Cast a Pale Shadow(27)

"She brought us breakfast, Nicholas."

"I see. That's great. I'll be out in just a minute."

"I'll leave you two alone. Who wants a meddlesome old widow around at their honeymoon breakfast?"

"Don't go, Augusta, I need to talk to you. Get her some coffee, please, Trissa." He winked at his make-believe wife before he shut the door to finish shaving.

Trissa mirrored his whimsical show of affection with a wink of her own then touched the backs of her fingers to her cheek, surprised to feel the heat there. With smile on her lips, she finally turned her attention to her guest. "Do you take it black, Augusta?"

"None for me, honey. I have a cup cooling downstairs. I really do feel silly barging in like this. You tell Nicholas to come find me when he needs me." She bustled toward the door. "I'll be around." With that she was gone and Trissa heard her slippers flip-flopping briskly down the hall.

Trissa shrugged and adjusted her pajama top and cuff. On an oak dry sink by the closet, the coffee pot blinked its red light as it finished its percolating. Trissa found cups in the cabinet below it and poured the coffee into them, a cup for Nicholas and a half-cup for her. Gliding slowly so as not to spill, she brought them back to Augusta's tray. As she filled her cup to the brim with milk and stirred, she sang under her breath, something old from Johnny Mathis. She didn't know all the words and hummed in the blanks "And I say to myself, it's wonderful, wonderful. Oh, how wonderful..." The chorus rose to a sweetly sung whisper before she hushed self-consciously. She almost never sang. She didn't know what had got into her.

She settled back into the sofa, her legs tucked underneath her, and sipped her coffee waiting for Nicholas to reappear. When he did, haloed in yellow light from the bathroom, she couldn't believe her eyes. Her stomach did a little flip-flop. The backlight shadowed his scuffed and bruised face and touched off the sunlight in his hair. He was dressed in perfectly pressed gray flannel slacks and a navy blue blazer with a gleaming, white shirt and a paisley tie in shades of maroon. There was a twinkle of gold at his tie clip and cuffs and his shoes glinted with high polish.

"Presentable?" he asked, turning to give her a view of side and back.

She teased him with a long, low wolf whistle. "Gorgeous."

"Didn't think I had it in me, did you?" he smiled, and disarmed her with that wink again. The mischief of it and the warm brown struck with gold of his eyes made her giddy inside. "Where's Augusta?"

"She... umm, didn't want to disrupt the honeymoon. She said you could talk to her later."

Nicholas moved the table closer to the sofa and sat down beside her. "Unfortunately, I have to go to work and the honeymoon has to end before it ever gets started." He tipped his juice glass to his lips and peeked at her out of the corner of his eye. "But I did enjoy sleeping with you last night, Teresa Marie."

When she noticed her coffee jiggling in her cup, she set it down hurriedly and grabbed a cinnamon roll. It was warm and sticky and heady with spice. She had to lick the glaze from the tips of her fingers before she felt composed enough to speak. "I won't put you out of your bed, Nicholas."

He looked puzzled by her answer and, indeed, she did not know what meaning she meant to convey by it. There were certainly several interpretations, all of which flashed through her mind along with the abashing certainty that similar thoughts were occurring to him. She munched silently on her roll while he sliced some banana on his cereal and splashed on some milk.

His voice was crisp and businesslike when he spoke again. "We will have to discuss sleeping arrangements at some other time. This morning, there are other details that have to be worked out."

"You have to go to work," she sighed, resigning herself to being without him for a while.

"Do you have someone you can call about your classes? You don't want to fall behind if you can help it. I can stop by and pick up assignments or whatever. You can tell them I'm your -- I don't know -- uncle maybe? Don't look at me like that. You may think it sounds fishy, but what else could I be?"

"My concierge?" she suggested brightly.

