Thoroughly Kissed (19 page)

He pushed at the chicken cooling on his plate. He had treated her horribly these last few days, and she had been in a hell he was only beginning to understand.

What she needed was compassion. What she needed was a friend. And no one else had been there for her. He had come along under duress.

No wonder she was overprotective of that silly cat. The cat was the only true friend she had.

Michael would get her to Oregon. And then he would make sure these people she was running to would really assist her. If they didn't, he would help her find someone who could.

Magic or not, he would do whatever he could to make sure the next thousand years of her life would be a lot better than the first.

She couldn't hide in the bathroom forever. Emma sat on the red velvet stool in front of the lighted mirror in the ladies lounge and rested her elbow on the marble counter. The face that looked back at her—with its sad eyes, pale cheeks, and thin lips wasn't a face that launched a thousand ships. It was a face that lost a thousand years.

Yes, she knew she was a world-class beauty—celebrated in story and song, she thought with a lot of irony—but that was part of the problem. And it was an even bigger problem now that he had noticed.

Because she liked him. He was kind, and worse, he understood—or tried to. What he had said—his compassion—had choked her up, left her feeling restless and unworthy and terrified.

What if he tried to kiss her? What if she let him?

She had kissed Aethelstan once—just after he had rescued her from her evil stepmother. It had been ten years ago, and nothing had happened. But Aethelstan, who was a lot more experienced now than he had been as a boy, could have blocked the spell.

Michael had no magic at all. And Emma's was useless.

Like puberty. She smiled faintly at that. He had been trying to understand—and for a mortal, that was pretty close. But not quite it.

A woman came out of one of the stalls and sat three stools away. She reapplied her lipstick, then used a Kleenex to blot it. She kept stealing glances at Emma.

Finally, she said, “Hey, are you famous or something?”

Emma's stomach clenched. This had happened to her a few times. It usually happened the day after a TV appearance.

“No,” she said.

The woman frowned. “You look really familiar.”

Emma shrugged. “I have one of those faces.”

“I'm sure I've seen you before,” the woman said.

“Probably around town.” Emma stood. The woman had forced Emma's hand. She had to leave now. But she wasn't sure how she would face Michael's sympathetic eyes.

“Weren't you on, like, some documentary?”

Too close for comfort. Emma slipped out of the restroom, pretending she didn't hear the last question.

Michael was still sitting at the table. His chicken looked untouched. His hand rested near the wine glass, but it didn't look as if he had touched that either. He was staring out the window, his features pensive.

His blond hair caught the light, showing all the different highlights. His features were clean, the bones in his face strong. He would have been considered handsome in the world of her birth, just like he was considered handsome now.

He was wrong. Some looks never went out of style.

She squared her shoulders and walked back to the table. As she slipped into her chair, she said, “Sorry.”

He turned toward her. His features were masked. “I didn't mean to pry.”

She shook her head. “I'm just not used to talking about myself.”

“How about I make it up to you? Ask me any embarrassing question you want.”

She thought for a moment, feeling tempted. Then she said, “How about no more embarrassing questions for the entire evening?”

For a brief moment, he looked disappointed, and then he covered it with a smile. “Fair enough. Light and frivolous conversation it is.”

And it was. They talked baseball (a sport which Emma had fallen in love with), theater (which Emma knew little about), and news (which seemed to interest both of them).

The rest of the meal went quickly. Emma managed to finish her beef, and even enjoy some dessert. Michael was a witty and engaging dinner companion, who even insisted on paying for the meal. She tried to argue with him over that, but she lost.

“I was the one who chose an expensive restaurant,” he said. “When it's my choice, I buy.”

They drove back to the hotel in companionable silence that lasted until they reached their rooms. From Emma's, the blaring television didn't manage to cover Darnell's wailing howls.

“He doesn't do that the whole time you're gone, does he?” Michael asked.

“I don't know,” Emma said. “I'm gone.”

