Everything in Between (7 page)

“Thank you, soldier.” Zae smiled.

“My pleasure, professor.”

“Good evening, Captain Kish,” the blonde at the front desk said as Chip escorted Zae to the Chouteau Mansion’s ornate stairwell. “I trust the wedding was enjoyable?”

“It was real nice, thank you,” Chip replied with a nod, removing his cap and tucking it under his free arm. He continued to the stairs with Zae, who pursed her lips into a tiny line Chip recognized as annoyance.

“Captain Kish,” the blonde started, rounding the check-in desk, “I had a late-night snack delivered to your room, compliments of the Chouteau. Please be sure to read the card.” She moistened her lower lip with her tongue, her blue eyes moving up and down Chip.

“Excuse me, Captain Kish.” Zae stepped more prominently into sight. “My feet hurt, so I’m going to my room for a nice long bath. Goodnight.”

The finality of her last word made it clear that she was ending their night there in the lobby. Slightly dismayed, Chip took her elbow and drew her in. “Goodnight, professor,” he said softly. He kissed her cheek, lingering to whisper in her ear. “Let me know if you figure out the author of that quote.”

“Yes, goodnight, Mrs. Robertson,” the blonde hastily added. “Er, Richardson,” she corrected, her gaze never leaving Chip. “I hope you rest well. Evening weddings can be exhausting once you reach a certain age.”

Zae scowled, a look Chip knew all too well. It was the look that usually prefaced one of Zae’s forceful kill shots to an opponent’s head. Chip prepared to step between Zae and the blonde, but Zae grabbed him and yanked him to her. One arm around his neck and the other around his middle, she kissed him long and hard.

She pulled away, her teeth lightly clamped on the plump of his lower lip. Without another word, she gathered her skirt in her hands and started upstairs.

Once Zae turned out of sight at the landing, the blonde stepped closer to Chip, who continued to stare at the spot Zae had previously occupied. “I’m off in about a half hour,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to have a glass of wine with me, or—”

“Thank you kindly.” Chip headed for the stairs without looking at her. “But I’ll have to pass. It’s been a long and curious night for ol’ Captain Kish.”

He launched himself up the stairs two at a time, leaving the blonde with her mouth hanging open.

Zae was nowhere in sight, although Chip knew her room was on the same floor as his. He went into his own room and undressed on his way to the bathroom. After a quick shower, he hopped into bed. Lying naked under the lightweight comforter, he stared at the ceiling, seeing not the triple-tiered chandelier catching the moonlight, but envisioning the rose garden and Zae. She was always well put together, but in her formal gown, she had been at turns spiteful sorceress, fairy queen and earthbound goddess, each incarnation painfully beautiful.

He had massaged her feet because they seemed the one part of her he could touch without permission or fear of retribution. Chip had never been particularly turned on by feet before, but Zae’s were so soft and well-shaped, he’d wanted to pop one of her pearl-pink painted toes into his mouth and suck it like hard candy.

He groaned.

Something had changed in the course of the evening. Cinder and Gian became husband and wife while he and Zae had become…what? Certainly more than mere friends. Could a few dances have made such a difference, or had they simply fallen victim to the overlap of the love spell between Cinder and Gian?

He’d liked Zae from the first time he’d met her in class—she’d responded to his demand for fifty pushups with a spirited “Go to hell.” He respected her as a professor and admired her as a single parent. But he’d never thought of her as a love interest.

He’d thought about having sex with her; he thought that about every smokin’ hot woman he saw. But love—that variable that hadn’t entered the equation until tonight, when he’d listened to words of promise and commitment meant for his best friends and he’d had eyes only for Zae. When he’d danced close to her, his lips seeking the warmth of her neck. When she’d kissed him, surely to put the front desk girl in her place, managing only to seal his attraction to her once and for all.

