The strained expression smoothed out so fast Jen wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it—that it hadn’t just been the shadows. Nikos smiled as he stepped out onto the terrace with the economy of movement of a lifetime of martial arts. “Anything is fine,” he said.
His head began to turn toward Jen. And she was staring again! She jerked her gaze aside and stared at a bed of fuchsia as if her life history was written there. But she couldn’t prevent herself from listening as Cleo and Petra ran over to him, chattering in their home language. He raised a hand and said something in a low voice, and the girls stopped. Jen peeked as they flashed guilty smiles around. It was easy to guess that he was reminding them gently that company manners didn’t include talking in a language nobody else could understand.
Cleo promptly switched to English. “It was a whale, a great one! We saw it fountain the water up, so high, in greeting!”
“Cute girls,” Doris said, coming up on Jen’s right. “The news did report a pod of whales sighted off the coast.”
Jen said, “I thought whales only swam out way out beyond Catalina Island. There’s no way an
yone could see them from here.”
Doris’s gaze slide away. “Maybe they dared to swim between the island and the mainland.”
“That’s real rare,” Godiva put in. “In fact, I didn’t think they did that these days. Though back before the coast got so built up, you saw ‘em more often. Seals especially.”
Doris exchanged looks with Bird. Jen had a second to wonder what that was about before Doris lifted her voice. “I came to tell you that the food’s on the buffet. Don’t let it get cold!”
Nobody needed a second invitation. At once the entire party descended on the buffet table. Jen followed Doris, and soon she had a plate full of barbequed ribs, with cucumber salad, a tasty rice-and-vegetable dish called bibimbap, and a bowl of ginseng chicken soup that Joey’s grandmother had taught him to cook.
Conversation circled from whales to seafood to how delicious the lunch was. Jen had chosen a place beside Doris, consciously picking a spot away from Nikos to keep herself from staring like some dorky teen with her first crush.
Doris said, “My offer still stands. If you ever want cooking lessons, I’d be glad to initiate you into the mysteries.”
Jen smiled. “Thanks. I’m too old.”
“Nobody is ever too old to learn something new,” Doris retorted.
“Hear hear,” Godiva put in from the other side of the table
Jen shook her head, still smiling. “I swore off adventures in cooking after my cake disaster.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Bird said.
“Not me,” Godiva stated.
Jen thought back to those days. It was the year before the writers’ group started meeting at the bakery. In those days, everyone had traded off bringing refreshments. Feeling she wasn’t doing her part, Jen had finally volunteered after the round had passed her twice. She’d decided to bake a cake. There were a million recipes online, so how hard could it be?
Too hard for her. The cake turned out to be a brick. She’d been so embarrassed that she had planned to skip that Friday, rather than take that horrible cake and watch people gag over it, but Robert had insisted. “Forget the cake. You enjoy the people, and they’re the only audience we can trust to be objective when you read our latest article to them. Their opinions are so valuable! Just take some healthy snacks. They won’t drop dead if they don’t get their quota of bad carbs and sugar,” he’d said.
Jen said to Doris, “The truth is, I was clumsy as a teen. I grew so fast that I had trouble navigating through a room without banging my elbows into things. Mom wouldn’t let me near the stove, and when I got to college, they had the dorm cafeteria. So I never did get in the habit of cooking.”
Jen paused, struck with the vivid memory of Robert, year after year, standing at the kitchen counter with a book propped behind his plate and notebook at his right so he could take notes between bites. He’d never cared what he ate, only that it was easy to get and fast to go down. Preferably packed with vitamins and minerals to do double duty. All smothered in ketchup.
Jen blinked the memory away, aware of Nikos’s attention. She felt it. She said quickly, “I’m an expert guinea pig, though. I love good food. And Doris has spoiled me.”
The conversation promptly shifted to Doris, who talked about when she started cooking and her favorite recipes. Jen relaxed, relieved to be out of the limelight. That left her to savor the excellent meal as she cast quick looks at Nikos. The look turned into covert watching of his long, strong hands as finished off a rib. The glint of appreciation in his half-shut eyes. She had never before considered how attractive a man could be who enjoyed such simple pleasures—and she wondered how he would use those hands, and those lips, in other sensual ways . . .
FOUR
NIKOS
It was instinct, after a lifetime of being responsible for other people, to check on Jen as well as the two girls. Or so he could tell himself, but the truth was, every time he heard Jen’s voice or looked her way, he felt like he had too many hands, too many feet, and there were too many words he wanted to say, but the only one he should say was farewell.
That was logical. Responsible.
His unicorn responded to that thought with echoing silence.
He half-listened to the girls, who were soaking in the conversation about the sea life to be found along the Pacific coast. They wanted to stay. He could see and hear it in their joy at having spotted whales on their first, quick flight alone. He wasn’t worried about them being seen, as they were both mythic shifters—Cleo a hippogriff and Petra a Mongolian wind horse. As long as they were careful to shift out of sight of humans, they would be fine.