Black Flame

by Ruby Laska

  Deneen preceded him into the bedroom and stopped short. Mounded on top of a bed made with military precision was a very tall stack of boxes wrapped in red paper, next to a number of brown paper grocery bags. The gifts were all different sizes and shapes, but they were precisely wrapped and taped. The same fastidiousness was evident in the rest of the room. On the desk was a blotter with a laptop in the center. Shelves held dozens of neatly arranged books. A wall cabinet was filled with mechanical and electronic gadgets, or pieces of gadgets, whose purpose was unclear. A peg board held a number of tiny pliers and screwdrivers and other, more mysterious tools. The closet door was closed, and the only ornamentation in the whole room was a photograph hanging by the window—a smiling, pretty young woman in old-fashioned clothing. Though she bore little resemblance to the frail figure Deneen remembered visiting with her mother long ago, she had no doubt that it was Jimmy’s mother.

  “Where’s the ribbon?” she blurted, embarrassed to be caught looking around so nosily.

  “The what?”

  “You can’t give these gifts like this. They need ribbons. And were they really out of patterned paper at the store? You know, with snowmen and polar bears and elves and stuff?”

  Jimmy blinked and regarded the gifts. “I like red.”

  “Well, I like red too, but—never mind.”

  “There may be some ribbon in Matthew’s room,” Jimmy said uncertainly. “He was wrapping gifts to take with him.”

  “And this stuff,” Deneen said, going through the grocery bags, which were filled with plain paper plates, plastic cutlery, and white paper napkins. “These supplies aren’t for the breakfast, are they?”

  “Of course they are. The kids can’t very well eat pancakes without forks and plates.”

  “But they’re—you know they make holiday plates, right?”

  “You’re suggesting that I should have bought the decorated items,” Jimmy said, frowning. “With the, er, elves and polar bears.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “I thought they were a little too...gaudy.”

  Deneen rolled her eyes. “Honestly! If you can’t be a little glitzy at the holidays, when can you? Tell you what, you leave this all to me. Go do your cooking and cleaning and I’ll add a little holiday bling. For the kids,” she added, before he could protest.

  Jimmy opened his mouth and then closed it again. Good. Even Supergeek was helpless in the face of at least some of her charms. Although, Deneen preferred to think that most men gave in to her because she was irresistible, not merely relentless.

  Oh well. Jimmy Mason was hardly a candidate for her amorous attentions, no matter how nicely his white button-down shirt strained over his bulging shoulders. And Deneen wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, anyway. She was here to prove herself, plain and simple, which she would do the minute her sister returned. Meanwhile, she might as well stay busy.

  “I’ll just put your suitcases in Chase’s room,” Jimmy said, backing out of the bedroom.

  “Thanks,” Deneen said. Then she started unpacking the boring plates while humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The minute Jimmy exited his bedroom, he headed for the weight room that he’d rigged in the bunkhouse’s former larder. The unused room was unheated and smelled of moldy onions, but no one had objected when he’d bought a set of used barbells and a chin-up bar and installed them in the small space. He didn’t have time for a complete workout—that would have to wait until after dinner—but if he didn’t pound out at least a few deadlifts and bicep curls, he might just lose his mind.

  Ever since middle school, when Jimmy accidentally discovered the calming powers of vigorous exercise after the gym teacher made him do fifty pushups as punishment for being a smartass, Jimmy had lifted weights as a means of dealing with frustration, anxiety, and the confusion of trying to navigate social interactions that were way over his head. As it happened, he hadn’t meant to provoke the gym teacher when he pointed out that his demand that his students “feel the burn” was, in fact, counterproductive since a burning sensation meant the body couldn’t convert glucose to water and carbon dioxide quickly enough, but before he could explain himself, he was on the floor grunting and sweating. Which, it turned out, was both easier than trying to make himself understood, and strangely satisfying.

