Impulse

by Lass Small

  Good grief! She stood there as if she was fourteen again and it was her first non-party kiss, for God’s sake. He lifted his head and smiled at her; and he had creases at the corners of his eyes that were enormously attractive. She took an unsteady breath as a part of her mind said: Hmm, this might be very, very nice!

  “If your Charity is part of our family, her mother was Trilby Cougar Winsome. Trilby was my great-great-aunt. Apparently— from the stories— she was a pistol. Unpredictable. Are you that way, too?”

  He knew! “No.” Her voice was thin. He couldn’t possibly know.

  “I’m Charles Cougar. My friends call me Chas. So do cousins, Cousin Amy.”

  “Cougar? Are you kin to Indiana’s John Cougar Mellencamp?”

  “Cougar isn’t John Mellencamp’s real name. When he first started, his record company named him John Cougar. Our name comes down three hundred years from Billy Cougar. He was a hunter in the Appalachian system. He wore a cougar’s skin on his back with the cat’s head on his head. That’s how he got his name.

  “We know he was a Brit. An Englishman. But we have no idea if he was a younger son come here to the New World to make his way, or if he was deported.” He grinned at her. “But he was a hunter, a trader and an organizer.”

  “Yes.” She was still not working on all cylinders. She was distracted by the fact that she was trying to figure out a way to get another chance at a cousinly kiss. “How did you know my name?”

  “I was in back of you when you registered.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t being too swift at conversational allure. If she planned to entice this man, she needed to be a great deal more sparkling and interesting. She inquired politely, “Did your wife come with you?”

  He couldn’t prevent a laugh. He controlled it quickly, but he had laughed. He replied nicely, “I’m not married, are you?”

  She solemnly shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. Why was he so amused?

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” he suggested. “It’s getting a little wet out here.” He took her arm, and they went on back.

  The shells bumped against her thighs as she lengthened her stride to keep up. She felt like a fool. She ought to tell him right now she was a sham. Yes. She took a breath and said, “Ah...”

  “You will come to the wedding? It’s going to be in those rooms off the lobby. With the fountains? Have you seen them? If it’s still raining, they’ll cover the roof so it’ll be warm enough. You will come?”

  She nodded, still very serious, but she realized just how fragile this opportunity was. She needed to take hold and use it. No man would be tongue-tied and silent. He’d flirt a little and smile. Did men have to work this hard?

  She stretched her mouth incredibly and managed a small grin. Then the whole ridiculous situation hit her funny bone, and she laughed. She boldly took his hand and pushed back her hood enough so that she could look up at him, striding along beside her, and she actually swung his hand a little as she laughed again.

  He grinned back and his big, warm hand enclosed her small, cold, wet one. He was playing along! Did preying men feel this sense of exhilaration? But as she watched his smile, her eyes lifted to his, and his eyes were guarded. He was suspicious of her.

  Did she look like a predator? A predator like some of the men who had pursued her? There are men who women instantly recognize as dangerous so they can avoid them. Had her intent changed her into something else? Had it changed her from the safe, businesslike woman into a huntress? Did her very pores smell of danger to men, telling them to beware?

  And Amy considered that the men who looked predatory had probably once looked bland and safe. Criminals eventually had a look about them that was hard and scary. It could well be that women changed, too, as their life-style was changed, and...

  Such thinking was all completely idiotic. She’d been working too hard. Her imagination had never taken control this way, before now. Of course she’d never before deliberately set out to seduce a man.

  “Where is your home?” Chas asked.

  She blinked once to come back to the reality of being with Chas. “Home? A suitcase. I travel.”

  “Oh? And what makes Amy run?”

  “I’m in research. Polls.” That wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “That must be interesting. What do you ask?”

  “Depends on what we’re researching.”

  “House to house?” he inquired.

  “That, too, depends on what we’re researching.”

  “Phone banks? Boiler-room surveys?”

