Damon, Lee (25 page)

"Hmm. Later, love." He laughed and grabbed her hand, holding it for the rest of the run.

Since Kitt still hadn't food-shopped, he insisted on taking her to breakfast again at the small restaurant in the square. They bantered and laughed their way through omelettes, freshly baked, still-warm cranberry-orange muffins, home fries and grapefruit juice. Over their second cups of coffee, they made tentative plans for the rest of the week.

"Tonight, you and Hero are invited to supper. Andy is agog with anticipation. As might be expected, Ez wrapped her around his little finger Sunday. She was practically panting over him and spent two hours making her special lasagne and a Black Forest cake when he 'just happened' to mention that they were two of his favorite treats."

"He has an appalling effect on older women," said Kitt, straight-faced.

"Women have been spoiling him rotten all his life. I don't know how he does it. He gets this look on his face, utterly pathetic, that seems to say 'Inside this great, hulking body is a poor, starved little boy,' and they fall all over themselves to feed the poor, deprived mite. Yuck! Stop laughing. That's exactly what he does."

"I know, I know," Kitt gasped. "But I think you're just jealous. Ooo. Brute. Don't grab my knee like that. I take it back. You've got more than your share of females flinging themselves at your feet."

"Mmm. But they aren't offering home-baked goodies," he teased.

"Never you mind," she purred, a challenging gleam in her eyes. "I'll take care of the goodies, home-baked or otherwise."

"I'm counting on it." His smile promised delights that she thought it best not to dwell on at the moment.

At the sound of gasps and a muffled groan from her right, Kitt glanced around to discover four pairs of dazed female eyes fixed on O'Mara. She turned back to watch him curiously to see what he would do.

He directed the smile, now turned down a few notches, toward the young women at the next table, nodded, and murmured a polite "Good morning, girls."

"Oh, subtle. Very subtle," Kitt said, grinning.

Reaching across the table for her hand, he raised it to his mouth and slowly kissed each finger, a wicked glint sparking in the sapphire eyes as he played to his audience. "You give me confidence," he claimed audaciously. "Now that I've got you to protect me from importunate females, I can—"

"You can stop the blarney, O'Mara," she hissed. "You can also stop nibbling on my fingers. Have another muffin. Wicked toad. Behave. You're giving those girls spasms. Oh, damn you."

Resisting all her efforts to pull her hand away, he held it to his mouth while he wrote messages on her palm with his tongue. Stifling a nearly uncontrollable desire to giggle, she didn't even try to decipher his words—the outrageously sensual blaze of his eyes said it all.

"O'Mara!"

He released her hand with obvious reluctance and an unrepentant grin, winking conspiratorily at the fascinated girls.

"You're impossible," Kitt groaned.

"Hmm," he agreed. "Now, about the rest of the week. This is Tuesday. Tomorrow evening we'll leave open until we can talk with Gus, but Thursday evening he's in a school play. You will go with me, won't you?"

"Love to. What's the play and what part does he have?"

"It's something to do with a Little League team facing it's first experience with a girl teammate, and he plays the captain, who doesn't think much of female baseball players. I'm not going to tell you any more, or it will spoil the suspense."

"Sounds great! I love school plays. The kids get so involved if they've got the right coaching, and sometimes they turn in remarkably good performances besides having a lot of fun. And that takes us to Friday, when the Midge-and-Ez Show rolls again."

"Lord help us all," O'Mara intoned. "At least we've got two very public evenings planned, which should keep them under reasonable control part of the time."

"Don't count on it," she warned. "He gets worse as he gets older, and an audience only encourages him to wilder flights. Unfortunately, he's such a natural comedian that even his most outrageous performances make everyone laugh. Not too long ago, I saw him tie up traffic for fifteen minutes at a busy city intersection while a couple of hundred people, including three cops, fell all over the place in hysterics."

"What in the world was he doing?" asked O'Mara, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward in anticipation.

"You know the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Streets in Boston?"

"Oh, my God," he said in awed tones.

"Indeed. Well, we reached the middle of it in conjunction with one of Boston's feistier cabdrivers, and you know how belligerent they can be. Neither he nor Ez would back off, so they both ended up in the middle of the street debating the rights of man, cabdrivers and civilians."

"I can hear it now."

