Smiling, she lowered her heels and wondered how the prim and spinsterish Miss Royal would respond to the definite charms of Nicholas Brewer.
Olympia Royal was a shrewd and sharp-tongued woman whose suspicious nature was honed by twenty years as a physical education teacher, twenty years of counting laps for students prone to overstating their own tallies, twenty years of hearing and dismissing tales of cramps and monthly miseries that would make a gynecologist cringe, topped by five years of advising hundreds of students out of their dreams and into something to fall back on like nursing or pharmacy or optometry. Somehow, Trissa doubted even Nicholas could melt her stony heart.
"Oh, no," she thought suddenly and yanked open the door. "Nicholas! Nicholas, wait." She dashed down the hall toward the stairs and found him already turned at the landing and headed back to her.
"What's the matter?"
She waited until he was close enough to hear her urgent whisper. "You need a name."
"What?"
"If you're going to be my uncle, we need to agree on a name."
"Right. I didn't think of that."
"My mother's maiden name is Mickle. Like pickle with an M."
"Mickle. Got it." He turned to leave.
"No. Wait. Nicholas Mickle, that sounds awful." She screwed up her face as if she had just tasted a very sour pickle with an M. "We'll have to think of a different first name, too."
He folded his arms and chuckled at her. "What do you suggest?"
"Oh, I don't know. Pete? Yeah, Pete Mickle is ok."
"Great."
He was down four steps before she hissed for his attention again. "Pssst, Nicholas."
"What?" This time when he turned, he had to grab her shoulders to keep from bowling her over, she had crept so close behind him. She was one step up from him and their eyes were nearly level. He leaned even closer to hear her conspiratorial whisper.
"I thought, since we're out in the hall where anyone could see us, maybe we better kiss goodbye again. You know, appearances?"
"Wife, you think of everything."
She closed her eyes and waited. His lips touched hers while his hands slid with sizzling slowness from her shoulders to her waist. He drew her closer as he whispered "Open." against her mouth and without hesitation, she obeyed. His tongue played against hers sending delicious shivers to her toes. She responded by following his retreating tongue into his mouth and thrilled as he moaned softly. When he let her go, her buttery knees made her sink to her seat on the step.
"Think that will satisfy any peeping Toms?" He laughed as he bounded away from her.
"You've had a lot of practice at kisses, I take it?"
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, arching his brow to look up at her. "You have apprenticed yourself to a master, Sugar Lips."
"Oh, go to work," she ordered.
"Regrettably, I must." With a flourish, he tipped an imaginary hat and was gone.
*****
Her mouth full of straight pins, Augusta mumbled something that sounded like "Turn," and Trissa dutifully and carefully turned about thirty degrees. From her slightly dizzying perch atop the sturdy trestle table, Trissa looked down at the warm, busy kitchen where Augusta pinned up her hem, Beverly stitched a button on a cream angora sweater, and Ruth, the cook, peeled potatoes for a stew whose browning meat, onions, and spices already teased Trissa's hunger with their aroma. She was happy that the stew was for tomorrow's evening meal.
"Stew's always better the second day," Ruth had instructed her when she expressed her regret that she and Nicholas planned to eat out that night. "I always plot a day ahead. It's pork chops and applesauce tonight you'll be missing."
Like the boarders, Ruth had accepted her without a blink at the extra work she might cause. "Shoot, what's one more plate to wash?" she had scoffed. "She can't eat more'n a bird, I expect." In the Ozark Mountains where she came from, she told them, nine at the supper table would make a body darn near lonesome. When Trissa had offered to scrape the carrots, Ruth had clucked and fussed over her as if she were peeling away gold leaf from a national treasure. "Watch out now, lambie, you're gouging out half the viteymins there. Jest skin it. Don't whittle it."
There had been little time for the rest Nicholas told her to get, but she did not miss it. Shortly after he had left, Augusta had come bustling in to clear away her tray and ask her what she wanted for lunch. Trissa did