“My favorite was ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ done dance-mix style.”
He looked around the room, apparently for lamps. He turned on the one beside the chair where Emily Ann reposed, and another near the love seat. He went to the light switch by the door and switched off the overhead fixture. The room instantly became a cozy nest.
“You’re right though,” he said, returning to where I was sitting. “I may never go into a store again. I'll have to figure out how to buy groceries on the Internet. Jack, get down now,” he added, and with a reproachful look Jack hopped off the couch. Bob took his place beside me. “Good boy.” He reached down and gave Jack a scratch on the chest before picking up the two glasses of wine and handing one to me. “Here you go. I doubt if it will hold a candle to my cocoa, but it no doubt is fine in its own way. What should we drink to?”
“I don’t know…world peace and dry clothing,” I chose at random. We touched the rims of our glasses together and a merry crystalline note chimed out.
The wine was indeed fine, probably the best I'd ever tasted. Ambrose obviously didn’t search out the best three dollar merlots that money can buy. I could feel dark red warmth trickling down my throat and spreading to my arms and legs and face. I sank against the back of the couch and took another sip.
“I'm bushed,” Bob sighed, leaning back as well and twisting his wineglass in his fingers. Shots of ruby light glinted in the crystal. “For some reason it's hard to relax when you’re tied to a chair. I didn’t intend to fall asleep in the barn. I sat down to rest and the next thing I knew Jack was giving my face a bath.”
“You should go to bed,” I told him. He nodded.
“In a bit. I'm tired but I'm so wired I doubt if I'd go to sleep.”
“What was it like being kidnapped?”
He looked at me and frowned. “You know, I keep asking myself why I didn’t just refuse to go with her when she accosted me in the store. It's unlikely she would have shot me in public, in a grocery store of all places. If it had been Walsh I would have tried to resist. It's hard to explain. She looked desperate. Miserable. This sounds stupid but in a way I wanted to help her out. Or maybe I thought someone who looked that desperate really might shoot me, I don’t know.” He shook his head.
“You have fine gentlemanly instincts,” I told him. “Look how nice you were to that crazy woman who tried to steal your car a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yeah, but she had a very handsome dog with her. I can never resist a handsome dog.” He sipped some more wine. “One thing about last night…”
“Yes?”
“It didn’t seem—planned.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had rope to tie me up, but a hotel room is an odd place to take someone you’ve kidnapped. What if I'd done a lot of yelling and people in the adjoining rooms heard? And wouldn’t you expect some kind of torture to go along with kidnapping and interrogation?”
I gave a little shudder. “Ig, don’t even say that. Think of all the kidnapping stories where they mail off some body part if the ransom isn’t paid.”
“I admit I'm pretty attached to all my parts. Anyway, if not torture, at least some kind of pressure. All she did was keep asking me where the tape was, and I kept refusing to tell her. Ransom didn’t come into the picture at all.”
“It does sound like an awfully genteel kidnapping,” I said. “I wonder if Ambrose is right, and she and Carl are working at cross purposes.”
“Could be, but I'm damned if I know what those purposes could be,” he said. “I'm convinced Walsh wants to remove me as a threat to his prosperous lifestyle, but what’s her story?”
“I hate not knowing stuff, or at least not having a way to find out.”
“I know. Is she an accomplice? Maybe she was an accomplice and he double crossed her. Or vice versa.”
“If I had been his accomplice, I'd be looking for something to protect me from becoming his next victim,” I said.
“Good point. Ian’s stepfather has not exhibited a lot of—what was it?—fine gentlemanly instincts.” He took another sip of wine, then set the glass down. A big yawn forced its way out of his mouth. He looked exhausted. I set down my glass beside his.
“You’re tired, you need to get some sleep,” I repeated.
“First things first, though,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my temple, my forehead, then zoned in on my mouth. He tasted like very good wine. I could feel myself start to react very much as I had to the wine, a gentle warmth flowing down all my limbs, a buzz in my head. I hadn’t had a kiss like this in a very long time.
Hell, I hadn’t had a kiss like this one ever.
I discovered my arms had encircled him, and we were leaning into each other. After a long, long time we paused for air. “Louisa,” he murmured, coming in for another kiss. One of the voices in my head asked me if I knew what I was doing, if I was ready for this, and did I remember I was in a cabin in the woods with only one bed, but I could barely hear it over the rushing of blood in my ears.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The alignment of the stars that day dictated that my fate would turn on the actions of small mammals with long tails.
Fabulous kisses could not distract me from the mouse that ran over us just then. The creature started its foray at Bob’s end of the love seat, dashed straight across us, and leapt off my end. Bob jumped and I gave an embarrassing shriek and somehow levitated up onto the couch. Jack bayed, and both dogs gave chase to the rodent, which dashed and zigged all over the cabin, finally disappearing under the stove. Emily Ann tried to dig it out, but the wide boards of the polished floor were unyielding. She remained for some time with her rump in the air and her nose glued to the bottom of the stove. Jack tried back-trailing, sniffing along the mouse’s track, which led him on an eccentric path to Bob and me.
The action took less than a minute, but as a spell breaker it was as good as a bucketful of cold water. Bob looked at me standing on the furniture.
“Don’t you dare say anything,” I warned him. “I can't help it. It's a visceral reaction to small, fast moving objects. Just because I'm acting like a cartoon character does not mean this is funny.” Embarrassment put a crabby note in my voice.
He contrived to look innocent. “I wasn’t going to say a word,” he lied. I glared at him. I could tell he was struggling to keep a straight face as he held out his hand to help me descend. I stepped down as haughtily as I could, pretending I wasn’t ready to leap back onto the love seat should the mouse be foolish enough to reappear.
The dogs gave up their chase, though I would have preferred that Emily Ann remain at her post by the stove all night, to prevent the mouse’s return. The burst of exercise made them think that a trip outside would be a good idea, and they went over to the door and stood looking expectantly at us.
I shot one last look at the stove. “I’ll take them out,” I said firmly. Bob started to protest. “No, I'll do it. You stand guard and make sure the mouse doesn’t come back. We’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
I leashed the dogs, not wanting them to take off into the woods after some enticing smell or sound. “You guys have had enough hunting for one night,” I told them. The creaking porch swayed beneath us. They led me down the steps and across the small yard, away from the direction of the road. I walked about thirty feet from the house to let them accomplish what we’d come out for. We paused, and I looked up at the sky. The storm clouds of this morning had blown away, and a million stars gleamed overhead, so intense away from town where no lights clouded their brilliance.
I took a deep breath of chilly night air. Behind me loomed a cabin with a man in it that I liked a whole lot, and only one bed. We’d had two perfectly wonderful kisses. And I was scared. I could remind myself over and over that Bob was not Roger, and that Roger was dead; but even if there are no ghosts, the dead still can haunt us.