Bedroom Eyes (8 page)

Hinson let go of her chin. She kept her gaze fixed on his face, watching his expression shift and his eyes narrow as he said, “Olano was a cop who just couldn’t mind his own business. Always butting in, never following procedure.” David gestured around her bedroom. “Look what he did today. Same sort of impulsive behavior. Thinks he’s spotted a crime and barges in. Not the sort of cop that makes for true law and order.”

Penelope started to comment that David had rushed right into the bedroom alongside Olano, but she held her tongue. David didn’t look too open to criticism at the moment.

“And the funny thing is that he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was bounced from the force in disgrace.”

“What—” Penelope started to ask for specifics, the lawyer in her uncomfortable with such a vague description.

“Forget Olano,” David interrupted, putting both his arms around her.

Penelope knew he wanted to kiss her. She’d let him kiss her once before, but kissing while sitting on her bed smacked too much of an invitation she wasn’t ready to offer David yet, if at all.

He stroked a hand over her hair. “What happened to that chic French braid?”

She stiffened. Of course he’d noticed how uncharacteristically unkempt she appeared. Pulling her hair into a semblance of order behind her neck, she said, “Fainting is hard on one’s looks, you know.”

“So I see,” David said, reaching for the neckline of her blouse. “Maybe you should slip into something fresher.”

She caught his hand with hers. “David . . .”

“Yes?” Twisting his head down to hers, he covered her lips with his. His mouth was hot and demanding and Penelope knew she should respond. But all she could think about was her sweaty armpits. And the gun he had holstered under his jacket.

His tongue broke through the barrier of her lips and Penelope squirmed against him. There must be something wrong with her, a fear she’d carried within her for years. Men who wanted her, she didn’t want. Men she wanted never looked twice at her.

She stifled a sigh and tried to force herself to return David’s kisses.

He didn’t seem to notice her lack of involvement. One hand working on a blouse button, he pushed her back on the bed, his slender body not crushing her so much with weight as with her wild thought that if she didn’t make him get off her that very instant, he’d refuse to stop.

She pushed at his shoulders with her hands. He worked one button free, then the one below it, and slid his hand inside toward her breast. She twisted her mouth from his and said, “David, don’t. This isn’t right. It’s not the right time.”

He raised up on his hands and stared down at her, breathing hard. Before he could speak, Penelope sniffed and said in alarm, “Do you smell smoke?”

David kept looking at her as if he wanted to ignore the question, ignore her request to stop. Penelope shivered. The smell of smoke grew more definite.

Finally he lifted his body off hers and stood at the edge of the bed. “Something is definitely burning.” Then he laughed and added, “Something besides me.”

Penelope blushed. Well, it wasn’t her fault he’d gotten all worked up. She jumped from the bed and ran toward the kitchen. Had she left something on the stove or in the oven? She didn’t think so.

However, flames danced above the stove. “Firecrackers and figs!” She raced for the fire extinguisher she kept under the sink, yanked the pin, and aimed it at the blaze.

David walked slowly into the room behind her.

Penelope already had the fire damped. She tiptoed toward the stove. David moved behind her and looked over her shoulder. Inside the sauté pan atop the stove were the shards of what looked like a heap of toothpicks. And sure enough, the holder where she kept toothpicks handy for testing her baking sat empty.

David looked from the pan to her and back again.

Penelope lifted her hands, all innocence. She certainly hadn’t started the fire in the pan.

But she knew who had. And she knew why. That incense stick must serve as more than a pole-vaulting aid.

“David,” she said, in a voice she forced into sweetness and light, “would you mind awfully if we rescheduled dinner? I’ve just had too much excitement today, what with fainting from the heat and that dangerous man following me home, and now this. . . this spontaneous combustion.” She didn’t add
and what with you throwing yourself on me and not even taking off your gun first!
She wanted him out of her apartment, and apparently so did Mrs. Merlin.

And Penelope wasn’t one to ignore help when it came to her aid. What had Mrs. Merlin said earlier? Something about don’t question the gifts of the goddess?

“Of course not, Penelope.” David adjusted his jacket and shot his cuffs. “You may be right. This may not be the best time for us. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Penelope smiled, relieved he’d taken the rebuff so well.

He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Again, she didn’t feel the way she thought she should. But maybe it was wrong of her to expect to experience shooting stars with every kiss.

