“It’s more personal than anything. I’ll be the guy who stands next to a piece of rock all day, growling at anyone who gets too close.”
“A piece of Ofaria, you mean,” she corrected with all seriousness. “It’s still an honor.”
He slid his hands into his pockets, wishing he could tell when people didn’t want to hear wisecracks. “Absolutely. It is.”
At length, she asked, “Mind if I finish my glass?”
“Not at all.”
She didn’t immediately take up her glass. First, oddly, she went to the sink and turned on the water. She ran her hands under the stream, her wrists graceful, her fingers relaxed. She whispered Ofarian and the water obeyed, trickling in thin rivulets around her knuckles and palms in a discernible pattern. Seemed like he wasn’t the only one with strange habits.
When she was done, she ignored a towel and spoke the words to evaporate the liquid. She reached for the Zinfandel.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room?”
David nodded, even though her back was to him. A palpable excitement ballooned inside him, as though all their previous interactions had led up to this moment—to the day they’d be given a chance to start again on their own terms.
A year after the skeleton prank in high school, he still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to talk to her directly. So he’d done what he did best, and devised another stunt specifically to give him an excuse to approach her and be rewarded by her attention.
Junior year Creative Writing, and Mrs. Harris had assigned an awesome first semester final. She’d given the class a single word—love—and told them to present something—anything—creative associated with that word. It didn’t even have to be writing.
David had found a quote by Charles Morgan, a novelist he’d never heard of, that read: “There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.”
Perfect, he’d thought.
He had it printed on a thousand tiny slips of paper, crumpled them up, then stuffed them all into a bed sheet. Between second and third periods, he’d hung that sheet above the Creative Writing classroom door. As he worked, he’d turned to the gorgeous, studious, copper-haired girl whose desk was conveniently closest to the door.
“Hold this,” he’d said, and handed her the string attached to the draped sheet. “And don’t let go, or you’ll ruin the surprise.”
When he’d winked, she’d positively bloomed. But as he slid that string from her fingers, deliberately touching her, she’d swallowed that brilliant smile. The birth of the deer-in-headlights look.
When Mrs. Harris had sauntered into the classroom, clipboard at her hip, David had released the string, showering the teacher in tiny slips of paper. He went to one knee and shouted, “There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved, Mrs. Harris! It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder!”
He’d gotten an A.
The sound of wine splashing into a glass brought him back to the present. Twelve years gone, and just now he and Kelsey were moving forward. At least, he hoped they were.
He turned toward her living room and stopped. “I can’t get to the couch,” he called over his shoulder. “There’s a giant, black road block.”
“Just step over him.” She came to David’s side. “He won’t move.”
“I don’t know if my leg goes that high.”
She giggled. Actually giggled. And he was a goner.
David raised a dubious eyebrow. “Will he go after me again?”
“He’s lying down. You could seriously do anything to him right now and he won’t move.”
“Anything, you say?” David lowered himself to the floor, right next to Dante, who blinked slowly at him. David snatched the TV remote from where it balanced on the corner of the coffee table. “What if I put this on him?”
Kelsey edged around them to take a seat on the sofa. “Yep.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She smiled into her wineglass. “Try it.”
So he balanced the long, flat remote on Dante’s wide, round belly. The stupid cat just pressed his head to the carpet as if to say, “More. Bring it.”
“Here.” Kelsey tossed him another remote, this one to the receiver. He laid it next to the other. Dante didn’t even twitch.
She slid off the couch, her eyes mischievous, her hand stretching for a small, circular candle. “Now this.”
David looked at the candle, then back into her glittering eyes, and shook his head. “You do it. But let’s make it interesting.”
“Yeah?” Her fingers tightened on her wineglass, little ovals of heat surrounding the tips.
“Yeah. Winner gets to ask a question. Any question. Loser has to answer. Truthfully.”
She sucked in a breath, held it, and he realized he’d been holding his, too. Somewhere between the front door and her living room rug, this had turned personal. Right at that moment, he had no desire to ask her about the Pritcharts.
She licked her lips, and though it wasn’t the first time the sight of her had gotten his dick hard, it was the most intense, because it was just the two of them, alone for the very first time in a quiet room.
“Okay.” She exhaled, looking alternately excited and scared.
They settled on opposite sides of the black, furry monstrosity, whose side moved up and down under the two remotes. Kelsey set her wineglass aside and placed the little green candle near Dante’s tail. She sat back, satisfied, a dare quirking her lips.
This was how he’d always wanted to be with her. A man and a woman with nothing in between—not books or school or work or duty. Or social classes or edicts from their elders.
Nothing except . . . the World’s Largest Cat.
“So,” he said, looking around and finding a blue crayon wedged next to the TV. He’d forgotten about her small nieces and nephews. He laid the crayon between the remotes. “Are you at the clinic tomorrow night? Or can you go to the Star Gala?”
The crayon wobbled, but eventually steadied.
She pressed her lips together in disappointment. “Thought for sure that would roll off.”
He considered throwing the game, just to find out what she was so desperate to ask.
“The gala,” he prompted. “Are you going?”
She pulled out a little statue of a cat carved from stone, and eyed him sideways. “You haven’t won.”
“That’s not what I want to ask you.”
She matched his stare for a long second, then leaned forward and balanced the statue on a fold of fat near Dante’s back leg. “I’m closing the clinic for the gala. I’ll be there.”
“Good.” He looked down at the game board. “All you left me was the neck and head!”
The sly grin she threw him was wonderfully evil. Deliciously seductive. It made him want to push the cat aside, snag the straps of her tank top and bra, and pull her to him. She’d kiss like she’d grinned just now, full of secrets and heat.
“It’s your turn,” she prodded.
Dante’s tail thwapped against the rug. David looked around for a playing piece. There, on the end table, sat her anemic wallet—because Kelsey Evans would never carry along extraneous items. He’d bet she had her license in there, maybe one credit card, maybe a picture of her brother and his kids. When David stretched for the wallet, she quietly gasped.
“This okay?” he asked.
“Sure.” Her voice had gone thready.
He bent over the cat. “Dante, sorry. She’s making me do it.”
Though the tail slapped harder, Dante didn’t move as David nudged the wallet edgewise into the narrow space left on his neck, not quite on his forbidden head.
Kelsey chewed her lip. David couldn’t tell if she feared losing or winning more. To be fair, neither did he.