Flushed (5 page)

“Mirabelle, eight o’clock,” Stacey said. “Thank you,
Isabelle. I gotta go. I promise not to pick ugly bridesmaid dresses.”

And with that, the conversation was over. Isabelle was free
to pop open the hamper and pull out last night’s satin blouse from among her dirty
clothes. Sure enough, Kim’s business card was right where she’d left it, tucked
into the blouse’s turned-back cuff.

Except it was the card Stacey had given her with the
possible commercial business lead.

Or was it?

Isabelle went to the kitchen. The business card on top of
the penne pasta jar said Wall Werx. The business card from her blouse said Wall
Werx. She held them side-by-side. One of them was imprinted with the
president’s name, Damon Franklin. The other had no name on it at all.

A shiver wound down Isabelle’s spine. Maybe Stacey was
right, that it was no coincidence, her getting Kim’s card at the same time
Steven was breaking Isabelle’s heart. Maybe Kim was the perfect way for her to
get back at the dimple-faced rat bastard.

All he could say was no.

* * * * *

“No,” said Kim.

“Damon lets us put on our own music,” the kid said. He wore
the standard more-attitude-than-thou knitted cap favored by so many of the teen
boys who seemed to arrive in after-school packs. They came in with big
attitudes, but none of them were stupid enough to pick a fight in here. So far,
at least.

“Yeah,” said his friend with a buzz cut and a neck covered
with tribal tattoos. They were both fairly serious climbers, Kim knew, as he’d
seen them in here a lot. Long-limbed and tightly wired, they looked good on the
wall. Kim wondered whether they climbed outside the gym and whether anyone had
talked to them about what to say to the cops if they got caught buildering.

“Damon isn’t here today,” he said. “I’m picking the music.
Let’s see you move to it.” He nodded at the wall. They stood there, giving him
a poor-old-dude-is-so-uncool look.

If he’d been quicker to think of it, Kim might have locked
the doors in the post-lunch doldrums, enjoyed a private workout and skipped all
this nonsense. It would have served Damon right for being both gone and
unreachable. But he hadn’t. In consideration, he should at least get to pick
the music. And he had. The walls of the Big Top fairly throbbed with an ex-pat
Cuban rap band he was fond of.

Kim gave the teens a poor-dumb-kids-don’t-know-nothing look
and leapt at a jug hold, low on the east wall. It was the starting point for
the Testament route, but he had something else in mind. He hung from his right
hand for a few beats, letting his body torque to the music. He brought his feet
up onto smaller holds and slapped the wall to emphasize the beat before
launching a highly stylized horizontal traverse. He’d never tried anything like
this before and the rap tempo was far slower than what the kids usually chose,
but it worked surprisingly well, giving him enough time to sketch his next move
before he had to commit, every plastic bolt and hold vibrating with the bass.

Wow. He’d found yet another way to have fun climbing.

When he jumped clear of the wall and turned to see how the
punks had taken his improv wall dance, it wasn’t only kids watching. A vision
dressed like a film star from the forties stared at him. Even with her hair
hidden under a sleek little hat, there was no mistaking the sexy flush on the
face beneath. Isabelle Caine had come to Wall Werx.

“Isabelle,” he said, unable to think.

By her side, a kid wearing a Texas Aggies t-shirt and braces
on his teeth said, “This lady was looking for Damon.”

“Thanks, Cameron,” Kim said, remembering the kid’s name from
a past climbing basics class. He waved the others off. “As you were,” he said,
“nothing to see here,” which was far from true.

Isabelle’s old-fashioned suit was the color of fertile,
Midwest river-bottom soil and followed every delicious curve of her. The jacket
buttoned to a low V-neckline she wore nothing beneath, showing plenty of creamy
skin, though the suit was perfectly decent, even downright modest compared with
what Shawna and Jules and other female climbers wore.

She was definitely not the average climber. She was a
bombshell from another era. The hat centered his attention on her face,
especially her mouth. He’d thought about that mouth a lot last night in all the
hours he hadn’t slept.

He stepped nearer so he wouldn’t have to shout to be heard
over the music. He was keenly aware of the perspiration gluing his shirt to his
skin. He hoped he didn’t stink. “What a surprise,” he said to her. But she
wasn’t looking at him. She was looking around. She was looking up. She was
looking paler with every moment.

