Elliot grinned. “I’m one of the founding partners of Stryker, West, Dwyer, Coffey, and Nichols. We’re one of the largest law firms in town. I can’t take a whole lot of credit for that. We were lucky. We were in the right place at the right time. Owen West and I opened for business in a cheap storefront office twelve years ago, right at the start of the biggest boom this town has ever seen. We represented some people no one else would touch, entrepreneurs who had a lot of good ideas but not much money for start-up legal fees. Some of our clients made smart moves and were carried right to the top by the explosive growth of the gaming industry and the Vegas real-estate market, and we just sort of shot up there along with them, hanging on to their coattails.”
“Interesting,” Tina said.
“It is?”
“You are.”
“I am?”
“You’re so modest about having built a splendid law practice, yet you’re an egomaniac when it comes to your cooking.”
He laughed. “That’s because I’m a better cook than attorney. Listen, why don’t you mix us a couple of drinks while I change out of this suit. I’ll be back in five minutes, and then you’ll see how a true culinary genius operates.”
“If it doesn’t work out, we can always jump in the car and go to McDonald’s for a hamburger.”
“Philistine.”
“Their hamburgers are hard to beat.”
“I’ll make you eat crow.”
“How do you cook it?”
“Very funny.”
“Well, if you cook it very funny, I don’t know if I want to eat it.”
“If I did cook crow,” he said, “it would be delicious. You would eat every scrap of it, lick your fingers, and beg for more.”
Her smile was so lovely that he could have stood there all evening, just staring at the sweet curve of her lips.
Elliot was amused by the effect that Tina had on him. He could not remember ever having been half so clumsy in the kitchen as he was this evening. He dropped spoons. He knocked over cans and bottles of spices. He forgot to watch a pot, and it boiled over. He made a mistake blending the salad dressing and had to begin again from scratch. She flustered him, and he loved it.
“Elliot, are you sure you aren’t feeling those cognacs we had at my office?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then the drink you’ve been sipping on here.”
“No. This is just my kitchen style.”
“Spilling things is your style?”
“It gives the kitchen a pleasant used look.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to McDonald’s?”
“Do they bother to give their kitchen a pleasant used look?”
“They not only have good hamburgers—”
“Their hamburgers have a pleasant used look.”
“—their French fries are terrific.”
“So I spill things,” he said. “A cook doesn’t have to be graceful to be a good cook.”
“Does he have to have a good memory?”
“Huh?”
“That mustard powder you’re just about to put into the salad dressing.”
“What about it?”
“You already put it in a minute ago.”
“I did? Thanks. I wouldn’t want to have to mix this damn stuff three times.”
She had a throaty laugh that was not unlike Nancy’s had been.
Although she was different from Nancy in many ways, being with her was like being with Nancy. She was easy to talk to — bright, funny, sensitive.
Perhaps it was too soon to tell for sure, but he was beginning to think that fate, in an uncharacteristic flush of generosity, had given him a second chance at happiness.
When he and Tina finished dessert, Elliot poured second cups of coffee. “Still want to go to McDonald’s for a hamburger?”
The mushroom salad, the fettuccine Alfredo, and the zabaglione had been excellent. “You really can cook.”
“Would I lie to you?”
“I guess I’ll have to eat that crow now.”
“I believe you just did.”
“And I didn’t even notice the feathers.”
While Tina and Elliot had been joking in the kitchen, even before dinner had been completely prepared, she had begun to think they might go to bed together. By the time they finished eating dinner, she knew they would. Elliot wasn’t pushing her. For that matter, she wasn’t pushing him, either. They were both being driven by natural forces. Like the rush of water downstream. Like the relentless building of a storm wind and then the lightning. They both realized that they were in need of each other, physically and mentally and emotionally, and that whatever happened between them would be good.
It was fast but right, inevitable.
At the start of the evening, the undercurrent of sexual tension made her nervous. She hadn’t been to bed with any man but Michael in the past fourteen years, since she was nineteen. She hadn’t been to bed with anyone at all for almost two years. Suddenly it seemed to her that she had done a mad, stupid thing when she’d hidden away like a nun for two years. Of course, during the first of those two years, she’d still been married to Michael and had felt compelled to remain faithful to him, even though a separation and then a divorce had been in the works, and even though he had not felt constrained by any similar moral sense. Later, with the stage show to produce and with poor Danny’s death weighing heavily on her, she hadn’t been in the mood for romance. Now she felt like an inexperienced girl. She wondered if she would know what to do. She was afraid that she would be inept, clumsy, ridiculous, foolish in bed. She told herself that sex was just like riding a bicycle, impossible to unlearn, but the frivolousness of that analogy didn’t increase her self-confidence.
Gradually, however, as she and Elliot went through the standard rites of courtship, the indirect sexual thrusts and parries of a budding relationship, albeit at an accelerated pace, the familiarity of the games reassured her. Amazing that it should be so familiar. Maybe it really was a bit like riding a bicycle.
After dinner they adjourned to the den, where Elliot built a fire in the black-granite fireplace. Although winter days in the desert were often as warm as springtime elsewhere, winter nights were always cool, sometimes downright bitter. With a chilly night wind moaning at the windows and howling incessantly under the eaves, the blazing fire was welcome.
Tina kicked off her shoes.
They sat side by side on the sofa in front of the fireplace, watching the flames and the occasional bursts of orange sparks, listening to music, and talking, talking, talking. Tina felt as if they had talked without pause all evening, speaking with quiet urgency, as if each had a vast quantity of earthshakingly important information that he must pass on to the other before they parted. The more they talked, the more they found in common. As an hour passed in front of the fire, and then another hour, Tina discovered that she liked Elliot Stryker more with each new thing she learned about him.
She never was sure who initiated the first kiss. He may have leaned toward her, or perhaps she tilted toward him. But before she realized what was happening, their lips met softly, briefly. Then again. And a third time. And then he began planting small kisses on her forehead, on her eyes, on her cheeks, her nose, the corners of her mouth, her chin. He kissed her ears, her eyes again, and left a chain of kisses along her neck, and when at last he returned to her mouth, he kissed her more deeply than before, and she responded at once, opening her mouth to him.