Bit by the Bug (Matthews Sisters 1) (21 page)

‘Mmm,’ she moaned, blindly lifting the first chocolate her fingers touched. She didn’t care what flavour it was as she brought it to her mouth and popped it inside. The sweet had a bit of tang to it, not unpleasant but definitely not her favourite. Still chewing as she talked, she said, ‘They’re beautiful, thank you.’

He nodded, his way of saying ‘you’re welcome’.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ he asked, sounding concerned.

‘I’m menstruating,’ Kat laughed, popping another chocolate in her mouth, ‘not sick.’

His look said he didn’t really get the difference. ‘Sorry, my mother always shut herself up in her room during her . . . Well,
that
time.’

Kat stood, giving him a bemused look. ‘You’re technically a doctor and I know from firsthand experience you have a pretty extensive knowledge of the female genitals but you can’t say the word menstruation?’

He laughed. ‘I may be a scientist, but I’m still male.’

‘I noticed.’ Kat winked. Then, amazed, she watched as a blush crept over his face. ‘Why, Dr Richmond, are you embarrassed?’

‘What? No. No.’ He tried to keep a straight face, but failed.

Then, deciding she’d like to change the subject from her ovaries, she asked, ‘So, what are you up to tonight?’

‘Ah, I was just hoping you wouldn’t kick me out before I got through the door. Beyond that, I didn’t make plans.’

‘Vincent . . .’ she hesitated. They had been going at it like rabbits and the way she was fighting cramps and bloating didn’t make her feel too sexy. Jack always disappeared during this time, like she was contagious. ‘. . . I’m not really feeling up to –’

‘I didn’t come over here just for sex,’ he interrupted, as if reading her mind. She liked it when he smiled. His mouth curled in a way that was too adorable for words. His dark eyes were framed by his dark bangs, a stunningly attractive look, and they were only made darker by his brown shirt. ‘I thought maybe we could spend some time together.’

‘OK.’ she smiled. ‘I’d like that. I’ll just grab some clothes.’

‘You look fine.’ Vincent crossed over to the couch to stand beside her. ‘Beautiful.’

Kat glanced down over her attire.

‘I like the slippers,’ he said, reaching for the front of her robe. He ran his finger down the front, loosening the flap. Seeing her breasts beneath the camisole, he said, his voice suddenly hoarse, ‘And I like your T-shirt.’

‘Camisole,’ she corrected.

‘And I like your camisole,’ he repeated, in the exact same tone as before. Kat giggled. Vincent groaned softly and pulled her robe back together to hide her sexy lingerie. ‘We’ll just cover that back up.’ Then, suddenly, he stopped, turning serious. ‘You weren’t expecting someone were you?’

‘Well, I was about to call the delivery boy down at Chang’s Chinese Restaurant,’ she teased. ‘You hungry?’

He glanced over her. ‘Oh, yeah, I could definitely eat.’

‘I’ll get the menu.’

After a brief discussion, Vincent called the restaurant
and ordered fried cheese wontons, chicken lo mein, General Tso’s chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce and Chinese vegetables, Szechuan Beef, fried rice and, Kat’s personal favourite, egg drop soup.

‘Do you think you got enough?’ Kat asked, laughing.

‘Why, you want me to call them back?’

‘Um, no, I think we’re good. I’ll be eating leftovers for a week.’

‘I didn’t see this last time I was here,’ he said, pointing at the wall. Kat turned, looking at the collage of her and her sisters. When he had picked her up for their date, she hadn’t invited him that far into her home. Besides, his eyes hadn’t been looking at her walls. ‘It looks like you spent a lot of time on it.’

‘My whole life,’ she said.

‘I like it.’

It was hardly the glowing compliment an artist liked to hear in regard to their work.

‘May I see your other pieces?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you say you had a darkroom?’

‘Oh, yeah, over here.’ She led the way to a small closet she’d converted into her darkroom. It was a pain because she had to haul tubs of water back and forth to make it work. Opening the door, she flipped on the light. Red shone from above from her photo bulb. Several prints hung from clothespegs attached to hangers. The hangers were on the bar intended to hang coats from. The space was small and they crowded inside.

Vincent leaned over to study a print. ‘Where was this taken?’

