The Dreeson Incident(133)

"And?"



"And you're lucky that you guys picked a reference librarian to do this job. Not a 'ditz.' "



Ron had a feeling that "ditz" had really grated on Missy. She kept coming back to it.



"I really think you ought to bring it to Don Francisco's attention. Those Themes were quotations, almost all of them. Most of them from Seneca. Which makes it likely that Dumais has some kind of an academic background. That's not exactly typical for a garbage collector, is it? One of the things in the material that Cory Joe brought for Pam and me to study was to look for things that are out of character. If you ask me, Seneca quotations from a garbage collector are really out of character."





There was something to be said for the greenhouse at Lothlorien. For one thing, it was, for the time being, private. Over at the house, Bill was sitting in the living room studying an incredibly expensive herbal, or botanical manual, they had bought. The down-time cleaning woman, who did it as a second job and had no qualms of conscience whatsoever about working on Sunday afternoon, was racketing around with the vacuum cleaner.



Admittedly, the floor was brick. On the other hand, the air was warm. Part of Missy's pony tail had come loose, which was an increasingly common problem as time went on and the bands lost their stretch. The winter sun was catching it, making every individual hair glisten. They'd been here a while. The sun wasn't going to last much longer. Once it went down, that it was it for necking in the greenhouse. The artificial lighting would be like putting a spotlight on them.



Ron looked down. Her eyes were dreamy.



"What are you thinking?" she asked.



"That I'm getting positive feedback."



It wouldn't be a good idea to say exactly what he had been thinking. Which was that he had made out with a fair number of girls before Missy, but he'd sure never made out with one who appreciated his perfectly average and ordinary efforts at making love anywhere near as much as she did.



He had a suspicion that he wasn't likely to come across any other girl this appreciative in the future, either. Which meant that since he wanted continuing positive feedback, he ought not bring up other girls, past or future.



He might even be starting to get the hang of this.



His left foot gently climbed upward from the bare toes, started to explore her lower leg, and then pulled back from the barrier.



He had been a little startled when she climbed up into the Jenkins attic the day after the snow fight, went through several boxes of old toys that her mother had put away to wait for the day she had grandchildren to babysit, came down with a pair of fairly sturdy plastic handcuffs that still had their key, and put them on her ankles that evening. Plus quite a few following occasions.



"Revival of the chastity belt?" He had to laugh.



"Not exactly," Missy answered. "I'm the one who has the key. That makes it different."



He wasn't sure she was joking. At least not entirely. She kept the handcuffs in her jacket pocket, tucked underneath her gloves. And referred to them as "the accessory."



Not that there hadn't been a couple of occasions when the reminder had been useful.



Necessary, really, considering that even though Missy's mind really meant it when she said "no way," the subsection of primal instinct that had moved in on her was obviously starting to put up considerable argument on the point.



Sometimes Ron could kick himself for having pulled back when they were in that snowbank. He hadn't been violating Dad's precepts. By no means had it been a first date, by no means had he been forcing the issue, and Missy had been so willing. Or, at least, the part of Missy that was her body had been very willing indeed. Cooperating, responding, inviting, and encouraging every move he made.



But . . .



He had rolled himself off her, face down into the snow, which had been goddamned fucking unbelievably cold by comparison to the heat the two of them had been generating ten seconds before. Well, no male fantasy story he had ever read back up-time had recommended a snowbank in February as a desirable venue for seduction.



He had this suspicion that if her instincts took over before her mind agreed with them, he was the one she'd be mad at. Mad at herself, but really mad at him. Maybe mad enough to break the whole thing off. Even if it wouldn't really be his fault.



He knew that having Missy break it off would be a bad thing. Way closer to a catastrophe-type bad thing than to a nuisance-type bad thing. That was why, really . . .



Not that he could have explained to anybody else exactly what "it" was.



"It" was pretty amorphous right now.



They were spending more and more of their free time at Lothlorien, where the privacy and comfort seemed almost designed to foster temptation. But it also seemed to be almost the only place that they could really talk. They talked a lot when they weren't doing other things. Even while they were doing other things, sometimes.