by Mindy Klasky
CHAPTER 14
“JA-ANE…” NEKO’S VOICE echoed from the living room. I checked my teeth in my bedroom mirror one last time, making sure that nothing green and embarrassing had lodged between them. I ran my fingers through my unruly hair—at least I wasn’t wearing a mob cap—and pulled the bottom of my blouse down over my skirt. I lifted my arms so that the hem rode more normally. Leaning over to adjust my bra, I jiggled back and forth to even things out, and then resisted the urge to tug the blouse down one last time.
“Ja-ane! He’s at the front of the garden!”
I flung open my bedroom door, scarcely taking the time to close and lock it behind me. For one fleeting moment, I wondered what Jason would think as I led him back here, as we were clinched in the throes of passion, and I needed to dig my key out of my pocket. What kind of freakish woman locks her own bedroom door?
What kind of slut sleeps with a guy on her first date? Even a perfect guy. Even an Imaginary Boyfriend.
I’d changed my sheets, though, just in case.
Wishing that I had invested at least one blouse-tug’s worth of time into hunting down a breath mint, I hurried into the living room. “Okay, guys. Downstairs, now. We all need our privacy.”
“Don’t we?” Neko purred, raking me with his almond eyes.
Roger clicked his tongue against his teeth. “A-plus on the manicure, sweetheart, and the blouse works wonders for your décolletage, but we have got to do something about that hair.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, panicking.
“Nothing,” Neko said immediately, splaying a possessive hand across Roger’s well-muscled chest. “Nothing at all.”
But Roger would not be hustled into silence. “It’s just a few inches too long. Too boxy. You have got cheekbones, darling, if you’d just learn how to show them off.”
A knock at the door saved me from more belated makeover advice. “Get downstairs!” I hissed, starting to run my fingers through my hair again. Would that help, though? Or would it hurt? What if I ruined any possible emphasis on my cheekbones? “Now!”
I never should have let Neko bring Roger back. I should have taken the late wine delivery and sent them packing for the evening. I should have splurged on dinner for both of them, somewhere in Georgetown. Better yet, somewhere on Capitol Hill, all the way across town. Somewhere with atrocious service, so that they’d take at least three hours to eat their food.
There was another knock at the door, this one more insistent. Showtime. As the basement door clicked closed, I took a huge breath that I intended to be calming. And then, I greeted my Imaginary Boyfriend.
“Jason!”
He was perfect. He’d traded in his khakis for grey flannel slacks, trousers that managed to look casual and special, all at the same time. His sweater picked up the grey, but wove the color into a swirl of blue and green, leaving ample golden highlights to enrich the glints in his curls. His hair was mussed, like a little boy who had forgotten to bring a comb.
And he was holding flowers.
Honest to goodness flowers. A mixed bouquet of bright autumn colors—zinnias and Gerber daisies and dahlias and one late sunflower splash. Scott had bought me precisely one wrist corsage in all the years that we had dated. He’d always said that flowers were a waste of time, because they only died. Died. Just like romance, when it’s left unfed.
“They’re beautiful!”
He smiled shyly. “I saw them, and I thought of you. ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’”
A man who read Shakespeare. My heart clenched, and I pulled up another part of Ophelia’s speech, “And pansies, that’s for thoughts.” A shiver swept my spine. Of course, I was quoting the words of a mad woman, a woman insanely in love with a man who did not return the affection. Not a good omen. I shook the rest of the words out of my skull, ordering myself not to dwell on fennel. Or rue.
“Come in,” I said, ushering him into my living room. I finally remembered my best hostess manners. “May I get you a cocktail?”
“Sure. What have you got?”
“You name it, I’ve got it.” I finally took the flowers from him—an awkward motion that resulted in his stepping forward, my jumping back, his easing away from me, and my leaping to catch his arm to keep him from toppling over the coffee table.
When we were both standing steady and the flowers were in my hands, I managed to smile, turning my head to the side in an attempt to remind him that I was waiting to serve him a drink. “Um, Scotch, then,” he said. “On the rocks.”
Hmm…. I shouldn’t have been so glib about my household bar. “No Scotch. Bourbon? Or anything clear?” Except for rum. I hadn’t restocked after the last mojito therapy night. “Or wine? I have wine!”
He laughed. “Wine sounds perfect.”
“Please, have a seat,” I said.
“Let me help you.”
I immediately pictured the clutter on my kitchen counters. I’d read that there were two things you never wanted to witness being made: sausage and legislation. I’d add another thing to the list: a cozy dinner for two. “The kitchen is tiny,” I lied. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
He shrugged, and I retreated into the battle zone. Of course, you could see it from the living room. He’d know that I’d lied about the size. I wanted to smack myself on the forehead, but that would have ruined the bouquet.
