Tinker told Nathan of her run-in with the fake EIA agents.
He swore softly. "It certainly sounds like them. If I'd known there was any chance you'd get mixed up with them, I would have tracked you down yesterday."
"Ah, I dealt with them." Knowing that they had coldly killed one of their own made her encounter, in hindsight, more chilling.
Nathan shook his head. "That's my Tink."
The cookouts were held in the wooded grove next to the Observatory, handy to the dormitory kitchen. True to form, the picnic tables looked overcrowded with food, and the smoke from the charcoal grills, scented with the smell of cooking meat, drifted out into the parking lot. Oilcan's hoverbike sat on the grass beside the lot, almost as comforting a sight as Oilcan himself.
Nathan parked his Buick, and they got out.
"I'm going to have to go soon." Nathan scanned over the picnicking scientists, as if making sure none of them were the missing smugglers. "My shift starts in half an hour. Make sure Lain locks her doors tonight. If you need a ride home tomorrow, call me."
"Sure." Tinker was never sure how to take Nathan's protective streak. "Thanks for the ride."
"Any time." He turned to her with the start of a smile, which vanished with a look of surprise. "Tink!" He reached out to button the bottom of her shirt closed. "Please, try to stay decent."
"What?" She brushed away his hand and gave her middle button a slight tug. "You can't see anything important with this one done. Besides, I've got a bra on."
"I know," he said in an oddly husky voice. "It's a very sexy bra."
"You checked it out?" She would have been embarrassed except for the fact that he beat her to the blush. Weird seeing such a big guy turn red and knowing she had done it to him. Empowering. She tugged on the middle button again, flashing a bit of her bra's black lace. "Like what you saw?"
"Tink." He caught her hand with his. "Don't tease guys like that. The wrong guy will get the wrong idea."
"It's just you."
"I'll take that as a compliment." He surprised her by running his finger across her bare skin, just above the middle button—a glide of rough fingertip over the upper swell of her right breast. "And yes, I liked what I saw."
Her turn to burn. "You're just being nice." She frowned when he laughed. "What?"
"It's just you're so smart, and yet you're so naïve, innocent."
"What do you mean by that?"
He looked up at the sky for a minute, and then gave her a look like a boy caught stealing candy: guilty, but wanting so badly to get away with it. "You were just this skinny little kid until you turned about fifteen, and then, one day, I turned around and you were suddenly so drop-dead sexy."
She laughed out of total surprise. "Me?"
"You bloomed that year."
In plain English, she got breasts that year. "Well, yeah, but sexy?"
"Yes. I've been quietly obsessed with you since then."
"You've got a funny way of showing it. You've never laid a hand on me."
"You were fifteen, and I was twenty-five. I kept my hands to myself. I would bust any guy for doing what I was thinking."
"Big brother" Nathan thought she was sexy? She couldn't believe it. "Yeah, sure."
"That's always been the worst of it. You've never been aware of how sexy you are. Like the way you eat strawberries."
"What's wrong with the way I eat strawberries?"
He opened his mouth, and then thought better of explaining. "Nothing. Just forget it."
"Come on; tell me."
"You don't eat them; you make love to them. It's such a turn-on, I need a cold shower afterward."
"You get off watching me eat?"
"See!" He shook a finger at her. "You're innocent. You don't understand. And I do. I'm older, and—"
"If you say wiser, I'm going to smack you."
He held up his hands to ward off any blow. "Hey, when it comes to brains, you're clearly way ahead of me. I've never minded. This isn't about you; it's about me. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I thought I was taking advantage of a kid."
"So? I'm a legal adult now."
"Hell, you just turned eighteen and never been kissed. And you still look young enough to be sixteen. I'm twenty-eight."
Tinker studied him, trying to reevaluate the last three years. How had she missed his obsession? Certainly he spent an inordinate amount of time with her and Oilcan—but he'd also had two or three girlfriends that she could remember. "Yeah, you're twenty-eight and definitely more experienced than me. That doesn't seem fair. You get to screw around while I stay a virgin."
He kicked at a weed growing up in a crack in the parking lot's cement. "I thought if I found someone else, I'd stop having a thing for you. It really hasn't been fun, wanting you and feeling like a filthy old man at the same time."
"You know, you are always going to be ten years older than me. There's nothing I can do about it."
"I figured that when you hit nineteen, if I was still hooked on you, that was old enough."
Was he serious about this? It was weird to think he had waited three years already for her to grow up, and planned to wait another year. Certainly at fifteen she could have cared less about men, but in the last three years she had developed definite interest. Most guys she knew were like Jonnie, too slimy to consider. But Nathan Czernowski? She trusted him.
Everything inside her went suddenly, nervously aquiver. She looked at his mouth and wondered what it would be like to kiss him. "What am I supposed to do for the next eleven months? Sit and twiddle my thumbs until you feel righteous?"
He glanced at her, squinting in speculation. "You'll probably hit me if I say that would be nice."
"Yes," she growled. Eleven months of wondering would kill her. She was too used to satisfying her curiosity to wait that long. "Why don't we compromise? It would be stupid to spend the next eleven months, waiting, only to find out we can't stand each other in more than a good-friend way. We should try a date."
"A date?"
"You know. Go out to eat. See a movie. Go to the Faire. Date. That is, if your ego can stand being seen with me, and whatever people might think of you."
"Ouch."
"That's really it, isn't it? You're afraid that people will think you're as nasty as the guys you bust for molesting little kids."
"Okay, yes. You look younger than you are, and anyone who doesn't know how much you've got going on upstairs will see me as some kind of pervert. And that bugs me."
"I can look older. If I put some makeup on and some nice clothes, I can look twenty." Or at least Lain said so. "Especially in a dark restaurant."
A pleased grin spread across his face. "You really want to go out to eat with me?"
"I've watched you eat. What I actually want is to find out what it's like to kiss you, but I figured I'd scare you off if I told you that."
The smile vanished to a look of such intensity it seemed to solidify the air between them, making it impossible to breathe.
Oh my, he's totally serious about being gaga about me.
With infinite slowness, he leaned down and kissed her. His big hands caught her hips, pulled her to him, and then held her tightly. Her hands were momentarily pinned between them, and then they slid up, searching for someplace to go. She'd never realized how tall he was, or imagined how solid he would feel.
He nuzzled down her neck and kissed her where her shirt gaped open, exposing the top curve of her breasts. She clung to him, feeling suddenly small in his embrace, unsure if she wanted him to stop or go on.
He stopped, though, kissing her more chastely on the cheek, and then just held her. "I think anyplace we go," he whispered huskily, "should be brightly lit, with very little privacy."
"Possibly, that would be a good idea."