The Importance of Being Alice (6 page)

In other words, the ideal makings of a spy. Had he been joking earlier when he'd said he would have to kill me if he told me the truth? Was it hyperbole or something more sinister?

Little goose bumps of sheer, unadulterated pleasure rippled up and down my arms when I hurried back to our cabin. There was nothing I loved more than a puzzle, and I anticipated a wonderful two weeks unraveling the mystery that surrounded Elliott.

The man himself looked up with a frown when I entered the cabin with a cheery wave. “You can stop glaring, because I'm just here for a second. We're all going to see the windmills. Historic ones, ones that are bound to be fascinating, but I won't press you to see them with us, since you said you had other things to do.”

He grunted something incoherent. I stepped into the bathroom to make fast use of the toilet before sightseeing (who knew if windmills had facilities?), and when I came out again, he was writing, ignoring me when I gathered up my things. I had the worst urge to tell him to stop writing and come sightsee with the rest of us, but reminded myself that his welfare or happiness wasn't my business, and if he wanted solitude, then he could just have it.

I was halfway through the door when I looked back.

He looked so lonesome sitting all by himself, hunched over the small table, frowning slightly at the screen as he tapped on the keys.

He wants to be left alone,
my inner sage advised.
Leave him be.

He looks so sad, though. And lonely, and he's clearly one of those hidebound Englishmen who would sooner fall over dead than ask for any help. Or companionship,
I told my sage.
Besides, I have to live with him for two weeks, so it won't hurt to extend the hand of friendship.

You just like his plummy voice,
the sage countered in a smug voice.
And you want to pry into his life to see if he is a spy or not.

There is nothing wrong with ogling a man's voice from a distance or being interested in his life,
I told her, and proceeded to drown out her reminder that I was still
wholly and completely devastated by Patrick's betrayal by saying, “Hey, how about dinner?”

He looked up, his fingers momentarily stilled. “Pardon?”

“Dinner. Why don't we have dinner together? According to the cruise info, we're responsible for our own dinner today, so why don't we have it together?”

“I have to write,” he said, casting covert glances at the laptop.

“You just got done telling me how you have to eat in order to keep your brain running, so you'll definitely need dinner by this evening.”

“Work is more important than eating.”

“Spoken like a true workaholic.”

“I am nothing of the kind! I simply have a deadline I must meet.”

“Uh-huh. And you'll work better with food, right? I mean, you feel better now after having breakfast, right? So why not prove me wrong and unwind tonight with a dinner out. It's the perfect opportunity to nail both birds with one stone.” He started to object, but I added, “Come on, I won't even make you translate. Wait, do you speak Dutch?”

“I understand it tolerably well, yes.”

“Well, don't worry, I won't let your brain so much as translate one little item. I got some restaurant recommendations off of Ricardo the pool guy at Patrick's condo, so we can go to one of them, have a bite, then go back to the ship and you can work your fingers to the bone if you like. OK?”

“Oooh, sounds intriguing.”

I turned around, swearing silently to myself when Deidre oiled past me down the hall, a small day pack
swinging from her perfectly manicured fingertips. “You won't mind if we join you for dinner, will you?”

I thought quickly. I very much did not want her to push her way into a dinner where I hoped to covertly pump Elliott for information about his possibly spy-laden past, but polite manners kept a refusal off my lips. “Not at all, although I have no idea when that will be, since Elliott is trying to get some work done. But if you're around when we decide to head out, you're welcome to come with us.”

“I haven't actually said that I—”

“Oh, shoot, forgot something,” I told Deidre, and, spinning around, reentered the room and closed the door behind me.

Elliott's eyebrows rose. “What did you forget?”

“Er . . . nothing. I just wanted a little privacy to plead with you. I really don't want to have dinner with Deidre, or even Laura for that matter, and I like
her
. I just thought it would be fun for us roomies to have dinner together.”

“Why are you so obsessed with feeding me?” His eyes glittered in the morning sunlight, and I had a premonition that he was going to refuse the invitation. Since I'd had it up to my eyebrows with rejection from handsome, silver-tongued men, I went into full survival mode. I wanted to run away. I wanted to burst into tears. I wanted to hit Elliott over the head with something heavy.

I did none of those things, of course. I simply shrugged and turned to the door. “You know what? I don't care if you eat dinner or not. Do whatever you like. Life is too short to work yourself into a swivet over a stupid meal.”

