Smoke in Mirrors(43)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Correction. They hadn’t made love on the floor. They’d had sex on the floor. Proper terminology was important, she reminded herself. But she refused to dwell on semantics tonight. She felt good. Relaxed. Satisfied beyond her wildest dreams.

She realized that Thomas was watching her with unconcealed amusement from the other side of the counter. He had put on his trousers and shirt, but he hadn’t bothered to button the latter.

“Want some help?” he asked.

“I do believe I can get up all by myself.” She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and managed to stand. She gave him a triumphant smile. “See?”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Which way is the bathroom?”

He folded his arms on the counter and angled his chin toward the hall behind her. “Thataway.”

“Mind if I take a shower?”

“Help yourself.”

She shuffled down the short hall, opened the first door she found, groped for a switch and flipped it on. The lights came on, revealing floor-to-ceiling walls covered in gleaming blue-and-white tiles set in an intricate pattern.

She turned on the water in the shower and let it run until the small room was filled with steam. When she was convinced that it was hot enough, she dropped the blanket, shoved aside the curtain and got beneath the spray.

She stood there thinking about what had happened out there in the living room.

Just good sex. It was important to keep things filed under the proper subject heading. Thomas had made his feelings on the subject of marriage and children very clear.

Make that subject heading great sex.

She suddenly understood how Alice had felt when she found herself on the other side of the looking glass. The world appeared very different now that she had experienced serious passion at the hands of Thomas Walker.

She had no idea how much time had gone by until the bathroom door opened and closed, yanking her out of her deep thoughts.

Thomas pulled back the curtain. Steam roiled around him. His gaze traveled leisurely from her head to her toes. “You okay?”

She scowled at him through the billowing vapor. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“Just wondered. You’ve been in here quite a while.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Hastily she turned off the taps.

“I brought you a robe. Probably a little on the large side but it’s clean. Deke gave it to me one year for Christmas. I’ve never worn it.”

“Thanks.”

He held out an oversized towel. She took it from him and wrapped it completely around her body. She cast about for something witty and sophisticated to say, the sort of comment a modern woman of the world made when she found herself showering in a man’s bathroom after hot sex.

“Nice tile work,” she mumbled.

“Thanks.” He gave the wall behind her a brief, critical look. “I thought it came out well. You sure you’re okay?”

“Just ducky.”

He nodded, looking somewhat dubious. “I’ll go see how dinner is doing.”

She waited until he was gone. Then she turned to look at herself in the mirror over the sink, hoping she didn’t look beet red and straggly haired from the hot water.

She could not make out her reflection clearly. It was lost in the mist of steam that covered the glass.

But as she gazed at the enigmatic mirror, some possibilities materialized.

Fifteen minutes later, feeling almost normal, she swathed herself in the thick, man-sized robe and ventured out of the bathroom.

And stopped cold at the entrance to the main room when she heard the low rumble of masculine voices.

“What the hell was it doing behind the old card catalog?” Deke asked.

He was sitting on one of the counter stools, his back toward her. There was a bottle of beer in front of him. He had one hand stuck inside a box of crackers. Wrench was sitting on the floor next to the stool, watching the progress of the crackers, clearly ready to move in the event one happened to fall.

“Damned if I know,” Thomas said.

He lounged against the counter on the kitchen side. There was a second bottle of beer in front of him. His blatantly relaxed, sexually satisfied air made her feel warm all over again.

She took a firm hold on her scattered emotions and went forward.

“Under the circumstances, I think we have to assume that Meredith must have done some exploring while she was working up at Mirror House,” she said briskly. Trying for cool. “I was doing just that, myself, when I found the bracelet.”

Thomas looked at her, his smile intimate and knowing. “Here comes our intrepid heroine. At long last.”

Deke swiveled on his stool and saw her. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but she thought she could guess. He would have to have been dim in the extreme not to figure out what had happened here. Deke was definitely not dim.

“Evening, Leonora,” he said. He kept his curiosity politely confined to his eyes, leaving it out of his tone. “Sorry to barge in like this. I walked over to talk to Thomas about a few things I pulled off the Net today. Didn’t know you were here.”

She glanced toward the fireplace and saw that her clothes were neatly folded on the chair, bra and panties tucked discreetly out of sight. But that didn’t make the situation look any less risqué. It was obvious that she had stripped naked for some purpose and it wasn’t as if there were a large number of logical reasons why a woman would do that in a man’s living room.

Well, the damage was done. Nothing for it now but to act worldly. Self-possessed. Like she did this kind of thing all the time.

She managed a smile.

“Hello, Deke. We were just about to have dinner.”

“I know. Thomas invited me to stay. But I don’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense.” She walked forward, conscious of the overlong robe trailing on the floor behind her, and perched on a stool next to him. “Of course you’re welcome to stay. The three of us have a lot to talk about.”

Wrench looked at her with melting eyes. She reached into the box, removed a cracker and fed it to him. He promptly abandoned his position near Deke’s stool and moved to sit beside her.

She smiled at him. “Make that the four of us.”

Wrench leaned closer and touched her leg with his nose. She gave him another cracker.

“That’s outright bribery,” Thomas said. He set a glass of red wine in front of her.

“No, it’s not. I’m repaying him for all the gifts he’s given me.”

Thomas rested his elbows on the counter, the beer framed between his big hands. “I was just telling Deke about your little adventure this afternoon. But I don’t know all the details myself. If you will recall, we were interrupted before you told me how you found that old door off the servants’ stairs.”