‘Colorado,’ she said. Then, panicking as she realised what she had up, she glanced down the line of hanging black and white photographs. There, at the end was a picture she’d snapped of his parents getting into their limo. She unclipped a mountain scene with some flowers and thrust it at him. ‘This one is my favourite.’

Vincent took it from her and moved closer to the door to use the white light from the other room. Kat reached over, grabbed the picture of Mr and Mrs Richmond and yanked it off the hanger before dropping it on the floor – all before he turned back around.

‘It’s nice.’

Kat frowned. Nice? That’s all he had for her was ‘I like it’ and ‘it’s nice’?

‘You favour black and white?’

‘There’s something nostalgic about it. Plus the chemicals used to process colour prints are much more toxic and require better ventilation than I have.’

‘Ah, now this,’ he said, pointing at a photo she’d taken of a little girl playing on a street kerb. ‘This is an excellent photograph.’

‘Why?’ she asked automatically.

‘Because of her face. She’s sitting in filth on – if the guys sweating miserably in the background are any indication – an unbearably hot day, yet she’s perfectly happy in her own little daydreaming world.’

‘You like kids?’ she asked.

Vincent shrugged. ‘The last time I talked to my mother she was begging for grandkids.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘I guess I haven’t thought about it too much. I like their innocence.’

‘I haven’t thought much about it either.’ Kat stepped for the darkroom door, prompting him to get out of the small room. ‘I think I could be happy both ways. If I met the right person and we had children, I’d be fine with it. Or, if I never met anyone and never had kids, I think I’d be fine with that as well.’

The front door opened and they both turned towards it.

‘Kat,’ Flora called. ‘You home?’

‘Here,’ Kat said.

Flora smiled. Then, as her eyes found them, the look
faltered. She sized Vincent up. ‘You’re the man who came here the other night to take my Katarina out on a date, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.

‘And kept her out all night, didn’t you?’

Vincent looked stunned.

‘Flora,’ Kat scolded.

‘What?’ the old woman laughed. ‘I’m just bustin’ his balls.’ Hitting Vincent on the arm, she said, ‘You should’ve seen the look on your face.’

‘Flora, this is Vincent, my –’ Kat hesitated, not knowing what to call him. His dark eyes met hers. ‘My date. Vincent, this is Flora. She lives in the building and makes the best cappuccinos in all the city.’

‘She only thinks that because they’re free,’ Flora told him.

‘Come look what Vincent brought me,’ Kat said, directing the woman’s attention towards the flowers and chocolates.

‘Now there’s a good boy,’ Flora said. ‘Glad to see you found a man who knows how to treat a woman and buys you flowers.’

‘You know, Mills would buy you flowers in a heartbeat if you’d give him just a little encouragement,’ said Kat.

‘You really think so?’ Flora asked.

‘Want me to ask him?’ Kat grinned. ‘Vincent wouldn’t mind me inviting him up for a little double date tonight. We ordered enough food.’

‘What kind of food?’ Flora asked, as if that was the most important factor.

‘Chinese,’ said Vincent.

‘I’ll go get the old codger.’ Flora walked out of the door, leaving it hanging open.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Kat asked when they were alone.

‘Not at all. I think having a chaperone here is a great idea,’ he teased. ‘But, you might want to put some clothes
on. If this Mills character starts staring at my girl, I might get jealous.’

Kat laughed, but pleasure rippled through her at the comment. She went to her bedroom, half expecting Vincent to follow behind her to watch her change. He didn’t. By the time she put on a pair of black and navy track pants and a matching T-shirt, Flora was back with Mills in tow. The delivery boy was a few seconds behind them with the food.

Mills was as wrinkled as Flora and half as lively. He wore an old sailor’s cap, a navy jacket with a white shirt underneath. Kat almost felt sorry for the man. It was clear he was smitten with Flora and Flora acted as coy and as hard to get as the best of them.

Dinner was eaten in the living room with Kat and Vincent on the couch and the other couple in her two chairs. They fell into easy conversation, laughing and telling funny stories. Mills had a surprising number of misadventures from when he was young – from run-ins with the law to nearly being shanghaied into the Navy, which he’d later joined anyway.