Yet in her fantasies she felt so alive she just couldn’t believe the feeling didn’t exist in reality. Penelope sighed, walked David to the door, and wiggled her fingers good-bye.

She shut it after him, then leaned her back against the door’s solid surface, thankful to be alone. Or almost alone. “Thank you, Mrs. Merlin,” she called. “You can come out now and I promise you anything you want for dinner.”

“Now, that’s music to my ears!”

Mrs. Merlin’s voice sounded from the kitchen. Penelope ran over and saw her flour canister pushing itself away from the counter wall. From behind it inched Mrs. Merlin, all-purpose incense stick in hand.

The woman said, “Honestly, some men just don’t know when to take no for an answer, do they?”

Penelope smiled at her newfound ally. “Thanks for coming to my rescue. But David would have stopped.”

Mrs. Merlin snorted. “Honey, when you’ve been on this earth for as long as I have, maybe you’ll get a better grasp of human nature.”

Wanting to believe David would have stopped, Penelope didn’t argue the point. “How did you manage this diversion?”

Mrs. Merlin patted her incense stick. “Fastest vaulting I’ve ever done. With this baby I just might set an Olympic record.” She winked. “And the toothpicks were just too, too handy.”

“Well, thanks, but you might have burned my house down, you know.”

“Phifil! Better to take that chance than let that man have you for dinner.”

Penelope nodded. “Good point.”

“Besides,” Mrs. Merlin said, “it’s only my candle spells that seem to end up causing trouble.”

Penelope started the water to boil for the pasta and whisked together the sauce ingredients she’d prepared earlier. “Oh, you mean like shrinking yourself to six inches tall by mistake?”

“Yep. Only I’m quite certain that if you measured you’d find I’m actually six and a quarter inches.” Mrs. Merlin had inched the top off the sugar bowl and stuck a finger in for a taste. “I sure am hungry,” she said. Sucking on her finger, and talking around it, she said, “Your Tony wouldn’t have forced himself on you.”

“How do you—” Penelope looked over from where she stirred the sauce. “He’s not ‘my Tony.’ But how do you know that?”

“His aura was much too violet and he has very old eyes.”

“You saw him?”

Mrs. Merlin nodded. “When he looked under the bed.”

The spoon stopped in mid-rotation. “He saw you under the bed and didn’t say a word?”

“Like I said, he’s the kind of man who would’ve stopped the first time you told him to, no matter how much he wanted to keep going.”

Penelope hugged her arms to her sides, unaccountably pleased by Mrs. Merlin’s words.

“Besides, I only winked at him.”

“Right.” Penelope let the whisk slow under her hand. “I’m sure he thought you were some sort of voodoo doll.”

Mrs Merlin smiled a most superior smile. “I suppose that’s why he winked back at me.”

“He did what?” The whisk quit moving.

“I am awfully hungry.” Mrs. Merlin circled a tiny hand over her belly.

Penelope frowned and tried to remember the look on Olano’s face when he’d risen from beside the bed, but she drew a blank. She’d been concentrating on the way he rose all in one motion, more graceful than a panther bunched to spring. The man with bedroom eyes moved with the speed and grace of a big cat, and distracted as she was, she hadn’t been able to read the expression on his face.

The sauce burbled under her unseeing gaze as she pictured the man with bedroom eyes.

Tony Olano.

She sighed and for a moment forgot that he annoyed her. For a moment he became the man she’d imagined earlier, standing beside her as she accepted the Best New Chef award. She felt the warmth of his touch when he placed his hand in hers, a warmth that traveled up her arm into her heart. She glowed with accomplishment, but most of all with the feelings he ignited in her.

“You’re never going to feed me, are you?” Mrs. Merlin dusted her hands together.

Penelope jerked back to her surroundings. “Why do you say that?”

“Just look at that sauce.”

“Oh, no!” The once-beautiful alfredo sauce lay scorched and thickened into paste under her perfectly still whisk. Just when would she learn to keep her mind planted firmly on planet Earth?

“I don’t suppose you have any oatmeal?”

“Oatmeal with Caesar salad?”

Mrs. Merlin held forth her hands in a begging gesture. “You have salad, I’ll have oatmeal.”

