"You doing anything tomorrow night?" he asked her impulsively.
She hesitated before answering, but she didn't look away. "I have to work."
He nodded. "Right. I forgot." Hoping he didn't sound too desperate, but worried that he did—desperate was, after all, exactly what he was feeling—he asked, "Can you get someone else to take your shift?"
With clear reluctance, she told him, "No. I can't. I've already asked Lindy for too many nights off lately. I don't think she's going to tolerate too many more."
Adam wanted to ask her about all those missed shifts, was curious as to just why there had been so many of them lately. But the question that came out of his mouth instead was, "When's your next night off? I want to see you again."
For a long moment, she only gazed up at him in silence, her dark brows arrowed downward in very clear concern. Adam couldn't imagine what she had to feel worried about. In spite of all the uncertainty tying him up in knots, he hadn't felt this good himself for a long, long time.
"I'll be off Thursday," she told him. "But I, um … I'm busy. I can't see you. I'm sorry."
"How about this weekend, then?"
She shook her head again, harder this time. "I can't. I have to … I have something I have to do."
A knot of anxiety closed tighter inside him at her response. After the way they'd just responded to each other, he'd begun to think that maybe the two of them… Well. He wasn't sure what to think the two of them might do. But he had been thinking in terms of the two of them. And that was more than a little unsettling.
"Is it because of your job at Drake's?" he asked. "Because Lindy would fire you if she found out you and I were going out? Because if that's the reason, Mack, she'll never have to know. Or if that makes you uncomfortable, then I can talk to her, and maybe—"
"It's not that," she interrupted him.
"Then what?"
A slash of disappointment darkened her features. "I just have things to do, okay?"
Things to do , he echoed to himself. He couldn't recall ever being brushed off quite so vaguely. Things to do. Yeah, that was pretty clear.
"Fine," he muttered blandly. "No problem." Nodding once, he dropped his hands from around her waist and took a step away, then turned toward the stairs.
"Adam—"
It was the first time he'd heard her say his name aloud, and there was a pleading, plaintive tone to her voice when she said it. As if she was torn between what she wanted to do, and what she felt she should do. Even though it was probably pointless to make the effort, but unwilling to leave things as they were, Adam spun back around and reached for her again, pulling her roughly toward himself until her body was flush against his. He buried his hand beneath her hair, cupping it around the nape of her neck. And then he bent and covered her mouth with his again. This time when he kissed her, it was fiercely, insistently, possessively.
She had just sighed her surrender, was just beginning to melt into him again, when the porch lamp above them flashed on, bathing them both in a slice of garish yellow light. In one swift motion, they separated, Adam leaping backward, Mack jumping toward the front door. Before she even had the knob in her hand, however, it opened inward, to reveal a pert, petite blonde standing on the other side.
The newcomer blinked wide blue eyes, then arched delicate blond brows in not particularly convincing surprise. "Why, Dorsey," she said, turning her attention first to Mack and then to Adam. "I had no idea you were out here. I was just going to run next door to check on Mrs. Hoofdorp's cats."
She looked at Adam again and smiled. "Mrs. Hoofdorp is traveling," she added parenthetically. "We have no idea where she is—I suspect she's in Betty Ford again, because that's where she was the last time she was traveling, if you follow my trail, but I'm much too polite to ask her—and since we have a key to her place, we're feeding Moochie and Jester while she's gone…"
"I feel it's my civic duty to warn you," Mack interjected quietly, nodding her head toward the blonde, "that if you don't stop her right now, then she'll just keep on talking."
Adam eyed her quizzically but said nothing. Why would he, when he had absolutely no idea what she meant?
"Not that Moochie and Jester necessarily need feeding," the woman at the front door continued, just as Mack had said she would. "Why Jester is so fat, he could pass for that … that…" She fluttered a hand restlessly in front of her face. "Oh, who's that fat, pompadour-wearing, checkered-pants boy who holds the hamburger up over his head?"
"Uh … Big Boy?" Adam supplied helpfully.
"That's the one," she said with a smile. "And as for Moochie, well. He rather reminds me of that actor who played one of the criminals in the old Batman TV show. It wasn't one of the ones who wore spandex, though—or is it latex?" she asked. "I always get those confused. Anyway, it wasn't one of those, though I always rather liked that Frank Gorshin outfit. But this other actor I'm thinking about wore something Egyptian, I believe. Yes, in fact I know it was Egyptian because I took a class in Egyptology during that half-semester I spent at Brown. Actually, I spent half-semesters at quite a lot of universities, so it may not have been Brown. Not that I was really paying attention, anyway. I only went to college because I was hoping to meet some cute boys. And it worked! Because not only did I meet some cute boys, I—"
"Carlotta," Mack interjected again. And with surprising
