Improper English (5 page)

“I’ll be there in a sec, I just have to look for something to put this in…oh, well, I guess a plastic bag is as good as anything else.” I scooped the ice cream into the bag with a muttered “waste of perfectly good toffee crunch,” sealed the bag, and went over to see how the wounded warrior was doing.

He was lying down with his eyes closed. I plopped the makeshift ice pack onto his injury. He jumped, swore, and tried to sit up.

“Stop being such a baby,” I said, holding him down, and replaced the bag of ice cream on his eye. I sat down on the edge of the chaise, pried his hand away from his face, and gently felt his cheek. It was a bit swollen, and looked like it was going to bruise.

“You look horrible,” I said, shifting the bag of ice cream to see if it was helping to reduce the swelling at all. The flesh beneath his eye had taken on a dark, mottled red color that indicated it was going to be very colorful in a day or so.

“You don’t look much better,” he replied, cracking his good eye open to examine my head. I reached back for my hair, grimaced at the few strands long enough to be pulled forward, and went to find the scissors. Popeye watched me with a faint frown showing on half of his forehead.

“You’re going to cut your own hair?” he eventually asked.

“Nope,” I said, returning to the chaise and sitting down on the floor next to him. “You’re going to do it for me.”

He sat up, lowering the bag of ice cream from his face, a faint shimmer of panic in his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

I pushed the scissors into his hand and turned my back to him. “Don’t look so scared, I just want you to even it up. I can’t stand having a few straggly long ends and the rest charred stumps. Just cut it off so it’s all one length.”

“But—”

“I’d do it for you,” I said slowly, watching him over my shoulder. He gave me a long, unreadable look, then nodded for me to turn my head. His hands were tentative at first, fingers almost unwilling to touch me, but he snipped diligently away with only minor murmurs of distress.

“Thanks,” I said when he was finished, turning halfway around to take the scissors from him. I ruffled my hand through my hair and encountered his fingers as he pulled a cut strand of hair from where it was dangling from my shoulder. Heat flashed through my fingers as if someone had splashed me with a bucket of hot water, tiny little flames licking their way down from where my hand was touching his, up and over my chest like a flush, pooling lower, deep within me.

“Wow,” I breathed, mesmerized as his pupils dilated slightly, his eyes turning almost black. His fingers rubbed against mine, slowly stroking them from knuckle to fingertip. “All that from just fingers.”

He didn’t say anything, but a shuttered look fell over his eyes. He glanced toward the door. “I should be leaving.”

“No, what you should be doing is lying back and letting
this ice cream take the swelling down on your eye.”
He’s not for me, he’s not for me,
the little voice chanted in my head. I told the voice to get stuffed, and reached down to push him back onto the cushions. He resisted for a minute, his eyes wary; then he allowed his body to sag backwards.

“Here, put this back on your eye. It won’t stay cold for long, but it’s all I have.” I handed him the ice cream and gathered up the scissors and my comb.

Neither one of us said anything for a few minutes, other than me asking if he’d like coffee, and him accepting. I pulled out my precious container of preground Starbucks, plugged the kettle in, and assembled a couple of mugs, milk, and my secret stash of chocolate orange truffles on a tray.

“How do you like England?” He finally broke the silence.

“I love it,” I answered, wishing I had an exotic pastry or two to compensate for Alex having missed what I’m sure was a fabulous dessert at Isabella’s. “I haven’t been anywhere but London, but I plan on doing a few touristy day trips in a bit.”

“To where?”

I poured water into the French press and added it to the tray. “Oh, here and there. Windsor Castle, Bath, Cambridge, the Lake District—those sorts of places.”

“Ah. The Lake District is nice. Isabella said you’re writing a book?”

I hauled the tray out and set it on the end table, then dragged both around from behind Alex’s head to a position alongside the chaise where he could easily reach them. As I pulled the table into place, a magazine slipped off the edge, exposing the box of condoms Cait had given
me. I had a brief moment of sheer panic as a picture rose in my mind of me trying to explain away grape—and banana-flavored condoms, but I quickly snatched them off the table and slipped them beneath the cushions under his head. “No, don’t sit up yet, keep the bag on your eye. I was just plumping up the pillow. White or black?”

