LENA

Booker is staring at me with such intensity, I shift in my seat, goosebumps spreading as I feel his regard like a finger trailing down my spine. My face heating up, I glance out the car window at the trees lining the street. They have begun whipping in a newly kicked up wind. Peering up at the sky, I see clouds, which earlier had been thin, pale and high, growing thicker, darker and lower by the second as they ride the wind northward.

Then my gaze is drawn irresistibly back to Booker. I manage not to shiver when I find him still studying me with that penetrating gaze. “Um, I should probably go rustle up a newspaper and see what the Rooms to Let situation is. Maybe I can check into one or two before work.”

“You don’t have a helluva lot time for that today,” he says. When I stare at him in confusion, he adds gently, “It’s Saturday, doll.”

“Oh, shit!” I promptly cover my mouth with my fingers, appalled at my language. Then I jut my chin. Sometimes swear words are the only ones to properly cover the way a girl feels. Booker’s right, of course, I won’t have enough time to find a new place. Washington State has a Blue Law on the books going back to when I was a kid. It prohibits most businesses from operating on Sundays so their workers can observe the Sabbath with their families. This means bars close down at midnight on Saturdays. For those of us drawing our paychecks from the Twilight Room, the early shutdown means starting at the lounge three hours earlier than our usual time.

Impulsively, I scoot along the seat until I’m close enough to reach across Booker’s hard stomach and grab his left wrist. Turning it toward me, I peer at his watch. I can’t help but notice his skin is, as usual, toasty warm beneath my fingers and—oh, my—incredibly sleek on the underside of his wrist where my fingertips pick up the strong pulse of his heart.

Ho-ly crow. I have a sudden urge to fan myself, and touching him makes me highly aware that once you feel something like this, it is simply not possible to unfeel it.

Giving myself a mental shake, I actually read the watch face I’ve been wasting my time staring at, considering I couldn’t state the time to save my soul. “Drat,” I say again as the time finally sinks in. “Drat, drat, drat.” Releasing my hold on his wrist I sag back against the seat. Try to reorganize my thoughts. “Okay, Plan B.”

Booker’s lips curve up and I hear him murmur, “A woman after my own heart.”

Whatever the heck that means.

“I should at least call Dot and Clara to tell them what’s going on. I’ll see if I can stay with them until I get my room situation straightened out.”

He looks at me. “Or you can just stay with me again tonight.”

For a moment, I think my heart stopped. If so, it certainly isn’t stopped now—the darn thing is stampeding like a herd of mules through my chest. And in a moment of clarity I realize that, my goodness, I want that! I probably shouldn’t, but, oh, I do. The smart money says this very reaction is precisely why it’s the last offer I oughtta accept. Straightening up smartly, I wiggle back into my space on the passenger side of the front seat. And give myself a stern warning to stay there.

As if he can already read the refusal I’m working up to speaking aloud, Booker shoots me a look so soft it rattles my will power. “Why not give yourself one more good night’s sleep? Then you’ll be fresh to jump into the hunt for a room tomorrow. Hell, we can pick up a copy of the Seattle Daily Times on our way home, so you can at least cull out the best prospects to interview on Monday.”

Refuse, Lena. You need to refuse. You know it’s the only thing to do!

It’s just—

Home. My, how that word grabs me. I can feel it prying open my deepest, most heartfelt desire the way Will and I once tried to do with one of the clams we’d dug up over on Alki Point (before we discovered the trick of steaming them open). And even admitting to myself how the word is one huge trigger for me—

Well, it doesn’t do a darn thing to shoo away the boatload of emotion it stirs up, now does it?

“Okay,” I whisper. Then clear my throat and hurriedly add in a stronger voice, “But just for tonight.”

“Sure.” He starts the car and turns on the heater. “Look, I owe you a nice meal and we owe each other that talk we were going to have last night. Let’s go see if they’re serving yet at Top o’ the Town.”

I blink. Then I’m pretty darn sure I stare at him stupidly. But, oh, my God. Booker is talking about the Sorrento Hotel’s seventh floor restaurant! “I would like that.” I am so proud of the way I manage to say this calmly, as though eating at Top o’ the Town is an everyday occurrence for me. Heaven knows, inside I’m spinning in circles, kicking up my heels and screaming, Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!

“I don’t believe I have ever been there,” I murmur. Another proud moment because, hell’s bells and hallelujah, I don’t even wince a tiny bit at discovering my new-found talent for swooping around the truth. As if I don’t know perfectly well I have never been there.

“It’s settled then. Let’s go.”

