by Sharon
"I saw him." Elaborately calm, Jennifer removed the wire cage cover. "Maybe he wants to check out a book."
"Hum. You must not have noticed the way he's watching you. He wants to check out a librarian. I'll take the rest of the hour. You go talk to him. If he stands around much longer like that, one of us may go and attack him. We're only human. Oh, my Lord, you aren't really intending to pick that... that thing up, are you?"
"Yes." Jinx dove under a pile of bedding as Jennifer tried awkwardly to scoop him up. "It's important for me to show no fear. Positive early experiences with animals are essential to a child's development of—" She broke off, and said sotto voce into the cage, "Quit the funny business, you furry little fink, or I'll trade you in on a hamster."
Lydia laughed surreptitiously. "I don't see how you can touch it. It looks like a—"
"I know what it looks like," Jennifer said grimly, lifting Jinx. "If Mr. Greenjeans can do it, I can do it." Turning to her innocent audience, she tried to let nothing show in her face except warm delight in and tolerance for the unique varieties of animal life on the green earth. "Jinx is a lot like a mouse. In fact, he comes from the same family," she exclaimed enthusiastically, as if that were a great thing, She loved animals; studying and watching them had always seemed to her one of the chief pleasures in life, but she knew her strong feelings had the dewy-eyed sentimentality of a Bambi-syndrome dilettante. When it came to practical experience, she had virtually none.
"You may come up one at a time and say hello to him by petting him very carefully with one finger." She stroked his back with her forefinger to illustrate. Jinx, meanwhile, had stepped experimentally out onto her wrist with the cautious air of someone testing a rickety foot bridge. A knee-high towhead with jam on his mouth ran up.
"Me first! Me first!" he said, poking an inquisitive finger into Jinx's face. Jinx, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, skittered into Jennifer's sleeve and up her arm without looking backward, dashed across the no-man's land of her chest to her other shoulder, his little body making a wiggly hump before it plunged down her back.
The children loved it, and in any other circumstances she would have delighted in their tinkling splashes of laughter. But Jinx had tiny sharp little claws, and her tucked blouse prevented his egress. He lost patience, poking his tickling nose, wiggling his body, searching for a foothold at the base of her spine.
Smiling weakly, with shivers skittering up and down her back, she said, "Silly Jinx. Do you see that, boys and girls? Jinx is playing with Miss Jennifer." Then, the B-movie mobster aside to Lydia: "Please. Get him out!"
"Oh no. No way. I feel for you, believe me, but one touch of that glorified mouse and I'm likely to pass out. Untuck your blouse and shake him out."
"I couldn't! Poor little guy, he might get hurt." Not only the potential fall but an excited stampede of plastic snowbooted feet could be highly dangerous to Jinx's future.
"For heaven's sake then, slip into the staff room and get Eleanor to help you," Lydia hissed with a grin. "I'll read the kids a couple of story books. Scoot!"
Because it was well nigh impossible to maintain any dignity when the person inside the poised facade was mentally hopping around the room shrieking "eeek," she gave the laughing children a sickly grin. She told them she'd be back soon and beat a hasty retreat toward the staff door. But the commotion had drawn Eleanor, who was looking on in a rather aghast way from the encyclopedia case where, Jennifer was alarmed to see, Philip Brooks was still comfortably established.
"Hello, Philip," she said, a little breathlessly, and directed a pleading look at Eleanor in passing. "Eleanor, if I could borrow you for a moment or two in the staff room..."
Assuming that Eleanor would follow her directly, she fled to the staff room with Jinx digging at the waistband of her slacks. Waiting alone in the small room, she rested her hands against the paper-jumbled desk, closing her eyes and pulling in a long restorative breath. Her heart was engaging in the maniacal syncopation that she had come to know as the Philip Brooks rhythm.
Behind her, the staff room door closed.
"Eleanor, thank you. Please hurry. I think he's chewing on the elastic of my underpants—"
A gentle suggestive finger found the slight hollow behind her neck and traced slowly downward.