“White, please.”

I poured cream in a cup, then pushed down on the coffee press. “I am writing a book—a romance. I don’t suppose you read them?”

His eye opened briefly, then closed again. “No. I don’t read for pleasure.”

I leaned over him and lifted the bag of ice cream to cover his eye better. He must have felt the movement, because he suddenly opened his eyes.

And got a good look down my dress to where my boobs glittered in all of their golden glory.

“Sorry,” he said in an embarrassed voice, slamming his eyes closed. He grimaced at the resulting pain when his swollen eye protested the cavalier action, and allowed me to replace the bag over it.

“It’s OK, they’re just boobs. I’m sure you’ve seen them before.”

His good eye cracked open. I smiled and straightened up. “Well, maybe not these particular ones, but others of their ilk. Why don’t you read for pleasure? I thought you being a Scotland Yard detective and all, you’d be an avid mystery reader.”

His eyelid lazily drifted down again. I went out to the cubbyhole kitchen to dampen a clean dishcloth.

“I’m in the Obscene Publications and Internet Unit.”

I stopped wringing out the cloth and cast a worried glance over to the bookcase beside the door, squinting
at it and wondering if he could make out the title of the Victorian erotica book I had bought at a used bookstore a couple of days before. For research, of course. Purely for research, nothing more.

Alex’s voice continued on in a weary monotone. “I have nothing to do with murders or solving crimes unless they are related to Internet pornography, and I don’t read novels because I don’t have the time to.”

“Internet pornography?” I asked coming back to the chaise.

“Yes,” he said without opening his eye. I folded the cloth and laid it on his cheek, accepting his murmured thanks without comment.

“You mean like those online sex sites and stuff? The ones with the women bumping and grinding to web cams?”

“Some. Our department focuses mainly on the pedophile sites.”

“Oh.” I nudged his hip with my knee. He scooted over a bit, his good eye open to watch me sit down beside him. “That’s a good job to have. I mean—it’s not good that it exists, but it’s good that you’re doing it. I bet you take a lot of satisfaction in getting those slime balls sent to jail.”

He pinned me with an emerald-eyed gaze. “It’s very satisfying, yes.”

I couldn’t help myself. I reached out to smooth the faint lines between his eyebrows. His eye warily watched my hand withdraw, almost as if he expected a blow. I folded my hands together in my lap to keep from touching him. “Even my husband Matt, who was the biggest workaholic in the continental United States, took time out occasionally to play, although his idea of having fun
was sweating on a racquetball court. What do you do for fun if you don’t read?”

“Your husband?”

I nodded, tightening my grip on my hands. That look of puzzlement he was wearing was just so damn adorable!

“Isabella said you were interested in meeting available men. I assumed that’s why you wanted to meet Karl—”

“Ex-husband,” I interrupted him, smiling at my own foolish thoughts. His interest in my marital state didn’t mean anything—no matter what he claimed, he
was
a detective, and everybody knows detectives detect when they come across something that doesn’t add up. “So what do you do?”

“For fun?”

“Yep.”

He closed his eye again. “I don’t indulge in frivolous pastimes.”

“Well, that lets out running around the neighborhood clad in nothing but a pair of frilly knickers and a fright wig, but there must be something you do for entertainment.”

“No.”

I resisted the urge to peel his eyelid back; his jaw was set so firmly it’s a wonder he got that one word out.

“What do you do when you’re at home? What do you watch on TV?”

“I don’t have one.”

“And you don’t read for pleasure?
Anything?
”

“No.”

“Oh. How about music? You must like some sort of music.”

The eye opened. “I don’t listen to music, I don’t have
any hobbies, and I don’t care to be interrogated about this any further.”

Well, that put me in my place.

“Sorry,” I said, and rose to clean up all of the bits of my hair he had cut off.
Prickly, prickly, prickly—that was his early warning system coming into effect,
my inner voice warned.
Don’t think about getting too close to this one—just when you think he’s eating out of your hand, he’ll snap your arm off.

