“You will stay here with me,” Lugal stated. “We will fuck together all the day long.”
“Believe me, I’d like nothing more,” Samantha said, hating it when her logical side intruded. “But I don’t want to give Bunny any more excuses to fire me. Especially since she’s already green with envy because you’re my boyfriend and you turned down her, ahem, offer.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she added hastily, “Bunny has no idea you’re not really my boyfriend, that you only said that because—”
“It would please me very much to be your boyfriend, Samantha. And for you to be my girlfriend. After all, are we not lovers?”
Oh, the low, sexy timbre of his voice when he said that made Samantha shiver from head to toe. The very idea of being able to officially introduce Lugal, her outrageously handsome barbarian, as her boyfriend had her head and heart reeling.
“Yes. Thank you, Lugal. That would make me very happy.”
Hell, it would make her fucking insane with delight!
“Good. Now we eat, yes?” His lips curled into a smile. “We will talk about Monday later.”
Fortunately the rotisserie chicken was still warm enough not to need reheating. Samantha threw a couple of potatoes into the microwave and cooked up a bag of frozen sweet corn. She salivated as she slathered crusty bread with real butter and added beautiful, creamy-yellow slices of it to the baked potatoes and hot corn. A dollop of full-fat sour cream topped their potatoes.
A bottle of earthy pinot noir rounded out the meal, along with some light classical music from her CD collection for just the right ambiance. The sun was just beginning to set, so she lit a few candles and the gentle glow of the flickering candles enhanced the overall feeling.
She eyed the picture-perfect plates as she set them on the kitchen table. So much decadence in one day. She definitely wasn’t used to this deliciously naughty excess of wickedness. Gobs of hot, tantalizing sex and a dinner of honest-to-goodness non-diet food. Heaven. Sheer nirvana.
She’d never really missed not having a dining room until now. It would have been extra special to serve Lugal in style, with her grandmother’s good china, crystal and silver in a graceful setting. But those things were packed away until the day Samantha could afford a bigger house.
“I feel like a king,” Lugal said as she joined him at the small table. “With a bounty of victuals at my table and my precious queen across from me.”
Samantha smiled in response, gazing up at him through her lashes, noticing how the golden cast of the flames enhanced his bold, masculine beauty. An image formed slowly in her mind. With the candlelight flickering, she could imagine the way Lugal must have looked thousands of years ago, partaking in a meal amid the torchlight with his army comrades after a hard day at battle.
Each time she was reminded of the implausible reality that Lugal was from an entirely different time, one she knew almost nothing about, Samantha was filled with a new sense of wonder and awe. It was all so unreal, so unbelievable…and yet here he sat across from her, dining on chicken cooked on a grocery store spit, instead of goat roasted over a crackling flame beneath the stars of the ancient sky.
If it was this difficult for her to fathom, Samantha could only imagine how hard it was for Lugal to come face to face with random snippets of time over the centuries, each vastly different from the previous. And just when he was getting used to his surroundings, learning about the people, their culture, habits and the advances, he was wrenched out of his new life and catapulted back to that inert existence in the bottle.
Each time she’d seen Lugal eat, she noticed how quickly he consumed the food before him—almost as if he were afraid it would be snatched away before he had a chance to finish it. He didn’t eat like an uncivilized man. His table manners were close to impeccable. Samantha wondered if Abigail Henley might have tutored him in that area. Still, the feeling of urgency was palpable.
“I like the flavor of these yellow beads called corn.” Lugal polished off the sizeable pile she’d put on his plate. “Like bits of juicy, steeped grain. The fowl has a favorable taste as well. And I am amazed that this potato is the same foodstuff as that of the fries I ate earlier. It is truly a versatile food fit for the gods.”
“Wait until I make mashed potatoes swimming in fresh mushroom gravy,” Samantha offered, trying to remember the last time she’d allowed herself to enjoy that simple but divine treat. Insipid mashed potatoes made with nonfat milk and topped with a quarter teaspoon of diet margarine just didn’t measure up to the real thing.