We arrive atop First Hill a short while later and Booker parks on Ninth Avenue not terribly far from the Sorrento’s elegant corner courtyard. He escorts me into the hotel and across the lobby to the elevator, which we ride up to the seventh floor.

Disappointingly, we learn the rooftop restaurant is closed and won’t open with enough time for us to both enjoy a meal and make it to work for our early start. Well, not that Booker, as owner, can’t do whatever the heck he wants. But I’m glad he doesn’t suggest it. Because, how embarrassing would it be for little ol’ employee me to come trailing into the lounge late in his wake?

Uh, no. I don’t think so.

In any case, a friendly hostess directs us to an open tearoom on this floor. And since we have a few minutes while they refresh the two-person table that another party is getting ready to vacate, we brave the cold and blustery late afternoon weather to go out onto the loggia to take in the spectacular views. Getting hit in the face by the wind, I am happy for my warm, if not exactly the height of fashion, coat and the close fit of the pretty hat Officer Miller helped me recover from Mrs. Rodale.

Everywhere I look, there is something to gawk at, and each new sight to greet my eyes seems more appealing than the last. Below us to the west, lights wink on one after another in the downtown area. Beyond the city buildings coming to life, white caps churn up a froth in Elliot bay and on Puget Sound, even as one of the higher peaks in the Olympic mountains across the water is lit by a pale sunbeam breaking through the cloud cover. To the south is the amazing Smith Tower—the tallest building west of the Mississippi—and beautiful Mt. Rainier. Okay, so maybe the eastern view isn’t as gorgeous as it could be, since we’d ordinarily have a pristine territorial view of the Cascade mountains. The storm clouds currently piling up against the foothills block a good portion of the range, but the taller snowcapped peaks thrust their tips through the cloud cover. That glimpse of their power and the sheer beauty of the remaining views threatens to overwhelm me.

I grip Booker’s forearm. “Jeepers-creepers. At one time or another, I have seen every one of these sights. But I have never stood in one place and seen them all at once. I think this might be the most glorious sight I have ever witnessed!”

He smiles down at me and lightly rubs the pad of his thumb against the small dent in my chin, another action that takes me back. He used to do the same thing all the time; he’d seemed endlessly fascinated by my chin’s shallow cleft. Flooded with sudden memories, I find myself inching closer to him.

“Excuse me, Mr. Jameson,” the tea room hostess calls softly from the doorway, making me take a swift step back. I feel for a moment almost as though she caught us doing something we shouldn’t. But she merely smiles at us and says, “Your table is ready.”

She seats us a moment later. The instant she walks away Booker shoots me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Lena. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

I’m frankly delighted with the place and, planting my elbow on the table and my chin in my palm, I smile at him over the little vase hosting an artful single chrysanthemum. “I like it. The view can’t be beat and it’s very pretty, don’t you think?” The latter is hardly a serious question—it’s more like one of those whatchamacallit kinds where no answer is required. Because, please. The tearoom is beautifully appointed and it’s hardly as if I have been to so many elegant eateries I’m going to look for details to complain about.

“You are very pretty,” he says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates in a most interesting place deep inside of me. He lounges back in his chair with one elbow hooked round the top dowel of its ladder back.

“Aw, you.” I grin at him across the small table. “You know,” I add, studying him more closely, “you are more what I thought a sheik would be in the movies than Rudolph Valentino was. If you tell Dot, I will deny this with my dying breath. But Valentino seemed more grinning fool than a romantic hero.”

No, no, no, no, no! I did not just say that! Now Booker is going to think I think he’s a romantic hero. And okay, at the moment I kind of do. But danged if I want him knowing anything of the sort.

Too bad for me, though, since I am clearly too late. He shoots me a cocky smile and wags his eyebrows.

I’m valiantly ignoring him, when I remember his check for an orphanage in my purse. “Oh!” I snap upright. “I forgot all about this.” I dig through my purse and pull it out. “I’m so sorry. This came yesterday.” I explain how it arrived with the box of gowns from Frederick and Nelson.

“I wondered what the hell happened to that.” Booker looks up from studying the check. “I didn’t even remember writing it while I was waiting for you during the fittings until a couple days ago.” He shoots me a crooked smile. “Which isn’t too surprising considering how stunning you looked when you modeled the gowns.” Then he shrugs. “Drove every other thought out of my head.”

Pretending his flattery—and hot eyed gaze—aren’t turning my cheeks seven shades of red, I hand him the note from Alice even as I tell him what it says. Then I meet his gaze head on and raise my eyebrows. “So, how long have you been doling out generous checks to orphanages?” I lean forward, my discomfort forgotten. I have wondered about this since first laying eyes on the check Frederick and Nelson returned with my box of gowns.