“What did you think of Karl?”

I frowned at the wicker wastebasket as I tossed my hair into it, then turned back to assess his expression. His voice had a slightly apologetic tone to it, and was a good deal warmer than the previous sentence he’d spoken. “Why do you ask?”

“You were there to meet him, weren’t you? Isabella said she’d asked you there for that purpose. I merely wondered what you thought.”

I took a few cautious steps toward Alex. Why on earth had he taken his yummy Rickman voice and turned it into a sterile, emotionless parody? “Karl? I think he’s not in the remotest sense of the word perfect.”

His good eye opened and watched me as I again seated myself carefully next to him and reached out to flip the dishcloth over to the cool side. “That’s all? He’s not perfect?”

I nodded, letting my fingers gently graze the bruised area, then replacing the cloth, lightly tracing a path down his jawline. His cheeks were a little bristly, but the rough texture of his beard stubble wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it made me a bit goose bumpy. “You’re not perfect either, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” he said softly as I followed the line of his
jaw to his chin. More bristles, but better than that, his lips were directly above. Alex shifted slightly and pulled the bag of ice cream off his eye, dropping it onto his chest. I took the half-closed lids and darkening eyes to indicate interest, so I brushed my fingers over his lips. They were warm, so very warm, and parted just slightly so I could feel his breath steam softly on my fingertips. I traced the seductive curve of his bottom lip, outlined the soft lines of his upper lip, and with my stomach tensing and my breath caught in my throat, let my finger sweep across the long length of his sensitive mouth.

“You aren’t what?” I asked, forgetting what it was we were talking about.

Halfway across his lips he opened his mouth slightly, allowing my finger to slip inside. My stomach twisted into a tight little coil as he sucked my finger in deeper, his tongue a little rough, but hot and wet and wonderful, and doing things I never thought could start little fires all over my body, but damned if it didn’t! The coil inside me tightened even further when he gently bit the pad of my finger, making me shiver with desire, building a pressure inside me that cried out to be satisfied. His lovely green eyes went completely black as I leaned forward, intent on replacing my finger with my mouth. His right hand swept me forward suddenly, pulling me down across his chest, our lips a hairbreadth apart.

“Alix,” he said in that sexy, almost hoarse voice that pushed the pressure inside me even higher. I breathed in his scent and felt myself melt against him as his hand brushed down my back, over my hip, and started up my ribcage. I stopped breathing altogether when he paused at the underside of my breast.

“Yes?” I let my breasts rub against his chest, feeling
my nipples tighten and swell, watching his eyes fill with hunger, knowing that my own reflected my longing. I flicked my tongue and tasted the edge of his mouth just as his hand moved upward and cupped my left breast, palming it and squeezing ever so slightly. Passion so hot it felt icy cold washed over me, down my chest, down further toward the core of me, sending the pressure inside spiraling out of control. I slid my hands up his arms, over his shoulders, and around the back of his head just as I pressed closer to taste all of his mouth. His lips parted as mine just touched his.

“Dammit!” I jerked back, looking down at myself, over to his chest, then up to his eyes. He looked slightly red, and very annoyed.

“I apologize. I should not have taken advantage of you like—”

“The ice cream’s melted,” I said, heedless of both manners and the thrill his thickened voice sent racing through me. I looked down to my chest. The upper slopes of my boobs and the bodice of my lovely red dress were tan and white with gooey ice cream. “There must be a hole in the bag. It’s all over you, too. I hope that wasn’t an expensive suit.”

He closed both eyes. “It
was.
Very expensive.”

“Shit.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

Lady Rowena gazed across the crowded ballroom, her heart fluttering madly just as a dove would should it be confined in a rounded, breast-shaped cage. She gasped in horror and clutched her throat as she watched Sir Thomas Cholmondley-Featherstonehough, Bart., stride toward her beloved Raoul. The latter was standing negligently within a circle of young bucks, carelessly sipping from a flute of champagne, his dark eyes flashing around the room, his exquisitely handsome face showing disdain, boredom, and a soupçon of hauteur that belied his noble lineage. Rowena fluttered her dainty lace hanky at him as he turned her way, but his eyes passed unseeing over her.