  After recruiting him to play football, his high school coach—who had a much higher tolerance for Jimmy—gave him an old weight bench and some free weights in exchange for Jimmy rigging the school’s scoreboard with a projector system the A/V department no longer needed so it would light up for night games. By then, Jimmy’s career as an inventor seemed inevitable—at least to him. Between school, sports, and tinkering, there was little time for anything else, especially after his mom got sick, so his experience with girls was limited to the occasional make-out session or exploratory grope. Since then, he’d graduated to longer and more satisfying sessions with willing adult women, but he was careful to choose only the most predictable, the ones who could be counted on not to form bizarre attachments. Female scientists were good. He’d also had relatively successful, if brief, relationships with an international economist, a philosophy grad student, and a visually impaired attorney.

  Deneen was definitely not potential sexual partner material, even if she hadn’t been Jayne’s sister and, therefore, off limits due to the current living situation. She was, in fact, the sort of woman Jimmy tried to stay away from: a heavy user of cosmetics and grooming products, she dressed for visual impact rather than practical considerations, which indicated an undesirable set of priorities. Not to mention the fact that she was far too attractive. Jimmy didn’t discriminate against attractive women, but in his experience, physical beauty was highly correlated to impetuous, unpredictable, and dangerous behavior.

  Also, her motives and opinions were confounding. While Jimmy had taken care to prepare for tomorrow’s brunch, she found his preparations lacking for reasons that he didn’t understand. The kids at the Family Circle Intervention Center had never seemed to care what sort of plate their food arrived on, and he doubted the packages would stay wrapped long enough for the paper to make much of an impression. Jimmy was actually good with the kids—all of the other volunteers said so—especially the boys, who liked to challenge him to wrestling matches and ride around on his shoulders. And this scheme of hers to become a wedding planner—was that even a real job? If Jayne and Matthew were for some reason unable to plan their own wedding, Jimmy figured he could take care of it in an afternoon. How hard could it be, once you secured a venue, an officiant, a DJ and someone to bring food?

  She’d been vague about her plans, too, declining to say how long she intended to stay. Well, with her sister out of town, that probably had added a day or two. She hadn’t made arrangements for lodging elsewhere, so Jimmy was going to have to put up with her for at least a few more days. And presumably she’d return when the wedding actually occurred, but maybe she’d get a hotel room then. He wouldn’t worry about that now, at any rate; he just had to put up with her until Jayne returned home and took her off his hands.

  A vein pulsing in his neck alerted Jimmy that he had probably lifted enough for now, especially since he wasn’t wearing athletic garments and still had domestic chores to complete. He set down the weights, wiped off his face with a clean hand towel from the stack he kept in the larder, and ventured cautiously back into the kitchen.

  For the next three hours, Jimmy doggedly continued his cooking adventure, the first time he had ever attempted anything more ambitious than a turkey sandwich or a pot of spaghetti. Cooking, he reasoned, was merely following instructions in a manual, and as someone who mastered the Consumer Electronics Troubleshooting and Maintenance Handbook at the age of eight, and built a real-time communication server at seventeen, he figured he had every reason to expect success. However, the results of his efforts proved disappointing. As the afternoon wore on, he pulled a lopsided cake
from the oven, leaving half the batter burning on the bottom; couldn’t figure out where the “heart” of an artichoke was located; and sliced his thumb while attempting to remove the skin from a pomegranate. Meanwhile, strange sounds issued from his bedroom and, after Deneen emerged and asked permission to look around for a few extra supplies, continued elsewhere in the bunkhouse and even from outside in the Tar Barn. Jimmy didn’t care for people borrowing his tools, but he was elbow deep in chicken stock and bread crumbs and couldn’t leave his post to supervise Deneen.

  Finally, at a little after five o’clock, he’d managed to invert the cake onto a serving platter, cover the dressing and put it in the fridge, and clean the kitchen. Several cooking implements had either melted or become fused with burnt matter that refused to come off, but Jimmy had done the best he could, returning the items where he’d found them. As he put yesterday’s casserole into the microwave to heat up, the front door opened and Deneen came in, stomping snow from her feet and cradling something in her hands.