“I agree. And since you are so kind as to offer, I would be delighted to join you for dinner.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “You really are a horrible liar, aren't you? Oh, boy, that came out wrong. Lower your hackles, I simply meant that you don't tell polite lies well.”

“I do not lie,” he said in a low voice that was more a growl than anything else.

“Hey, I put the ‘polite' qualifier in there; that makes it a compliment, not an insult. And I did mean it nicely, you know. My point is that you look like I just asked you to work with me at a smudged-sage stall during an Enya concert, and not out for a pleasant dining experience.”

“If that is so, then I apologize,” he said, evidently mollified. “You made a good point about breakfast, and as we have decided to share the cabin space, it makes sense that we do so as amicably as possible. Dinner together will allow us to learn each other's likes and dislikes more easily.”

“Do you talk like that all the time?” I asked, a little in awe of the way words seemed to march off his lips in such a dignified, orderly manner. They always seemed to tumble out of my mouth and flop into an ungainly heap.

“In what manner?” he asked, his eyebrows rising in question.

“The kind that says you don't go out to dinner to have fun. That's it, isn't it?” I narrowed my gaze on him. He made a face that confirmed my suspicion. “What do you do to have fun? Wait, don't answer that!” I looked at my phone. The ten minutes were almost up.

“I have no intention of doing so.”

“You can tell me later, over dinner. Shall we say seven? I'll meet you on the dock. Later, alligator!” I tucked my tour book into the small cross-body bag that
held my various necessities, and dashed out of the cabin. The hall was blissfully empty of Deidres.

My spirits felt as ebullient as a cloud. For the first time in two weeks, I felt happy. Perhaps time spent with my new roommate wasn't going to be a chore after
all.

Expense Account

Item one:
fifteen euros

Remarks:
Hookah. I have no memory of this purchase.

“T
his day,” Elliott said to a gull that sat on the railing of the cabin's minuscule deck and pecked in a desultory manner at a bit of bread it had scavenged up somewhere, “is one of the longest I've ever known. It should most definitely be seven o'clock by now, shouldn't it?”

The words spoken aloud shocked him into adding, “Not that I am looking forward to dinner with Alice, mind you. It's just that I've been in the cabin all day, and I've written the amount I set myself to write, and then some, and now I am hungry and thirsty and could do with a break. That's all very reasonable, isn't it, gull? It's not as if I've been wishing I could have gone with the others to see the windmills. I've seen windmills. Once
you've seen four or five, you're really at the limit of windmill appreciation, and nothing further can be served by seeing more.”

Except the fact that a little fresh air and exercise is good for the creative processes. And he might have been able to explain to Alice any signs that were in Dutch.

Guilt twinged at him when he thought of her. “I don't fancy her,” he said, sitting down in a wobbly plastic chair and putting his feet up on the rusted railing. The gull, not in the least bit frightened of him, hopped along the railing to peck hopefully at his shoes. “Oh, she's nice enough to look at. More than nice enough, quite pleasant, as a matter of fact. No, it's not that I couldn't fancy her given half the chance, but she's so . . .” He waved a hand in the air. The gull cocked his head and watched him, clearly expecting treats. “. . . so spontaneous. You didn't see, but she just asked me out to dinner as if I'd been hoping for it. Which I haven't. Hell, she was Patrick's girl! I'd never poach on a friend's girl. Although Patrick made it quite clear that he's done with her, so if I wanted to, it would be within my rights to do so.”

He fell silent, absently watching the gull nibble on one shoelace. Why was he there, at that moment? Why hadn't he gone back home once he found the cabin was occupied? Why had he accepted Alice's dinner invitation when he had every intention of keeping her at arm's length?

Dammit, he didn't need a woman complicating his life, and he certainly didn't need a spontaneous, erratic woman who evidently acted on every whim, and who took so much joy in simple things.

“She's never been abroad,” he informed the gull, who attempted to consume his shoelace despite the fact that it was attached to his shoe. “Look how excited she got
about seeing a bunch of windmills—poor woman is desperate to soak up all the local color, and she's stuck with this motley group. I could have gone with them, could have shown her around, let her see the interesting side of Holland rather than a dry, uninteresting visit to a collection of moldy windmills. I could have gone with her today, and written during the night, while she was sleeping.”

The memory of her snoring gently into her pillow the night before made him smile. She certainly had been exhausted, and although he had expected to find her presence in the cabin an irritation, it had been just the opposite—he had written late into the night, strangely comforted by the sounds of her sleeping just a few feet away.

