The entire inside of the dome is decorated with a background of gleaming gold mosaic where mosaic angels with wicked big wings and wearing flowing white robes mark the directions: north, south, east, and west. Between each angel are more mosaic pictures, swirling scrolls that burst into blooms of pink stylized flowers. The whole shebang is bordered at the bottom with red and white stripes and glistening golden wreaths. It’s all pretty spectacular, and I would have allowed myself to be impressed if the wreaths didn’t make me think of wheels, and wheels didn’t make me think of tires, and tires didn’t make me think of—
Never mind.
“I am inquiring is all what I am doing.” I snapped out of my thoughts to find the little man with one finger pointed straight up. “How do you say this? I am asking yourself as the representative of the cemetery in which all this is possessed, if it is possible to get a more better look?”
Since I only speak English, it took me a bit to work this through. “Oh, you want to go up there? Upstairs?”
He nodded, and relieved to finally be getting rid of him, I showed him the way to the stairs.
Unfortunately by that time, Doris and the four visitors she was working with were up on the balcony, too. I went back into the rotunda, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t catch a word of what she was telling them. I could, however, see them, and I watched Doris (all sweet-faced and as fluffy as one of those mosaic angels) gesture wildly toward the balcony railing.
The ladies looked appropriately horrified.
All three of them.
I’d been a little busy wondering when and if Ball Cap Guy was going to jump out from some shadowy corner and attack me, but believe me, even that wasn’t enough to make me forget what I’d learned from the president earlier that morning. He said there was commotion in the memorial. At all hours. He said he’d seen people near the ballroom door, people who weren’t employees or volunteers. And I remembered that CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign that seemed to have a way of getting turned upside down when no one was looking and how the president had suggested that it might be some sort of signal to the intruders who were disturbing his peace.
Intruders like the woman who was suddenly and suspiciously missing from Doris’s group?
I backed up a step, the better to take a closer look at the balcony above my head. The little man with the beard was up there snapping pictures with a digital camera. And Doris was still talking away to the three women who were hanging on her every word. But there was no sign of their friend.
Curious, yes? And being curious, too, I scampered up the corkscrew stairway to the floor above the memorial hall. The balcony up there loops around the rotunda, and from where I was standing, I couldn’t see any sign of the bearded man, or Doris and her tour group. I scooted around to the blocked stairway that led into the ballroom. That CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign was exactly where it should have been, and not upside down, and I was about to chalk up the whole silly thing about the sign as a signal to an imagination that was running way too wild when I thought I heard a noise from inside the ballroom.
“Hey!” I reached for the door. “If there’s somebody in there, you’re not supposed to be. The ballroom isn’t open for tours, so why don’t you just—”
“Aha! There you are.”
At the same time I heard the voice behind me, someone touched my shoulder and I jumped about a mile. One hand pressed to my heart, I whirled around.
“Jack!” My blood kept right on rushing a mile a minute, and believe me, it had everything to do with being surprised and not with Jack’s hotness (though in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on the front of it, he looked plenty hot). I thought about my own outfit and the absolute unhotness of khakis and a polo shirt, and the blood drained from my face. “It’s not . . . it can’t be . . .” I gulped down my mortification. “Lunchtime already?”
“Looks like you’re busy today. I saw some people just leaving as I was coming in. I guess your morning must have flown by. That’s why you didn’t realize what time it was.” He glanced around the balcony. “I heard voices up here, too. You’re not giving someone a tour, are you? Am I interrupting?”
I thought about that sweet little kiwi-colored dress down in the carry bag in the office. And I thought about the noise I thought I’d just heard from inside the ballroom. I glanced at the door at the top of the stairway, beyond that CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign. As always, it was shut, and I could tell it was locked. When it wasn’t (which wasn’t very often, only when a cleaning crew went in or the maintenance guys had to visit), it had a way of sagging so that a strip of light showed all along the side of the door.
“Interrupting? No.” I looked back at Jack. “It’s just that—”
“I brought sandwiches.” He held up a paper takeaway bag and I recognized the name of the place printed on the side of it. It was from Presti’s, one of the restaurants in the Little Italy neighborhood where I lived, just down the hill from the cemetery. Good food, great prices. Leave it to a history teacher to find quality and thriftiness in a strange town.
“Hungry?” Jack asked.
I was. But there were more important matters than my hunger pangs. I made a face. “I wanted to change before you got here. I have this really cute summer dress, and—”
“You look fine.” He gave me a careful once-over that made my heart start thumping madly again. “Better than fine. You look—”
“What was that?” Another noise made me spin around. “Did you hear something?” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “From up there?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say I did.”
I knew he was probably right. The door was locked, after all; there could be no one inside the ballroom. Not someone alive, anyway. I didn’t have a key, and it was just as well. If I went in there to check things out, Jack would follow me, and if my imagination was playing tricks on me and there was nothing and no one there, I’d just end up looking jumpy and paranoid. On the other hand, if there was a ghost prowling around, he wouldn’t see it and I would, and I’d just end up looking jumpy and paranoid. Believe me when I say I did not want to look jumpy and paranoid in front of Jack.
I made a move for the door, anyway. At least I could jiggle the handle and satisfy myself that all was well and the door was locked tight.
I probably would have gotten there if Jack hadn’t grabbed me, whirled me around, and kissed me.
Just like that.
He was holding the paper bag in one hand, and he still managed to pull me close. The bag scrunched between his body and mine, and the unmistakable smell of pizza sauce filled the air. His other hand was free, and he slipped it from my wrist to where the short sleeve of my polo shirt ringed my arm. His fingers were cool against my skin. His mouth was hot. He slanted it over mine, and even if I cared that one of our visitors might see us . . . well, let’s face it, at that moment, I didn’t care. Not one little bit.
“Sorry!” It’s not the kind of thing I like to hear after a heart-stopping kiss, but when he pulled away, Jack softened the blow with a smile that melted my anxiety. “That was way too forward of me,” he said. His voice bumped over his rough breaths. “I just couldn’t help myself. You’re so beautiful. I shouldn’t have done that. I hardly know you and you work here and—”
“Yeah.” I struggled to catch my breath, too. “My boss wouldn’t be happy if somebody reported that they’d seen you and me here and—”
“Which means I won’t let it happen again.” He stepped back. Just as quickly, he moved forward again, dropped the takeaway bag, and scooped me into his arms. “Well,” he said. “Maybe one more time.”
There was nothing impetuous about this second kiss. It was slow and leisurely, and I tilted my head back, enjoying every scrumptious moment of it.
“No more kissing you while you’re at work,” Jack said when it was over, then proved himself a liar by giving me another quick peck. “You ready for lunch?”
I was ready for a lot of things. Lunch wasn’t necessarily one of them. And this definitely wasn’t the time or the place to think about it. I smoothed my hands over my hair. “You go on down,” I told Jack. “I’ll be right behind you.”
With another sleek smile, he headed over to the stairway. I took a careful step to make sure I could move, even though my knees were mush. When I was sure I could, I wiped the dreamy little smile off my face (just in case I met Doris or a visitor on my way down) and followed him. It was a good thing I looked back right before I
