A Kiss of a Different Color

by Bettye Griffin

  Of course, her groping hands had already told her he had what it took…and so did another part of her anatomy. But still, it would be nice to enjoy the visual sight…

  After dinner they had dessert—Danish butter cookies and Dutch apple pie a la mode, which Nina freely admitted came from her grocer’s freezer—in the small family room attached to the kitchen, where a tall Christmas tree was lit up in a corner next to the fireplace. Miranda found the house charming, seeming much larger that it appeared from the outside because it was on three levels. Miranda had gone with Jon when he carried their bags to the basement. The rooms there were only partly underground because of the slope the house sat on. In addition to the two bedrooms that had belonged to Jon and his sister Sara, the lower level had a full bath, laundry room, and a small common area, as well as a few stairs that led up to a back door.

  Miranda’s eyelids began to feel heavy by eighty-thirty, and she’d actually been dozing off when she heard Jon say, “Mor, Mormor, I’m about ready to call it a night, and I think Miranda is, too. I know it’s early, but that flight really wore us out.”

  “Of course. You two go downstairs,” Nina replied as Birgitta, busy lighting a cigarette, nodded.

  “I’d like to get to the ER early, by about seven, if that’s okay with you, Mor. They’ll probably be less crowded then.”

  “I’ll be ready at six-thirty,” Nina assured.

  Birgitta exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I have some pain medication left from when I had my knee replaced, if you need it, Jon,” she offered.

  “Thanks, Mormor, but I’ve been drinking, so I guess I’d better pass. I do have every intention of waking up tomorrow morning,” he said with a laugh.

  After they said their goodnights, Miranda followed Jon downstairs. She’d changed into a clean sweater and was letting the one that had been splashed with tomato juice on the plane rinse in the laundry room sink.

  “I guess I’ll say good night.” She smiled, suddenly feeling shy. “I did want to thank you for inviting me to come home with you, Jon. Your mother and grandmother have been so welcoming…I’m feeling a little embarrassed that I thought they might not be.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable. I know how some people can be. I still remember that asshole at the stop sign screaming at you.”

  She nodded. “That’s the way it is sometimes. I also wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your volunteering to drive to Racine with me. I’m sorry we’ll only get to spend two days apiece with our families, but it’ll be so much nicer to make that drive with you than by myself.” Miranda let out a breath, glad she’d told him her thoughts. She didn’t know why she felt so shy all of a sudden. “Well, that’s it. I’ll see you in the morning.” She headed toward her room.

  “Miranda.”

  Her feet came to an immediate halt, and she slowly turned around. “Yes?”

  He came to where she stood and reached for her hand. “I want you to know what I thought when we were being bounced around on that plane. I asked God not to let me die without having another chance to make love to you. Not stolen sex like that night in Bottineau, but leisurely and out in the open, the kind that lasts all night long. I want to see you as well as touch you. I want to taste you.”

  It astounded her that he had the same thought she had during those terrifying moments. But hearing him say it was more than she could handle after the ordeal they’d been through. “Jon—” she began, choking on his name.

  “I don’t mean tonight. We’re both exhausted, emotional, and my shoulder hurts like hell. This is hardly the time to try and get romantic, but this isn’t about sex, it’s about giving each other comfort. I don’t want you to be in one room and me in another; I want us to be together. I need the comfort that comes from having you close by.” He applied a slight pressure to her hand. “Lie down with me, Miranda. Spend the night in my bed. No sex, I promise. I give you my sacred word,” he emphasized.

  She knew he was telling the truth.

  “I just want that reassurance of being able to hold you while I sleep.” He raised the back of her hand to his cheek. “After what we experienced today, I like to think that you don’t really want to sleep alone, either.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, and finally she pulled away and silently went into her room. She was only there for a few minutes, but when she emerged, wearing light blue pajamas with white piping and carrying her cell phone and pillow, he was gone.

  The door to his bedroom was open, and she walked to the doorway and looked in on him lying on his back in the center of the bed, stripped down to his underwear. “You’re going to have to move over,” she said as she moved toward the bed.

  He propped himself up from his uninjured left side. “I thought—”

  Miranda placed her cell phone on the dresser, then dropped the satin-covered pillow she’d gotten off her bed onto the head of his. “I have to have my satin pillowcase wherever I lay my head, remember?”

  “Yeah, you did tell me that.” His gaze grew serious. “I’m glad you’re here, Miranda.”

  She smiled, then slipped between the covers and lay next to him, breathing in a scent of natural skin mixed with faded after shave. She laid on her side and cuddled up facing his left, knowing his shoulder hurt too much for him to lie on his right side. He rested his hand at the junction of her shoulder and upper arm.

  That arm made her feel safer than she had in a long time, and with her arm draped across his midsection she closed her eyes.

  Jon’s hand slipped down to rest over hers near his waist. As he gently massaged her wrist he felt her breath on his neck. This felt so nice, so right…

  In their contented positions they both fell into an exhausted, yet contented, sleep.