Michael rolled his eyes and opened his door. Emma followed him into the room. Before she had been too stressed to notice it much. It was the mirror image of her room, down to the colors. The stripes on her bedspread were the same color as the solids on his.

His suitcase was open on the suitcase rack, and she could see his clothes, neatly folded. It made her feel as if she had seen something personal.

She reached for the connecting door.

Michael glanced at her hand. “May I offer you a nightcap?”

“You travel with liquor?”

“No,” he said. “But there are tiny bottles in my refrigerator.”

“Tiny expensive bottles.”

“And a pop machine down the hall. A bit of ice, a can of Coke—what more could you want on a nice spring evening?”

The two of them sitting on the bed, laughing and talking. He'd reach toward her and she'd lean in—

“I can't,” she said.

“Can't?” He looked at her in surprise.

“Darnell—”

“Can come in here.”

“Michael.” She put a hand on his arm. His skin was warm, muscled. A little shiver of pleasure ran through her. His breath caught and their eyes met and for a moment, she thought he might kiss her right there.

She let go of his arm.

“I can't,” she said again. “Really.”

“What are you so afraid of, Emma?”

She swallowed. She had already told him too much truth tonight. She couldn't tell him any more, not and save her self-respect.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just want a good night's sleep.”

He hadn't moved. His eyes were intense. She was so close to him she could feel his warmth and she knew that if she made one wrong move, he would take her in his arms, and she would never leave.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said, and let herself into her room.

Darnell stopped howling. He looked at her as if she had been gone for weeks. She scooped him into her arms and clung to him until he squawked.

“Oh, Darnell,” she whispered. “This trip is going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

***

That night, her dreams were a tangled mixture of memories and fears. The whole experience of her arrival into this new century, Nora's frightened face, Aethelstan's older one—so familiar and yet unfamiliar—and Emma's own strangled terror when she realized she could never, ever go back to the world that she was most familiar with, a world she hadn't loved, but a world she knew.

Finally, she woke up in the strange room, the unfamiliar darkness choking her, the air stale and a thousand years old. Her heart was pounding and she knew she was trapped inside, forever trapped. The panic held her until she felt Darnell's familiar warmth scoot closer to her back.

She put a hand on his side, like she used to do when she was first at Nora's. He grunted and rolled on his back so that he could get his stomach rubbed. The softness of his fur did relax her, and so did the clean sheets against her bare skin, the uncomfortable bedspread, and the hotel pillows.

All of those were part of now, and now was better than then. All of the thens. Even a now filled with magic.

She had to remember that. And remember too what Michael had told her at dinner—that most people dreamed of receiving the gift that she didn't want. Most people wished they had magic when they never could.

Michael. She would carry that image of him, sitting alone in a restaurant that he had chosen for its atmosphere, for the rest of her life. He had softened toward her, and she had liked it. Maybe she should have stayed for that nightcap.

Maybe she should have gone on this trip alone.

“Maybe,” she whispered to Darnell, “I should stop thinking and go back to sleep.”

Darnell's answer was a not-so-muffled cat snore. She smiled at him, and then, despite herself, peered at the crack beneath the connecting door. Michael's light was out. She grinned at herself. What would she have done if it wasn't? Knock, plead nightmares, and let him comfort her?

He probably would have talked to her, found her some warm milk and sent her back to bed. She had probably imagined that moment in the room. She wasn't used to touching anyone except Darnell. She wouldn't know what a normal touch felt like. Maybe whenever she touched a man, she would feel that spark.

Although she had never felt it with Aethelstan.

She sighed and groped on the nightstand for the remote. Nora once told her that she had officially become a modern woman when she used the television to fall asleep. Well, someone should circle a calendar. Tonight was the night.

Emma flicked on the TV, found that the hotel had only fifteen channels, and felt extremely disappointed. She surfed, finding nothing to hold her interest except an infomercial for an online cooking school. Maybe that was what she should have done. She should have taken lessons from Aethelstan and opened her own restaurant.

How ironic. She had once thrown a plate—actually an entire pile of plates—at him when he had suggested that.