"I only wish you could have. Ez was at full parade-ground bellow, which was positively echoing off the Prudential Tower and the John Hancock Building—and you know how far away they are—while this five-and-a-half foot cabby was literally jumping up and down in rage trying to make himself heard. It was ludicrous. Ez is looming there, roaring at the skies, and this little cabby is trying to shake his fist under Ez's nose but can't reach him. People were lining up on the sidewalks, and finally the drivers of all the waiting cars got out and joined in the debate. After two or three minutes, when he'd gathered a nice crowd, Ez climbed up on the hood of the car, flung out his arms and roared, 'Let the people decide!' He then appointed a judge, twelve jurors and the prosecuting and defense attorneys from among the spectators."

"You're making all this up," O'Mara gasped. "I don't believe it."

"Could I make up something like this? Listen. I don't know how he does it, but he got them all to go along with it. I think by then they were so stunned by the noise and fascinated by his act that they just got carried away. He kept it going for at least ten minutes, coaching everyone in their parts and conducting both the prosecution and the defense. Just about the time that police sirens could be heard heading our way, he waved everyone back to their cars, directed the cabby to a parking space, found one himself, gathered up the cabby, the cops and a few bystanders, and took us all to Jake Wirth's for knockwurst and dark beer. What with one thing and another, we never did make it to the matinee performance of the play we were going to."

"Who needs the theater when you've got Ez?"

"Too true. Yipe! Look at the time. I've got twenty minutes to get changed and open up."

The rest of the day seemed to fly by. Somehow, Kitt kept feeling that she was losing an odd hour here and there. Late in the afternoon, she finally decided that the clock wasn't skipping but, rather, her mind kept drifting off into enticing scenarios of her and O'Mara in a variety of isolated places such as sand dunes at midnight, mountain cabins and a houseboat anchored in mid-ocean.

When Midge arrived at three, she took one look at Kitt's smudgy eyes and not-quite-with-it expression and pushed her toward the stairs. "Go take a nap or you'll fall asleep in the middle of supper. O'Mara's house is supposed to be fabulous, and you're not going to be able to keep your eyes open wide enough to see it. Go on, Kitt. I'll close up and make sure you're awake before I leave."

"Okay. I'm sold," mumbled Kitt as she half-stumbled up the stairs and drifted down the hall. She was asleep seconds after pulling a quilt over herself.

The persistence of something tickling her cheek and nose and the sound of boyish chuckles finally impelled her to open one eye, and she found herself looking into Gus's laughing face. It took a few seconds of disorientation before full awareness returned and her mind started receiving a jumble of messages. Lying on stomach. Gus must be kneeling on the floor. That's Hero on my feet. Something's tipping the mattress. O'Mara sitting on the edge of the bed. Suppertime.

She opened the other eye and smiled at Gus. "Hi. If it isn't my favorite mini-O'Mara." Her voice was sleep-husky, and she cleared her throat. "What's everybody doing here? Thought I was coming to your house."

"We came to get you so you wouldn't have to drive home alone late tonight. Dad says I should start getting used to taking care of you." His grin was pure imp. "Uh, I think maybe I'd have better luck with Hero. I bet you can hold your own with anybody, especially if you've been taking lessons from the crazy bear."

"I'll bet I can hold my own with you, my lad," cried Kitt, suddenly throwing back the quilt and grabbing Gus, hauling him up on the bed and tickling him. Laughter and breathless protests intermingled as they wrestled back and forth across the wide bed, watched by an indulgent O'Mara. Hero, trying to join in the melee, almost got knocked to the floor before O'Mara caught him up and held him in his lap.

"Okay, you two, break it up." O'Mara set Hero on the floor before plucking a laughing Gus off of Kitt's stomach and dropping him beside the excited dog. "Gus, you take Hero for a quick run around the block while Kitt gets herself put together. Don't be long. We want to show her the house before it gets dark. Hustle, now."

"We're gone. Come on, Hero. Wait'll you see our captain's deck, Kitt."

O'Mara dropped back down onto the edge of the bed and leaned over Kitt, his hands braced on either side of her. "You look very enticing like that. Hair all mussed, buttons half-undone, and you'd better get that gleam out of your eye or we'll embarrass Gus when he gets back," he ended in a deepening voice.

