by Cach, Lisa
He lowered his lips next to her ear. “I know,” he whispered.
“Prove it to me,” she whispered back, and arched her body against his.
He groaned deep in his throat, his body going hard with desire. He would prove it to her right here on the ground, if he had a condom handy. Instead, he picked her up off the ground and pulled her towards the house.
“I’ll prove it when you get rid of this,” he said, snatching the Legionnaire’s hat off her head and tossing it to the ground.
She grabbed at her bare head. “Jack!”
They went through a side door and paused to kick off dirty shoes. Jack pinned her against the wall and kissed her again, then when she was dazed and helpless he lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped the zinc off her nose. “And when you get rid of that.”
She covered her nose with her fingers. He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the kitchen and living room. “And this,” he said, snagging the elastic around the end of her French braid and tugging it off.
“Jack, wait!” she protested, reaching up to protect her hair.
He trapped her inside his embrace and used his free hand to gently loosen her hair until it spread in red waves over her shoulders. She had so much in common physically with Rosa, and yet was so different.
Kelsey ducked her face against his chest, then when he loosened his hold she darted from him, down the hall to his room.
“You know I’m coming for those damn goggles next!” he said, chasing after her.
“I know, I know,” she said, panic in her voice.
He reached the room as she closed the last of the curtains. There was still enough light to see his way by, but the room had gone to shades of grey and the shadows were deep. “I’d rather see you,” he said.
“If I can barely see you without my goggles, then this is only fair.”
“Are you really that shy of my seeing you?” he asked, coming close to her. He could see the shape of her face, and glint of lighter grey reflecting off the goggles.
“Just this first time,” she said softly. “Please.”
He carefully removed her goggles and set them aside. “All right.”
The darkness amplified their breathing, and with small exhalations and moments of held breath they undressed each other, piece by piece. They were both damp with sweat beneath their clothing, especially between Kelsey’s breasts, confined as they had been by the sports bra. He ran his fingertip down her sternum, feeling the droplets and dragging them in a trail down to her belly.
He put condoms on the bedside table and together them tumbled onto the mattress. Their hands explored each other in the dark, her eager hands touching him without shyness, his own hands roaming her lithe body and marveling at the cat-like sleekness of her muscles. As his eyes adjusted to the dark he could see her shape more clearly, and it was eerie how similar she was to Rosa. He tried to shake off the thought, not wanting thoughts of another woman to intrude on this moment with Kelsey.
They touched each other until their breathing grew heavy, and he donned protection. She surprised him then by pushing him onto his back and climbing on top, sliding herself onto him without further preamble. She was a demon, her hair hanging wild about her as they rocked together, her back arching and breasts rising as she leaned back to changed the angle. In the semi-dark her body merged again and again with his memories of Rosa, until even her face began to look like Rosa’s.
Kelsey reached down to touch herself, shameless in her need for gratification, and when her climax came his came too. When their motions eased she slowly leant forward, her hands on his chest, and kissed him while he was still inside her. In that moment he thought that even her eyes had lightened from black to blue, and he was so appalled with himself for thinking of Rosa that he closed his eyes against the image.
She fell asleep tucked against his side, but he could not rest easy, his mind wide awake and sick with dread that he had led Kelsey down a false path. Even as his heart said that the woman sleeping beside him was the one that he wanted, his vision of her atop him as Rosa made him doubt the truth.
Did he think he loved her because she resembled Rosa?
But wait. He laughed with Kelsey; they talked; they worked together and were silent together; and he looked forward to her arrival every morning. Those many hours had not been a lie. Her adorable wit and weirdness and incomprehensible fondness for Little Bastard were not a lie.
He wished he’d never met Rosa Rugosa, if it meant she was going to taint what he could have with Kelsey.
He slipped from under Kelsey’s hold, unable to lie still any longer with the thoughts and feelings that were torturing him. He stood beside the bed and looked down at her, so serene in her trust.
She moved, startling him, and then rolled over so that her face was toward the windows. The dim light fell more strongly upon her, and he stared at her face in growing disbelief. There couldn’t be two women roaming Seattle with the same features and same body, who would both go to bed with him in the space of three days.
Kelsey had known he was going to be at the convention. Kelsey, who had never let him see her without her hat and either orange goggles, or glasses so big that he wouldn’t recognize his own mother in them.
“You have to keep your eyes open to who someone really is, instead of only seeing the bits that conform to your first impression,” Kelsey had said not an hour ago.
He stepped to the curtain and slowly pulled it open. A wedge of light stretched across the bed, widening as it moved up her body, then falling at last upon her face.
Kelsey squinted in her sleep, then slowly opened her eyes.
They were the intense blue-green of a tropical sea.
His heart thudded in his chest, a flush of adrenaline flooding through him although he didn’t know if it was for anger, fear, or relief. His vision throbbed to his own heartbeat and he sank to the foot of the bed, staring at her.
“Jack?” she said sleepily.
“Right here.”
She pushed herself upright, her hair in glowing copper tangles against the perfect whiteness of her skin.
“Can you see me?” he asked.
“A smudge,” she said, and yawned.