Booker shrugs again. “I started donating to The Children’s Home once the lounge started turning a healthy profit.”

“Almost right away, in other words?” Face it, Booker seems to have a golden touch, but I doubt it’s because the sun follows him around just looking for an opportunity to shine down on his head. I think it stems from his tendency to consider every possibility before committing to an action. It simply makes sense to me that all his hard work would result in prompt success.

Not that I know the first thing about what it took for him to pilot the Twilight Room into the black. Or, heck, even if he actually has.

But I do know, by the big smile on his face, my assessment doesn’t offend him. And I simply have to smile back. I am also helpless to stop myself from gazing at the smile lines his grin fans out from the corners of his eyes, or admiring the whiteness of his teeth as they gleam in the room’s lighting.

His shoulder above the arm draped over the chair back hitches up, then as swiftly drops. “Pretty much.”

“What made you choose that particular charity?”

“Seriously, Lena?” A dark eyebrow quirks. “Why do you suppose?”

I blink. Then blink and blink again, for all the world as if I’ve developed a sudden tic. Squeezing my eyes shut, I immediately pop them wide open again, relieved when the action halts the stupid winky-eye activity. My voice comes out just a bit too high when I say, “Me? Because of me?”

“Yeah. You and the godawful Blood of Christ. I wanted my money to go toward making something better than that place .” Unhooking his arm from the chair back, he leans forward. “I hated the way the matron from hell ran the B of C. It was a disgrace.”

Then his face lights up as quickly as it clouded over. “You should see the Seattle Children’s Home, Lena. It’s over on Queen Anne Hill—I’ll take you there one of these days. It’s light and bright and everything I wished for you at the foundling home. Not that they don’t do some things the same. The girls learn to sew, for instance same as you did. The boys are taught a trade.

“One of the interesting differences in this place, though, is that not only orphans live at the home. They also take in kids of single fathers who work in the woods or mines or are out to sea for extended periods of time. And the women who work there smile at the children. They’re not all doom and gloom like Matron Stick Up Her—um. They smile,” he repeats emphatically.

I hide my amusement at Booker’s attempted cover-up. But, please. Like I don’t know exactly what he meant to say! Clasping my hands in my lap, I hear myself admit, “I always had the strongest urge to stop at the local orphanage in the different towns where I had my singing gigs. I thought I could offer some music lessons, or, I don’t know, maybe help organize a choir for the kids who were interested.” I have never told a soul that. Not even Will.

“But you never did?”

“No. I just couldn’t.” To my horror, my chin quivers. I draw a deep breath and hold it one second...two seconds...three, until I regain my composure. My chin tilts up as I admit for the first time the true reason I could never bring myself to do the thing I truly longed to do. “I know far too well what it feels like to have people come into my life, only to leave me just when I drop my guard and start to count on them. And at this point in my career, coming and going is the nature of my work. I follow the gigs, and when you’re trying to move up the ladder in this business that means going from town to increasingly larger towns.” I sit straighter in my seat.

Because there it is, what I have never actually acknowledged to myself.

Yet Booker doesn’t seem the least surprised. He gives me a brisk nod, as if to say atta girl!

Darned if it doesn’t renew my strength without a word being spoken. Solemnly, I peer up into his handsome face. “I couldn’t bear to get other kids all excited about singing, only to walk out on them just when they’ve placed their trust in me.”

I brace my forehead in my palm a moment. Then I raise my head to look at Booker and softly slap my hand down on the tabletop. “I could not do that to them.”

“Okay, I can see that.” He slides his hand across the table until his fingertips barely graze mine. His touch is soft as a breeze, yet I feel it like a lightning bolt sizzling through every nerve in my body.

I’m so discombobulated I have to concentrate to make sense of his individual words when he says, “I recall you once telling me how hard it was when the older kids in the orphanage who’d befriended you moved on.”

Then his words sink in and I sit straighter in my seat. “Oh, my gosh, you remember that?”

“Of course.” Booker looks at me as if I’d asked a ridiculous question. “I remember damn near every conversation you and I have ever had.”

And just like that, I feel the final dregs of my ill-will, the last of my hard-held grudge against Booker, evaporate like fine drizzle on hot rocks. I have been so darn angry since coming face to face with him again and didn’t even realize until this minute how much it has worn me out. But now, all that energy-sucking ire is simply...gone.

Leaving me awash in the most amazing, peaceful feeling.