  “Even that sometimes.” Her reply was also true.

  “What is your firm?”

  “Freelance.” She had to smile at his effort to pin her down. He probably would never fully know how adroit she had been in replying. Too bad. He would appreciate the game.

  Now, how did she know he’d appreciate her intrusive game? If he knew she was being tricky, it would more than likely make him mad. Men didn’t like being fooled.

  But what he liked didn’t matter. It was what she liked or wanted that mattered. And she could well decide to want Charles Cougar. Cougar. Men were supposed to walk like cats. He walked like a hunter of cats.

  They separated to change into dry clothing and met in the glassed corner of her floor’s discreet nook of chairs and tables. He rose as she came around the corner to him, and he suggested, “Why don’t we go up on sixth and meet the others?”

  “Others? There’re more of you?”

  “Oh, yes. And not all of us could come. So there are even more of your newfound family for you to meet another time.”

  He said “another time” so casually, as if there could be a future for them. “How many of you are there?”

  “They all have kids so fast we ought to be called rabbits instead of cougars. I don’t know what the latest count could be. We’ll see if anyone on sixth knows. Come on. They’re dying to talk to you. And of course you’ll go to the wedding. Will you need a gown?”

  She shook her head. He went on, “Some of the pools are heated. We might swim later, before supper. We’re on our own tonight. Do you play chess?” He gestured to the waist-high chess pieces on the clever brick board sitting idle in the soft rain.

  Again she shook her head.

  “Well, how about putting? When the rain stops, we can do that?”

  She nodded. She’d been a runner up in a golf competition at their club during the summer she was twenty. She could handle golf.

  He was telling her, “Tomorrow night’s the bachelor’s dinner in the main dining room. Everybody goes to the dinner. That’ll be fun. You’ll learn a lot about the family skeletons there. Tad’s family are nice people. You’ll have a good time.”

  They were inviting the fox right into the chicken house? She smiled in a foxy way. It would be an experience. What a story this would make when she next saw her best friend Elsie! Elsie would say, “You did what? I don’t believe it.”

  But Elsie knew Amy didn’t have enough imagination to make up this impulsive madness. Elsie would have to believe it. Or...would she ever tell Elsie? She’d have to wait and see how it all turned out.

  They went up to the sixth floor where the wing’s whole series of suites were opened together, taken over by the Cougar Clan. Chas and Amy went from suite to suite and were welcomed with laughter and chatter. Amy kept saying, “I may not be any kin at all!” The truth can be said so that one is safely misunderstood and accepted. How strange that was.

  “If you aren’t, we’ll adopt you,” Matt announced, and Connie gave Amy a rather cool look.

  So Matt was a flirt? Connie was jealous? Would Connie finally move in with Matt just to keep him? Ah, What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! How unknowingly we influence other lives. Would her bold intrusion cause Connie to do something rash? Would she do something she wouldn’t ordinarily have done?

  The Cougars accepted Amy. That unquestioning acceptance made her a little uncomfortable. And
Chas stayed close. He would say, “I’ll tell her about it and see to it she gets there.” And that easily, Chas established them as a pair.

  Did women fall into men’s laps this readily? Did men simply decide who they wanted and then just wait for it to happen? It was amazing! No wonder men were womenizers. There was no sweat to it at all.

  Chas, the catch of the entire clan, was hers! And it was he who’d paired them off. After this, she should be able to get him into bed in two days at least. By Saturday. Right on schedule.

  The clan all had lunch together, still talking. The clouds broke, the sun came out, the sand absorbed the rain and dried on top.

  The wedding dresses arrived, and some of the women went to try on the dresses. Tad was teased about whether or not he had the ring or had ordered the flowers. He was tolerant. For Amy, it was like really being a member of a large clan. It was nice.

  After lunch, Chas pulled Amy to her feet and said they were leaving. They made their goodbyes and went back out into the bright afternoon. They strolled through the marvelous myriad latticed walkways, around and over and throughout the complex, through the open and sometimes on hidden, secret stairs.