Lugal sipped from his wine. “Ahh, surprising. It has a smooth taste. I would liken the wine I have imbibed in the past to vinegar. Most of it was stored in pouches of goatskin.”
Heaping second helpings of chicken and corn onto his plate, Samantha wrinkled her nose. “That definitely could have affected the flavor.” She refilled his wineglass as well as her own. Wow, she hadn’t even measured out the allowed four-ounces before pouring. This wild, wanton dietary freedom nearly made her giddy. Now this is what a Saturday night dinner was supposed to be!
And sharing it in candlelight with the man of her dreams almost made dessert unnecessary.
Almost.
Thoughts of licking chocolate-drizzled dollops of ice cream from Lugal’s warm flesh was one dessert Samantha didn’t want to pass up.
“It is still difficult to understand,” Lugal noted as he devoured a drumstick, “the ease and speed of meal preparation today, as well as the astonishing assortment of foods available. In my time, a meal of roast fowl would have taken far longer to ready. First it must be caught, then plucked of feathers before roasting. Fowl was strong-tasting meat, tough and stringy, not mild and tender like this.”
“What would you usually eat with it?”
“A ration of barleycake with onion and perhaps some cucumber, all to be washed down with barley ale.” He popped half a slice of bread in his mouth and chewed. “The bread we ate was nothing like this tender crumb with its pleasingly brittle crust,” he told her once he’d swallowed. “And butter was not a principal at our tables. This modern food is a wonder.”
“There are so many other wonders I want to show you, Lugal. Not just edibles, although those are high on my list.” She chuckled. “But a vast world of things you have yet to discover. We’re going to have so much fun while you’re here.”
Her last sentence had them locking gazes across the table in silence for a small eternity. Biting her bottom lip, Samantha dragged it through her teeth, wishing she hadn’t added while you’re here to her words. Neither of them needed a reminder of the brevity of their time together, or what would happen afterward.
“Yes,” Lugal said, breaking the silence and offering a somewhat sad smile. “We will have fun together, little one.”
Eager to change the subject, Samantha asked, “Did you enjoy being at Henley House? I just fell in love with that beautiful old house as soon as I saw it. All that period charm and character.”
This time Lugal’s smile reached his eyes, lighting his entire face. “It makes me glad to hear that you liked that handsome house, Samantha. I created it for Abigail.”
Samantha’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Having a grand house of her own was one of her wishes. When she first became my possessor, Abigail was living in poverty, uncertain where her next meal would come from. She carried a satchel with a pot, spoon, bowl, a few ragged garments and not much else. She had been forced to sell the rest of her belongings in exchange for food and shelter.”
“Oh, that poor woman. No wonder she looked so old by the time she was fifty. How did she find you?”
“She was out scavenging for blackberries to keep from starving when she tripped over the stone box.”
Samantha cleared the plates from the table to give them some room. “So the possessor you had before Abigail was in Oregon too?”
Lugal shook his head. “Nein. Ich war in Deutschland.” He grinned as Samantha returned to the
table with a wide-eyed expression. “I was in Germany,” he translated, “for a brief time in the early 1800s. How the box journeyed to Oregon, I do not know.”
“Probably early settlers coming to America,” she surmised. “Do you remember all the different languages you’ve learned over the centuries?”
“Some better than others. It depends on how long a time I spent in a location.”
“You give the term multi-lingual a whole new meaning.” She smiled at him, wondering what it must be like to carry bits and pieces of various time periods around inside your head.
“Tell me more about Abigail’s house. How did you build it?” The old TV show, I Dream of Jeannie came to mind. “Was it done with a blink of the eyes and, boing, there it is, or did it take a long time?” She sipped from her wine, thoroughly enjoying the fascinating after dinner conversation with her mouthwatering guest.