Bouquet. Flowers. For me.
My heart was doing strange flip-flopping things in my chest, and I was having trouble remembering to breathe. Wasn’t that one of those things that your body was supposed to do for you automatically? Keep your lungs moving in and out, without your consciously reminding it?
I opened the drawer to the left of the sink, searching for the corkscrew. None to be found. I knew that I kept it there—that was one thing important enough that I wouldn’t lose it in my kitchen. I pulled open three other drawers. I stopped and decided to put the flowers in water, while I worried about the looming wine disaster.
No vase.
Well, that’s what pitchers were for. The mojito one. With fish on the side.
Okay. So the flowers were going to live to see another day, but where had the corkscrew gone? Had Neko made off with it? He’d threatened to come upstairs every half hour, just to keep an eye on Jason and me. To make sure that my Imaginary Boyfriend didn’t take advantage of me, he’d said. Maybe stealing the corkscrew was part of his master plan.
I wanted to be taken advantage of. Here. Now.
I took a deep breath and resigned myself to crossing the living room, to knocking on the basement door, to calling downstairs and asking where my conniving familiar had hidden the corkscrew.
“Is everything all right?” Jason called from the living room.
“Fine! Just fine!” And then I saw that it was all fine. Neko had followed my instructions to the letter. He had left the bottles of wine on the counter, and he’d opened the first one to breathe. The corkscrew was sitting on the counter, the cork standing guard beside it like a loyal infantryman.
I contemplated taking solid slug from the mouth of the bottle, but I told myself to wait. I’d be a lady tonight. I’d sip delicately.
I poured with a heavy hand.
“Here we go,” I said, returning to the living room and raising Jason’s glass like the Olympics torch.
“Thanks,” he said, taking it from me. “To new beginnings.”
I thought that I’d never draw a full breath again. “To new beginnings,” I whispered, clinking my glass against his and barely managing to take a sip.
“I always think of the autumn as the start of the year,” Jason said, nodding toward the darkened garden outside my windows. “The beginning of the new school year. Meeting new students. Launching new projects.”
Oh. So maybe he and I weren’t beginning anything new. My cheeks flushed, and I didn’t know whether to blame the wine or my presumptions. Just for good measure, I took another sip. I wracked my brain for something to say, something witty and en
dearing and entertaining.
Normally, I don’t have any problem talking. I can go on and on; I can be the belle of the conversational ball. Something about Jason, though, left me speechless. It might have been the sight of his fingers around the stem of his wineglass—long fingers, sensitive ones. They looked as if they could work any manner of magic, grimoires or no.
It might have been the light glinting on his eyes. His eyelashes were really long, longer than any guy should have. I’d never noticed that before, in the daylight of the library. Everything was different here, in my cottage, alone, together. At night.
A loud thump came from the basement.
“What’s that?” He looked at the floor, as if it might open up beneath his feet.
“Um, my cat?” Was I asking him, or telling him? “My cat,” I repeated. “He’s downstairs.”
“This place has a downstairs?”
“It has a basement.”
“And you keep your cat down there?”
Yeah, what was I? Some heartless wench, imprisoning a helpless animal? “No, no, I just put him down there for tonight. I was afraid that you might be allergic.”
“Oh, no. I love cats. You can let him out.”
Fat chance. “No!” I realized that I sounded too stressed. “I, um, I gave him a treat when I put him down there. He gets really nasty when I interrupt him when he’s playing with his … treat.”
Jason shrugged. “Maybe I’ll see him later, then.”
“Maybe.”
Well, that was the end of one fantastic conversational gambit. Hopefully, Jason would forget about my phantom house cat before long. There was another thump from downstairs, but we both pretended not to hear it.
“So,” I said, “I thought that we’d start with some soup.” If I couldn’t wow the man with my words, I’d reach him through his belly.
“Sounds great. Is that what smells so good?”
Ah, he was a silver-tongued devil. I answered breezily, as if I spent every day whipping up three-course dinners for two. “That, or maybe the pear tart I baked earlier.”
“Wow! You are domestic, aren’t you?” His praise was like a warm wash, flooding me from head to foot. “You work at the Peabridge all day, you cook in the evenings. What other secrets do you have up your sleeves?”
If he only knew. I’m a witch, I could say. Now, that was a conversation starter, for sure. Instead, I went for the more traditional: “Why don’t you just make yourself comfortable in here while I—”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here while you wait on me all night. I won’t take no for an answer. Let me help. Or—” he shrugged, and his grin was positively boyish, “at least let me watch. You probably don’t want me touching anything; I’m dangerous in a kitchen.”