  As they chatted quite casually, Chas said, “Since you’re a cousin, I wonder if you’d volunteer to help out the family. My cou— our cousin Robert and his family, with four kids, haven’t a reservation.”

  Chas explained in an aside, “The eldest didn’t have chicken pox after all. If you wouldn’t mind, I could bunk with you, and they could have my place.” Chas’s face was bland and logical.

  He elaborated, “If we can’t double up enough, they’ll have to stay at another hotel, and they’ll miss half of the fun. I can give them my suite, but I don’t want to move away from the hotel, either. How about letting me sleep on your living room couch?”

  Now that was fast! In the space of a couple of hours, she’d not only been accepted as a cousin into their clan, but now Chas was using “family connections” to move into her suite. Good grief!

  Amy’s mouth fell open and she gasped. Then as her blue eyes hit his very green, very steady watching eyes, she thought: In this situation, a man would jump at the chance! Really? This wasn’t... She hadn’t planned... This was really very fast. She said, “Uh...”

  “We’re cousins,” he reminded her mildly. “It would be okay.”

  “Well... Uh...”

  “Some problem?”

  “No, no. I just...” But she couldn’t think what she just. He was going to move into her suite— just like that! If he did move in, it would make the maximum opportunity syndrome very maximum, all right.

  She couldn’t get her conscience-stricken vocal chords to do anything. But with some concentration she got her head to go up and down— once each way.

  He accepted that lame movement as agreement and said, “Robert and Jean will be so glad. This way, in my suite, they can close the door on the kids and have the living room sofa bed all to themselves and not have all of them jammed together into one room. That’s restrictive for couples with kids.” He added that thoughtfully.

  He still held her hand as they walked along. She’d met him about— what— five hours ago? And here they were, walking along, holding hands. He’d already kissed her within the first minute, and now he was going to move into her suite.

  Her seduction was really going along very quickly. She ought to be jubilant with things working out so well. But instead, she felt rather as if she’d stepped on a merry-go-round and was having a little trouble balancing to its speed as it carried her around quite madly.

  He said with quick efficiency, “I’ll just run upstairs and nab Robert to tell him the good news, and I’ll be down to your suite with my things in about five minutes. If we go by your place, you can let me have your lock card and wait for me there.”

  So that’s what Amy found herself doing. They took the garage elevator up to the third floor and walked around the deck to her place. She unlocked her door, handed him the card and he left.

  Bemused, she wandered on through the bedroom, down the bath hall and stood in the living room. She was feeling as if she’d just now stepped off that merry-go-round and was unsure which direction she was supposed to go.

  It did occur to her then that surely some of Chas’s clansmen had an extra bed. But if she was intent on seducing Chas, this certainly presented a remarkable opportunity. Another handy opportunity.

  She had snatched the first one, and now here she was, that much closer to her goal. Any man would be dancing and grinning and exuberant!

  Her prize was at hand! And there she stood, wide-eyed and astonished. It would begin. So easily! Actually, it had started. How would it end?

  Her deck door opened, and Chas busily wheeled in a double-ended hanger luggage cart. He efficiently emptied it as she simply stood there and watched, with her arms hanging from her shoulders.

  He put things in the bath, in the bedroom closet and in the vacant bottom drawer. He added things to the refrigerator. He was moving in.

  He smiled, gorgeously. “We’ll have to go down to re-register me with you. I’ll split the bill. No long-distance calls without my okay. Know anyone in China? India?”

  Very seriously, she shook her head.

  “Peru?” He was being funny and enjoying it.

  But he was also laying down rules. She understood that. He was. It was her suite, and he was laying down the rules.

  Well, that was good. There had to be some ground rules if they were going to share the suite. He in the living room, and she in the bedroom.