“Sirrah, you have dishonored a lady. For that you will die upon the morrow,” Sir Thomas bellowed as he came to a stop before Raoul, throwing his glove at the duke.

Lord Raoul’s ebony brows rose in mock surprise. “You
annoy me, Cholmondley-Featherstonehough, you really do. Begone, puppy.”

“You refuse to give me satisfaction?”

Lady Rowena pushed forward between two matrons, the better to witness the scene. She was thrilled to death that dear, sweet Thomas—her childhood friend—had taken her seduction by the manly-thighed Raoul as a slight against her honor, but truthfully she didn’t want him hurt. Not seriously, anyway. Perhaps just a romantic dueling scar or two, although there was no doubt Raoul would be the victor should Thomas successfully call him out.

“I refuse.”

“Coward!”

Raoul took one long step forward and picked the baronet up by his neckcloth. “No man calls me that and lives to tell about it!”

“Then accept the challenge, damn you!” croaked Sir Thomas. Rowena gasped again, clutching her lace handkerchief to her mouth. Would he? Could he? Would her dashing Lord Raoul risk his life on her account?

Raoul tossed Sir Thomas across the room with a flick of his manly wrists. “I’ve dishonored no lady. Begone! You bore me.”

“You’ve taken Lady Rowena—”

“Rowena is no lady!” Raoul growled, and without a glance at her, he turned on his heel and strode from the room. Rowena tried very, very hard to faint.

“Ow!”

“
Peste!
If you’d just sit still, that wouldn’t happen.”

I rubbed my ear, looking with dismay at the spot of blood on my fingers.

“It’s just a tiny little nick, nothing to fuss over.”

I rubbed my ear again and glared in the mirror at Manuel. “I had to get the next chapter out of my bag. You want to find out what happens to Rowena, don’t you?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly. But you can read and sit still, yes?”

“Fine. What do you think of it so far?”

Manuel paused in combing my wet hair and tipped his head to the side while he considered my reflection in the mirror. He pursed his lips. He tugged on his earlobe. He made a rude body noise, flagged his hands in the air while muttering an apology, and then said, “It’s too slow, too boring. Bland, you know, tame, just like your hair when you came in here—that awful blunt cut! Not you, darling, just not you. What you need is something exciting and adventurous. I think you should have a mysterious Spaniard, you know, something gothic, like
Rebecca
—that’s all the rage now! Now,
that
was a movie, and the clothes! Oh, God, the clothes were to die for!”

“Gothic? You think I should add mystery to my book?” I looked down at the manuscript pages in my hands, wondering whether he thought I should add excitement and adventure to my life, my hair, or my story. Probably all three. “I suppose I could add a touch of mystery, if you think it will pick the story up.”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Definitely. Sit back, would you? No, head up, darling. Yes, a bit of mystery, that always makes a story just sing, don’t you think? A mysterious Spanish lover—now, that’s just a grand idea. Something exotic and unexpected, you know, always brings interest to an audience. I always try to bring the exotic and unexpected to my shows. Bully, bring me that mousse, will you? No,
not that one, the industrial-strength one. No, no! Oh, hell, I’ll get it, you’ll never find it as long as you’re wearing those ridiculous purple glasses.” Manuel patted me on the shoulder. “You just sit tight, chica, and I’ll be back in two tickety-boos.”

“Alex was right,” I grumbled as the famed Manuel Sorby-Ruiz waggled off to get the industrial-strength mousse.

“What was he right about?”

I glanced over to where Isabella was sitting in the chair next to mine, flipping through a fashion magazine. “He said that some things sound silly when Americans say them. I think
tickety-boo
is one of them. Honestly, Isabella, where did you find this guy? He’s the embodiment of a stereotypical gay hairdresser—all flamboyant
your hair should be a reflection of your inner goddess, not of the outer whore
-type comments. And to add insult to injury, he’s from Pittsburgh or somewhere god-awful like that! He’s just
not
what I would expect in a chic London salon.”