I wasted a split second making the calculation. I could leave him out here, listening for the Neko serenade from below, or I could let him into the kitchen. The directions for the peanut soup really were straightforward. I could risk finishing it, even with the man of my dreams as my audience.
“Well then, come on in.”
And he did. He sat next to the counter as I reheated the celery and onion mixture on the stove. He watched as I retrieved chicken broth and the milk and flour combination from the fridge. He turned his head to the side as I produced the cup of peanut butter.
I felt like I was on some cable channel cooking show, demonstrating technique for a crowd of impressed guests. Since Jason and I weren’t doing so well on the small talk front, I decided I might as well fill him in on the cooking process. “So, now I just pour in this chicken broth, and I wait for it to boil.”
“You look so intense when you do that.”
Intense. I was trying to keep from splashing broth onto my low-cut blouse. I should have thrown on an apron, but I didn’t want him to think that I was some 1950’s house frau.
“Wait a minute!” he said, and his tone was so sharp that I almost stopped stirring the soup. “Peanut soup. Pear tart.” He spun back to the counter and found the basket with the muffins, the ones that Melissa had baked earlier in the day. “Sweet potato and pecan muffins! Thomas Jefferson! You’re making Thomas Jefferson’s favorite meal.”
He got it. He understood. It was as if I’d reached out to him through a code, a secret language, and he’d deciphered everything. He truly understood me. “You figured it out!”
“Then that means that you’ve got mutton for the main course! And peas. You must have peas somewhere.”
“In the fridge. And, um, lamb, not mutton.”
“I don’t even know who sells mutton these days,” he said.
“Exactly!” We laughed, and for the first time that evening I felt confident that I might—I just possibly, conceivably, potentially might—make this whole Imaginary to Real transition happen.
When our shared laughter had finished, he looked away. He cleared his throat, as if he were about to say something, but his eyes fell on the book. Elemental Magick. Melissa had left it on the counter, beside the pear tart.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, nothing.” I would have slipped it out of his hands, tucked it away out of sight, but my fingers were coated with the peanut butter that I was trying to coax from the measuring cup. Somehow, I didn’t think that Julia Child ever had these problems.
“It looks ancient! It’s certainly from before my dates.”
His dates. Colonial America. The field that I specialized in, at the day job that he knew all too well. I thought quickly and forced a bright smile. “It’s from before my own, also. I’m branching out a bit. Taking some library continuing education courses.”
“And they let you keep rare books in your kitchen?” He lifted it with a scholar’s reverence, easing open the cover to peer inside. “What sort of program lets you do that?”
“It’s not really a program,” I hedged. “It’s more like independent study.” I finally managed to get the peanut butter out of the measuring cup and into the soup, but I didn’t back up quickly enough to escape the resulting plop. My blouse was drenched.
“Dammit!” I swore without thinking. I grabbed for a dish towel and tried to mop the worst of the damage from my cleavage. It was hot, but not bad enough to burn me. The fat from the soup would stain the fabric, though. At least it was black. That was part of the method to my fashion madness—stains were virtually unnoticeable on my wardrobe.
“Are you okay?” Jason looked up, but he didn’t move toward me.
This was why I’d wanted him to wait in the other room. This was why I hadn’t wanted him to watch me cook. I was embarrassed to find hot tears rising behind my eyes, embarrassment spilling over.
“Hey,” he said, setting down the spellbook. Well, at least I’d distracted him from the magic. He still kept to his half of the kitchen, though. He must be mortified that he was wasting an evening on a klutz like me. “Don’t worry about it.” he said.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t realize that it was going to splash all over.”
“I wouldn’t have either. I’m totally helpless in the kitchen—I can’t even fix myself a turkey sandwich.”
Chagrined by my own incompetence and thinking that I would have done better to order in two turkey sandwiches from Subway, I was horrified to feel two huge tears escaping down my cheeks. I suddenly remembered watching him with Ekaterina in the hamburger joint. She had been crying then. She had looked gorgeous, despite her tears. I would not; I knew that. I would look like a goggle-eyed carp. The thought of my red nose and swollen eyes was terrifying enough that it immediately desiccated my tear ducts.
“And besides,” he said, before I could find a way to maneuver the conversation around to Ekaterina, before I could find out something more about the ice ballerina, “I’ve been standing over here trying to figure out how to tell you something.”
I took a deep breath. This could not be good. Something that he had to think about. Something that he had to debate. Something that worried him. S
omething that kept him all the way on the far side of the kitchen. “What?”
“I’m allergic to peanuts.”