There was no mistaking her body's response to that touch.
"Philip—" she whispered.
"There's no understanding it, but Eleanor didn't seem especially thrilled with the idea of plucking up Jinx from his travels. It wasn't very difficult to convince her to yield the floor to a specialist," he said.
Firm hands turned her body, and she found herself staring up into smiling light-filled eyes.
"Poor Miss Jennifer's in a fix," he murmured, his fingers slipping down her body until they reached the first button of her blouse, the base of his palms barely brushing the upper rise of her breasts, and she felt a soft puff of sensual awareness spreading in her chest. His lips touched hers briefly and the top button of her blouse slipped open.
For a moment, her desire to press herself fully into his embrace overcame her, but whiskers tickled her back and her ill-functioning sense of self-preservation reared its abashed head enough to bring her to her senses. Drawing away, fumbling to pull her blouse closed, she gasped out, "Jinx is in back."
"I know." His dark brows lifted innocently. The long mouth quirked. "But how can I get my hand underneath your shirt if it's buttoned so tightly? Sit down." He pressed her gently onto the edge of the desk chair. "Don't worry. I'll fish out Jinx for you. Relax and rest your worried head against my—" He glanced down teasingly as though he were estimating which part of his anatomy her head would fall against. "Let's call it my stomach."
He could call it anything he wanted, but if she laid her cheek sideways, it would not have been against his stomach. Her upper body seemed to shock into a new state of wakefulness as his fingers twisted under her collar, following the curve of her back downward.
"When I came in, I never guessed I'd have this charming opportunity to grope under your—Hold still! I won't be responsible for the consequences if he runs around in front and decides to snuggle up against the warmth of your—" Dissolving into laughter at her reaction, "No, no. Hush now, darling. Don't try to get up. I've almost got him. There!"
Her shoulders trembled under the flood of receding tension as his graceful thighs moved backward a step and his hand moved up and out of her shirt.
She watched Philip carry Jinx toward his face on an upturned palm, churring softly to the tiny gerbil. Jinx stretched up on tiptoe to peer alertly into Philip's eyes, sniffing with affection and then with ravenous interest as Philip produced a sunflower seed from his pocket.
Philip smiled as the gerbil took the seed in its forepaws and deftly slit the shell. Studying Jinx while he munched, he said, "You really know how to liven up a story hour. Why'd you decide to become a librarian?"
Shaking herself out of her amazement that he just happened to have a pocketful of Jinx's favorite treat, she began to close her blouse with fingers that trembled. "When I was eight years old, I was carrying a stack of books to the checkout desk in my public library and a boy pushed me from behind as a joke. When I dropped my books on the floor, one of the librarians shushed me angrily. It was very traumatic because I was a quiet child and no one had ever scolded me in public. I decided that when I grew up I'd have a library too, but my library would never be like hers."
His eyes strayed briefly, thoughtfully, to hers before he emptied the few papers from the wicker waste basket and lowered Jinx inside with a scattering of sunflower seeds. Downy-light as the touch of his eyes had been, she felt entered, analyzed, absorbed.... Without the gerbil in his hand, he looked much more dangerous. Trying to cloak her inner desperation, she sped on, "Everyone said they'd graduate me with a bun on the back of my head and a pencil stuck in it but as you can see, I've cut my hair and..."
His fingers in her hair, penetrating to her scalp,
running along the edge of her ear brought her words to a warbling halt.
"I like your hair short," he murmured, dropping a soft kiss on the curve of her throat. "It's cute. And you have a lovely neck."
An easy motion of his hand brought a chair in front of hers and he sat down facing her, his body very close, one of his knees separating hers. Her breath caught at the sudden pleasure-filled uplift in her abdomen from the pressure of his leg inside her thigh. Her gaze dropped involuntarily to his legs. There was a mesmeric fascination in the way his lean muscles tugged at the age-polished denim, and she found herself following the taut line upward with her eyes until it occurred to her what she was doing. Her cheeks were flooding with color as she tried to pretend that she had only been trying to study the logo on his faded sweatshirt. She recognized the famous alien there with a jolt.