  Chapter 21

  Jon awoke automatically at six a.m. During the night he and Miranda had shifted, he onto his back and she onto her stomach. Now they both lay on their left sides, and he spooned her. He looked at her sleeping figure nestled against him, felt her warm skin through her nylon pajamas, where his hand rested on her hip; breathed in the pomegranate-scented hair, and his morning erection pulsated. It was cooler in the basement than the rest of the house, and although an oil-filled electric radiator kept the room warm, Miranda had the covers pulled up to her chest. His initial reaction was disappointment, then he remembered his promise to her. He told her he just wanted to look at her and hold her, take comfort in the knowledge of her proximity. If he’d gotten to see any part of her he might forget himself. His inability to keep his hands off of her that night she allowed him to share her hotel room may have satisfied her physically in the end, but it had also created an atmosphere of distrust that still lingered between them like a heavy holiday dinner in the belly. No way would he allow his body to betray him again, not when he wanted her to feel safe with him.

  He sat up for a better look. She looked lovely in sleep, the bedclothes over her chest rising and falling with each breath she took. He simply stared at her for a long time before getting up to dress.

  Miranda awoke to the ringing of her cell phone. “Hello?” she said sleepily.

  “Girl, what the heck is going on?”

  She frowned. She recognized the voice of her good friend Aislinn Palmer, but hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. “What?”

  “I turn on the Today show, and they include a story about severe turbulence on a flight between Bismarck and Minneapolis, and there you are, standing next to what looks like a Norse god. Is that the guy you told me about that you bowl with?”

  Miranda couldn’t get past Aislinn’s first sentence. “You saw that clip on the Today show? But we were interviewed by a local station in Minneapolis! How can that be?”

  “It was probably a network affiliate and they loaned out the video. This is a national news story, Miranda. Now, tell!”

  “Yes, that’s Jon.”

  “The guy you dance with?” Aislinn was the only one whom Miranda had confided in about he
r dance lessons. “You want to resist him? Hmph. I’d be naked under those covers in two seconds. Unless, of course, he wasn’t any good the first time,” Aislinn said pointedly.

  “Not any good? He was gurr-rate!” Miranda replied with a flourish reminiscent of a cereal commercial. “I just woke up in his bed, as a matter of fact.” She was embellishing, but she felt like having a little fun with her friend.

  “Did y’all get a hotel room there in Minneapolis?”

  “No, we stayed with his mama…and his grandma.”

  For a moment Aislinn said nothing. Then she exclaimed, “Get outta here!”

  Miranda laughed. “Okay, I’m pulling your leg. We did sleep in the same bed last night, but no sex. That plane ride shook both of us up, Aislinn. Everything not strapped down went flying all over the place, and the plane was losing altitude so fast it made me ill. I thought we were going to crash, and Jon told me he did, too.” She sighed contentedly. “It was nice just being in the same bed and holding each other.” She grabbed his pillow and held it to her chest.

  “Sounds romantic.”

  “It was.” Miranda explained their plan for Jon to accompany her home to Aislinn, who said she couldn’t wait to meet him.

  After Miranda hung up she worried a bit that someone from her job might have seen that news clip, then decided that anyone who knew Jon probably wouldn’t recognize her as the same woman he’d danced with at the Christmas party. Besides, no one could say there was something wrong with two coworkers being on the same flight as they traveled to their respective hometowns at Christmas.

  What she really hoped was that her mother hadn’t seen it…or else she’d be subjected to a barrage of questions. Geraldine knew they were coming, of course, but Miranda didn’t plan on her parents getting a look at Jon until he arrived at their front door.

  After showering and dressing, Miranda made her way upstairs to the kitchen.

  “Well, good morning,” Birgitta greeted, rising from a chair in the adjacent family room. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Lund.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Jon’s grandmother had already stubbed out her cigarette and was heading for the adjoining kitchen.

  Heat poured into Miranda’s cheeks. What would Birgitta say if she knew that she and Jon had slept in the same bed?

  “Very well,” she replied.

  “I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

  “Well…” Miranda hesitated, but saw no need to be coy. “Yes, I am.”

  “I thought so. I got up this morning and made pancakes, which Jon loves. He ate about six of them before he left, but there’s still batter left. I’ll whip you up some right now. The sausage is already cooked. It just has to be heated.”

  “I’ll be happy to cook the pancakes myself, since you’ve already made the batter.”

  “No, I wouldn’t hear of it. You’re a guest here, Miranda.”

  She didn’t object, simply said, “Thank you.” She slipped into one of the two stools at the center island. “I’ve never been to Minneapolis before,” she said. “It looks like a lovely city.”