“I can see you.”
She tensed, one hand flying to her face as if seeking the disguise that obviously wasn’t there. She dropped her hand. “Then you know.”
“Why, Kelsey? That’s all I want to know. Why?”
She drew her knees up to her chest, as if to protect herself. “I didn’t think you could ever see me as anything more than your landscaper. I didn’t think you could ever love Kelsey Safire. But Rosa – any man would want Rosa.”
“Then why play the Rosa role so little, if that was what you wanted?”
A wry smile touched Kelsey’s lips. “She seemed bigger than life, but in truth she was only a small sliver of it; too small a sliver to inhabit for more than a few hours.”
He continued to stare at her, astonished how blind he had been to the obvious. “You must have thought I was so shallow to be attracted to Rosa but apparently not to you.”
She tilted her head in reluctant acknowledgement. “And you must now hate me for lying. So what did it get me?” she said sadly.
He laughed softly. “I’m not angry. I fell for you both times, didn’t I? I have the feeling I’d be fighting the inevitable if I ended things over this.” He moved forward until he could reach her, and with the tip of his finger raised her chin until her face was fully in the light. “I don’t suppose you could live your life somewhere in between orange goggles and dancing all night at clubs? I’d hate to see all of Rosa disappear from you. She did have her merits.”
“I know what merits you’re talking about,” Kelsey said, and eyebrow raised suggestively. “I was there while you were appreciating them.” Then she smiled, and the aqua light in her eyes spoke of mischief and love, and the hope that maybe they did have a chance together; that maybe all was well that ended well.
/> “I kept the shoes, you know. Want to put them on?”
She laughed, and he knew he would be hearing that laugh beside him for the rest of his days.
Epilogue
“What do you think, Little Bastard? Do you think they’ll be impressed?” Kelsey asked the goat. She’d bathed him and cleaned his hooves, and tied him firmly to an eyebolt embedded in the patio. As a worker on the Lovgren garden project, he deserved to be present for the festivities.
“Nay,” Little Bastard declared.
“That’s what you always say. Try saying yay once in a while, you might like it.”
Guests were starting to arrive for the housewarming Jack was throwing to show off not only the house and garden, but as he put it, ‘the hot babe I found in the ivy outside my window.’
Bridget, Derald, and Mark came out onto the patio and Kelsey hurried over to greet them, giving Mark a hug to make sure he knew he was welcome as a friend. She’d called him to cancel both their dinner date and their relationship. His surprise had quickly given way to relief: It turned out that his ‘talk about the future’ had meant he wanted to break up, and to send her off with a nice meal as a consolation prize. “I don’t think we have that ‘spark’,” he explained again and again on the phone, even as she told him that no, it was okay, she felt exactly the same.
“It’s beautiful, Bridget honey,” Derald said, wrapping his arm around his wife’s waist. “You did a marvelous job.”
Bridget giggled. “Kelsey did quite a bit herself. I can’t take all the credit, you know, although there are some of my own touches on display.”
Actually there weren’t, as Kelsey had removed the plants that Bridget had installed in a burst of uninformed horticultural creativity. It was no skin off her nose to let Bridget be the genius in her husband’s eyes, though. On such illusions were grand loves built.
She found Holly and Erica in the kitchen, Holly adding tequila to the pitcher of margaritas and Erica looking annoyed as Jack’s friend Richard chatted her up. “Erica, Mark is suffering out on the patio. Would you mind bringing him a drink?” Kelsey asked. She knew that Holly had eyes for Richard, and wanted her to have a clear shot at him.
“I’d be delighted to,” Erica said, pouring a glass for the hobbit. “I always thought he was kind of adorable,” she whispered to Kelsey as she passed by. “Like a teddy bear.”
“Kelsey, I meant to tell you!” Holly said. “That shoe site is back up. You’re right, it is weird. I think I ordered something, but heck if I know what it was! Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”
Kelsey glanced at Richard, who was wandering after Erica, oblivious to the brunette goddess in the room. “Holly, I promise you won’t regret your purchase.”
“Good. So, when do you turn on the waterfall? I’m dying to see it run.”
“As soon as Jack stops abusing the snails.”
“Hey, serving them was not my bright idea,” he said, struggling to get a sheet pan of mushroom caps stuffed with snails into the oven. “We should tell people they’re clams. I don’t think the truth is going to be a big selling point.”
“If they refuse to eat garden snails, it just means there will be more for us. Admit it: you love them.”
“With a bit of Tabasco they aren’t half bad.”
“With an apron on, neither are you,” Kelsey said, putting her arms around his waist and giving his butt a surreptitious squeeze.
“You and your costumes.”
“Don’t pretend that you’re complaining.”
He kissed her, and they went out to throw the switch to the waterfall pump together.
“There’s something very sexy about those shoes,” he whispered in her ear as they crossed the patio. “Every time you wear them, I get the strangest urge to take you behind the bushes and ravage you.”
“I don’t see the problem with that.”
Jack growled his approval, and together they threw the switch to the falls.
