She chuckled. “That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I mean, what if you get writer’s block again? How can you relax when it’s not sent off to your agent or editor or wherever you send it to? The project isn’t finished.” He was genuinely concerned for her.
She smoothed back a few strands of hair that were clinging to her throat and seemed to understand his worry. “Here’s the thing, Oscar. Icouldsend it off tomorrow to my editor if I wanted to. It’s that done. But I want to tweak and polish it more before I do. That’s all.” She smirked at him. “I do like the idea that you’re very concerned about mefinishing.”
Hoo boy.Oscar nearly swallowed his tongue. “Well,” he managed, aware that his face had gone a little warmer, “it just makes for a—uh—happier situation all around.”
She burst out laughing, and his heart pinged a little when her eyes crinkled charmingly. “You do surprise me, Dr. London.” Again with the purr.
It was as if she knew what it did to him when her voice dropped like that and her eyes went all soft and sly.
Now it was his turn to tease. “But I have to admit, I’m a little offended that you didn’t use my idea of a trapdoor.”
“Well,” she replied, “even though I didn’t use it, you reaped the reward of giving me the idea, didn’t you?”
All righty, then. He grinned back. “Excellent point.”
“So, uh—what have you been doing to keep your mind occupied during these last few days without me to entertain you?”
“Oh, this and that. I’ve hiked around the area a lot. Drew some more samples from this pool—I found something unexpected in it—and also from some other water sources in the area. I’ve been testing them, and have contacted a few colleagues as well. Oh, and I cooked for a neurotic writer a few times, and went head to head with her cousin when he showed up wanting to bother her.”
“Head to head with Declan?” She perused him with a long look. “I think if it came down to it, you could’ve taken him.”
For some reason, her comment pleased him absurdly. “Fortunately for him, it didn’t come to that. But he was more than mildly shocked to find that you’d shacked up with a guy he didn’t know about.”
“Either that or he thought you’d kidnapped me and locked me away and was having your way with me—or worse.”
“Yes, I actually think that’s what was on his mind the first time he saw me. Hence the nearly head-to-head bit. But I didn’t know who he was, and I figured you didn’t want to be bothered. After we cleared things up, we ended up having a few beers and watching the lake for a while. And the next day I joined him and a couple buddies—Baxter and the police chief—for a few beers at the Lakeside. You didn’t even notice I was gone.”
“True enough, but that burger was so good. Thank you for bringing it home for me. I wolfed it down cold at about two o’clock that night. After the nightly scream.” She shifted in the water, easing out of it a little, obviously to give herself a break from the heat. Now he could see the hot pink strip of the bikini top covering her lovely breasts, and how her shoulders and chest were flushed red. “So you mentioned you found something unusual in this water. I’m assuming it’s not some dangerous microbe or something.”
“I’m not certain what it is. I’ve sent the image off to a few colleagues—it looks something like a spiky crystal snowflake, but not. So far, no one’s given me any information about it.”
“Do you have a picture of it? You could do a reverse image search online. I had to do that once when I was trying to identify a certain weapon for Blue.”
“Hmm. I could try that. Speaking of Sargent Blue—and let me say that as a straight male reader, I find him nearly as compelling and well drawn as Diana and Trib seem to—but what’s all this about him being your fantasy? A spy who can’t read without his glasses and has a ferret for a pet pushes your buttons?”
“And a cat. He has a cat as well, named Armstrong. He adopted him in the fourth book,Blind Alley.”
“I just finishedTraitor Square, so I’ll move on to that one next. Thanks for the warning. So. What is it about him that’s your fantasy?”
“Oh, well…” For the first time, Teddy seemed a little bashful. “Well, it’s partly just who he is—that moral code, you know. But there’s the glasses part.” She sighed, then tipped her head back against the wall again—so she didn’t have to look at him? “I have a real thing for guys who wear geeky-looking glasses. Plus I thought giving him a liability would make him more realistic,” she added quickly. “And, of course, add some plot difficulties. Can’t make it too easy for the character, you know.”
So she liked guys with glasses, did she? Well, well, well. This was becoming more interesting.
“And he’s resourceful, and knows about a lot of different things—I always pictured him as a sort of assassin-like librarian. He’s a little bit of a geek, I guess. He came to his spy work relatively late in life, after a lot of classes, including a library science degree.” She surged completely up out of the water now. “Whew,” she said, fanning herself as she perched on the side of the pool. Her legs were like white beams against the dark rocks and water in the lowering light, but they definitely had a pretty shape. “It’s getting dark and the bugs will be coming out soon. And I’m about done stewing in this water. Pretty sure I’m cooked all the way through.”
Oscar helped her climb out of the pool and accidentally-on-purpose bumped her up against him so they went body to body all the way from hips to knees. He saw no reason not to slide his arms around her and pull her even closer, and she appeared to agree that taking advantage of the moment was a good idea.
He found her mouth again, but only for a moment before he had to taste the warm, salty, damp skin of her neck and throat. The feel of her curves against him was delicious, and when she slid her foot up along his calf, he dragged her up closer. His hand tangled in the damp bottom of her bundle of hair, and her hands shoved up into his hair as she turned the kiss deeper and hotter.
All thought evaporated from his mind as he filled himself with the taste, scent, and feel of her there in the moonlight—damp, hot, sweet. He couldn’t get enough of the way her mouth fit to his, the way she made a very soft, deep moan in the back of her throat whenever he nibbled along the side of her neck or around the myriad of earrings she wore.
At last, she pulled away, arms linked around his neck, breathing heavily. Her pink-covered breasts rested against his chest, and he knew she must be able to feel the solid erection filling out his swim trunks. “That was very nice, Oscar.Verrrynice.”
“An exceptional MEI, I think,” he said when he caught his breath and could formulate the words. Then, in order to preserve his brain function and protect them from being eaten alive by the mosquitos, he stepped away—because otherwise, things were going to get a lot more serious very quickly. It took him a few tries to get his shirt on properly—and forget about buttoning it.
He’d just slipped on his shoes when Teddy began to laugh. “I just got it. MEI.”