  Three

  Chas and Amy went back up to the sixth floor to find out if there were any specific clan plans, which they might want to consider. They found a rather organized chaos. Some of the kin were planning to fish in the Gulf the next morning, and some were driving over to Disney World.

  And as they moved around, they encountered another cousin, Kenneth Cougar, who was promising Sally he would be back the next night for the bachelor’s party.

  “Leaving us, Ken?” Chas asked.

  “Just a quick trip.” Ken named the city. “I have to see a rising kingpin, Martin Durwood, and this is a good opportunity.”

  “Martin Durwood?” Amy found herself asking.

  “Yes. Know him?”

  To leave the festivities, the meeting with Martin Durwood would have to be important to Ken, her new “cousin.” Amy replied, “Yes.” Then she inquired carefully, “Do you know him?”

  “No. Not really.” Ken gave her a steady, measuring glance.

  She cautioned, “Be careful.”

  Both men focused on Amy almost as if they had opened second eyelids, their gazes were so intent and piercing. Ken asked, “Why?”

  Chas asked, “How do you know Martin Durwood?”

  Tellingly, she replied to Chas first, “A...survey.” She frowned a little at Ken. “What I have is privileged. Just be careful.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “There’s a saying. Let’s see. Yes, ‘If you shake hands with him, count your fingers.’”

  “Oh?” said Ken. He lifted his head a little, intensely alert. Then he lowered it as he pushed up his lower lip and nodded several very small movements.

  Chas then told Ken, “Listen to her.”

  And Ken smiled at Amy. “Thanks, cousin. I’ll let you know tomorrow night what I find out.” He gave Amy a rather formal nod with a warm smile. As he left, Ken clapped Chas on his shoulder and quite cheerfully said, “You lucky bastard.”

  And for some reason, Chas laughed.

  It was just as Elsie always said: Men are different.

  It was amazing for Amy to be absorbed into the wider group of strange people and accepted by them as one of them, without any effort on her part. Again she understood it was Chas who had maneuvered the phenomenon. So it was their trust in Chas that was involved. He had accepted her, therefore the rest did.

  * * *

  The most startling thing was how freely they spoke
of the most intimate things. As Amy had thought once before, in listening to them in the elevator, they were fortunate she wasn’t from a gossip magazine.

  As sometimes happens in a crowd, a quiet fell, and one conversation suddenly became general. A cousin was saying, “Well, after that they couldn’t allow her to be buried in the family plot. She’s off to one side, at the edge of the cemetery.”

  “Who?” someone asked.

  Another cousin hastened to assure them, “She wasn’t an in-law. That would account for several who never made the family plot, but Letty was a Cougar. Letty Cougar Milstone Wiggins LaCross Bernard. Those are the ones she married.”

  “It wasn’t her interest in men that shocked everyone,” a female cousin said in a fact-keeping way.

  “No. You’re right,” agreed another cousin. “The Cougars have always had a strong attraction for the opposite sex.”

  That caused a good, indulgent chuckle among those cousins and siblings in the crowded suite.

  But then the subject was changed, the different areas of the completely opened suite complexes led to more separate conversations.

  Amy never did find out what Letty had done to be forbidden the family burial plot. Think of being shunned even in death! She wondered if Letty wouldn’t have wanted to be planted in another place entirely.

  Before long, the cousins and siblings drifted outside. Especially the northerners wanted to be outside in the lovely March day. They shed jackets in the sunshine to walk and stroll the beach and select shells or play some of the games available.

  * * *

  Amy had never been anywhere in all her life where she suddenly knew so many people. It was marvelous fun to hear shouts of encouragement when she and Chas were in one of the paddleboats. Or to be watched by others as they used the putting course. And the critical observation with snide remarks when they were a part of a tennis foursome.

  Men can feel competitive in sports with women, but Chas didn’t. She could never match his physical strength, but he paced himself so that their game was fun, and she could show off. He was an unusual man.