“The house appeared instantly once she made the wish, if that is what you mean.”
“So one minute there was a blank space on the road and another, poof, there was a huge Victorian standing there. That must have been pretty shocking to the neighbors.”
“Blink, boing and poof.” Lugal laughed. “I do not understand these words in regards to granting wishes, but there were no neighbors to shock. Abigail’s house was the first one in that area. You must remember, Samantha, this was a time of vast wilderness. The city was not as it is today.”
“But what if someone was riding around on their horse and all of a sudden that house just magically appears out of nowhere? How would that be explained?”
Lugal tossed up his hands with a shrug. “I do not understand the workings. I know only that the wishes are granted seamlessly, without causing undue curiosity or the need for explanation to others. What mechanism the gods use to achieve this, I cannot say.”
“Maybe it’s like a forgetfulness fog or something,” Samantha mused. “Has there ever been a wish you couldn’t grant?”
“Nay, as long as the wish is within the guidelines it can be granted, although some wishes require more preparation on my part than others. Again, I am uncertain as to why, it is just something I know when the time comes.”
“So, how did you know how to create a Victorian house?”
“One of the things Abigail carried with her in her satchel was a detailed sketch of the house, with measurements, a list of materials and building instructions. She and her husband had planned to build it when they arrived here. Abigail asked me if I could erect such a house for her. I studied the papers in her possession over the next few days and went about building the house in my head. Once I could clearly envision every part of it, I processed the wish.”
“Amazing.”
“Even after all this time, I still find it so, yes,” Lugal agreed.
“Can you tell me what Abigail’s other two wishes were?”
“She asked to have all of her goods and possessions restored to her, including the belongings she was forced to sell to survive during her years alone here, the items lost along the Oregon Trail and things she had to leave behind in her home in Massachusetts, as well as in her ancestral home of England. She said that having things of great sentimental value surrounding her would keep her happy until that time that she would join her beloved husband in Kurnugi.”
The sheer intricacy of the idea amazed Samantha. “And you were able to do that?”
“Yes, over a period of a few days.”
“It must have caused some raised eyebrows when all of Abigail’s stuff just started disappearing from all over and showing up in her house.”
“Nay, it was not noticed. No doubt, due to the gods’ skill and magic in these things.”
“What about her third wish?”
“This was for ample wealth so she would never be hungry or homeless again and so she could live in the lifestyle she was accustomed to before journeying to Oregon. This wish was granted immediately.”
“That certainly sounds like a reasonable wish to me, especially after all that poor woman had been through.” Samantha found the story of Abigail’s life-changing wishes mesmerizing. Trying to imagine how her life must have been transformed from abject scarcity to fruitful abundance with a mere snap of Lugal’s fingers made her head swim.
Samantha reached across the table, covering Lugal’s hand with her own and squeezing it.
“What did Abigail do after her wishes were granted?” she asked. She was getting excited just imagining the joy and elation that must have raced through Abigail’s mind. Samantha wondered what she would spend money on first if she were in Abigail’s place. A boatload of chocolate shipped from England, probably. She chuckled at the thought. “Did she throw a big get-together bash for all the neighboring pioneers? Buy a houseful of furniture? Get a whole new wardrobe?”
Clasping her hand and stroking his thumb across her knuckles, Lugal gave her a touching smile. “I do not know, little one. Once the final wish was successfully granted, I was immediately returned to the bottle and remained there until you found me.”
Samantha felt that awful sting, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at the unpleasant reminder that Lugal’s time with her was only temporary.
“We’ll have to Google Abigail to find out what happened to her after that,” she announced cheerfully, determined not to cast any melancholy on their conversation.
“If you say so, then we will Google.” Lugal chuckled at the unusual word.
“I’m glad you told me about Abigail’s three wishes, Lugal. I was fairly certain what I wanted for my first wish. Now I know for sure.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lugal arched an eyebrow. “So, you have decided on your first wish. Are you ready to make it?”
