and fully functional, we can put this place back together by ten with no trouble."

"Ah, the optimism of youth," declaimed a deep voice from the back door, and Ez and O'Mara strolled lazily down the aisle.

"This place looks like a nor'easter struck it," O'Mara said, chuckling, as he sat down on the desk and reached over to push Kitt's tousled hair back from her face. She wrinkled her nose at him when he added, "At least a Force-Seven gale from the looks of you two."

There was a slight thud as Ez dropped, cross-legged, to the floor above Midge's head. With assumed clinical detachment, he leaned forward to peer, upside-down, into her face. "Gadsooks! It blinks! Its nose twitches! That rather interestingly shaped chest is moving up and down! I do believe it's alive, O'Mara. Perhaps a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation will revive it completely." Cradling her head in both hands, he started to bend down further, only to be halted by Kitt and O'Mara's laughter. He looked up at them crossly and chided, "Please. No levity. This is a serious scientific experiment."

"Looks more like a gorilla examining his dinner," said O'Mara, still laughing.

"Or a vampire bear selecting his favorite vein," chimed in Kitt.

"I'll overlook the gorilla crack, but really, Kitt, a vampire bear?"

"Whoever saw a bat that size?" she demanded convincingly.

With a quick twist and a flip, Midge was on her feet. "I," she stated firmly, "don't care if it's a gorilla, a bear or a bat—I'm not going to be anybody's dinner." With a gleam in her brown eyes, she bent over and rested her elbows on Ez's shoulders, purring into his amused face, "That resuscitation sounds interesting, though."

The words were hardly out of her mouth before she found herself pulled down into his arms and thoroughly kissed.

Shaking their heads and grinning, Kitt and O'Mara quietly disappeared up the stairs.

"Where's Hero?" Kitt asked a minute later, realizing that her dog hadn't come in with the men.

"We left him with Gus for the evening. Gus was feeling a bit abandoned when we told him that the four of us were going out to dinner, but he perked up when Ez said that Hero could stay with him." He caught her hand, pulling her around to face his inquiring look. "I also bribed him with a promise that you'd come to dinner Tuesday night. You will, won't you?"

"I'd like that." She smiled at him, and then, suddenly realizing that something had seemed different about him downstairs, stepped back to run her eyes quickly from his neck to his feet and back again. "My, my," she said wonderingly, taking in the full effect of the slim navy slacks and the muted navy and hunter-green plaid jacket that had obviously been tailored to the wide shoulders and taut waist and hips. The dark green silk tie was held in place against the pale blue shirt with a small gold lion's head tietack.

"I'm not at all sure I can live up to all this elegance," she teased, running a finger over one of the brass buttons on his jacket and then flattening her hand to stroke her palm over the soft wool. She was suddenly speechless as she realized what she was doing and froze, raising startled eyes to meet his amused gaze.

"Don't stop now, love. I'm waiting with bated breath to see where you're going with this."

"Oh!" seemed to be all Kitt could manage, but she didn't draw back when he brought his free hand up to hold hers against his chest. She felt suspended in time, held immobile by the compelling look in his eyes, the air around them glowing golden in the light from the lowering sun shining through the window wall. Bemused, she pressed her palm against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. Turning her other hand slightly, she slowly moved her thumb over the inside of his wrist until she found his pulse. Everything seemed to fade to insignificance except the two of them standing so still in their golden cocoon while his life force flowed through her body from hand to hand, his heartbeat vibrating against her palm and his blood surging rhythmically under her thumb, influencing her own rhythms until they blended with his. Simultaneously, they closed their eyes and concentrated their special sense of each other on opening the channel between them again.

For long seconds, Kitt was mindless, only able to feel every cell in her body shimmering with a strangely soothing heat, to feel the beat of her life mingling with his, to feel the balm of love flowing over the contours and into the crevices of her consciousness, and to sense the same shimmering, beating, flowing feelings in him.

