Her Man Friday(40)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"I’ll be happy to help," he told her, adjusting his glasses. "What’s the problem?"

"I need you in the… in the kitchen pantry," she said.

Something inside Leo went zing. Truly. Zing. How very odd.

"The, uh… the kitchen pantry?" he echoed, just to be sure.

"Yes," she said, still clearly anxious about something. "The pantry."

Trying not to rush too much, Leo circled to the front of the desk and approached her. "May I ask, exactly, why you… need me… in the pantry?"

She nodded once quickly, then glanced down at the backs of her fingernails in that way she had of doing to hide her nervousness. Oh, boy. This was going to be great.

"There’s um, there’s something in the pantry I need your help with," she said. "It’s… well, it’s rather personal."

The zinging inside Leo accelerated into a loud vroooom. "Oh?" he asked, pretending he had no idea what she was talking about as he pondered exactly which garment to start with. The zipper on her skirt seemed the most likely place to begin, but there was a lot to be said for that tauntingly short sweater, and—

"In fact, it’s almost embarrassing to have to discuss it with you this way," Miss Rigby continued, oblivious to his intentions. "But I… I…"

"You… you… ?" he prodded.

She finally looked at his face again and inhaled a deep, wistful sigh. Wistful was good, he thought. He could do a lot with wistful. "Well, there’s something in the pantry I need you to get for me," she finally confessed.

The vrooming inside Leo screeched to a halt as he realized he had been a bit premature in his plans for her clothing. "Tea?" he asked halfheartedly.

"Um, no," she said. "Not tea."

The zinging geared up again.

"Actually," she told him, "it’s… it’s a bug."

Pfft. So much for the zinging. So much for the vrooming. So much for the zipper on her skirt. There was nothing like the introduction of entomology into a seduction attempt to pretty much send it over a cliff. "A bug?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, rather a large one." She lifted her hands to hold them about an inch or so apart, then, when she looked up and noted his disinterest, moved them until they were about five inches apart. "It’s about this big," she said. "With long antennae that are quite… unpleasant." She shivered for effect. "It’s very… quite… um… really icky."

"A bug," he said again.

"A big, icky bug," she clarified adamantly. "I tried to find Mr. Tooley, to see if he might take care of it, but he seems to have left the grounds."

"All right," he said, resolved to his new role in life as exterminator. "Show me where it is."

He kept an eye on Miss Rigby as he followed her to the kitchen, enjoying without a trace of guilt the dance of her h*ps as she walked—well, hell, he ought to get some kind of reward for what he was about to do. Then, when they arrived at their destination, he crossed to enter the pantry alone, while she remained steadfastly on the other side of the room. He noted the offending creature immediately. It was hard to miss, seeing as how it sat brashly on the wall beside a box of Cocoa Puffs, taunting any and all comers. Plus, he had to admit, it was pretty big. And more than a little… icky. Involuntarily, Leo fought off a major wiggins.

"You got a baseball bat?" he called out over his shoulder.

"No, I’m afraid not," she replied, her tone of voice indicating that she hadn’t realized he was joking.

Then again, he thought, eyeing the bug once more, maybe he wasn’t exactly joking. He thought about asking for a Colt .45, but what came out was, "How about a fly swatter?"

"On the door behind you," she told him.

He claimed the weapon and disposed of the insect as quickly and neatly as possible—which, in the long run, turned out to be neither quick nor neat. Then he exited the pantry, still armed with the fly swatter, his dead quarry sheathed in a shroud provided by Brawny paper towels. Somehow, the brand name made him feel that much more heroic, and he straightened to his full, bug-slaying height as he approached Miss Rigby.

She shuddered again as he passed by her and made his way to the trash can, but before he could dispose of the corpse, she reached out a hand to circle her fingers shyly around his wrist. His pulse leapt at the contact, and when his gaze met hers again, he saw that her eyes shone with gratitude and something else he probably shouldn’t ponder. And damned if that zinging didn’t kick right in again.

"Mr. Freiberger?" she asked, her voice a soft caress.

"Yes, Miss Rigby?"

"Could you…" She batted her eyelashes at him quite prettily. "Could you… would you… take it out to the big can outside?"

"Of course," he said chivalrously. "I’d be delighted."

When he returned from completing his task, the kitchen was empty. The pantry, however, was not. The door stood open, and Miss Rigby was inside, straining to reach something from a shelf that was laughably beyond her reach. She had one leg extended elegantly behind her, and as she pushed herself higher on tiptoe and thrust her arm upward, her sweater crept above the waistband of her skirt to reveal once again that soft, brief span of tender flesh beneath.

For a long moment, Leo only stood there enjoying the view and the way his blood crashed through his body, dizzying him, heating up parts of him that really hadn’t required heating for some time now—ever since Miss Rigby had asked him to join her in the pantry, in fact. As if she sensed the inappropriateness of his thoughts—inappropriate for anyone who wasn’t currently pondering the taste of a woman’s torso, at any rate—she turned to find him—oh, he might as well just admit it—ogling her.

"Need some help?" he asked.

Still reaching upward, she opened her mouth to respond, and somehow, he knew that she was going to insist that no, as a matter of fact, she didn’t need any help, that she was this close to reaching all by herself the box that was still a good three inches shy of her grasp. So before she had the chance to say anything—he didn’t want to be responsible for her telling a lie, after all—Leo strode forward into the pantry to offer his aid—or something—anyway.

The moment he stepped inside the pantry, the already confined space shrank to virtually the size of an electron. In hindsight, he supposed that for maximum efficiency, he should have asked Miss Rigby to come out before he went in. But then where would have been the fun in that?