by Mindy Klasky
I heard the promise purr at the back of his words, and I wondered exactly what proposition was curled inside his English accent. I scarcely had time to blush, though, before the chauffeur was holding the door for me.
I slid across a leather seat as smooth as polished stone but far more inviting. A bar occupied the space across from my knees, and a bottle of champagne glistened in its ice bucket. Two flutes glinted in the overhead light as Graeme joined me. The chauffeur made a short bow and closed the door. In moments, we were gliding through the Georgetown streets. For the second time in a week, I was being conveyed through Washington, D.C., in a luxury vehicle.
I took great pride in not owning a car. I was a city girl. I walked where I needed to go, or took the subway; I even knew the city’s bus routes pretty well.
But much more of this fine driving, and I could be converted. I wasted a moment, remembering that my last car ride had taken me to a Coven meeting, that I’d come back from that session with a responsibility. I had no business being out and about on a date—I should be learning everything possible about setting the Coven’s centerstone.
But Samhain was still seven weeks away.
And Graeme was beside me right now. And the limo’s suspension was incredible—even the cobblestones seemed to melt to smoothness under the whisper-smooth tires.
“May I?” Graeme asked, gesturing toward the champagne.
“Please.” I couldn’t help but smile as he leaned forward. His movements were so confident, so spare. He poured with an expert twist of his wrist, capturing even the troublesome last drop on the bottle’s lip. When he passed me my glass, I let my fingers slip against his, and I had to catch my breath against the confusing tremble of heat and cold.
“To the past and to the present,” he said. And then, touching his glass to mine, he added, “And to the future.”
“Past?” I asked, because I couldn’t fold my mind around the word “future.”
“I figured we’d take a night tour of the monuments. Your nation’s past.” Unbidden, I thought of the movie No Way Out, of Kevin Costner and Sean Young writhing their way around a midnight Washington while suggestive images of the Washington Monument’s obelisk filled the screen. I glanced toward the front of our compartment, but the chauffeur had already raised the opaque window that separated us. Graeme and I were blessedly alone.
I needed to say something, to fill a silence that was rapidly becoming awkward. “I’d like that,” I said. I lubricated my enthusiasm with a large mouthful of champagne. “Very much.”
And so we became tourists. The nameless driver was an expert at his job. He wove his way through crowded streets, stopping at necessary traffic lights but never jarring us, never disturbing the cocoon that we wove for ourselves in the backseat. Graeme did his part as well—he kept my champagne flute full, and he produced a series of snackable tidbits, including a tiny crystal bowl of Marcona almonds that nearly set me to laughing, because they mimicked the love-nest fare I’d contemplated in the cottage.
D.C.’s night monuments never failed to disappoint—the white marble glinted beneath creamy lights, with tourists silhouetted against the stone as if they were placed by some exacting movie director. As we circled around the Greek temple of the Lincoln Memorial, Graeme reached out to tuck a strand of wayward hair behind my ear. “Are you up for a bit of a stroll?”
A stroll? Well, I’d rather stay here in our private air-conditioned retreat, truth be told. But that wasn’t very sporting of me, was it? If the man had something else in mind, I should play along. Be more flexible. Even the thought of that word—flexible—made me blush. What was it about this guy? Why did I find him so compelling? I set down my glass with a firm nod. “Of course,” I said.
Graeme smiled, and he rolled down the compartment window to speak with the chauffeur. In moments, we were walking around the Reflecting Pool, staring up at the Washington Monument. A pair of red lights blinked at the top, like benevolent eyes keeping watch over us.
He nodded toward the marble. “From here, it looks like the color changes partway up.”
“Oh, it does,” I said. “They worked on it for about a decade before they ran out of money. It just sat there, unfinished, for nearly twenty years, and when they started again, they took stone from a different quarry. They didn’t set the aluminum cap until 1888.”
“Aluminum?”
“Aluminium, I suppose you’d say. At the time, it cost as much as silver. But of course, it doesn’t tarnish.”