“Can I just tell you what it is first and kind of talk about it before making the official wish?”
“Of course.”
“When Rosie and I were at the Henley House estate sale, it was love at first sight for me.” Samantha felt the color in her cheeks rise as she realized the same thing had happened when she caught her first glimpse of Lugal after he’d popped out of that bottle.
“Although the house was rundown, I was awestruck by the classic ornamentation on the big old place. It was so charming, with an almost enchanted feel to it. It’s exactly the sort of house I’ve always wanted to live in. There was something about it that…I know this will probably sound silly, but it almost called to me. I felt I was meant to live there.”
“It does not sound silly. It sounds like a secret knowing that comes from here.” He clutched his belly, jiggling his fingers on the firm, lean surface. “Deep inside.”
“A gut feeling. Exactly. When I learned the house is going on the market for sale next week, all I could think about was trying to find a way to buy it. But then I figured I may as well be trying to buy the Taj Mahal.” She laughed.
Lugal nodded thoughtfully. “I know this place. I have seen it. The Taj Mahal was built by the emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife and queen, Mumtaz Mahal.”
Lugal’s knowledge of history put her to shame. “You mean you’ve seen it in photographs?”
“Nay, I was there. In India.”
Samantha blinked. “Wow. How long ago?” She reached to the corner of the table and brought the plate of shortbread cookies to the center, offering them to Lugal and taking one for herself. Sinking her teeth into the sweet, buttery treat elicited a sigh from her as she chewed. She’d probably be twenty pounds heavier in the morning, but it was worth every damn calorific ounce.
“The building of the monument was nearly complete. It was in the 1600s. My possessor was the wife of one of the workers who built it. Ahh, Samantha, it was remarkable in its beauty. The white marble structures glowed in the light of the full moon.” He bit into a cookie, indicating his pleasure and satisfaction as he chewed. “Another delectable food.”
“Scottish shortbread,” Samantha told him, waving another cookie in the air. “It’s one of my favorites. Simple, but rich
and decadent at the same time.” She bit into the second cookie with a satisfied mmmmm as Lugal helped himself to another.
He studied her as he ate the cookie, a pondering smile on his face.
“What?” she asked, her cookie poised in midair. “Why are you looking at me like that?” The intensity of his gaze made her so edgy she gave a nervous laugh. It dawned on her that she’d been consuming her food with relish, even helping herself to seconds, which she never did in front of anyone but Rosie. That curious smile of Lugal’s probably indicated amusement and bewilderment at how much she could pack away at one sitting.
“I was just thinking about how much happier you seem when you are eating real food instead of meager portions of unsavory diet food. It is clear that you enjoy eating good food.”
Clapping her hands against her belly, Samantha laughed. “Exactly. Which is why I’m practically a professional dieter.” She was mortified. She’d stupidly let her guard down in front of Lugal. She remembered Tommy’s admonishing words and his look of disgust when she’d helped herself to a second slice of pizza. As she brought it to her mouth he’d curled his lip and asked her if she thought she really needed to eat that.
And she was about twenty pounds thinner then.
That was on the fateful night he and the waitress boinked each other in the pizzeria’s restroom. After all this time it still stung—the admonishment, far more than the clandestine boinking.
“Sorry.” She set the unfinished shortbread finger on her plate and sighed. “I didn’t mean to make a pig of myself. I only allow myself to indulge like this on rare occasions. But I pay for it. I’ll be a good five pounds heavier because of this meal.” She shrugged. “A couple days of lettuce, grapefruit and mineral water should get it off.”
Lugal reached across the table, plucking the cookie from her plate and bringing it to her lips. “Open, little one.” She did. “Now eat. Food is a gift, a pleasure meant to be enjoyed. If you are worried about the addition of pounds, I will help you develop a more efficient body that builds muscle and burns fat.”
Samantha and Her Genie Page 19