“Right,” he said, shaking his head and getting to his feet. The gull squawked its protest, and flapped its wings. “Those are borderline stalker thoughts. I refuse to be interested in her. She's on the rebound, and vulnerable, and it would be ungentlemanly to express any sort of carnal thoughts about her. I will simply accompany her to dinner, and then let her go her own way without my attentions.”

He held on to such noble thoughts until the last few hours dragged past, most of which he spent writing. When he finally did escape his laptop that evening, he found himself on the dock watching as Alice hurried toward him. Her walnut-colored hair trailed after her like a banner, the gauzy material of her dress molding to her body with the gentle caresses of the wind. He suddenly wished he was that wind, then reminded himself of the fact that he wasn't interested in her, at least not in a physical way.

“Your Majesty!” she bellowed, waving her arm in the air in a manner guaranteed to attract attention. He
sighed as several tourists, on the way to and from their own ships, paused to look curiously at him.

“She's deranged,” he told the nearest group. They nodded and moved on.

“Are you hungry? I'm starved,” Alice said, shoving a carrier bag at him, and pushing him forward. “Here, hold my souvenirs while I find the name of the place that Ricardo recommended. Hurry, or the others will see us and want to join in. I had a horrible time getting away from the group to get back here early. I thought Deidre was going to handcuff herself to me at one point, but I managed to get away. They were about to leave, though, so they'll be here any second. Boy, you missed a great trip. The windmills were awesome, and then Anthony and Dahl and I went into this itty-bitty little town where they wanted to check out a distillery that made some sort of special gin.”

He looked closely at her. “And did you sample the special gin?”

“Nope. I don't like alcohol, as a rule. It doesn't work with my body chemistry, or something. It all tastes like rubbing alcohol to me.” She gave him a blinding smile, then consulted a pocket notebook, riffling through the pages while she muttered to herself. “I know it's in here—I've written all the cool places I wanted to see in here for the last year, ever since I started planning the trip. Oh, here it is. Hang on—let me pull up a map. . . .” She tapped the screen of her mobile phone, turned around to stare at the town, then finally nodded and pointed. “This way! I hope you like exotic food. Ricardo says that this place—it's called Ladybug—has great Ethiopian food. I do love me some wat.”

“What?”

“Wat. It's a stew, kind of spicy, but really yummy. The
Ethiopian place in my town serves it with this great flat bread called injera. You use the bread to scoop up bits of the wat, and eat it. Oh, but only use your right hand.” Alice consulted her phone again, then led them down one of the streets that branched off from the dock. “I made the mistake of using my left hand once, and I thought the restaurant owner was going to have a conniption fit. Patrick got all bent out of shape when the guy told us to use only our right hands, but you know how he is—he doesn't like it when anyone tells him what to do.”

She stopped so suddenly that Elliott, who was glancing around them with a bit of concern, bumped into her back.

“Sorry,” she said at the same time he murmured an apology. She turned to face him, her lips held in a tight line. “Patrick is an ass, isn't he?”

Elliott frowned. What was this?

She put her hand on his arm, and it was then that he noticed the lines of strain around her eyes. Worse, it looked as if she was about to cry. “I mean, he just dumped me, totally out of the blue. Everything was fine, and then one day, he just said he'd had enough, and that I needed to move out. Only an ass would do that, right?”

“That's a very apt description of a man who would treat a woman in such a manner,” he agreed, wondering a bit wildly what he could do to keep her from crying. He had a weakness against tears, especially women's tears, a weakness that horrified and repulsed him. As a result, he went to extraordinary lengths to avoid situations such as the one that was facing him now.

“You'd never treat someone that way, would you?” Alice asked with an audible sniff. Her eyes were definitely tearing up. Any moment now, one of the tears
would break free, and then he'd be a goner. He had to distract her, and fast.

“A gull tried to eat my shoe earlier today. It was most amusing.”

“I just know you wouldn't. You're too nice. Maybe it's because you're a lord, but I just know you wouldn't kick out a girlfriend without due cause.”

A big fat tear trembled on her eyelashes. He had to reroute her train of thought immediately. What she needed was a shock to her system. He thought for an instant, then asked, “So, seal clubbing. As bad as whaling, or worse? What are your thoughts on the subject?”

“Especially when you were planning on marrying that girlfriend in Budapest.”

Dammit, all his tactics were failing him! He had to act fast, or all would be lost. Desperately, he thought of subjects of conversation that might defuse the situation (satanic sacrifices? Global warming? An inquiry into her political beliefs?), but in the end, the pathetic little hiccup she gave that warned of imminent weeping drove him into doing the last thing he expected—he kissed her. He simply grasped her arms, pulled her up against him, and planted his mouth on hers.

