“Are we going to work today, or travel around the world?” came a deep, curt voice from behind them.
Everybody jumped. “Sorry, Dr. Rydel,” Keely said at once.
“Me, too,” Cappie seconded.
“Nihongo no daisuki desu,” Dr. Rydel said, and made a polite bow.
Cappie burst out smiling. “Nihon no tomodachi desu. Konichi wa, Rydel sama,” she replied, and bowed back.
Keely and Dr. King stared at them, fascinated.
“I said that I liked the Japanese language,” Dr. Rydel translated.
“And I said that I was a friend of Japan. I also told him hello,” Cappie seconded. “You speak Japanese!” she exclaimed to Bentley.
“Just enough to get me arrested in Tokyo,” Bentley told her, smiling. “I was stationed in Okinawa when I was in the service. I spent my liberties in Tokyo.”
“Well, isn’t it a small world?” Dr. King wondered.
“Small, and very crowded,” Bentley told her. He gave her a meaningful look. “If you don’t believe me, you could look at the mob in the waiting room, glaring at the empty reception counter and pointedly staring at their watches.”
“Oops!” Dr. King ran for it.
So did Keely and Cappie, laughing all the way.
* * *
There was a new rapport between Dr. Rydel and Cappie. He was no longer antagonistic toward her, and she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. Their working relationship became cordial, almost friendly.
Then he came to supper the following Saturday, and she found herself dropping pots and pans and getting tongue-tied at the table while the three of them ate the meal she’d painstakingly prepared.
“You’re a very good cook,” Bentley told her, smiling.
“Thanks,” she replied, flushing even more.
Kell, watching her, was amused and indulgent. “She could cook even when she was in her early teens,” he told Bentley. “Of course, that was desperation,” he added with a sigh.
She laughed. “He can burn water,” she pointed out. “I had so much carbon in my diet that I felt like a fire drill. I borrowed a cookbook from the wife of one of his buddies and started practicing. She felt sorry for me and gave me lessons.”
“They were delicious lessons,” Kell recalled with a smile. “The woman was acordon bleucook and she could make French pastries. I gained ten pounds. Then her husband was reassigned and the lessons stopped.”
“Hey, a new family moved in,” she argued. “It was a company commander, and she could make these terrific vegan dishes.”
Kell glared at her. “I hate vegetables.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” she shot back. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a good squash casserole.”
Kell and Bentley exchanged horrified looks.
“What is it with men and squash?” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I have never met a man who would eat squash in any form. It’s a perfectly respectable vegetable. You can make all sorts of things with it.”
Bentley pursed his lips. “Door props, paperweights…”
“Food things!” she returned.
“Hey, I don’t eat paperweights,” Bentley pointed out.
She shook her head.
