Page 19 of Catch a Kiwi
She looked over her shoulder at me, then slid the eggs onto the buttered toast. “No, I’ll put the oven on warm for these and do two more plates. Keep that hand in the water, and I’ll go get my brand-new medical supplies and treat that burn. Convenient that that’s the one thing I still possess.” She tapped unerringly at the electronic controls of the smaller ofthe two ovens in the big cooker and slid the plate inside, then left the room.
I felt stupid, standing there with my hand under the water, but Ihadburned it, so there you were. When she came back, though, I dried my hand on a tea towel and said, “It’s fine.”
Did she listen to that? She did not. She took my hand, inspected it, and said, “Blister. Here.” And started up with the hand-holding and doctoring thing, standing so close to me, I could smell the scent of her again. Which was much more “mud and earth” this morning than “soft and sweet,” but that was the wet clothes.
When she’d wrapped the plaster around the side of my hand, she looked up at me with a teasing light in her eyes and asked, “No comments on my technique? What happened to Mr. Suave? Mr. I’m-in-Charge-Here-So-Shut-Up?”
“I—” I cleared my throat and wished she’d step back. Wait.Icould step back. I did it. “You surprised me.”
That was putting it mildly. I hadn’t really seen, last night, what she looked like. It had been all strings of long wet hair and liberal lashings of mud, other than a glimpse of her shape in the firelight. Now, though … I said, “Your hair’s different.” Lamely.
She touched a pale strand. “You have power again, so I took another sort-of shower—it’s interesting to try to wash your hair without getting your hands or knees wet. I had to bend all the way over and aim the sprayer very carefully”—an image I did not need—“so I could soak it and then dry it slightly more respectably. Thanks for having a hairdryer in your guest room. I’m impressed. I don’t have a comb, though, so it’s better than last night, but still a wreck. I guess ‘different’ sounds better than ‘disaster,’ but I assume that’s what you mean.”
Well, no. It wasn’t. Her hair was blonde. Also shiny, pale platinum mixed with a few streaks of gold in a way that was either a very expensive coloring job or a lucky accident of nature. Had to be the latter, because she’d sounded skint, with the angst over the loss of the van and the hospital bills and all. Averylucky accident of nature. An embarrassment of riches, in fact, hanging halfway down her back and, yes, looking just-out-of-bed tousled in a fairly delicious way. Her eyes, which still held that teasing light, were a soft gray with a dark-gray rim, and the rest of her face …
She had the whole package: a heart-shaped face, with a wide forehead and cheekbones and a pointed chin, and those eyes, which seemed to take up half her face. As for the rest of her … She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday, the T-shirt and shorts and white strips of bandage. She’d obviously washed her clothes in the shower last night, because they weren’t entirely clean and were still damp, which meant they clung to her, and bloodyhell,but the woman had a body. Too short for a model, I guessed, but proportioned in the way a man most appreciated.
That innocent kitten face and petite size said “cute.” Vulnerable, maybe. Sweet. The rest of her, though, said “holy fuck.” The combination was disorienting. How had I missed all that? Was I blind?
“You were muddier yesterday,” I said, hearing how lame it sounded. “And wearing a raincoat. And so forth. Oh—chuck those clothes in the washing machine. Can’t be comfortable, wearing them still wet.”
“Well, no,” she said, holding the T-shirt out from her breasts and fanning it, “but I don’t think it would be a good idea to be naked, do you?”
Yes,I did not say. “I can loan you a shirt while you wash your things,” I said. “One with tails. It should be long enough to cover your … the most important areas. Wait here.” I headed back to my bedroom, thinking,Get it together, boy.Harden up.Unfortunately, though, hardness wasn’t my problem.
I was a reasonably worldly bloke. You might even call me sophisticated, for a Kiwi. I aimed for that frame of mind, came back into the kitchen, and handed her a white dress shirt on a hanger. “That should do you.”
She held it up. “Ah … Do you have one that isn’t white?”
“What, you’re going to be fashion-conscious?”
“Roman.” Her mouth did interesting things, saying my name. “You’ll be able to see through this. It’s white. You’ve told me you’re not interested, of course, but …” There was that teasing light again. Her lashes might be dyed, I thought stupidly, because she had no makeup to put on, and unlike the hair, they were brown, framing the gray eyes. Or maybe that was another happy accident of nature, that and the winged eyebrows. That was one disarming face, innocent and sensual at once.
“Oh.” I took the shirt and headed out to exchange it, coming back with a blue one. “Better?”
“Better,” she said, and smiled. “Hang on while I go get almost naked.”
Bloody hell.
I had to get these women out of here.
No, I didn’t. What was I thinking?
Summer
It wasn’t like men never stared at me. Men had been staring at me since I was twelve. I might be disappointed that Roman was staring at me, though. Or pleased, what with that “naked” comment, because why on earth had I said that?
I couldn’t tell how I felt, to tell you the truth. Yesterday, he’d been totally oblivious to how I looked, because I’dlooked terrible. He’d shown me his real self, which was weirdly nice, even though his real self hadn’t always been that nice.
Too confusing, and my life was too complicated to care about this. And I didn’t have sexual feelings anymore. Which was good, because I didn’t need that. I stripped off the disgusting, damp, not-clean-enough clothes as Delilah slept on—I didn’t want to admit how many times I’d woken and checked that she was still breathing, or that it was the reason I’d wanted to sleep with her—gathered up her wet clothes, and went to find the washing machine.
It had to be near the kitchen. I focused on that and not on the house, because I didn’t care about fancy houses. All right, this was averyfancy house, and, with all its natural stone and wood, more tasteful than any of the many, many fancy houses I’d seen thus far in my life, but still. I didn’t care, other than taking tastefulness notes for the much more modest house I would eventually buy with the salary I was going to earn on my own.
Once, you know, I got over being desperately poor again.
I’d never understood why Mom couldn’t get out of the hole. I’d seen the six-pack of beer and the liters of store-brand soda in the grocery bags every week, the carton of cigarettes she picked up at the Indian reservation every month, and said, “If you didn’t buy any of this stuff, at the end of a year, you’d have at least six hundred dollars.”
She’d said, “I know, honey. You’re right. I’m cutting back. I’m going to quit smoking, too.” She hadn’t quit or cut back, and now that I wasn’t fourteen anymore, I understood that in a life with so little pleasure, how could you deny yourself the temporary reprieve of that cigarette, that beer at the end of the day? You could cut back to the bone, and you still wouldn’t be getting out of your crappy trailer or your crappy life. I got it now, but it was a little late.