"One kiss?" She deliberately fluttered her lashes at him, but spoiled it by giggling. "Come and get it," he said softly.

In a quick, fluid move, she was kneeling beside him with her arms wound loosely around his neck. "Just one, now," he murmured provocatively as her mouth touched his.

When she felt his hands on her hips, she instinctively started to tense up, but then relaxed again as she realized that he was just going to let them rest there. In another moment, as his tongue touched hers, she forgot about where his hands were.

"Mmmmmfff... behave... I said just... witch... let go... this bed is... too tempting...."

The hands on her hips tightened momentarily, and she found herself swinging through the air and landing on her feet in the middle of the room.

"Coward! I thought I was supposed to set the pace," she complained.

Laughing and fending her off, he dodged out the door, calling back, "Within reason, love, within reason. Hurry up and get ready. I really do want you to see the Rock for the first time in daylight."

Kitt hurried. Within twelve minutes, she had showered, whisked a brush through her hair and scrambled into navy cords and a plaid velour vee-neck pullover—which just happened to blend with the navy cords and plaid Pendleton shirts worn by Gus and O'Mara. She lifted a sardonic eyebrow at the identical smug grins on their faces as they realized what she had done.

"We're a matched set," Gus exclaimed happily. "Too bad you haven't got a plaid collar for Hero."

"Sorry, chum. It never occurred to me."

"Maybe I can get him one for his birthday. When is it?"

"Never mind the dog's birthday present," O'Mara groaned. "Will you two get a move on?"

Within a couple of minutes, he had Kitt settled in the front seat of the Renegade while Gus and Hero shared the back, and they were heading out Ocean Avenue paralleling first the river and then, at the river's mouth, swinging left to follow along the oceanside, past Walker Point, and then losing sight of the water for a while as the road bent inland. A little more than two miles from Kitt's, they turned right onto a narrow, winding road that brought them back to the coast, climbing along the sea-washed ledges. They passed four widely spaced, half-hidden and obviously expensive summer homes, rounded a curve, and slowed to a stop to give Kitt her first view of Crest Rock.

For long moments, she just stared, unable to think of any appropriate words. It was so much more than she had expected that she could do nothing but try to take it all in. The Rock was an enormous granite outcropping that jutted some thousand feet out into the ocean almost due south, and rose nearly two hundred feet above the water at low tide. From where she was sitting, she was at eye-level to a point about halfway up the Rock and could see both the waves crashing against the rocks and ledges at its base and part of the roof and upper portion of a house at the top. She blinked at the bright flashes of the lowering sun reflecting off of what seemed to be a wide expanse of glass. It was difficult to make out many details through the mass of greenery and weather-twisted pines edging the top of the Rock.

"Kitt?"

"Oh, wow."

"Isn't it a neat place to live, Kitt?" Gus leaned forward between the seats, trying to see her face. "Do you think you'll like it?"

"It's incredible. What happens in a storm? Don't you get blown off the top?"

"No way. Wait till you see how everything's anchored down or protected and all the great things they did when they built it so you can really see a big storm. Wait till you see—"

"Enough, Gus," O'Mara chided. "It's got to be a surprise, or she won't get the full effect."

"Oh, okay, Dad. But let's go quick."

"What's all that glass? Have you got a window-wall? It must be a marvelous view. That's facing—what?—due west? What a great place to watch a sunset!"

"Better than you'd ever guess." O'Mara chuckled. "Patience, love, and you'll see for yourself." He let up on the brake and swung back onto the road.

Another curve and the ocean was out of sight. Still climbing gradually, the road was now bordered by a high stone wall backed by trees, and Kitt realized that they were on the land side of the Rock. O'Mara swung the jeep through a wide, gateless entrance onto a two-lane paved driveway, which curved in a shallow, sweeping 5 as it steadily sloped up through a field studded with rock outcroppings and clumps of low-growing bushes.

"In another few weeks, this'll be very colorful. I've left it to grow in a natural, untamed way," said O'Mara, waving a hand at the expanse of wilderness. "Those rocks are covered in wild roses, and the field is brilliant with all kinds of wildflowers. That mass of high bushes over there runs all the way back to the road and is a mixture of four or five colors of lilacs that have just gone wild."