Isabella waved at the framed awards on the wall above the mirror facing me.
The World’s Greatest Hair Artist
blared out from one of them. I leaned in closer.

“He’s been named International Hairdresser of the Year three times,” she murmured, studying the magazine.

I left the hairdresser accolades and sidled over to a framed magazine article. “ ‘Revered by his peers, Manuel Sorby-Ruiz pioneered well-known cuts such as the White Russian, the Elf, and the Imogene Coca,’ ” I read out loud. “Huh. It says his motivating factor is to create ‘ordinary hair for ordinary people.’ ”

I considered that sentiment for a minute as I resumed
my seat and glared in the mirror at my wet head. With my hair skinned back I looked like a petulant seal. “I think that’s a bit insulting, really, saying he wants to make ordinary people look even more ordinary.”

“He’s very much in demand,” Isabella said, unconcerned, leisurely flipping a page.

“I’m sure he is, and I’m sure he’s very good, and I can’t thank you enough for getting me an appointment this morning, but truthfully, I’m not used to having my hair cut by”—I glanced at Manuel’s wall of fame and picked out a good line—“ ‘a god amongst hairdressers.’ ”

Isabella glanced up and smiled at my reflection. “He does have an ego, but I assure you it’s well deserved. Stop worrying and enjoy the experience. You’ll look wonderful when he’s done.”

“After paying ninety pounds for a simple cut and blowdry, I’d better look bloody fabulous,” I retorted, but I did so quietly because Manuel returned chattering nonstop, followed by a flunky toting several bottles of hair products and an armload of fluffy yellow towels.

Two hours and a head full of Manuel Sorby-Ruizbrand mousse later, I was walking through Covent Garden swinging my hair from side to side. Although I mourned the loss of my hair, I had to admit I liked the feeling as it swished on my bare neck. Perhaps this change would be good after all. Perhaps it was a sign my life was taking a turn for the better.

“It’s kicky!” I said, watching my hair in every window I passed. “I never thought I’d have kicky hair. Although it’s a bit gunky kicky right now, it’ll be truly kicky later, after I wash all of the steel-girder-strength mousse out of it.”

Isabella, who had been looking on indulgently while I
studied my hair from every possible angle, cast a horrified glance at my head. “Manuel said your hair was too thick to maintain that style without mousse.”

She nudged the bag of hair products he had pressed upon me as I left (to the tune of some £30, I found out later when I looked at the charge slip), adding, “It won’t look the same if you try it without following his instructions.”

“I have a neck,” I said in wonder as I toyed with the few tendrils he had snipped to softly frame my face. “Will you look at that? I have a neck! You know, Isabella, this may not be the tragedy I first thought it was; this may end up being a good thing. I mean, look at me! My hair is actually cute now. It’s so short. And it’s shorter in the back than the front! That’s so sexy! I actually look sexy! I’ve never looked sexy before. Hey, if I stand like this, and you were a man, would you fall to your knees before me?”

Isabella made a little face at my dramatic pose, grabbed my arm, and steered me toward the Lamb and Flag. “Come along, we won’t be able to get a table if you stand about admiring yourself much longer.”

I allowed her to hustle me down Rose Street to the ivy-covered pub and up a dark flight of stairs to a charming little restaurant. We squeezed into one of the last tables, ordered gin and tonics (Isabella’s with a twist of lemon, mine with half a lime—I have a little weakness for limes), decided on lunch, then sat back to enjoy the people-watching.

“That couple over there are tourists,” Isabella said quietly, nodding toward a man and woman in their mid thirties who were seated in the middle of the room.

I swiveled around to look at them. They weren’t wearing
anything that immediately stood up and shouted tourist. “How do you know that?”

A tiny smile touched her lips. “Watch them. They’re so busy looking around at the pub and everyone in it, they are hardly speaking to each other.”

I stopped gawking at everyone and everything in the pub and turned back to Isabella with a wry, “Sorry.”

She smiled an honest smile. “Don’t apologize, you’re not quite that bad.”