My rush of relief nearly made my knees buckle. In one panicked flash, I’d imagined much worse. I’d suddenly expected him to tell me that he was married. That he and Ekaterina had two perfect children and a Labrador retriever named Molly. That he secretly lusted after Neko and had only accepted my dinner offer because he’d seen my familiar lurking about the cottage. That he had agreed to come to dinner because he was involved in a sociological experiment that measured what hopeless, awkward, plain women find attractive about accomplished, gorgeous, entertaining professors.
He just couldn’t eat the food that I’d prepared.
“No problem!” I turned off the burner with a precision usually reserved for aborting missile launches.
“I’m sorry. I should have said something when you first took out the peanut butter, but I was so surprised.”
“I didn’t exactly give you a chance.”
“But you planned everything, and now I’ve ruined your colonial menu.”
“The proportions would be off, anyway. Now that I’m wearing half of it.” I managed a bemused shrug.
He laughed, and I joined him after only a few heartbeats of hesitation. Then he said, “When you told me you’d locked up your cat because you thought I might be allergic, I almost said something about this stupid peanut thing, but I figured, what are the chances that you’d serve them?”
I glanced at the bread in Melissa’s basket. “How are you on pecans?”
“Just fine.”
“And gingersnaps?”
“Not a problem.”
“And lamb?”
“My favorite.”
“Peas?”
“The finest of all the legumes.”
I grinned. “I think we’re still in business, then.”
He finally took a step closer, as if he’d realized that he would not actually collapse from the peanut infestation on top of the stove. “You know, you have a beautiful smile.”
I looked down, unable to meet his eyes. That shy glance let me realize that my Miracle Bra was outlined perfectly against my soaking blouse. I shrugged, but the fabric didn’t move. The silence was stretching to something uncomfortable, so I reached for a feeble joke. “You must say that to all the girls.”
“It’s the truth.” He reached out and touched my chin with his finger. With gentle pressure, he made me raise my eyes. I was suddenly preternaturally aware of my smudged eyeglasses. “I notice you at the library every day I’m there.”
And then he kissed me. Jason Templeton kissed me. Standing in my kitchen, surrounded by herbs and spices and the makings of poisonous peanut soup, Jason Templeton kissed me.
I’d like to say that it was the finest kiss I’ve ever experienced. I’d like to describe how he made me feel, what he did to my swooning body. I’d like to explain how this kiss was like no other I’d ever known, that it was better and deeper and more meaningful on a hundred different levels.
But all I could think was that I was covered in chicken broth and standing dangerously close to a cupful of potent allergen, some of which was certainly still on my fingers. I could kill him, then and there. I could send my Imaginary Boyfriend into anaphylactic shock and spend the rest of my life explaining to the police that I’d never meant to harm him, that it had all been Thomas Jefferson’s fault.
I waited for Jason to come up for air before I took a step back. “I’m a mess,” I explained, when he looked confused. I managed a steadying breath and transformed it into a laugh. “Here. I’m going to turn on the broiler so that we can cook the lamb. You must be starving.” As I suited action to words, he grinned wolfishly and pretended to lick his lips. “For food!” I said, laughing and playfully pushing him away, but taking care to use my non-contaminated forearm. “I’m just going to change into—”
“Something more comfortable?” He was totally irresistible when he grinned.
“Something a little dryer. I’ll be back in just a moment.”
“Don’t take too long. I might try to work those spells in Elemental Magick.”
“Be my guest,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. I hurried across the living room, managing to palm the key to my bedroom door and open it smoothly.
Once the door was safely closed, I collapsed against it, fighting down a fit of giggles. Jason Templeton had kissed me. He had stood in my kitchen, put his arms around me and kissed me.
I was so over Scott Randall. I was on my way to true love and eternal happiness. Melissa had her First Date system, but I had knowledge and planning and foresight. I’d had the courage to ask my Imaginary Boyfriend to dinner, and now everything was, um, slipping into place.
I stripped off my blouse and tossed it into the corner of my closet. I could deal with it tomorrow, have Neko take it to the dry cleaner to see if it could be saved. For tonight, though, what would I put on?
Casual t-shirt, right out. Clingy crop top, would have been perfect about ten pounds ago. Sheer oxford cut to accentuate curves, ideal—except that the middle button had an annoying tendency to pop open. I was not about to limit my options for the evening by applying a safety pin for protection.
Slinky wrap-around, that tied on the side. Yes. That was perfect. It said, I am sophisticated, yet fun. It said, I am available, but I’m not an utter slut. It said, you want me, you know you really do.
I was slipping the garment from its hanger when I was interrupted by the most piercing Klaxon I’d ever heard.