Hers was the first kiss that had felt like…a kiss. Her lips touched his and triggered an all-out assault on his body. He’d felt it in his fingers and toes, but the most responsive part of his body had sprung to life, almost painfully. His right hand gripped the heaviness resting on his abdomen. Like an eavesdropper, it had awakened and was on full alert, inspired by only the memory of Zae’s kiss.

Chip stroked himself, imagining Zae’s full, lovely lips tugging his own, nibbling at his earlobe, sliding along the stiffening flesh in his right hand. Groaning low in his throat, his shoulders pressed into his pillows, his hand moved faster.

“Zae,” he moaned.

His memory of her scent and the taste of her kiss combined to send him shooting, literally, over the top. He lay in bed, momentarily spent, the fingers of his left hand pressed to his lips. He understood now, fully and painfully, what it meant to be truly kissed. Zae’s kiss hadn’t simply touched his heart. It might have stolen it….

* * *

Zae couldn’t stop laughing.

Every time she thought about the perky blonde’s shocked expression, she was gripped by full belly laughs that left her nearly doubled up in the warm, fragrant water of her bath. Her intent in kissing Chip might have been to throw a shock into the flirty check-in girl, but once her lips met Chip’s, thoughts of the blonde flew right out of her mind.

In the course of the evening, she’d held Chip’s hand, he’d massaged her feet, she’d danced in his embrace…yet none of those innocent contacts had prepared her for his kiss. She hadn’t expected him to return the impetuous kiss that had begun as an “up yours” to the pushy blonde. She had ceased to exist when Chip’s pliant, sensuously full lips had caught her own. And when the warmth of his tongue met hers, the rest of the world had shattered and fallen away, leaving nothing but the give and take of Chip’s mouth on hers, the heat of his body against hers, and the awakening of dormant needs and urges within her.

Zae sank deeper into her bath, submerging herself up to her collarbones. Her knees rose above the surface of the water, and she stroked her wet hands over the twin ramps of her glistening brown thighs. Droplets of water ran down her arms to her elbows, each tickle teasing nerves left oversensitive by Chip’s kiss.

“This is ridiculous,” she proclaimed. “Sitting here daydreaming like a kid.” She sat upright, then hoisted herself out of the water. Dressed in suds from the waist down, she pulled a thick peach towel from the warming bar affixed to the wall nearest the tub. She briskly dried herself with the towel, resisting the urge to wrap herself in its warmth for fear it would lead her imagination toward Chip.

Not that her mind had been able to turn him loose all night.

She caught her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The towel dangling from one hand, she studied her reflection. There had been about ten minutes in the eighth grade when she’d hated her height, but once she’d made the junior varsity basketball team, she’d come to love her long limbs. Faintly, she could make out the scars on her knees and elbows from skateboarding, softball and roller skating mishaps, but the gangliness that had plagued her youth had long been replaced by elegance, strength and flexibility. Years of martial arts training had tightened her core, leaving her torso almost as flat as it had been prior to the births of her children. Her big-breasted mother and grandmother had instilled in her the importance of good support bras. Though Zae had been blessed with an average C-cup, through high school, college and the nursing of three children, she’d worn bras all day every day, even sleeping in them.

She had stopped two years ago, after her first mammogram at forty. There were no serious health risks to wearing a good-fitting bra all the time, but her OB/GYN had suggested she give her circulatory system freedom to work at night. That first braless night, Zae had enjoyed such freedom that she never again slept in a bra. Hands on her hips, she cocked her head to one side to study her breasts. They really were quite nice. She palmed their sides, pleased with their weight and their curvy fullness, which made her waist appear smaller. She wasn’t perfect, not by society’s standard of beauty. Her complexion was too dark, her nose too broad, her lips too full and, twisting a bit to see it, her butt was too round and “bubbly,” as her daughter Dawn called it.

“Screw society,” Zae smiled at her reflection. She loved her body and didn’t care who knew it. She didn’t deprive herself of treats to maintain her health and figure, nor did she go overboard with exercise. Moderation in both had yielded desirable results, and what good sense hadn’t accomplished, good genes had. Zae’s Osage ancestors had provided her height, her naturally hairless limbs and her long, dark hair which tended more toward curly than straight.

