Page 6 of The Claiming of the Shrew
Pressed to the door on the other side, the pretty girl from the parking lot nearly fell into the room. Fawkes moved to catch her, but she stabilized herself before he could slap a hand onto her bosom. Whether this was good or bad, he couldn’t quite figure out.
“Why are you standing outside my door?” Fawkes asked. He became aware that she was hastily stuffing something back into her giant purse.
“Why are you dressed like you’re about to go burgle something?” she replied sweetly.
Because he was, more or less. Fawkes, as appeared to be usual around her, said the first thing that jumped into his head. “This is how I dress for walks at night. Because I like to do that. Go for walks. I have insomnia. And this way I blend. With the night,” he added, while telling himselfshut up shut up shut up.
The vision of loveliness narrowed her beautiful green-flecked eyes suspiciously at him. “You’re going for a walk.”
“At night. It’s a thing I do.” Technically true, he supposed. The lock picks felt like they were burning a hole in his pocket.
“I like going for walks too,” said the vision brightly. “I’ll come with you.”
This was simultaneously wonderful—because she was going for a walk with him!—and terrible, because first of all he could feel all the evening’s opportunities slipping through his fingers, and second, the way things had been going so far, he would probably give her a dozen reasons to be suspicious of him insidethe first five minutes. Having her at his side might be worth it, though.
“Oh. Well—okay.” Nerving himself after that resounding example of suave small talk, he asked, “Do you have a name?” And then could have drop-kicked himself into the next hotel room.
He was definitely no James Bond. At the moment, it seemed, he was barely capable of being Barney Fife.
“I ... do,” said the vision. “I do have a name. It’s Leah. Doyouhave a name?”
“Yes. Fawkes. Like Guy Fawkes,” he added, because like anyone else with a hard-to-spell name, he’d developed a reflexive instinct for over-explanation early in life.
“I know,” Leah said.
“You do? How?”
To his surprise, she blushed very fetchingly. “Never mind that. Weren’t we going for a walk?”
“Yes, we were.”
Fawkes started to offer her his arm, which she ignored. But as she turned to come with him, he abruptly noticed that she was on crutches. Had she been on crutches through the entire conversation? Probably, unless she had conjured them from a pocket dimension. But she hadn’t been on crutches earlier—had she? He had been completely captivated by her eyes, the most striking shade of brown-green that he’d ever seen, and her face, and her everything. Maybe she had tripped between then and now.
“What did you do to your foot?” he asked.
Leah looked genuinely baffled. “What?”
“Your foot. You know.” She couldn’t have literally forgotten she was on crutches, could she? That seemed like a thing that would be hard to forget. “Did you break it?”
“My—oh.” She looked surprised, slightly annoyed, and still a little confused. “No—Fawkes, it’s—look.” She turned and crossed one of her legs in front of the other one, at which point Fawkes abruptly realized that her legs weren’t merely slim, as he’d assumed, but wasted. They twisted around each other like the branches of a tree, and when she shifted her hips so her pelvis was level, aside from distracting him completely for a couple of seconds (oh no, don’t think about her pelvis), he saw that the toes of her right foot barely touched the ground. Also, she was wearing eye-searingly bright pink and white sneakers.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—uh—pry. I just didn’t notice all of that earlier.”
“You didn’t notice?” Leah said, staring at him. “It’s usually the first thing people notice about me.”
“Yeah, no, I was—distracted.” By her face, he didn’t want to say, and also by the swell of her small but perfectly formed bosom under her pleasingly form-fitting sweater, which hereallydidn’t want to say.
And also by his animal clamoringhold her clutch her carry her back to our den!!in his head, which it was doing again now.
“You must have been,” Leah muttered. She took off down the hallway in a rapid, slightly corkscrewing walk. It looked inefficient, but she was at least as fast as a regular walking person, even a regular walking person taller than her. By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Fawkes was glad he was in pretty decent shape. He was also starting to feel self-conscious about going down the wide front staircase in his obvious sneaking-around gear.
“Are you sure we have to go this way?” he asked. “What about a side door?”
Leah gave him an arch look. “Ashamed to be seen with me?”
“What? No! Of course not. I just don’t want awkward questions—do you?”
“You know, you’re right. My sister might be down there.” She grabbed him by the elbow, reoriented him down the hall, and slid her hand back onto the grip of her crutch, so fast it was almost unnoticeable. “There’s an emergency stairwell back here.”