“Sure.” Penelope did have a box of Quaker Instant in her cupboard. Every so often she tried to force herself to eat some, thinking she’d better offset all the rich creams and sauces she loved to devise in the kitchen. So she’d pick up a box with the rest of her groceries, then let it sit at the back of the cupboard until it was so stale she felt compelled to toss it out.

Oatmeal reminded her too much of her childhood.

“And raisins?”

“No raisins.” She wrinkled her nose. Her mother had sprinkled raisins on Penelope’s morning oatmeal, telling her they made good brain food. Her mother had been so set on Penelope’s success, Penelope sometimes thought it was a miracle she’d turned out as well as she had. Most kids, she reflected every so often, would have revolted completely.

“Raisins equal sadness?” Mrs. Merlin spoke softly.

Surprised, Penelope nodded. “You’re very perceptive. But I suppose you know that.”

Mrs. Merlin laughed, a tinkly sound that brought to mind chimes shifting in the breeze. “Oh, I work hard at what I do. For my grandmother, you see, these skills came so easily.” She sighed and sat down on the edge of the napkin holder. “But I have to practice, practice, practice to get things right. And even then—”

“Don’t tell me,” Penelope said. “Things somehow still get all mixed up.”

Mrs. Merlin cupped her chin in her hand. “As soon as you make that oatmeal, we need to talk about how you’re going to help me out of this little miscombobulation.”

Penelope started to deny any intention to help. But one more look at the determined creature and Penelope knew Mrs. Merlin would brook no protest. And the sooner Mrs. Merlin sprang back to her full size, the sooner she’d be out of Penelope’s once-orderly existence.

Even though Olano hadn’t said anything, what if he started mulling over the sight of a six-inch-high woman under Penelope’s bed? He’d been a cop. No doubt it was in his nature to investigate things that didn’t quite add up.

Penelope set some water to boil and found the oatmeal, tucked well back behind bottles of olive oil, balsamic and tarragon vinegars, and her treasured saffron and summer savory.

Mrs. Merlin had taken to muttering to herself again. Penelope smiled despite her misgivings about helping her with the spell it would take to release her. Messing about with magick was totally foreign ground to her. Add to that her firsthand knowledge of Mrs. Merlin’s last unsuccessful spell, and Penelope’s common sense couldn’t help but warn her away. Why, anything might go wrong.

She found a bowl for the oatmeal and a salad plate for herself, then shook some oatmeal into the boiling water and thought about how she’d longed for her life to change for the better.

She’d endured all those years in school with her nose to the grindstone to live out her mother’s dreams for her. Now, released by her mother’s death, she was free to shape her own dreams.

When the legal recruiter had first contacted her in Chicago, spinning stories of a plum job in an old-line New Orleans law firm, Penelope’s silent reaction had been, I can’t do that. She couldn’t leave a firm where she stood in line for partnership at a record-breaking early age. She couldn’t move to a new city, especially not to the South, where she’d never before stepped foot.

Penelope stirred the oatmeal and smiled.

She had done it.

So why turn her back on a little adventure now?

Chapter 7

Sighting the fiery orange ticket on his windshield, the infamous calling card of New Orleans’ meter maids, Tony swore under his breath, knowing he was far more infuriated by the idea of Hinson holed up alone with Penelope than he was with the “no parking—loading zone” ticket. It also irritated him that he’d had to leave his car around the corner where he had no view of the building entrance.

Tony paused with one hand on the handle of his car door. With the other he crumpled the ticket. He had friends who would deal with the ticket.

Hinson he’d have to handle himself.

He opened the door of his car, tossed the offending orange paper into the backseat, then paused.

“Forget it,” he said aloud. “Get in and let Ms. Penelope Sue Fields take care of her own problems.” He’d face off with Hinson later, one on one.

He did as he told himself, then reached into the pocket of his T-shirt for his sunglasses. His finger touched a cold round object. He pulled it out along with his glasses, rolling the gold ball of an earring between his fingers.

His fingers warmed, and for a fleeting moment Tony thought he could sense heat from the small piece of jewelry. Then he forced a laugh at the fanciful idea.

The earring had fallen off when he’d kept Penelope from cracking her head on the sidewalk. He’d nabbed it as it had slipped from her ear and had then forgotten about it, though he had intended to return it to her the first time he’d gone to her apartment.