“No wonder Major Decker couldn’t keep away from me tonight,” she cackled. “I’d have tried to get a piece of me, too!”

She hung her towel to dry, then went into her bedroom. Sitting on the foot of her bed, she began her evening grooming ritual by massaging a homemade hydrating cream of shea butter and olive oil into her damp skin, giving her knees, elbows and feet special attention. She slipped on a pair of black bikini panties and a dark, floral printed silk shift perfect for the mild evening.

Standing in the mirror over the dresser, she squirted a blob of Carol’s Daughter Hair Milk into her palm and then rubbed it into her hair, starting at her scalp and working it down to her ends, which tended to be too dry for her liking. She brushed her hair, all the while wondering why Chip hadn’t wanted a piece of her.

Always a gentleman, he’d been doubly so through the night. But he’d certainly been more affectionate than usual. Zae entertained the possibility that the romantic atmosphere and open bar had contributed to his interest in her. With Gian and Cinder married, they were both losing their best friends in some regards. Perhaps that’s what had driven the two of them closer.

There was no way Chip had wanted her as Maj. Decker had. Or had he?

Unless she was misreading his kiss, Captain Kish had a true hankering for Professor Azalea Richardson.

She folded down the brocade comforter on her queen-sized bed and slipped under the lighter top sheet. Nestling into her pillows, she thought about how much Chip had impressed her. His toast was brilliant. He had spoken from his heart and touched everyone, Zae perhaps more than anyone else, with his Shakespeare quote.

And he knew Balzac! Smiling, she shook her head in amazement. Her country boy never stopped amazing her.

Especially with the one quote she hadn’t been able to identify in the rose garden. “I teach literature, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “I know that quote. Why can’t I think of the author?”

Because you’re too occupied thinking about winning Chip’s kiss,
supplied an annoying voice in her head.

“Shut up,” Zae snapped. “If you want to be useful, tell me who wrote ‘How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love’s beginning.’ ”

Is the author English or American?
Zae asked herself. Had it come from poetry or prose? Was the author even a he?

The couplet was sweet, the language simple, but—

Zae bolted upright. “I got you now, soldier!” She raised her fists in triumph, a rush of tangible relief relaxing her back and shoulders. She couldn’t wait to tell Chip that she knew the author. “Why wait?” she said, and she threw off the bed sheet and started for her door.

* * *

Chip answered his door to find Zae standing in the corridor. She wore a short gown of some shiny, silky fabric. Its busy floral print took Chip back to the rose garden at the Piper Palm House. One of the skinny straps slipped off her shoulder, and she hiked it back up, inadvertently brushing her long dark tresses, which hung in disarray, as if she’d tousled in bed before appearing at his door.

“Zae, what—”

“Thomas Campbell,” she grinned, breathless from her jaunt down the long corridor. “Scottish poet. That the quote was a couplet should have tipped me off sooner.”

Chip savored the sight of her. He was mystified as to how she could appear nubile and worldly at the same time.

“You woke me up just to tell me that?” he asked with a silent chuckle.

“You weren’t asleep.”

A guilty blush traveled from Chip’s face to his shoulders. “How do you know?”

“You answered your door quickly enough.”

“Well, you’re right. On both counts. Thomas Campbell wrote that couplet I gave you, and I wasn’t asleep.”

The door partially hid Chip, but she caught a glimpse of his briefs, their whiteness startling against the expanse of bare tanned skin he tried to hide from her. Even though he’d answered the door quickly and in his underpants, his mussed curls indicated that he’d been in bed, even if he hadn’t been asleep.

“I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing now,” she said quietly. She crossed her arms over her chest, awkward in the chill emptiness of the corridor. Was he with someone? The blonde receptionist with the beady eyes? “‘Night, Chip.” Taking a half step back, she raised her hand in farewell. The strap of her nightie slipped from her shoulder once more.