The Great Scot
Page 33
Yeah, it’s me. I’m in your living room. I managed to figure out you had a special guest when I was in the air. You and I need to talk. It’s council business.
Right now? Couldn’t you go hit the bars for a couple of hours and come back later? Maybe take a nice long night walk on the beach?
Sayblee checked her irritation, biting her lip before thinking tersely, Adalbert sent me.
She waited for a reply, but there was no thought, no sound but the rustle of bedclothes and then the soft murmur of the woman asking a question. Felix’s low voice rumbled an answer. More rustling. Then there was silence. Sayblee sighed and turned her mind away from Felix and what was going on in the bedroom and sat down on the couch. She tried to get comfortable, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, smoothing the sleeves of her blouse, the fabric of her skirt on her thighs. She pushed her hair away from her face and then pulled it forward, finally sighing and tying it back with a band she pulled from her pocket.
She looked toward the bedroom door, leaned forward, sat back. Then she stood up, realizing she didn’t want to be lower than Felix when he came into the room, giving him the advantage of looking down at her. She walked to the window, stared out at the ocean that was flat and strangely calm, the moon a pan of white on its surface.
“Couldn’t you have knocked?” Felix said, walking into the room shirtless and barely wearing the Levi’s he was slowly buttoning up. “I could have arranged a later date with the fair maiden Roxanne. You know I always say business and then pleasure.” He paused as he spotted the shirt on the floor, bent down, and picked it up with a crooked finger, smiling to himself.
Sayblee swallowed, breathed in, kept her mind closed tight because God! she couldn’t let him know how she was seeing him at this very moment in the living room’s soft light. Impossibly, he looked even better than he had the year before, his tall, lean body golden tan from all his important Croyant visits to the beach and the pool and hot tub. He must also have crucial Moyenne contacts at the gym, his shoulders, arms, and abs tight and firm, each muscle clear under the tight gold of his skin. Clearly, he worked out for hours every day. His black hair was lit gold at the ends by days on Hawaiian waves and fell down his back like a silk curtain. His smiled, watching her with his almost-green eyes, his expression full of good humor, even though she’d interrupted him in his pleasure.
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