Vincent’s hands stayed possessively on her as they sat together on the couch. After dinner, Kat put on a mix CD she’d gotten from Flora. It had all the classics from the best of the Rat Pack – namely Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

Mills asked Flora to dance as ‘Ain’t That A Kick In The Head’ started to play. Kat smiled, watching as the man artfully led Flora about the wood floor.

‘Dance with me,’ Vincent said, standing.

Kat slipped her hand into his and he pulled her forwards. It felt natural being in his arms and she relaxed against him as he took the lead. The man could dance, but she really wasn’t surprised. He twirled her one way and then the other, gracefully moving her about with ease. Kat never danced like this and yet, with Vincent leading the way, it was like she was born to it.

By the time ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ and ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ played, she was completely under Vincent’s spell. And that night, she did something with Vincent she’d never done with a man before. She slept next to him all night without having sex.

Marred perfection.

That was the only way to describe how she felt when she was with Vincent. Kat wasn’t stupid. She knew this was the honeymoon period – the euphoric beginning of a relationship that blinded both participants to the other’s faults, the time when the sex was still explosively hot and everyone was always on their best behaviour, the part where both sides were thoughtful and yet mildly deceitful at the same time.

It was the deceitful part that spoiled the relationship’s perfection. Every new couple lied, she was well aware of that. They lied by omission – by pretending to be incapable of flatulence or belching, by hiding any number of little faults from the other. But Kat felt her lie was much worse. It weighed heavily on her mind and was never far from her thoughts when she was with Vincent. Luckily, Vincent was usually preoccupied to a fault and never noticed her distraction. Or, if he did, he never let on.

For the two weeks after they danced around her apartment and slept in each other’s arms, Kat had tried to pretend the Faux Pas thing didn’t exist, applying the out-of-sight, out-of-mind philosophy. She told herself the possibility of meeting Howard Faustino was just a random opportunity that would show up sometime in the future, like a happy accident. When lying to herself had stopped working, she promised herself she’d wait a few months and see where this thing with Vincent was going. There was no reason to throw away opportunities
if the relationship didn’t work out, was there? In which case, confessing she was hired help was just stupid.

Besides, it’s quite possible he won’t even care, she often thought. Even so, she didn’t tell him the truth.

Kat took a deep breath, glancing up from Vincent’s desk to the office door. The room was clean, as was every other inch of the building. Vincent was working in the lab again. Aside from luring him out of the laboratory with a cup of coffee and a doughnut that morning, she hadn’t seen him all day and it was almost quitting time.

Over the weeks, Vincent had invited her into his laboratory a few times, but she’d declined. No matter how often she looked at the little critters, she couldn’t muster his level of appreciation for his creepy crawly friends. In that, her opinion hadn’t changed. Girls and bugs didn’t mix. Sure it was stupid to avoid a whole room just because one bug might escape, but she didn’t really go into basements or the crawl space under a house for the same reason.

Turning back to stare at the desk, her eyes bore into the piles of pictures she had set around her. She was supposed to be making progress on the page layouts for the insect catalogue the museum was commissioning – a commission and opportunity only made possible because of Vincent’s kindness. The task at hand was to put together a few layout proposals before they hired the writers, but she couldn’t concentrate on what she was doing.

Vincent’s kindness didn’t stop with her. He’d given Ella the graduation gift, which ended up being a beautiful set of engraved dog tags – the perfect thing for the youngest Matthews sister. He’d helped Meg on a case, giving her his time and expertise. It was something that ultimately helped the oldest Matthews catch a killer. Megan’s picture had been posted all over the papers and on national news because of it. He’d called the restaurant and got Zoe promoted at her job. Kat had once started to
thank him for it, but he’d cut her off in embarrassment. So, instead of thanking him in words she’d thanked him with her body. It was a night filled with ice cubes and strawberries they would never forget. As far as she knew he hadn’t done anything for Sasha, but she was sure if the opportunity ever came up he’d be most willing to help out that Matthews sister as well.

Kat sighed heavily, feeling sick to her stomach. It was time to make a decision about what to do. But, it was just so hard. She was torn, held by the fear of losing Vincent and the fear of losing the only chance she may ever get to make all her dreams come true. Those fears kept her from telling the truth.

Slowly, she reached down into her camera bag and pulled out a stiff piece of parchment. Mimi Richmond’s stoic butler had delivered the note to Kat’s house early that morning. Her hands shook as she held it up, to again read what the woman had sent.