Spring fancy

He swooped her into his arms, only to discover her wide hat brim forced them apart. She leaned back from the waist to smile up at him. 'I was growing very impatient.'

His engaging grin twinkled down at her. 'So was I.' He tightened his arm and settled her hips to his, but the hat brim still bothered. It nudged the crown of his forehead. He studied it with the look of a police inspector searching for clues, then stopped dancing, raised both hands and reached around her head. He knew where the hat pin was: he'd watched her remove and replace it earlier. When it slid free and the hat along with it, Winnie felt an unwarranted thrill of intimacy-after all, it was only a hat he'd taken off her, nothing more personal. Yet she liked the way he'd done it, without asking, without fumbling.

Unceremoniously he pulled her length back against his, immediately snuggling her close, resting his jaw against her temple while the hat rode lightly against her buttocks as he held it upon the small of her back. The faint brushing movements of the straw brim through her organdy dress brought shivers, and she imagined his blunt- fingered hand and ruffled cuff and how they must look with the hat suspended from them. Then she closed her eyes and simply enjoyed.

He hadn't the smooth expert grace of Paul on the dance floor, but he had superb timing and was content to nestle her against him and circle the floor with small unflamboyant steps. In his arms Winnie felt an immediate shock of difference. Joseph was shorter than Paul. Thus her face was closer to his, touching his; his muscles were firmer, and his hand wider, thicker, harder. His fingers were coarse. He had a workingman's hands, with texture and calluses, in contraposition to the soft warmth of the butt of his palm. He used a different brand of cosmetic than she was accustomed to smelling on a man's neck, for he radiated a pleasant mixture of herb, lime and something resembling cedar. His chin was coarser, and she felt a vague scratching from it against her temple and imagined before the night was over, her hairdo would be disheveled and flattened on that side. She thought again of his hair, but it was beyond her touch, unless she wanted to be so indiscreet as to reach up and feel it above his collar. She'd been wondering what it felt like-all those airy girlish ringlets-ever since she'd first seen it. But she danced in his arms content to know his other textures and scents, realizing they allured far more powerfully than a sensibly engaged woman ought to admit.

'You were gone so long.'

He backed away slightly and looked down into her eyes. 'Was I?'

Her heart fluttered. 'I… I was anxious to dance.'

'When I left, he was still here. Didn't the two of you dance?'

'Yes, for a little while, but he left shortly after you did.'

'Seems we didn't do such a hot job of spiriting the bride away without being noticed.'

'Oh, I noticed, all right.' Winnifred Gardner, now you're the one who's flirting.

His hand moved caressingly on the hollow of her back, but he continued looking down into her eyes. 'You were right about him. He's tall, blond, handsome, immaculately groomed, well dressed, and I have to confess, I hung around just long enough to watch you two when the music started. He's a darn good dancer. You both are.'

'Well, that darn good dancer is laboring over a computer keyboard right now, so what good does he do me?'

'He may not be doing you any good, but I'll have to make it a point to thank old Hildegard for abandoning you the way he did. I couldn't be happier to fill in.' Again he brought her up against his body, taking two dramatic swirls, then laughing into her ear when he lost his balance on the second and nearly sent them toppling. She laughed, too, enjoying the feel of her breast flattened to his.

'You were doing just fine before you started getting melodramatic, Joseph Duggan. I don't need Fred Astaire. You'll do very nicely.'

The next several songs were fast ones, and Jo-Jo Duggan gamely gyrated his hips and rocked his shoulders, thinking himself rather inept at the sport but enjoying himself immensely nevertheless, just because he was with the prettiest woman in the place.

'Whoever told you you aren't a good dancer?' she queried.

'I can feel it. I don't need to be told.'

She glanced at his waist, shadowed within the open panels of his tuxedo jacket, then dropped her eyes a little lower. 'Why, look at you. You have exquisite rhythm.'

He lifted his chin and laughed at the ceiling, then gave her an open leer that passed from her breasts to her knees and back up again. 'So do you, Winn Gardner, so do you.'

After that last set of fast songs, he removed his tux jacket and left it hanging over the back of a chair. The back of his vest was made of sleek silk, and beneath it his musculature was easily felt. She moved into his arms when the music started again and gently explored his shoulder blades and the hollow between them. Around her waist his arm tightened, and she made a soft throaty sound and nestled more securely into his curves while he dropped his head until his lips rested just beside her right ear.

'Mmm… whatever that is you're wearing smells much better than the gasoline you wore last night.'

She laughed. It felt wonderful, laughing against his firm chest, which lifted and fell against hers, while an answering chuckle rumbled deep within him.

'It's Chanel No. 5.'

'I love it. Does it taste as good as it smells?'

'I don't know. Does yours?'

His fingers moved suggestively on her ribs. 'Maybe we should both find out later, huh?'

'Uh-uh,' she murmured against his neck. 'Can't do that. I'm engaged to another man.'

'Oh, that's right. Old Silicon Chip. The guy who left you here with me for safekeeping.'

'Why is it I don't feel very safe around you?'

'I have no idea. I'm only filling in for your absentee fiance. And with fresh reminders every fifteen minutes that you are promised to him, and you do wear his diamond.' His hand left her waist and meandered upward to the small of her back, finding the vertical slit in the overbodice of her dress. His warm palm slipped inside and rode up to her bare shoulder blades, then down over the abbreviated back bodice, remaining inside the lace cover-up.

'What in blazes are you wearing under that dress?'

His point-blank question caught her by surprise, and she answered without thinking of the unsuitability of the subject. 'Something old-fashioned and very hard to find these days.'

'It feels like you're rigged out with two barrel staves.' His hand explored her ribs and side, running down the long plastic stays that held up the foundation garment.

'It's called a merry widow.'

Suddenly he lifted his head and met her eyes with his sparkling brown ones. 'I wish you were,' he whispered.

She cocked her head to one side. 'What?'

'A merry widow. I wish you were a merry widow instead of a promised woman.'

She came to her senses then, backing away a reasonable distance. But without the length of his warm body, hers felt cold and deprived.

'I think it's time we talked about something nice and safe and… neutral.'

'You're right. How did you like the dinner?'

'I liked everything but the asparagus. How about you?'

'I liked everything including the asparagus.'

That subject was shot. She groped for another, but her thoughts were taken up by him, his nearness, how much she was enjoying being with him. It seemed a long time since she'd laughed this readily or bantered this freely. Paul was so often serious or immersed and out of touch with earth. Winnifred had fleeting thoughts that it was wrong to enjoy another man's company this much. But when Pete Schaeffer asked her to dance, and she returned afterward to Joseph, it felt like home. Already he felt familiar and comfortable.

They danced another fast set, and after it their brows were damp, their breath short. She was fanning her face with an ineffectual hand, and he'd yanked his bow tie loose and stuffed it into his pocket, then rolled up the ruffled cuffs of his white shirt to the elbows.

'This is hot business, your kind of dancing,' he chided good-naturedly.

'Whew! I'll say!'