Blinded by the sun blazing into their eyes as they reached the top of the stairs, Ez and Midge were several steps into the living room before they saw the two standing so still and lost in each other. Ez's abruptly cut off "What are—" was enough to snap them back to the present. Blinking as if they were just awakening, which in a sense they were, Kitt and O'Mara slowly turned their heads to look at the other two.

"Oh, hi," Kitt murmured vaguely.

"Is it time to go?" O'Mara asked with equal vagueness.

Ez shook his head pityingly, heaving a deep sigh of resignation. "You see what I mean, now," he said to Midge. "They're gone, poor devils, lost to us forever. And here I am, left alone, fated to wend my solitary way through life unless, of course, I can find a sympathetic soul to keep me company. Uh, a female soul, you understand."

Midge stepped back to stand, hands on hips, looking up at him. Wide-eyed, she gasped, "Incredible! I never knew they could pile it so high!"

It was enough to bring Kitt and O'Mara back to reality with shouts of laughter. Ez picked Midge up and tossed her over his shoulder. As he passed O'Mara on his way to the door, he flipped a thumb at Kitt and said, "If you could manage to concentrate her attention on getting dressed, we just might be ready to go in time to make our reservation. I'll drop this one off and be back to change myself; we can pick her up on our way."

Midge's muttered, "God, how I hate to be organized!" trailed off into unintelligible scolding as Ez closed the door behind them and ran down the stairs.

Kitt turned her head just enough to slant a hesitant look at O'Mara, and found him watching her with an enigmatic smile.

"Ah... I'd better get dressed, I guess. Are we... it looks... you look... I mean, what should I wear?"
This is ridiculous. I can't even get a sentence out in one piece. Why do I let him keep doing this to me?

"I know what I'd like you to wear, but I doubt if you'd do it," he said suggestively, managing a creditable leer. He laughed at her quick scowl and pushed her ahead of him toward the hall. "Come on, silly, show me what you're hiding in your closet, and I'll pick out something appropriate."

"Now, wait just a minute, O'Mara," she demanded, bracing her feet and grabbing the back of the sofa. "I can choose my own clothes. Just tell me what kind of place we're going to."

He took the last step, which brought him against her back, moving his hand around to her waist and holding her lightly against him. While he worked at prying her hand off the sofa, he bent his head and murmured in her ear, "Don't be stubborn, love. If I leave it to you, you'll come out draped neck to toe in some kind of tent. Look at this shirt you're wearing. There's room enough in there for two of you. Come on, now," he coaxed, "let me pick out something I'll enjoy looking at. Trust me. You'll still be covered up—more or less."

She hissed at him and stamped a foot, narrowly missing his toe. "It's the less I don't like. Please, O'Mara—"

"No, don't grab the sofa again. Here, hold my hand. It will help me resist the temptation to put my other arm around you." She could hear laughter threading through the soft purr and felt a warm, melting sensation in her belly, which suddenly intensified as he slowly traced the rim of her ear with his tongue.

"Trust me," he whispered again. "I promise you won't be uncomfortable. And no one's going to bother you. Who's going to argue with both Ez and me?"

"Oh, you wretch," she sighed, leaning back against him and turning her head so his lips brushed her cheek. "You can look through my closet, but—"

The rest was lost as he tipped her face up and kissed her. Before she had time to pull away, it was over, and he was tugging her along with him down the hall.

Still reluctant, she paced after him, her brows drawn together in a frown as she tried to decide whether to laugh or swear. Kitt had developed very definite ideas about how she wanted to appear in public. Although she was perfectly willing to admit that her choice of clothes was inspired by a defensive need for concealment, she refused to face the fact that she subconsciously chose fabrics, colors and designs that enhanced her natural handsomeness and long, lithe form. When she looked in her mirror, she saw only a tall figure whose shape was blurred under loose sweaters and shirts or the straight lines of shift-style dresses and caftans. Ez could have told her that when she was moving with her long, graceful stride and elegant carriage, her slenderly curved body was far from hidden from the discerning eye.