Even while he was doing it, he was telling himself to keep it clinical, to stay at an emotional distance, and not to put any effort into the kiss. It was a distracting tactic, and nothing more.

Until she melted against him. Then the heady scent of sun-warmed woman teased him, sinking into his blood and triggering an instant reaction in the groin region. Worse, she put her arms around him and kissed him back, her mouth opening under his and allowing him to taste the warmth within. Sometime recently, she'd been eating
cinnamon, leaving her mouth as spicy and sweet as a Christmas candy. He had to stop. He was going to stop. Stopping was the right thing to do.

She moaned into his mouth, and he pulled her even closer, sliding his hands down her arms to hold her waist. He wanted to grab her delectable ass, but he was a gentleman through and through, and he'd be damned if he was the sort of man who ass-grabbed after only a day's acquaintance.

When they finally stopped, she pulled away from him and they both took a steadying breath. After a minute, she said, “Thank you,” quietly leaving him feeling bereft and frustrated and with a raging erection that was going to make walking extremely uncomfortable.

He looked down at her face, slightly sunburned from her time at the windmills, the scattering of freckles across her nose and chin making a warm glow deep in his belly. “For what?”

“The pity kiss. Normally, I'm against them, because nothing is worse than knowing someone is driven by pity into kissing you. I mean, how embarrassing is it to admit that people kiss you not because they want to, but because they feel like that's probably the only kiss you're going to get? But that was a nice pity kiss. It was a pity kiss that says that you aren't the type of person who would have kicked me out of our condo and found a new woman without at least suffering a bit. It was a pity kiss that says I'm in the right, and Patrick is an ass, and while you empathize with my sad situation, you don't feel sorry for me. It was a pity kiss that said you want me to feel better about myself, and to not let Patrick's idiocy ruin a really good trip. Right?”

He wanted quite badly to tell her that he kissed her
because he wanted to, and not out of respect for her feelings, but long association with his mother and sisters kept his tongue behind his teeth. He nodded.

She gave him a dewy smile, sniffed twice, and thankfully blinked back the last of the tears. “You're really a nice guy, your royal lordship. Tell you what, I'll take you to dinner tonight, OK? So long as you don't order any wine. It's really expensive here, and my daily spending budget isn't huge. Deal?”

“If I desire wine, I will be happy to pay for it,” he told her gravely, and allowed her to tug him along toward their destination.

“I hope you're hungry,” she said again as they wound their way through the sometimes confusing maze of streets, guided by a map she had on her mobile phone. “Did you get your book written today?”

“I reached my goal for the day, yes, but the book is far from being done.”

“Ah. How long does it take you to write a whole book?”

“It depends on the book in question. Where exactly is this restaurant?”

“Just around the corner ahead. Do you not like talking about writing?”

The neighborhood they had entered had a decided seedy tinge to it, one that raised a few mental warning flags. He wasn't opposed to people indulging in minor recreational drugs, so long as they didn't harm others, but he didn't care to participate, himself. The question was, how did Alice feel about coffeehouses and the drug patronage they offered?

Different strokes, he reminded himself, and decided that he would not attempt to kiss her again. Not until he knew whether she was likely to be getting stoned at
every opportunity while they were in Holland. Emotional distance—that was what he needed, at least until he knew her a little better. Not only did he not need a romantic complication in his life, he certainly did not need one that used drugs.

“Elliott?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, not in particular. What's the name of the place we're having dinner?”

“The Ladybug. I hope that isn't too cute for you, but Ricardo said it was the best place to go in all of Holland, and that I shouldn't miss the experience of visiting it.”

The warning flags fluttered a bit more in his head. “This wouldn't happen to be a coffeehouse, would it? One that happens to also serve Ethiopian food?”

“Like a Starbucks, you mean? No, they have meals. I'm so looking forward to a big bowl of wat.”

He slid a glance at her. Did she think that he was not aware of the fact that coffeehouses in Holland were infamous for the consumption of cannabis, or was she simply naive? He sincerely hoped it was the latter. They turned the corner and ahead indeed was a sign that hung directly over a purple door.

“There it is. What a cute ladybug sign. You ready for an exciting Ethiopian experience?” She fairly skipped to the door she was so excited, and Elliott couldn't tell whether it was because she was anticipating a drug-filled evening or a spicy stew.