“How high is it?” she asked. Her throat worked as if she
struggled to swallow a large pebble.

“Fifty feet. Actually fifty-one and four inches. We’ve got a
full sixteen inches of concrete, topped with cushion, so every anchor is
bombproof. Do you climb?”

“Up? Up there? Oh my, no,” she said.

“I hope you’ll decide to change that.”

She was lovely. In Kim’s experience, women generally had one
part of the day that suited them best. Isabelle Caine had been a warmly sexy
candlelit woman. Now he saw she became a translucent-skinned beauty in the
building’s combination of fluorescent boxes and natural sky-lit afternoon. He
wondered if she might be a morning troll, if only out of fairness to the rest of
womankind.

“Ms. Caine?”

Her eyes tracked to his voice, but they didn’t seem to focus
on him. There was something wrong. Her throat still worked at that pebble.

“Come sit down,” he said, taking her arm. Damon had brought
a selection of garage sale furniture to the Big Top’s open center so climbers
could watch each other in relative comfort. Kim steered Isabelle around the
faux leather sofa and torn recliner to the piece that had once been someone’s
dining room chair, straight backed and armless. She sat. The flush had faded
from her cheeks. Her lips were pressed together. He squatted beside the chair
and took her hand.

It seemed to help her. “So rough,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I like it.”

She liked it. Why did that make him happy? He nearly came
back with something about her liking it rough, but this wasn’t the moment. He
contented himself with the thought that she liked his touch and waited for her
to pull herself together.

Cameron was already halfway up the Bender route while his
climbing partner, a teen in a yellow tank top Kim didn’t recognize, watched on
belay.

The kids who’d wanted to play their own music experimented
with the beat Kim had chosen, climbing double-time, stopping in rest position
and rotating their weight from limb to limb. They seemed to be having fun.

“How embarrassing,” Isabelle said, her breathy tone somehow
lighting vivid sensory memories of succumbing to the urge to kiss her last
night, her thawing in his protective embrace. “I come here to ask you a favor
and then I get flustered.”

Kim blinked. “Favor? Me? I thought you came looking for
Damon.”

“No. Yes.” An exasperated sigh and pursed lips seemed to
signal the return of the confident lioness he’d met last night.

“You and I have been requested to chaperone on a double
date,” she said. “You made quite an impression, it seems.”

Chaperone. Double date. When had he last heard either one of
those words? He tried not to smile.

She kept her voice and her gaze low. “I know it’s a lot to
ask, considering, but would you mind making an encore performance?”

He no longer held her hand. When had she drawn back from
him? “I’m confused,” he said. “Are you asking me out?”

He’d have sworn nothing could distract him before she’d
answered, but a blur of motion in his peripheral vision tore his attention back
to the room. The kid belaying for Cameron lay on his back on the floor, limbs
flailing. Cameron swung wildly on twenty feet of rope. Only practiced use of
his hands and feet prevented him smashing his head on the wall.

Kim leapt to his feet.

“Oh my,” Isabelle said.

The downed kid had been yanked off his feet when Cameron
fell, which wouldn’t have happened if he had been doing his job as belayer and
paying attention. Kim would deal with him later. He put himself between the two
and got a grip on the rope.

“You okay, Cameron?” he called.

“Got it.” Cameron had slowed his spinning and swinging both.
Even better, he was calm. Good kid. Good instincts.

Yellow Tank Top was back on his feet. “I’ll take him down,”
he said.

Kim nodded, still too angry to speak to him. He stepped out
of the kid’s way and watched him lower the climber to the gym floor. As soon as
Cameron was safely down, Kim rounded on the would-be belayer.

“What happened?”

The kid shrugged. He was even ganglier than Cameron, all
bony shoulders in his yellow tank top. “He fell.”

“So did you.” Kim grabbed the center tie-in of the kid’s
harness and jerked hard. The kid stumbled. “You’re supposed to be watching.” He
jerked again. “It’s your job to keep him safe.” The kid grabbed at Kim’s wrists
and tried to push him away.

“Stop it, man.”

“Are you even certified to belay?”

“Let go or I’ll sue.”

Kim released him. “I don’t want to see you in here again.
You can piss about it to Damon. I don’t care.”

