Her Man Friday(66)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Which was fine with him, because he would just as soon pretend they didn’t exist, either.

The sofa and chairs were an eclectic mix of style and color, each hosting more pillows, more throws, more… stuff. But thankfully, no more cats. On the walls were framed posters advertising a mix of genres on exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The place was small, but cozy, the kind of apartment that invited Bohemian guests and arty conversation.

His gaze trailed after Caroline, who lifted the roses to her face again as she strode toward what he assumed must be the kitchen, skimming the soft blossoms against her cheek as she went. Schuyler could scarcely reconcile this woman with the one he’d gone to see at the Van Meter Academy the evening before. Certainly their conversation afterward had offered each of them an insight into the other that neither had had before, but this…

When Caroline was safely ensconced on her own turf, in her own domain, in her own home, she was obviously a different woman than the one she unleashed on the world. Because surely it couldn’t have been anything he’d said the night before that made her so accessible now.

Could it?

A resounding clatter of metal striking metal snapped his attention around, and he realized she had disappeared from his view. So, rounding the counter that separated the kitchen area from the living area, he saw her stooped down, struggling to extract something from one of her lower cabinets. She squatted in front of the open door with both of her stocking feet planted firmly on the linoleum, her arms looking as if they were about to be consumed by whatever lived inside the cupboard. She rugged once, twice, three times, then lost her footing and fell onto her fanny. Schuyler smiled at the picture she made, so clearly unbothered at having someone view her in such a position.

She pushed herself back to a squatting position, dusting her hands on the part of her shirt that covered her bottom. "I think I have a big roaster," she said as she completed the action.

Schuyler refrained from commenting on that. Oh, no he didn’t—he couldn’t. "I don’t think it’s inordinately large," he assured her, tilting his head to one side to get a better view of her posterior.

But she seemed not to get the joke. She just nodded and said, "Yes, it is—it’s huge. I think it would be perfect."

"I think it’s already perfect," he told her.

But again, she didn’t notice that they were discussing two entirely different things. Instead, she reached into the cabinet again and jerked hard, yanking a big, metal… thing… out of its jaws. Unfortunately, to win the war of the roaster, she had to concede the battle of the posture, and once again, fell backward onto her… roaster. And as she threw her head back without concern and blew an unruly curl off her forehead, Schuyler couldn’t help but chuckle.

"Here," he said, moving forward, extending his hand. "Let me help you."

Without hesitation, she reached up and tucked her hand into his, letting him pull her up to a standing position. She tried to set the roaster on the counter as she stood, but he had tugged a bit too hard—though he really, honestly, truly hadn’t meant to—and even when Caroline was standing, she just kept moving forward, until she had careened against him, coining to rest with her torso nuzzled against his.

Immediately, the big metal roaster fell to the floor with an almost deafening clatter. But all Schuyler heard was the sound of bells, rattling an alarm at the back of his brain.

As always, he ignored that alarm, and dipped his head to Caroline’s to kiss her.

He had never realized what softness tasted like, what gentleness smelled like, what tenderness sounded like. Not until Caroline Beecham melted into him, curving her palms over his shoulders, curling her arms around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair. When she did, Schuyler intensified the kiss, cupping a hand under her chin and over her jaw, to tilt her head to the side and hold it in place while he plundered her mouth at will.

She sighed, a soft murmur of surrender, and he nearly lost himself completely to the sound. Without warning, he was overcome by a need to completely possess her, as if in doing so, he might transfer some of her warmth, her happiness, her ability to care, into himself. So what else could he do but end the kiss as quickly as he had started it, and take a step away?

"Well, that was certainly…" He took a deep breath and released it slowly. "Life altering."

Caroline blinked her eyes quickly, as if she were a mechanical doll, and wondered what on earth had happened to make the Earth tilt on its axis the way it clearly had. Then her gaze focused again, taking in the sight of Schuyler Kimball in a tuxedo, and she was surprised the Earth hadn’t gone spinning completely out of its orbit and crashing into the sun. Because what else could explain the explosion of heat that rocked her as a result of one kiss?

She swallowed hard and had no idea what to say. "Ah… you like tomato soup?" she asked, uttering the first thought to brave entry into her brain.

"Tomato soup?" he asked. But he seemed to be not at all affected by what had just transpired between the two of them. "Well, I like the kind they serve at The Chart House. It’s got leeks in it, and this funny little green herb that looks like fur. Do you make yours that way?"

She shook her head. "No, I open a can. I was about to have that and a grilled cheese sandwich for supper. How will that be?"

He kissed his fingertips before spreading them wide. "Vive les tomates et la frontage."

She smiled. "Nothin’ like home cookin’."

"Yes, that’s what I meant," he said.

She still couldn’t believe he was standing here in her apartment looking so… so… Wow. By the time their evening had concluded last night, she’d changed her mind significantly about Schuyler Kimball. But that didn’t mean she felt as if she were up to the task of taking him on. Not even on her own turf this way. Nevertheless, he was here now, and she told herself she might as well make the best of it. Of him. Of herself.

Last night, she had realized that the man he presented to the rest of the world, the one he had been on the other occasions when she’d met him, wasn’t the real Schuyler Kimball at all. On the outside, he was a wealthy, sophisticated, vaguely eccentric billionaire who cared about little other than his own satisfaction. Outwardly, he didn’t seem as if he had a care, a heart, a soul.

But deep, deep inside, he did indeed have a heart. And a soul. And a care. He was simply too frightened to acknowledge any of them.

In many ways, he was like Chloe. In fact, he was like a lot of the children who came to Van Meter. None of them understood the source or comprehended the nature of the gift they’d been given. None of them could figure out the whys or whats or wheres or hows of it. And few of them knew quite what to do with the gift they had so arbitrarily received. That was part of the program at Van Meter, to teach the children how to handle and nurture and grow their gifts. And how to stay human in a world that tried to exploit them, a world that was becoming less human with every passing year.