But it would have been a lot easier than taking this leave of absence from her current job. History professors didn't just vanish for a year or two, especially ones who got interviewed occasionally on the History Channel. Restaurateurs closed shop all the time.

The television did lull her to sleep, and she dreamed of cooking school and vanishing maître d's, of beautifully designed restaurants and food so scrumptious that it won every award ever given for dining. Somewhere in the mix was Michael, saying that such meals made trips worthwhile, and Darnell, who was sitting at a table, like those cats in the Fancy Feast commercials, delicately eating salmon out of a small crystal bowl.

And when she woke up, light was streaming in her window. Darnell was sitting on the round table, chittering at birds that he could see through the net curtains. He had adapted to this room a lot quicker than she had expected him to.

She stretched, feeling remarkably refreshed and hungrier than she should have been, given her dinner the night before. She got up, took a short hot shower, and was just getting dressed when she heard a hard, firm knock on the connecting door.

“Just a minute!” She struggled with the last leg of her jeans, and walked barefoot across the room. Her hair was still damp, and curled on the shoulders of her blouse. She hadn't buttoned her sleeves yet, and they flopped uncomfortably against her wrists.

The knocking came again, harder this time, and more urgent. “Emma!”

“I'm coming.” She unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Michael was dressed immaculately, his hair combed and dried, his shirt pressed. Even his jeans looked tailored. “What did you do?”

His voice was not calm. Nor was it as deliberate as his clothing. His words were clipped and seemed to have an edge of panic in them.

“What did I do?” Emma asked. “I slept, got dressed—”

“No,” he said. “To the hotel.”

“Nothing.”

“It's not nothing.” He came inside and grabbed her shoulders, leading her to the dresser.

“Michael, this room's the same as it was last night.”

“No,” he said. “It's not.”

He opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the fake leather book that gave all the pertinent information about the hotel. He flipped it open to the room service section.

The selections went on for pages, with everything from duck à l'orange to the chef's special perch with asparagus and lemongrass. Desserts ranged from simple cookies to award-winning petit fours.

“I don't understand,” Emma said.

Michael flipped back to the front of the menu. Under the heading “About our restaurant,” she saw the words “fifty of the world's greatest chefs vying to create the most unique dishes in the entire fifty states.” And then there were reviews of the hotel restaurant from the
New
York
Times
,
Gourmet
,
Vanity
Fair
, and a hundred other publications.

She felt cold. “I thought the restaurant was closed.”

“Being remodeled,” Michael said. “At least yesterday it was.”

“Maybe this is what they're shooting for?” she asked, feeling her heart start to pound too hard.

“Fifty world-famous chefs? No restaurant has fifty chefs. Haven't you heard of too many cooks spoiling the infamous broth?”

“I didn't see broth on the menu,” she said.

“You know what I mean!”

“That's actually an oversight, considering the extensiveness—”

“Emma!”

She stopped talking.

“What did you do?”

“I had a nightmare,” she said in a small voice. “So I turned on the TV and watched an infomercial.”

“And?”

“I had a dream about chefs.”

“And?” His hands were still on her shoulders.

“That's all.”

“All?”

She nodded.

“You had a dream, and suddenly
Esquire
is calling a restaurant attached to a chain motel the finest dining in all of North America, if not the world?”

“Maybe Sioux Falls needed a five-star restaurant. The place we were in last night—”

“Was just fine!” Michael's fingers were digging into her skin.

“No, actually it wasn't fine. The salad was bitter and the potatoes weren't mashed all that well.”

“So now you're a food critic?”

“No.” She slipped out of his grasp. “I'm just a little startled, that's all.”

Darnell had wandered from his perch on the tabletop to the connecting doorway. Emma hurried toward him and pulled the door closed.

“Have you said a reverse spell?” she asked.

Michael nodded. “It's not going away.”

“We have to say it in the first five minutes.” She sighed. The good mood she had awakened with left her. “This could have happened hours ago.”