  “Wow, it’s really coming down out there!” she said cheerfully.

  “Forgive me for asking, but are those my electrical safety gloves you’re wearing?”

  Deneen looked down at the thin rubber-covered gloves, turning her hands this way and that. “Is that what they are? I have to say, they aren’t terribly warm.”

  Jimmy gritted his teeth in frustration, reminding himself that there was nothing to be gained from becoming contentious with Jayne’s sister. “Perhaps you might consider buying some appropriate cold weather gear,” he said. “I believe most places of commerce will be closed tomorrow, in observation of the holiday, but I understand that the day following Christmas is a popular shopping occasion. And seasonal merchandise may be discounted at that time, so—”

  “Got it,” Deneen said, ducking her chin and looking abashed. She hastily took the gloves off and carefully folded them in half. “I’ll return these as soon as I get warm. I’m sorry I took your stuff.”

  “No, that’s fine, don’t worry—what have you got there, anyway?”

  She peeked up at him, brushing snowflakes from her hair. She looked uncomfortable, but didn’t unfold her hand to reveal what she was holding.

  “Wow, it sure smells…interesting, in here.”

  So she wasn’t going to tell him. Either she was doing something unethical or improper or…oh no, was she intending to surprise him? Were all of her mysterious activities going to culminate in some presentation from which she would expect a reaction he couldn’t possibly guess at?

  “I hate surprises,” Jimmy burst out before he could stop himself. “I mean, just in case you were, that is to say, if by shielding from view the, uh, results of your endeavors…”

  “Oh.” Her lower lip wobbled and she peered between her fingers at whatever she was holding. “It wasn’t going to be a surprise surprise, really. I just, well, I made a few things, for the breakfast tomorrow. It was going to be more of a reveal.”

  “A reveal?”

  “You know, like on HGTV? When they do the home makeovers and the host shows it to the homeowners? Or like when you have your hair highlighted and the hairdresser won’t let you look until he’s done blow drying?”

  “I’ve never had my hair highlighted. And I take it that HGTV is a television channel?”

  He was trying; he really was. But Deneen was looking increasingly woebegone. This was it, the reason that he wasn’t meant to fraternize more than necessary with beautiful women. He always managed to upset them.

  “Look, forget I said anything. Go—do whatever you’re doing, I’m sure it’s, ah, an enhancement. I am preparing dinner, and it should be ready in five minutes.”

  She seemed to brighten a little. “Heavens, I’m starving. Leftovers would be great. I haven’t eaten since before I went to the airport.”

  She left the room, still cupping whatever she was holding in her hands. Her damp hair curved around her face in a way that was quite unsettling, and the pants she was wearing fit her with extraordinary precision—truly, a marvel of engineering. It was only the ding of the microwave that brought Jimmy’s attention back to what he had been doing.

  As he set out the food and glasses of milk—Matthew often used placemats, but in Jimmy’s mind they were an unnecessary step—he made a mental note to contact the electrical supply company and order a new set of gloves. And wondered why the prospect didn’t make him more irritable.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Well,” Deneen said, chewing carefully. There was something…unusual about the casserole Jimmy had served her. “Thank you so much for inviting me to dinner. What, er, is the main ingredient in this dish?”

  “Gluten,” Jimmy said, drinking a big swig of milk. Deneen hadn’t seen a grown man drink a glass of milk in, well, she couldn’t remember the last time. But somehow it was weirdly sexy, watching the muscles in his throat, the pale milk mustache on his upper lip that he dabbed with his napkin. “Gluten has fallen out of favor in nutritional circles, which makes no sense. For the 99% of humans with no intolerance issues, it is a protein found in some of the most nutritious grains. It’s inexpensive and readily available. I don’t know why more people don’t eat it.”

  Maybe, Deneen thought as she forced down another bite, because it was bland, colorless, and had a weird flavor, at least in this dish. Oh well, at least she wouldn’t starve. “Well, I insist on doing the dishes and cleaning up.”