"E.T.?", she asked suddenly.
"Yes. Shall I show you how to turn on my heart light?"
Her gaze flew to his and held there suspended in the perception and tenderness and dancing light she saw in his eyes.
Giving her a little grin, he began to walk two fingers up her thigh, murmuring, "Eensy weensy spider..."
Seeing that she was continuing to stare at him in the transfixed way he was not unaccustomed to receiving from women, he tried again. "There's no telling what Jinx might have been up to under your shirt. You'd better let me check your underwear."
Her deepening flush and steady wide-eyed gaze, the engaging rise and fall of her breasts against the light fabric of her blouse, the dusky barely parted lips, were drawing deep-rooted answers from his senses; and his desire to have his arms filled with her became almost as great as his desire to make her smile. Holding her waist in a light clasp, he drew her toward him, setting her on his leg with her thighs straddling one of his. What the pressure of her delicately hugging thighs aroused in him showed in his voice as he murmured, "You make a ravishing monkey." One of his palms slipped upward to massage her neck, bringing her lips slowly toward his. "Want to monkey around?"
But her warm unsteady fingers covered his mouth gently, a stubborn mute barrier. Her other hand pressed shakily against his chest, begging for space.
"Philip, no."
Under his hands he could feel the tense hold of her body, the winsome trembling in her thighs. He could sense her lacerating inner struggle against the violent flame that was the mirror of his own. He searched her expressive brown eyes.
"No?" he asked.
"No." She whispered the word and tried to slide away, her warm inner thighs brushing over his jeans. His hands stopped her.
"Why?"
"Because—Philip, please. Let me go. I can't think with my—with your leg in between..."
He released her and watched her go to stand against the desk, closing her eyes, catching the edge in a pale-knuckled grip. It struck him then that she was saying no to more than the kiss. She was saying no to everything. There was an odd despair in her face and he echoed that as he had her desire. In a lifetime of hearing yes, the first shy, sane voice to break the babble that his life had become was telling him no. Don't you want to be my redemption? he thought. He tried to choose what he would feel, to corral and control and confront it, but the emotions were too new, too unfamiliar.
She watched him stand, glance around the room in a distracted restless fashion, and then absently lift a nearly empty roll of paper towels from an upper shelf. He removed the last paper sheets, and selecting scissors from the pencil can, cut the cardboard roll in half. For a bewildered moment, she had no idea what he was doing. Then she saw him set the cardboard rolls in the wicker basket. After a cautious minute, the gerbil came to sniff at them, and then darted inside one. Philip had made a toy for Jinx. It was a small thing, but it touched her. Her throat grew uncomfortably tight as he sat back down facing her, his dramatic, endless legs stretched out with the wine-colored boots crossed at the ankle, the shapeless cling of the sweatshirt outlining the hard modeling of his upper body. He met her eyes and repeated, "Why?"
The subtle tracing of feeling she had seen earlier on his face seemed to have vanished and she began to wonder if it had been there at all. The blue eyes were only clear and curious, the long mouth relaxed. She had never felt less articulate.
"It would be too complicated," she said.
His head tilted slightly. His eyes affected interest. "Is that based in something concrete or is this more of the 'I don't trust men because they're strange and have body parts that change size' doctrine?"
"If you think I'm that ridiculous, it's a wonder I intrigue you at all."
That drew a smile. "When you're ridiculous, you're wonderful. We only begin to have problems when you try to be consistent."
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, the action unconsciously drawing her tense attention back to the taut pull of fabric over his hip bones. Pummeling herself mentally, she watched him stand once more—the restlessness again, what did it mean? He gave Jinx another sunflower seed. His gaze strayed around the room. It lit softly, suddenly, on the Cougar Club calendar and the contraction in her throat spread downward to her stomach when he reached out one patrician hand to flip the pages open to July. Dispassionately, he surveyed the beautiful nude photograph of himself.