The kid wriggled his shoulders and moved his head back and
forth as if to check for neck damage, as if Kim had shaken him that hard. Not
half as hard as he wanted to.

Around them, activity in the gym had come to a standstill.
Cap and Tattoo leaned back from their holds on the wall. Seemed everyone else
was on the ground. Watching. It had been a pretty spectacular fall, considering
the safety precautions in place at Wall Werx. Yet Cameron hadn’t taken a
scratch—just as it should be.

Kim jerked his head toward the door. “Get out of here,” he
told Yellow Tank. “Now.”

Grumbling and posturing, the kid went.

“Sorry, Kim,” Cameron said. “I thought he was cool.”

“Could have been worse.” Kim rolled his shoulders, letting
it go. “You going to take another run at the Bender?”

Cameron demonstrated he was still tied in. “I’d like to.”

“Go see if there’s someone in the garden who’s certified and
willing. If not, I’ll do it.”

The kid unclipped himself and headed out of the Big Top
toward the boulder garden.

The crowd had already lost interest and resumed their
individual efforts, leading Kim to remember he’d been in the midst of his own
intriguing conversation. He found Isabelle on her feet, staring straight up at
the spot where Cameron had fallen. Her hat had slipped to the floor behind her.
She didn’t seem to notice.

“He’s fine,” he said to her. “It’s not dangerous.” Not if
the idiot on belay paid attention, anyway.

She licked her lips, which would have been far nicer to
watch if he hadn’t suspected she was stiff with fright. “I need to go,” she
said. She turned toward the door. Kim scooped up her hat and followed, only too
aware he was still Guy in Charge and couldn’t leave the gym floor. Damn Damon.

“So, tonight?” he said. “Double date?”

“Yes.” She sounded wooden. Her translucence had clouded into
something plastic and uncomfortable. He still wanted to touch her.

She walked through the door. Kim stopped. Luckily, she
noticed and turned around. One quick glance beyond him and suddenly her gaze
was focused on his face. Very focused, as if she were determined not to see
anything beyond him.

“Yes,” she repeated. “The Mirabelle for dinner. A jacket,
but no tie.”

“What time should I pick you up?” He wondered what he’d
offered to do, who the other couple was and why she looked sick.

She looked at the hat he offered, touched the flattened
curls of her hair and frowned. “Thank you,” she said. “Seven thirty?”

“Seven thirty,” he said.

* * * * *

As seven thirty approached, Isabelle was still in her
pajamas, a white hooded t-shirt with cotton drawstring pajama pants covered in
large pink and orange flowers. Comfort food for the body. Bad enough she’d lost
her composure this afternoon in that three-story death trap Kim Martin called a
gym. But Charlie remained MIA, and she’d had to reschedule her closet installation.
She hated letting down a client.

A long bath followed by sorting files and organizing drawers
had given her back a sense all was as it should be. Time to get dressed.

Why would anyone haul himself fifty feet off the ground,
supported by nothing but a thin nylon rope? It was insane. And yet, there were
all those kids, clinging to the walls like crazed, spandex-wearing arachnids.

Kim Martin apparently did it too. He evidently thought it
was fun.

And safe.

She opened her wardrobe and gazed at her choices with no
more attention than a man hanging on an open fridge door.

Of course, it had almost been worth it to see Kim all sweaty
in a clingy t-shirt. And shorts. Oh my, what legs. Whatever they called what
he’d been doing on the wall when the boy named Cameron showed her in, it was
hot enough to have her doing a little perspiring of her own.

At least until she’d noticed all the ropes hanging from the
impossibly high ceiling, and the people intent on using them. At least until
that boy fell and nearly killed himself smashing into the wall.

She shivered.

The doorbell rang, focusing her in a hurry. Kim Martin had
arrived.

She opened the door. “Come on in. I’m afraid it’s going to
be a few minutes.”

“No problem,” he said, apparently unsurprised. At least her
PJs were cute ones. He presented her with an armload of the most vibrant
watermelon-pink tulips she’d ever seen, wrapped in dark-blue tissue paper that
set the blooms and bright-green stems aglow.

“Oh!” Nothing more intelligent would come to her lips. Her
face must have reassured him, because Kim Martin cut loose with a
no-holds-barred smile that took his sex appeal right off the charts.