  “That seems like a good division of labor,” Jimmy agreed. “I will use the time to work.”

  “All right. And then, could I maybe show you what I did for tomorrow?” For some reason, Deneen held her breath. Why did she care what this odd stranger thought of decorations she’d made? They weren’t meant for him, but for the guests at the Christmas brunch.

  He stopped chewing, and stared at her carefully, frowning. Deneen rolled her eyes. For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t a trick question.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Just yes, nothing more. “All right then.”

  “All right.”

  After that they finished eating in silence, Deneen discarding several possible conversational topics. Instead, she snuck glances at Jimmy. Earlier, when he’d been hiding in his little room with the weights, he must have brushed against the unfinished wall because he had a splinter or something on his cheek. It wasn’t bothering her so much as…well, honestly, it was bothering her. If she knew him a little better, she could casually say, “Oh, you’ve got a thing…there, under your eye.” Or she could even reach across the table and brush it away, just a casual gesture, nothing more.

  She reached across the table and brushed at the thing before she could think better of it. Whose hand was that, she wondered, horrified, as her fingers stroked that slightly stubbly, masculine cheekbone? Who on earth would then reach a little higher so she could nudge that lock of hair back into place?

  Who was she? Because Jimmy Mason was not Deneen Burgess’s type, not by any stretch of the imagination; also, Deneen Burgess did not go around touching men who had not expressed interest in her.

  “You had a little thing,” she said, jerking her hand back, feeling her face flame with embarrassment. “I got it off you, though.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.” Jimmy leapt up from the table, nearly knocking his chair over. He grabbed his dinner plate, then hers, making a terrific clattering of crockery and cutlery.

  Deneen didn’t bother pointing out that she wasn’t finished with her casserole. Maybe she could sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night and find something to snack on, but the casserole wasn’t worth tussling over. Besides, Jimmy looked even more mortified than she felt. Okay, so clearly, physical contact with the Supergeek was a no-no. Was he so inexperienced that he didn’t even know how to respond to the most innocent touch?

  Or was he repulsed by her? The thought popped up out of nowhere. Jimmy had certainly expressed distaste or disapproval several times since picking her up at the airport. He didn’t approve of her coa
t, her mittens, her occupational goals—that had been crystal clear from the expressions he was unable to hide. Maybe he thought she was unattractive. Except, no, a man such as him, armed with more than enough critical thinking, must surely recognize that Deneen possessed all the traditional markers of female beauty.

  She wasn’t the least bit insecure about her looks. But the other, chronic, terrible, soul-crushing fear—the one Deneen had been carrying around with her since she was seven years old and her mother had given her a time-out for playing dress-up when she was supposed to be doing “Important Women of the Twentieth Century” flash cards with her sister—was that Deneen was nothing more than a dumb blonde, a ditzy chick, a bubble-headed window dressing.

  And if that was how Jimmy saw her, then of course he wasn’t attracted to her. Correction, he was repelled by her. He was probably counting the minutes until she left. But the problem was, she didn’t have anywhere to go.

  No, strike that, Deneen thought, as she swept up a few crumbs and drained the last of her milk while Jimmy bustled around the kitchen. The problem was that Jimmy Mason didn’t like her, and that provoked a combination of indignation and hurt feelings that she really, really didn’t like. Only Deneen’s family was allowed to dismiss her, and only because it was practically a tradition. Men were supposed to line up with their tails wagging, full of compliments about her looks and the way she smelled and how clever she was, and in exchange she knew how to be a darn good date. She laughed at their jokes. She encouraged them to talk about themselves. She followed enough sports to discuss their favorite teams. And most of all, she looked really, really good on their arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  Jimmy was standing next to her, holding a dishrag, and peering at her skeptically. Oh, no—she was about to cry, a fact he seemed to have picked up on despite his general cluelessness.

  “Yes. Yes! All right?” She got up from the table with as much dignity as she could muster. “Thank you for dinner. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing the cleaning?”