"It's because I strip, isn't it?" He looked up at her and gave her a smile of heart-stopping charm. "Don't think another thing about it. I'm sure everyone who comes to the show is only interested in my mind."
She turned away, fighting to enforce the slipping hold on her will. He came to her and caught hold of her shoulders, bringing her to him. She sensed something in him that reminded her queerly of exhaustion as he laid his forehead against hers, his fingers gently kneading through her thin blouse.
"Jenny, Jenny... Why do you have to make this a problem?" he whispered. He must have felt her resistance, her fierce hold to decisions made in cooler moments, because he raised his head, looking down into her worried eyes, his hands resting loosely on her shoulders.
"All right then. Let's explore your consistencies," he said. "If I posed nude as an artist's model would that disturb you?"
Knowing that she was going for a baited hook, yet not able to resist the temptation, she said, "I'm not sure. Probably not as much."
"I see. You like a high culture tag on your exposed skin. What if I was an artist who painted nudes?"
She was becoming blindingly conscious of his thumbs, which were making leisured uplifting circles under her collarbone. "That would be different."
"High culture," he repeated dryly, "and you prefer the exploiter to the exploited. Smart."
"Now just a—"
"What if I were a doctor and spent the day examining naked bodies?"
Exasperated, and yet enchanted by him, she said, "Doctors at least don't kiss their patients."
"True. But maybe they should. Kissing someone for a buck is significantly more wholesome and probably more therapeutic than sticking your fingers into their body cavities for fifty dollars an hour. Oh no!" He shortcut her sudden effort to jerk herself out of his grip. "There's one more thing I want to know, love." His next words, an urgent whisper, formed themselves against her mouth. "How does this fit into your logic?"
Logic evaporated like steam as his mouth moved in a soft eddy over hers, dragging her lips into fragile openness. His knee rubbed over her outer thigh as it flexed just enough to permit his hand to slide over her back and lower, his slowly rotating palm lifting her into the hard cradle of his hips. With a seizure of need, she melted forward into the firm welcoming frame, her restive senses seeking him, learning his pliant flesh, the complex detail of projecting bone structure, the sensitive strength of his hands. Her fingers found his shoulders, the sides of his face, winnowed the fawn-soft delicacy of his hair. Each part of her that pressed his body stung with the tingling hunger to know more of him.
His gentle swirling kisses altered, and his hands burned their way upward to form a nest for her head as they guided her deeper int
o kisses and slow tongue strokes that carried the motion of physical love. He had stopped courting her defenses. This was a preliminary, the shattering avowal of a love act that was not to follow and they broke from it gasping, sex-flushed, though she saw with enhanced insight that in his experience, he could control it much more accurately than she.
His hands left her, resculpting themselves quickly to her cheekbones, his thumbs gently lifting her chin.
"When you—" He stopped, taking in a betraying breath. "When you decide to pull your head out of the sand, come see me. You know all the places to look."
CHAPTER 6
He left her with a hammering pulse and the image of his mouth wet-burned into hers. And she knew the moment she let him walk out the door that it was a mistake. No woman in her right mind would have let that man walk out of her life. Because Philip Brooks had won. She liked him. She desired him. More, she respected him. Staring into the wicker waste basket, watching Jinx's whiskers poking out of the end of a paper towel roll, she made an important discovery about human nature. One didn't always hand one's heart to another human being. Sometimes, it just went.
The library closed late, and she stood in the darkened back hallway wishing that he was waiting for her outside. She pulled her coat from the hook, and stopped, staring at the muffler still hanging there. For the first time that week, she admitted that she wasn't wearing it because it was the scarf her hand had happened to fall on.
She was wearing it because it was his. His, and because of that, somehow precious. She traced down the muffler's soft length with a fingertip and then brought it to her face, rubbing her cheek against it unseeingly. Philip Brooks. She had survived the good-humored teasing about his sudden appearance and much speculated upon assistance to her in the staff room that afternoon from Annette, Lydia, and Tracy. Surely that was a beginning.