First they heard the faint rumbling of the motor, and then several seconds later the first gurglings of water somewhere up the slope, the source hidden by carefully placed greenery and stones. The gurgling turned to splashing, careening down the bends and drops of the waterway, and then finally a sheet of water spilled over the top of a stone and dropped five feet to the pond below, in which a half dozen koi milled, waiting for food.
The guests applauded and Little Bastard said nay.
Kelsey glanced down at the Hiheelia shoes she wore and sent a private word of thanks to Shoestra. She was not the same woman who had started work on this garden, hunched behind a goat and longing helplessly for a man. The shoes had brought out a sensuous, confident side of herself she would never have known she had. And Rosa was not gone now, whether or not Kelsey wore the shoes: she had taken her proper place amongst the facets of Kelsey’s character.
The red blossoms had all fallen off the shoes, but in so doing had revealed the structure of the vamp beneath: a gold filigree of roses, in permanent bloom.
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The Trouble with Truffles
Chapter One
Brussels, Belgium
He could not help noticing the nun.
Well, maybe not a nun. A novitiate, perhaps, but a pity either way. A young woman with such potential should not be wearing shapeless black dresses and sensible, rubber-soled shoes.
Sebastian turned the page of his newspaper, snapped the sheets into obedience, and watched the little nun over the top edge of the paper as she stood staring up at the changing timetable of the Brussels train station. With her head tilted back, her dark golden hair brushed her spine just about where the band of her bra should be.
Was it made of sensible white cotton? Flesh-toned nylon? Or perhaps it was a creamy lace and silk fantasy, to sustain her through those barren days at the convent, scrubbing floors and contemplating brown bread for supper.
She moved, and he saw the backpack that had been hidden on the floor behind her skirts. She bent to grasp the straps, then hefted the bag up onto her shoulders and moved off toward the ladies' rest rooms, bent slightly under her burden, sidestepping those in her path, bobbing her head in apology for blocking another's way.
No European woman would move in that way through a train station, so self-conscious, and yet so unaware of her own sex appeal and the interest she might arouse in the eyes of the men watching. She was neither nun nor novitiate. No, he could play that game no longer. She was most likely that other form of repressed female, rarely spotted alone outside her native habitat: the American.
Eliza dragged her backpack down the aisle of the train, searching for an empty pair of seats. She could have kicked herself for not buying a reserved seat, but she had been so flustered at the ticket counter she had forgotten to ask. Well, she'd forgotten until she actually had the ticket in her hand, and then hadn't had the nerve to ask for it to be changed.
An overweight, middle-aged man suddenly stepped backward into the aisle, bumping into her, giving her a strong whiff of cologne and alcohol. He grunted, said something harsh-sounding in another language, and glared at her.
"Oh, sorry!" Eliza said. "Sorry, uh, excusez-moi, pardon." He continued to glare at her a moment longer from his dark, red face, then finished stuffing his bag up onto the shelf above his seat, his breath heavy in his hairy nostrils.
He sat down at last with a great deal of shifting about, like a hippo settling into mud, and she moved past, mentally shuddering. She chalked up another point against Melanie, the supposed best friend and travel companion who had abandoned her two days ago in Paris. Eliza took perverse pleasure in blaming her friend for everything unpleasant that had occurred since Melanie flew home: her headache, her howlingly empty stomach, the unreserved train ticket, and the fact that her underwear had still been damp from last night’s sink washing when she put it on this morning.
She dragged her bag through several more cars until, finally, she spotted a foursome of empty seats, two facing two.
A haphazardly folded newspaper leaned against the back of one of the seats, apparently discarded by its former owner.
Eliza set her backpack down, then gratefully dropped into a window seat and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the rest. She pulled the black headband out of her hair and rubbed the places where its toothed plastic pressure had begun to feel like a shark gnawing her skull.
A minute later a small jolt made her open her eyes, and a glance out the window confirmed that the train was pulling out of the station, on its way to Bruges, in northwestern Belgium. She smiled at the empty seats across from her, guaranteed to remain empty now that no more passengers would be boarding. She slipped off her shoes and stretched her legs out across the intervening space, using the edge of the opposite seat to massage her soles.
Things were looking up a bit, she admitted. Her panties were finally dry, and she was fairly certain she was on the right train. Now if only she had something to eat. A cheese sandwich and tomato soup, that would be perfect. Stir-fried vegetables and a big bowl of rice. Waffles with strawberries. Her stomach whined at the thought.
Between the motions of the train and her feet, the newspaper propped against the back of the seat opposite began to slide slowly to one side, revealing the corner of a white and gold cardboard box.
Eliza dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight, not quite believing her eyes. The box, the corner that she could see, had a distinctive shape to it: it looked like it belonged to a ballotin. She had seen them in the windows of shops in the Brussels train station. They were deep boxes, with flaps on top, often tied closed with a satin ribbon.
A ballotin was a box for chocolates.
It was as if someone had heard her stomach and left that box there for her, knowing she would be boarding this train half-starved. Her stomach yowled its yearning. A sense of destiny overwhelmed her, telling her that those chocolates were meant for her. She leaned forward and pulled away the newspaper.
