The Multitude, стр. 18
“I knew you’d never drink that.” She’d teased him into trying the juice earlier when she discovered the can in the fridge next to a six-pack of beer.
“I’m saying a little prayer over it first.”
“More like a novena.” The hint of humor in Carla’s expression defeated a comic, crossed-arm attempt to come across as a stern schoolmarm type. A plunging neckline also betrayed her intended image, although he supposed if she wore glasses and kept a straight face, she could play a stern, naughty librarian like a champ.
He hated to back down from a challenge. Maybe if he closed his eyes and gulped this slop down, he could get on with his life and never shop healthy again. But what about the aftertaste? Carrots? Beets? Probably not beets. Otherwise the drink would be red. Cauliflower? He shuddered.
She reached across and patted his hand. “I won’t torture you anymore.”
“Whew.”
“Why did you buy the stuff? You look slim enough already.”
“Yeah, for now, but I hit a bad age milestone.”
“Thirty?”
He nodded.
“And that’s when it all goes to hell?”
Hmm. That brought him back to the immediate issue. Judging by Carla’s earlier behavior—wandering into the neighborhood on foot during a thunderstorm, settling onto the wet pavement as if for a midnight picnic in the rain—maybe she’d been trying to escape a far worse version of Hell than a damned glass of vegetable juice. What pushed her off the ledge? “Can I ask you something?”
She closed her hands around her mug and hunched over it.
Clearly, that was a no. Women who melted into puddles had no use for probing questions. But he was a businessman, trained to inquire, probe, engage, learn, and then form plans around the ambiguous bits of information gleaned whenever the opportunity for interrogation presented itself. The truth could always be found by asking seven questions.
Carla had fallen out of the sky and into his life wearing a tight black dress and spiked heels. What did it mean? How could he help her? Had she come to help him? He was beyond help. He couldn’t even think of seven questions. “You look like you’re dressed for a party that didn’t happen. Are you okay?”
She hid behind her coffee steam. “I don’t want to think about what brought me here, let alone discuss it. Hopefully, that doesn’t seem—”
“No, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Let’s change the subject.” She reached for his glass, sipped some of the stuff, grimaced, and slid it back to him. “I’ll stick with tea.”
“Wait till you’re thirty.”
“Shh. I’m there already.”
They shared an easy laugh. Carla’s smile brought a welcome glimmer to those gray-green eyes, but a loud gust of wind broke the spell. “Your house hums,” she said.
“Stick around long enough, and the doorbell will blast you out of your chair.”
“Who’s coming?”
“It goes off on its own.”
She glanced around, leaned forward, and moved a finger to her lips as if sharing a secret. “Brewster,” she whispered. “Maybe you have a poltergeist.”
“And here I was groping for a scientific explanation.”
“My mother’s into the occult.”
“And you?”
“Hah!” She shook her head, dizzying him with a swirl of black hair. “Why invent the supernatural when we still have the mystery of our dreams to explore?”
Dreams. She sure struck a chord with that one. “Hey, now that you mention it, just before you came along, I was locked into a rerun of this repetitive, Latin—”
Dut-dut-dut DAH!
That crazy doorbell. Brewster nearly had to reach down and pick Carla off the floor. “Well, I did warn you about that.”
She stared out of the kitchen toward the front door across the foyer, hopefully not measuring her escape route. “You’re sure we aren’t dealing with poltergeists?”
“I’m thinking thunderstorms. Static electricity. Beethoven’s Fifth blasted me out of bed during the last one.”
“Try lowering the sound.”
The doorbell box loomed high up a wall near the entryway. He’d thought many times about pushing a chair over there or grabbing the stepladder out of the garage, climbing up, doing something about it.
Plans. Whenever he was lucky enough not to be dealing with the spreadsheets and calendars of his regimented office life, he shunned all attempts at enterprise. Work was one compartment, home quite another. Carefree novelists didn’t make plans. They let their doorbells run wild.
The wind hummed louder. Carla kept her focus on the door, and Brewster took the opportunity to sneak his attention down the front of her dress. What was the thing about women in black? His sex-crazed subconscious always latched on to the color choice as a suggestion of availability or, even better, a willingness to walk the wild side.
He settled his gaze on the swell of her breasts and the impressions of nipples beneath. That bra had to be flimsy if she wore one at all.
But he’d been busted earlier when looking her up and down a little too lasciviously on the street. Besides, what the hell was wrong with him? This poor woman had entered his home seeking sanctuary from whatever had been haunting her, and all he could think about was burying his face in her breasts, running his hands through her midnight-black hair, moving them lower, down her arms, along her hips…
He scurried back to neutral territory just in time to meet her eyes as she turned her attention back to him. “What do you do when you aren’t getting lost at night on twisty streets?” he asked.
“My shop keeps me busy.” Carla reached into her sleeve, came out with a card like a magician, and slid it across the table.
The placeholder displayed the image of a woven basket overflowing with handmade dolls. Rag Thyme—her clever play on words had been shaped into a crescent of rainbow-colored, cursive font beneath the sketch. “Craft store, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Cute name.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him through the steam of her