“Of course.”
I winced at his droll tone and realized how much I’d been babbling. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I sound like a textbook.”
“You sound like a woman with a lot of facts at her fingertips. And that is a trait I find quite attractive.”
Before I could figure out what to say to that, Graeme wove his fingers into mine. He started to wander toward one of the side paths, away from the well-lit Reflecting Pool. “Where are we going?” I asked, barely making the words audible above my pounding heart.
“I was certain that you could tell me,” he said, smiling. “Isn’t there some other monument over here? Something off the beaten path?”
“Constitution Gardens,” I said, and then I bit my lip. All right. I was a librarian. I knew stuff. But did I have to show off that knowledge like some completely geeky teenage girl? I fought against the urge to tell Graeme about the Monument to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, or the fact that the Gardens were land reclaimed from the Potomac River Tidal Basin, or any of the other dozen Happy Tourist Facts that sprang to my mind.
Instead, I let Graeme guide me to a wooden bench. “What are those lights over there?” He nodded toward a vague glow that lit the path ahead of us.
“The Vietnam Memorial,” I said. Designed by Maya Lin, completed in 1982, droned the travelogue in my mind.
“Ah,” he said. “What was the name of the woman who designed it?”
“Maya Lin,” I said, trying to keep the note of surprise from my voice.
“And how long has it been there now?”
“Since 1982,” I said, and my awe definitely flowed into my words.
He didn’t care that I knew things. It didn’t bother him that I had a stash of trivia tucked away, that I could call up a ridiculous number of facts and tidbits.
And as I relaxed into the curve of his arm, I wondered why I’d ever thought that it would matter. But that, at least, was easy to answer. Most guys didn’t like to hang out with girls who knew more than they did. I’d spent a lifetime trying to hide the fact that I was smart, trying to disguise my memory, the bits and pieces I’d picked up as a librarian.
Even David Montrose wasn’t thrilled with my know-it-all approach. Or at least so I sensed. I held back from him. I assumed the role of student, let him play the part of teacher. I gave in to him regularly, because that was how we related to each other. Those were our jobs with respect to each other. He taught. I learned.
I blinked as I became consciously aware of the things Graeme was doing with his fingertips on the back of my neck. The very stimulating things he was doing. The downright arousing things, as his lips moved toward my silk-wrapped cleavage.
Toward the cleavage I had liberally doused in chemical-tainted, mosquito-damning poison. “Wait!” I said.
“What?” He pulled back reluctantly.
I let my own fingers travel toward the neck of his white shirt. The cotton glimmered in the dim light, and I licked my lips nervously. At least there was no taste of Offs! there. Who knows what this gorgeous man would think if I let him proceed? If I let him continue on the shimmering little journey of discovery that he’d commenced? What a way to kill a romance—literally, with poison.
I undid his top button. “Nothing,” I said, aware that his exclamation was still hanging in the air. “I just thought that I should do a bit of the work.” I added a taunting smile to my words.
He grinned back at me. “Work?”
“Work,” I
repeated, and then I shrugged. “Play. Whatever.”
I kissed him, to keep the proverbial ball rolling forward. His fingers tangled in my hair, adding an urgency to my lips. I fumbled at another of his buttons, and another. I could see that my Englishman had a fine dusting of blond hair on his chest—not one of those movie-star smooth torsos that always reminded me of a boy. No. Graeme Henderson was a man. A man who was obviously eager for me to return to my ministrations.
Who was I to disobey? Without thinking, I hitched my skirt a little higher and eased onto Graeme’s lap, facing him and the shadows of Constitution Gardens. His indrawn breath told me that my attention was more than welcome, that I had, indeed, made him forget my chemical-soaked skin. I leaned down, determined to continue my successful enterprise. Another button. Another. A tug to free his shirt from the waistband of his slacks.
I might have ignored the sound of a clearing throat. I had definitely overlooked the slap of feet against the blacktop path. But there was no way I could avoid the beam of a flashlight.