“It’s just that there’s so much to see,” I tried to explain. “I’ve never been anywhere except Disneyland, and this is so…
exotic
to me! I mean, I’m halfway around the world from home! In another country! I can’t quite wrap my mind around the distance issue.”

Isabella shrugged and took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Distance is all relative. What you think of as being halfway around the world is really just a phone call or e-mail away from your family and friends.”

I flinched a bit at that. I was supposed to have set up an Internet account as soon as I got settled, but hesitated to do so because it would mean my mother had instant access to me. Although she had telephoned after I first arrived, she told me she wasn’t going to waste good money calling when she could contact me for free via e-mail. I wasn’t about to tell Isabella about my embarrassing relationship with my mother, however. I was twenty-nine years old, not sixteen. I had been married, divorced, lived by myself, and had jobs. I just hadn’t done any of it with success.

I dragged my mind from contemplation of the mess that was my life, and did an experimental little head bob to feel the soft sweep of hair at the top of my neck. Manuel had trimmed it jaw length in the front, a bit higher
in the back, and took out some of the bulk by snipping it into a few soft layers. It was curly, cute, and totally unlike any other hairstyle I’d ever had.

“He was worth the ninety pounds,” I replied to Isabella’s knowing smile, and tackled my roast beef with gusto. “I can’t wait to show it to Alex.”

The words were out of my mouth before I even realized it. I stared at Isabella in surprise and horror. “That is—I just want to show him that everything ended up all right. After last night, I mean.”

A flush crept up my face as Isabella set her fork down carefully. “Oh?”

There was something possessive about that “Oh,” something that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Surely she couldn’t be having an affair with more than one man? If she was doin’ the nasty with Mr. Perfect Karl, she couldn’t be playing squishy-squishy with Alex, too. Or could she?

“Um…Isabella…”

She leaned over and touched my arm, her eyes glittering with emotion. “Alexander means a great deal to me, Alix. He is a very close, very dear friend.”

Right. No further warning was needed. That was the clearest
hands off
I’d ever had leveled at me. Now it was obvious why she wanted to pair me up with Karl—she wanted to dump him for Detective Inspector Hunk.

“When I said ‘last night,’ I meant last night when my hair caught on fire,” I clarified, nodding my head for emphasis. “Not last night when we got ice cream all over each other.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth while she toyed with the slight bit of lemon skin in her drink.

“It sounds like you had a much more adventuresome
evening than I had imagined. I take it you and Alexander—”

“No, of course not!” I wanted to smack my forehead over my stupidity. I may be many things, but I have a rule against dallying with men who are involved elsewhere, and yet that was what I was about to do last evening when the ice cream saved me.

I looked at Isabella, speechless, wondering if my guilt was written on my face for all to see. “How can you think I would…you know…with Alex? The thing with the ice cream isn’t what you think. It was the only cold thing I had, so I put it on his eye. It melted,” I finished lamely, positive by the look in her cool blue-eyed gaze that she suspected the worst.

“Ice cream does that,” she agreed easily.

“Yes, well, you don’t have to worry, nothing happened except I ruined his suit with the ice cream.” I wasn’t about to tell her I got it on my dress as well, because then I’d have to explain just what I was doing on top of him when the ice cream spread.

A faint line of puzzlement creased her brow. “Why would I worry?”

Why indeed? I looked at Isabella’s chic silk suit that matched her eyes, and knew I posed no threat to her. Mind you, Alex hadn’t seemed to be repulsed by me the past evening—in fact, he seemed rather to approve of the whole general layout that was me. I grew a bit warm remembering the form his approval had taken, and promptly damned myself for sitting in front of his significant other as I thought about all of the things I wanted to do to him.

“Are you all right? You’ve turned red. Are you
blushing
about something?”

Amusement sparkled in her eyes, proving to me that she
had
suspected the worst, and clearly felt confident of her own hold on Alex. Still, I felt a little distraction would be timely. “I’m fine, just a bit warm. Where do you think the best place is for me to buy a boom box?”

“A what?”

“A CD player. Stephanie either doesn’t have one, or if she did, she took it with her. I’m dying for a little music.”