  “Funny, but I don’t get into the city much anymore. We pretty much have everything we need right here in Eden Prairie. With sixty thousand people, we’re not exactly Mayberry,” she added dryly. Then she asked, “How are you adjusting to the Bismarck winter, Miranda? I know it gets cold in Wisconsin, but it’s colder here in Minnesota, and colder still in North Dakota.”

  “I’ll say. We had our first snowfall in October. I feel like an Eskimo.”

  Birgitta tested the cast iron skillet on the stove with a drop of water, then carefully poured three perfectly round cakes into it. “I was born and raised in Minnesota, but I spent part of my childhood in Southern California, and I remember how much I hated it when we moved back here.”

  “You lived in California?”

  “Yes, L.A. My parents broke up when I was about two, and my mother, being a talented dancer, took me out to California. That’s where my earliest memories are. She got a job assisting on those movie musicals they made in the Thirties.”

  “Really?” Miranda was impressed. “Jon mentioned that both you and his mother were dancers, but he didn’t say anything about your mother.”

  “She died when he was two, so he didn’t get to know her. But yes, she was very successful. She worked directly under Busby Berkley as his assistant at the time she left.”

  “Wow. Why’d she leave?”

  “For one, she didn’t like working with Mr. Berkley, who was quite a taskmaster.” Birgitta tested an edge of a pancake for doneness with a spatula. “For another, she’d had an unhappy love affair, although she didn’t tell me about that part until years later.” She chuckled. “I was going on eight years old when she brought me back to Minnesota back in early Nineteen Forty-Two, so we didn’t talk about things like that. That’s when she opened the dance school that Nina runs today. Her experience with the movies gave it the boost it needed to be successful, and we carried down the tradition of excellence. That’s why the school continues to do well today.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Miranda said, leaning forward in interest.

  Birgitta took the other stool and had another cup of coffee, and they were still sitting there chatting when Jon and Nina returned from the hospital with the happy news that Jon’s injury did not involve a fracture, but a dislocation that had been repaired in the emergency room. Miranda learned that the twenty-third of December was referred to as “the day before the day before” in Swedish culture, and that Jon’s sister and her children would be joining them for a festive holiday dinner.

  Nina drove them to the local car rental office, and when they were handed the keys to a sedan large enough to accommodate Jon’s long legs, he took her for a ride around the city, showing her where he had gone to school and the Veteran’s Memorial that the residents had raised money for. She heard the pride that crept into his voice when he informed her of Eden Prairie’s constant placement in Money magazine’s annual rankings of the best places to live, and their recent Number One ranking.

  He pulled into a diagonal parking space in what clearly was the city’s downtown shopping district, which had the usual mix of stores and services: a bakery, a bank, a dry cleaner, a jewelry store, a hardware store, a drug store, a post office, and a few cafes. Miranda saw the lettering in the windows on the second floor of one of the buildings. “The Mildred Aurness School of Dance,” she read aloud.

  “That was my grandmother’s mother,” Jon informed her. “She started our little family dynasty.”

  “Yes, your grandmother told me about her while you and your mom were at the ER.”

  “What’d she tell you?”

  Miranda shrugged. “Just about how her mother brought her to California after her marriage broke up, and that she had a romance that didn’t work out and eventually came back to Minnesota and opened her studio.”

  “Did she mention the specifics of her failed romance?”

  Her eyebrows arched. “No. Why? Did I miss something?”

  “No,” he said, quickly enough to arouse Miranda’s curiosity, but she chose not to press. It wasn’t her business.

  “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you the inside,” he suggested.

  He unlocked the door at the ground level, and they climbed the stairs to the entrance. The studio walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs of Jon’s great-grandmother on the sets of Hollywood musicals. Like Nina and Jon and probably the now-elderly Birgitta as well in her youth, Mildred had been tall, slim, blond, and beautiful, her skin radiating with good health and the outdoors. Other photographs included those of past students, all dressed up for performing, both children and adults, in pictures that dated back to the earliest classes in the Nineteen Forties until the present.

  Miranda was so busy looking at the photos—she saw several of Birgitta when she was young, as well as Nina and a younger woman she presumed was Jon’s sister, Sara—
that she didn’t notice Jon had left her side until she heard the opening chords of a song on the piped-in speakers, which filled the entire studio with sound. She turned to see him walking toward her with an outstretched hand.

  “Dance with me, Miranda.”

  She shrugged off her coat and happily went into his arms, and they waltzed to Cassandra Wilson’s smoky vocals to the standard Polka Dots and Moonbeams…a paean to romantic dreams coming true on the dance floor. Just as the lyrics said, she and Jon floated over the floor. Miranda closed her eyes and allowed him to lead her, and they took advantage of the large dance floor by taking large steps and moving with complete freedom, with no worries of colliding with another couple. The music, not too loud, came from all angles, courtesy of an excellent sound system.

  They might have been dressed in jeans and sweaters, and she might be wearing flat boots, but in her mind’s eye Miranda saw Jon wearing a tuxedo and she a filmy dress that swirled with her every movement.