A flashlight that had all of the intensity of a CSI investigation. A flashlight that immediately picked out and broadcast the fact that my T-shirt had ridden up considerably higher than the waistband of my skirt. A flashlight that showed exactly what a remnant trail of Pick-Me-Up Pink looks like against pale English flesh, especially flesh that was framed by a tousled cotton shirt.
Graeme blinked and sat up straighter on the bench, holding me steady with one confident hand. “Is there a problem, Officer?”
Officer. Crap.
I jumped away from Graeme as if he were a lightning rod channeling an entire thunderstorm of electricity.
The policeman took advantage of the movement to shine his light directly into my eyes. “I was going to ask you the same question, sir.” I could hear the smirk behind his words, an infuriating “just a joke between us boys” tone that made my blood boil. “We’ve had reports of certain…unsavory characters here in the park,” the cop went on. “You can never be too careful.”
I started to splutter a reply, but Graeme settled a soothing hand on my forearm. “I’m being careful enough, Officer.”
I could swear the flashlight beam dipped lower, that the policeman made an entirely inappropriate inspection of Graeme’s trousers. Or maybe that’s where my eyes traveled. Oops.
“All the same,” the policeman said. “The park isn’t safe after dark. You two should move along.”
We were being rousted by the D.C. police. We were being chivied along like vagrants. Herded up like streetwalkers. Well, I was the one being treated like a streetwalker. Graeme was just my unsuspecting john.
I started to protest, to ask if the park was closed yet, if it was technically after hours. I was going to demand a meeting with the cop’s boss, with the sergeant, or whoever it was who took charge of these badge-toting, flashlight-wielding tyrants of the street.
But then I thought about riding in the back of a police car. A car that would almost definitely be lacking the smooth suspension of Graeme’s limousine. A car that would certainly be in short supply of champagne and almonds, of the miniature chocolate truffles that I had glimpsed in the cabinet of culinary wonders.
And so I let myself be hustled out of Constitution Gardens. I let myself be marched back to the main path, to the uncomplimentary glare of streetlights. I let myself stand beside Graeme as the policeman waved a jaunty farewell, shaking his head as he left to search out other miscreants in the night.
I was too embarrassed to hear Graeme’s parting words to Washington’s finest. I didn’t even feel Graeme’s fingers on my elbow, guiding me back to the limo. I didn’t see the chauffeur, standing at attention beside the sleek black door. I didn’t taste the champagne that Graeme poured from a fresh bottle, didn’t feel the tickle of the tiny bubbles at the back of my throat.
Instead, I sat on my half of the car seat, swaddled in my own private blanket of misery. I felt like a child caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. I remembered the time that Gabriel Kahn had come over to study high school physics, and Gran had caught us necking on the living room sofa, our textbooks long forgotten.
Only when the limo pulled up in front of the Peabridge did I trust myself enough to speak. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” I managed to say.
“Jane,” Graeme said. “Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?” I started to ask, and I was horrified to hear tears behind my words.
“Hush,” he said, and then he pulled me close to his lipstick-traced and now cotton-covered chest. I felt his arms around me, though, calm and soothing. He wasn’t embarrassed. Or at least, he didn’t act like he was.
I felt him brush his lips against the top of my head. My mosquito-lotioned hair. That was the problem. Deep Woods Off! had ruined everything. I pushed back from his chest enough that I could look into his eyes. “It wasn’t like we were doing anything wrong,” I said. I felt as if I was testing foreign waters, easing in with a toe before I dared to take a plunge.
“We’re both consenting adults,” he agreed.
“He didn’t have to be so snide.”
“He was likely jealous. Miserable sod.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I realized that I could do the responsible thing. The adult thing. I could invite Graeme in, take a quick shower to remove the Off! from my tainted skin, and pick up right where we’d been interrupted.
