Then I turned back to observe the well-dressed crowd enjoying Derek’s generous spread. Waiters strolled among the guests, serving delectable hors d’?uvres. There were two full bars in the room, with bartenders pouring top-shelf alcohol. Food stations were placed in each corner of the room and featured the four food groups: Italian, Thai, Mexican, and desserts.
Other than the mean girls, this was a fabulous party and I’d been having a good time. Another burst of high- pitched laughter arose from the women’s table, and I watched Derek turn and smile at them with admirable tolerance. They returned his attention with an annoying round of giggling and flirting and-Oh, hell. I was being sulky and petulant, wasn’t I? I was letting them win.
But were they correct? Was I Derek’s flavor of the month? I hated that term, by the way. And hadn’t he just admitted that he’d been thinking about moving here since the first night we met? Didn’t that mean I was more significant to him than a mere passing fancy? Was I going to believe some cackling women or the man himself?
“Flavor of the month,” I muttered. The fact was, I’d been his “flavor” for almost five months now, although we certainly hadn’t dated all that time. To be honest, we’d barely dated at all. Then, all of a sudden, he’d moved into my home. We were living together. I’d turned over half my closet to him. Not that I minded. On the contrary, I loved having him there. I loved the way he kissed and the way he looked at me as though I were the only woman in the world. And I loved doing silly things with him, like racing each other to the corner on the way to the coffee shop, and reading the Sunday paper out loud. I loved talking and laughing with him. I loved… him.
“Oh, God, shut up,” I whispered. No way.
I whipped around and stared out the window, knowing my inability to hide my feelings. Anyone who looked at me right now would guess how I felt by simply tracking the path of my overly ardent gaze in his direction. My radish-red cheeks would probably give me away, too.
It was time to be honest with myself. Why would I have allowed Derek to move in and live with me and rearrange my closet space if I didn’t, sort of, you know, love him?
Still, this couldn’t be good. It was a well-known fact that I made bad decisions when it came to love. After all, the first man I was engaged to marry turned out to be gay. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but if I were going to all the trouble of marrying someone, I wanted it to mean more than a lifetime of good fashion advice.
Watching Derek now, in his element, surrounded by friends, partners, clients, and employees, I found it hard not to be impressed with everything about him. He was strong, confident, gorgeous, witty, smart, dangerously sexy, loyal.
“Sounds like a Saint Bernard,” I admitted under my breath. Well, except for the sexy part. On the other hand, the man had his share of faults. He could be pushy. And let’s not forget he carried a gun, although I couldn’t complain about that too much, since he’d used it to protect me in a number of frightening situations. Still, the fact that I was with a guy who owned guns and knew how to use them was an ongoing surprise to me.
Derek came with some currently unidentifiable baggage as well, and I worried that more would be revealed- and not in a good way-in the months to come if we stayed together. For instance, he carried on clandestine telephone conversations on a regular basis, going into the guest bedroom and shutting the door. I knew he dealt with private, often classified matters, but sometimes I wondered if maybe he was in there talking to old girlfriends. It was silly of me, but my imagination was a scary place sometimes. Needless to say, the mean girls’ comments were stoking that imaginary fire for me.
Another problem was that Derek left town fairly often. That was fine, of course, and usually he told me where he was going. But other times, he wouldn’t say. I knew the nature of his business was often confidential, but I hadn’t realized how much information he’d have to conceal from me. It didn’t leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Ah, well, who didn’t have faults?
More guffawing from the mean girls’ table brought me back down to earth. I didn’t want to believe those women were right about me and Derek, but doubts crept in anyway. Was this a pattern of his? Was I being used as a halfway house until he got his bearings and found his own comfort zone in the city?
I mentally arm-wrestled my neuroses into submission, tossed back my hair, and strolled across the room, smiling and nodding and greeting people.
Flavor of the damn month. Hell, as long as I was this month’s flavor, I was going to be Triple Caramel Chocolate Cherry Crunch.
When I reached Derek’s side, I tucked my arm through his.
“Hello, darling,” he murmured close to my ear. “I missed you. Were you enjoying the view?”
“I was.” I smiled at him and everyone else faded into the fog. “This is a lovely party.”
“It is now,” he whispered, gazing at me. Then he turned to the small group he’d been talking to. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to my lovely friend Brooklyn Wainwright.”
See? I was his lovely friend. Hmm. Well, it beat the heck out of being introduced as his flavor of the damn month.
Chapter 14
The next day was Sunday. Derek and I walked to South Park for coffee and a breakfast wrap. We were both anxious to discover whether the flash drive might be hiding somewhere inside the Kama Sutra, so I spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in my workshop, taking the book apart. Derek was there, too, watching, pacing, wishing I weren’t being so meticulous, praying I would pick the book up in both hands, rip off the covers, and cut into the leather with a carving knife.
He didn’t say any of that out loud, of course, but I knew he was thinking it. I could tell by the way he was breathing in and out. Restless. Impatient. Fidgety.
But he would just have to suck it up. That wasn’t the way I worked. I especially didn’t work well while being watched. I’d never developed that ability. I tackled each step carefully, deliberately. In solitude.
Derek knew that. I think he hovered nearby simply to drive me crazy. I tried to ignore him as I used my scalpel to pick away at the edges of the endpaper covering the leather overlay. I had to be fastidious in order not to tear the endpaper, because its design was irreplaceable. Frankly, the procedure I was doing presently went against all my personal rules of minimal intervention in book reconstruction. But it had to be done. We needed answers.
As I worked, I took photographs with my digital camera to memorialize the process.
When Derek finally slid his stool even closer to mine to get a better look at what I was doing, it was the last straw.
“You’re invading my personal space,” I said, with as sweet a smile as I could summon, what with my left eye beginning to twitch and all.
“I didn’t think you’d mind.” Closing his eyes, he sniffed. “You smell good.”
“Yeah, nice try,” I said with a laugh. “The dank smell of musty vellum is intoxicating, isn’t it?”
He gazed at me. “I’m finding it so.”
I shook my head. “Don’t you have some guns to clean?”
“They’re clean,” he said with a smirk. “Besides, I get such a kick out of watching you work.”
“You get a kick out of tormenting me.”
“An attractive side benefit.”
“You just want to be here in case I find the flash drive.”
“I do indeed.”
“Fine.” I waved my hand at him. “But just… back up a little. You’re making me nervous.”
“Intriguing thought.” From the corner of my eye, I could see him grinning as he scooted his stool a few millimeters away.
As long as I was distracted, I got up and found the bag of chocolate-caramel Kisses I’d bought, popped it open, and poured them into a bowl. I worked better with chocolate.
After munching two Kisses, I picked up my scalpel and tried my best to ignore him as I made a series of tiny picks along the edges of the endpapers.
