Now though, I was stuck here, at least until the Super came back from bingo. "I can't believe I locked myself out." Another stupid sneeze. At this rate I'd pass out from lack of blood to my heart. Did you know when you sneeze, all your working parts, just sort of stop? No heartbeat, no nothing. Sneezing is hazardous to your health.
"Here," Nash said, handing me something that smelled like the whiskey my great grandfather used to drink, but it steamed like hot tea and felt good against my cold fingers.
"What is this?"
"Hot toddy. Old family recipe." He pulled the towel from my shoulders and started to dry the ends of my hair, all familiar and sweet. Definitely not like him at all. I liked it-Nash Nation, tough-looking, techie guy taking care of me like he wanted to.
"Mmmm." The small, satisfied noise slipped out, without my permission, but I didn't try to cover the slip. It felt nice to have Nash fussing around me, in this quiet, almost but not quite intimate way. It felt … familiar and I wasn't sure why that was.
"Drink," he said when I stared off into space, humming like an old woman when he worked that towel through my wet hair.
I listened to his demand, making a deeper, more satisfied noise when the toddy warmed me from the inside, a sensation that left me a little punch drunk.
"It's good, right?" he asked and I could hear the humor in his voice. I must have seemed ridiculous to him, needy and pathetic, but I couldn't help myself.
"Willow?"
There was too much sensation and my head felt fuzzy; a fog surrounded me, and now Nash combed his fingers through my hair, sweet and soft, too tender and yet welcome. What was in that drink anyway? I stifled a yawn, but Nash caught me up, tugged me onto the sofa with him and I let him, liked how it felt to be tousled around because I felt weak and helpless. I never had let a man do that to me before, but just then the warmth that surrounded me made me careless, left me stupid to warnings that might normally come into my head when I was alone with a man I didn't really know.
"Is Mickey back yet?" I said absently through another yawn, but Nash shooshed me, pulled me to the cushions with his arms easy around me. The room became silent in that space between fever and rest, right in the center of dreams and alertness. I nestled there, comfortable, free, and wondered where I'd landed; I wondered how long I'd stay there. It felt safe. It felt so familiar and so, I let the dream take me.
Washington D.C.
There were two spots on my new flower-print dress. I wasn't sure if it was ketchup from the burger I'd scarfed down on my way to the library or maybe droplets of blood from the straight pin I'd used to separate my thick lashes after I'd spent nearly an hour on my face this morning. It had pricked my finger when I'd gotten careless and those tiny blots of blood remained on the fabric.
Red against pink. Stupid really, but it reminded me of Jackie Kennedy's bloodied pink suit the day President Kennedy had been assassinated. God, had that only been four years ago? The thought came from nowhere and I returned my attention to the small droplets. The spots were obvious and I tried to keep Isaac from noticing. He sat next to me huddled over the paper on the table in front of us, the long paragraph written in a neat, precise penmanship that reminded me of typewriter font. He leaned on one large arm as he wrote slowly, knocking his elbow against the worn copy of Countee Cullen's "Any Human to Another" I'd borrowed from him and returned when we met tonight.
"You think I should mention the work I did at my church? We had to rebuild after that first fire and I got the pastor thinking about a library. I built the bookshelves and even stacked the books when we got them in. Think maybe that will make me seem like more of a … what'd you call it? 'Viable candidate' or whatever it was you said."
"I think it couldn't hurt."
He smiled when I nodded and not for the first time my gaze stuck a little on his full mouth and the dimple pushing in his right cheek. "You really think so, Miss Riley?"
"I do." I touched my palm over my heart, an exaggerated oath, and instantly wished I hadn't. It brought Isaac's gaze to that red stain. "And I wish you'd stop calling me Miss Riley."
He looked down at my face, the light gold in his dark amber eyes seeming to sparkle a little, but then that could just be my imagination. I'd gone a little stupid over this man and was always inventing fantastical things that his eyes did or how his voice, so deep and sultry, spun its own sort of magic anytime I heard him hum or sing something under his breath.