As Sola got up from her chair and started to put her coat on, Mark came in behind her and helped settle the wool on her shoulders.
The way his hands lingered suggested he was more than open to this being the end of dinner, but the beginning of the rest of the night. He wasn’t pushy, though. He stepped back and smiled, indicating the way to the exit with a gallant hand.
Moving in front of him, it seemed like some kind of mental-health felony that he didn’t make her blood boil…and yet that highly aggressive, dominating man from the night before did.
She was going to have to give her libido a pep talk. Or maybe a spanking…
Perhaps from that other guy, part of her suggested.
“No,” she muttered.
“Sorry, what?”
Sola shook her head. “Just talking to myself.”
After wending their way through the crowd, they got to the restaurant’s door, and wow, what a sinus-clearer when they stepped out into the night.
“So…” Mark said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his well-developed torso bunching up—and yet still not managing to get close to the size of—
Stop it.
“Thanks for dinner, you didn’t have to pay.”
“Well, this was a date. You said so.” He smiled again. “And I’m a traditional kind of guy.”
Do it, she said to herself. Ask him if you can go back to his house.
After all, there could be no hanky-panky going on at hers. Ever. Not with her grandmother upstairs—the woman’s deafness was highly selective.
Just do it.
This is why you asked him….
“I’ve got an early-morning meeting,” she blurted. “So I have to head off. But thank you very much—and I’d like to do this again.”
To give Mark credit, he covered any disappointment he might have felt with another of those winning grins.
“Sounds good. This was cool.”
“I’m just parked back here.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “So…”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Thanks.”
They were silent as their boots crackled through the salt that had been put down over the ice.
“Nice night.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
For some reason, her senses began to fire in warning, her eyes searching the darkness outside of the lit parking lot.
Maybe it was Benloise coming after her, she thought. He undoubtedly knew by now that someone had broken into his home and his safe, and had also probably noticed the shift in that statue’s position. Hard to know whether he would retaliate, though. In spite of the business he was in, he had a certain code of conduct that he adhered to—and on some level, he must be aware that what he’d done in canceling that job and cutting her pay had been wrong.
He would most certainly understand the message.
Besides, she could have taken everything he’d locked up.
Approaching her Audi, she disengaged the alarm. Then she turned around and looked up.
“I’ll call you?”
“Yes, please,” Mark said.
There was a long pause. And then she reached a hand up, slid it behind his neck, and drew his mouth down to her own. Mark immediately went with the invitation, but not in a pushy, domineering way: As she tilted her head, he did the same, and their lips met, brushing lightly, then with a little more pressure. He didn’t crush her to him, or trap her against the car…there was no sense of out-of-control.
No feeling of great passion, either.
She broke the contact. “I’ll see you soon.”
Mark exhaled hard, like he’d gotten turned on. “Ah, yeah. I hope so. And not only in the gym.”
He lifted his hand, smiled one last time, and walked to his truck.
With a quiet curse, Sola got behind her wheel, shut the door, and let her head fall back against the rest. In the rearview mirror, she watched his taillights come on, and saw him make a fat turn and head out of the parking lot.
Closing her lids, she didn’t see Mark’s gleaming smile, or imagine his lips against hers, or feel his hands roaming her body.
She was back to being outside of that cottage looking in, playing witness to a pair of hot, slightly evil eyes looking up at her over the exposed breast of another woman.
“Oh, for the love of God…”
Shaking herself out of the memory, she feared that in this case, her craving for, oh, say, chocolate, was not going to be eased by a diet soda. Or a Snackwell’s cookie. Or even one single Hershey’s Kiss.
At this rate, she was going to have to melt down a case of Lindt truffles and run them through an IV directly into her vein.
Putting her foot on the brake, she hit the button on the dash and heard the engine flare to life. As the headlights lights came on—
Sola jerked back into her seat and let out a scream.
When Qhuinn returned to the mansion with the others, he broke rank as soon as he was through the vestibule and into the grand foyer. Moving at a quick jog, he mounted the staircase and headed directly to Layla’s room: According to her texts, she’d decided to leave the clinic after all, and he was anxious to find out how she was doing.
Knocking on the door, he started praying. Again.
Nothing like pregnancy to make an agnostic religious.
“Come in?”
At the sound of her voice, he braced himself and ducked inside. “How’re you feeling?”
Layla looked up from the Us Weekly magazine she was reading on the bed. “Hi!”
Qhuinn recoiled at the cheerfulness. “Ah…hi?”
Glancing around, he saw Vogue, People, and Vanity Fair on the duvet around her, and across the way, the TV was nattering on, a commercial for underarm deodorant segueing into one for Colgate toothpaste. There were ginger ales and saltines on the side table next to her, and then, on the opposite stand, a cleaned-out carton of Häagen-Dazs and a couple of spoons on a silver tray.
“I’m feeling really nauseous,” Layla said with a smile. Like that was good news.
He supposed it was. “Any…you know…”
“Not in the slightest. Not even a little. I’m not throwing up, either. I just have to make sure I eat a little all the time. Too much and I feel sick—same if I go too long without putting something in there.”
Qhuinn eased back against the jambs, his legs literally wobbling from relief. “That’s…awesome.”
“Do you want to sit down?” As if he were looking as pale as he suddenly felt.
“No, I’m good. I’m just…I’ve been really worried about you.”
“Well, as you can see”—she indicated her body—“I’m just doing my thing—and thank the Virgin Scribe for that.”
As Layla smiled over at him, he really liked the way she looked—and not from any sexual sense of the word. It was just…she appeared calm and relaxed and happy, her hair down loose over her shoulders, her coloring perfect, her hands and her eyes steady. In fact, she seemed…really healthy all of a sudden, that sallow cast to her skin now noticeable for its absence.
“So I guess you’ve had some visitors,” he commented, as he nodded to the mags and the dead soldier of ice cream.
“Oh, everyone’s been by. Beth stayed the longest. She stretched out right next to me—we didn’t talk about anything in particular. We just read and looked at pictures and watched a Deadliest Catch marathon. I love that show—it’s where all these humans go out on boats into the sea? It’s very exciting. Made me feel glad to be warm and on dry land.”
Qhuinn rubbed his face, and prayed that his sense of balance began to return quick: Evidently, his adrenal glands were still struggling to catch up to reality, the idea that there was no drama, no emergency, no dire anything to react to curiously hard to handle.