But there was Neko to consider. Neko, and Jacques. I shuddered. There was also the fact that I had promised Melissa—sworn to my best friend—that I would keep this romance secret from my familiar.
Friendship Tests could be a bitch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, at the same time I heard Graeme say exactly the same words.
He laughed, and he cupped his palm against my jaw. “Sometimes, when the moment’s lost, you just have to let it go.” He sighed as he traced my jaw with one blunt finger. My belly—or something lower—flipped over. “Promise me that you’ll save next Saturday night for me. Let me make this up to you.”
I looked around—at the limo, the champagne, the remnants of a perfect evening. I was acting like a spoiled brat. I shouldn’t need Graeme to make anything up to me. If anything, I should be making things up to him.
Saturday night, he’d said. Just like a regular boyfriend. “I’d love that,” I said.
He reached for the door handle. “Let me walk you to your door,” he said.
“No!” I pictured Neko and Jacques, staring out the cottage windows. “No,” I repeated in a slightly more sane voice. “I want to picture you here. Remember the good things about tonight.” I leaned in and gave him one last kiss, a hint of what I wanted to make happen next Saturday night.
“Good things,” he said with a smile, as he came up for air. And then he opened the door.
I was only a little embarrassed to find the chauffeur there, waiting patiently. Of course, he was waiting for me to emerge from the sex lair of the backseat. That was his job. He offered me the slightest bow as he handed me out of the car. “Good evening, madam,” he said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, his demeanor as different from the cop’s as any two men imaginable.
I forbade myself to look back as I walked down the garden path. Instead, I focused on slowing my breathing, on steadying my pounding pulse. I started to weave together the bits and pieces of my story, the tale I would need to tell as soon as the front door opened.
Earlier, in fact. Neko pounced on me from the front porch. “Where were you?” he asked.
“And who were you weeth?” Jacques added from his own darkened corner of the doorstep.
I wondered how long they’d taken to coordinate their interrogation, but I was suddenly inspired to answer with disarming truthfulness. I shivered a little, overcome by my daring. “I had a date,” I said, breezily opening the door and letting all three of us into the living room.
“With who?” Neko cocked his head to one side, as if I were a mouse he might bat across the floor
.
“Whom,” I said, smiling sweetly.
“Whom,” he growled, flexing his fingers like a predator’s claws.
“Nate Poindexter,” I said, tossing off the name as if I’d said it a million times. Where had that come from?
“Poindexter?” Neko asked.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have chosen a surname that made me want to laugh. “Nate,” I said firmly. “We went to high school together.”
“High school?” Jacques asked, as if the notion of education were completely foreign to his French mind.
I reached back into my store of schoolgirl French and said, “Lycee. I ran into him the other day, just walking down the street in Georgetown. He’s been living out in San Francisco, but he decided that D.C.’s really more his style.”
“San Francisco?” Neko asked, making the name of the city sound like an accusation. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen a gay stronghold. My familiar just might use that one against me. But not if I got him off track soon enough.
“Actually, Silicon Valley. Cupertino.”
Neko nodded, storing away my words. He even stretched, working out every last kink in his seemingly elastic spine. “Where did you go tonight?”
“Morton’s. For steak. Apparently no one serves red meat in California anymore.”
Neko sniffed, and for just a moment, I wondered if he was trying to smell filet mignon on my breath. I wouldn’t put it past the little sneak. Before I could come up with another lie to cover my meat-free evening, Neko shook his head. “What are you wearing, girlfriend? Eau de Pine-Sol?”
“It’s not that bad!” I gasped.
“Not if industrial solvents turn you on.” Neko made a face. I tried to remind myself that he had once been a cat. He was a magical familiar. His senses were more finely tuned than any true human’s. They had to be.
“Enough,” I said. “I’m going to bed. You boys keep the noise down.”
They were quiet enough. But I tossed and turned for hours. Even after I took a quick, cool shower—enough to wash away the Deep Woods Off! And the lingering heat that Graeme had stirred inside me.