He cast her a quelling look and continued. "Ask for enough for a week. By then you should look and feel well enough to--"

"Wait, wait, wait." He was going too fast. And this wasn't just playful teasing. He was seriously suggesting she go back to school. "What are you talking about? I can't go back. I have to get a job to help pay--"

"No. A job now is out of the question. I'm not rich, Trissa, but I'm not destitute. School first. That's the most important thing. When's the semester over?"

"It's supposed to be May twenty-second, but I'm missing exams. I don't know if they'll let me--"

"Nonsense. Accidents happen. They have to realize that. Maybe I should talk to them. You call and say I'm coming and I'll explain when I get there.

"But my books are at--"

"Your books are right over there on the desk. Your mother gave them to me. If she forgot some, let me know and I'll fetch them." Nicholas finished his cereal and his coffee. He left the second cinnamon roll on the plate and pushed it toward Trissa.

Her lips still frosted sweetly with the first, she reached out eagerly for it. She needed the sugar to steady her flittering nerves. "It's on Lindell," she said.

"What?"

"The Academic Services Center. You can park in the lot behind. I could call Miss Royal, my advisor. She would probably help me out. Her office is in that building."

"Perfect. I'll ask for Miss Royal then." Nicholas went to rinse his cup in the bathroom sink then returned it to the cabinet where Trissa had found it. "I want you to get some rest today, Trissa. I'll have Augusta check in on you once in a while. She knows where to reach me if something comes up.

"And make yourself at home. I put your stuff away in the top drawer of the chest and the left side of the closet. There's a television downstairs in the back parlor. I'm sure Beverly will welcome your company. I believe she's off today and I think she gets lonely when she's on the night shift at the funeral parlor. The telephone is in the hall to your right by the stairs. I've put some change in the dish by the coffee pot. Oh, and I'll talk to Augusta about lunch. I'd like to have dinner alone with you though. We'll go out if you feel up to it."

His brisk efficiency baffled her. It was as if her life had become part of an internal checklist of his. She had not had the time or the energy to think about anything but the minute that followed the present one, while he seemed to have the schedule plotted until June. He took over, and, for now, she was very content to let him.

Nicholas rose and went to the closet for his coat and she pattered after him like some bewildered, stray puppy dog. She knew there were a dozen questions she should be asking him, but only one came to her. "Nicholas, how did you happen to me?"

"It's very simple," he said, as he tilted her chin up to him on the crook of his finger. "You were my mission." He brushed her lips with a whisper of a kiss that tasted of cinnamon and bananas. "I'll be home about five, wife."

As he closed the door, she found herself still on tiptoes as she had been when she reached for more of the kiss. Smiling, she lowered her heels and wondered how the prim and spinsterish Miss Royal would respond to the definite charms of Nicholas Brewer.

Olympia Royal was a shrewd and sharp-tongued woman whose suspicious nature was honed by twenty years as a physical education teacher, twenty years of counting laps for students prone to overstating their own tallies, twenty years of hearing and dismissing tales of cramps and monthly miseries that would make a gynecologist cringe, topped by five years of advising hundreds of students out of their dreams and into something to fall back on like nursing or pharmacy or optometry. Somehow, Trissa doubted even Nicholas could melt her stony heart.

"Oh, no," she thought suddenly and yanked open the door. "Nicholas! Nicholas, wait." She dashed down the hall toward the stairs and found him already turned at the landing and headed back to her.

"What's the matter?"

She waited until he was close enough to hear her urgent whisper. "You need a name."

"What?"

"If you're going to be my uncle, we need to agree on a name."

"Right. I didn't think of that."

"My mother's maiden name is Mickle. Like pickle with an M."

"Mickle. Got it." He turned to leave.

"No. Wait. Nicholas Mickle, that sounds awful." She screwed up her face as if she had just tasted a very sour pickle with an M. "We'll have to think of a different first name, too."

He folded his arms and chuckled at her. "What do you suggest?"

"Oh, I don't know. Pete? Yeah, Pete Mickle is ok."

"Great."