LaVyrle Spencer - Spring Fancy

His hand moved caressingly on the hollow of her back, but he continued looking down into her eyes. "You were right about him. He's tall, blond, handsome, immaculately groomed, well dressed, and I have to confess, I hung around just long enough to watch you two when the music started. He's a darn good dancer. You both are."

"Well, that darn good dancer is laboring over a computer keyboard right now, so what good does he do me?"

"He may not be doing you any good, but I'll have to make it a point to thank old Hildegard for abandoning you the way he did. I couldn't be happier to fill in." Again he brought her up against his body, taking two dramatic swirls, then laughing into her ear when he lost his balance on the second and nearly sent them toppling. She laughed, too, enjoying the feel of her breast flattened to his.

"You were doing just fine before you started getting melodramatic, Joseph Duggan. I don't need Fred Astaire. You'll do very nicely."

The next several songs were fast ones, and Jo-Jo Duggan gamely gyrated his hips and rocked his shoulders, thinking himself rather inept at the sport but enjoying himself immensely nevertheless, just because he was with the prettiest woman in the place.

"Whoever told you you aren't a good dancer?" she queried.

"I can feel it. I don't need to be told."

She glanced at his waist, shadowed within the open panels of his tuxedo jacket, then dropped her eyes a little lower. "Why, look at you. You have exquisite rhythm."

He lifted his chin and laughed at the ceiling, then gave her an open leer that passed from her breasts to her knees and back up again. "So do you, Winn Gardner, so do you."

After that last set of fast songs, he removed his tux jacket and left it hanging over the back of a chair. The back of his vest was made of sleek silk, and beneath it his musculature was easily felt. She moved into his arms when the music started again and gently explored his shoulder blades and the hollow between them. Around her waist his arm tightened, and she made a soft throaty sound and nestled more securely into his curves while he dropped his head until his lips rested just beside her right ear.

"Mmm… whatever that is you're wearing smells much better than the gasoline you wore last night."

She laughed. It felt wonderful, laughing against his firm chest, which lifted and fell against hers, while an answering chuckle rumbled deep within him.

"It's Chanel No. 5."

"I love it. Does it taste as good as it smells?"

"I don't know. Does yours?"

His fingers moved suggestively on her ribs. "Maybe we should both find out later, huh?"

"Uh-uh," she murmured against his neck. "Can't do that. I'm engaged to another man."

"Oh, that's right. Old Silicon Chip. The guy who left you here with me for safekeeping."

"Why is it I don't feel very safe around you?"

"I have no idea. I'm only filling in for your absentee fiancé. And with fresh reminders every fifteen minutes that you are promised to him, and you do wear his diamond." His hand left her waist and meandered upward to the small of her back, finding the vertical slit in the overbodice of her dress. His warm palm slipped inside and rode up to her bare shoulder blades, then down over the abbreviated back bodice, remaining inside the lace cover-up.

"What in blazes are you wearing under that dress?"

His point-blank question caught her by surprise, and she answered without thinking of the unsuitability of the subject. "Something old-fashioned and very hard to find these days."

"It feels like you're rigged out with two barrel staves." His hand explored her ribs and side, running down the long plastic stays that held up the foundation garment.

"It's called a merry widow."

Suddenly he lifted his head and met her eyes with his sparkling brown ones. "I wish you were," he whispered.

She cocked her head to one side. "What?"

"A merry widow. I wish you were a merry widow instead of a promised woman."

She came to her senses then, backing away a reasonable distance. But without the length of his warm body, hers felt cold and deprived.

"I think it's time we talked about something nice and safe and… neutral."

"You're right. How did you like the dinner?"

"I liked everything but the asparagus. How about you?"

"I liked everything including the asparagus."

That subject was shot. She groped for another, but her thoughts were taken up by him, his nearness, how much she was enjoying being with him. It seemed a long time since she'd laughed this readily or bantered this freely. Paul was so often serious or immersed and out of touch with earth. Winnifred had fleeting thoughts that it was wrong to enjoy another man's company this much. But when Pete Schaeffer asked her to dance, and she returned afterward to Joseph, it felt like home. Already he felt familiar and comfortable.

They danced another fast set, and after it their brows were damp, their breath short. She was fanning her face with an ineffectual hand, and he'd yanked his bow tie loose and stuffed it into his pocket, then rolled up the ruffled cuffs of his white shirt to the elbows.

"This is hot business, your kind of dancing," he chided good-naturedly.

"Whew! I'll say!"

"It's not too bad outside for March. In the fifties. Want to go out for a minute and cool off?"

"We'll probably catch pneumonia."

"We'll only stay a minute, and if you get shivery, we'll come back in. Or better yet, I'll grab my jacket." He retrieved it from the chair, and Winnie found herself crossing toward the great front door without having consciously made the decision to be alone with him.

Outside the moon was at its apex-it was nearly midnight. Stillness surrounded them, for it was too early in the year for frogs, crickets or any of the other night sounds that would bring midnight alive when summer came. They stood on the highest of three white steps, breathing deeply. Joseph slung his tuxedo jacket across his left shoulder, suspending it from two fingers. He scanned the dark star-dappled sky. Winnifred ran a hand up the back of her neck, lifting the tendrils of hair that had come loose. Her nape was damp and the air felt wonderful. Joseph turned, watching the outline of her face as she lifted it, hung her head back and let her eyes sink shut. God, she was lovely. He wondered if she ever had any doubts about her impending marriage; if Hildebrandt was too ignorant to see the dangers of letting a woman like her drift free on a night like this. Around a man like himself.

"Come on…" He slid his hand from the soft inner curve of her left elbow down to her wrist and intertwined his fingers with hers. "Let's walk."

He held her hand loosely, and it would have taken the simplest movement for Winnie to withdraw, but it felt right, ambling down the steps, across the withered pale grass, around the side of the house with her hand innocently in Joseph Duggan's.

The lawn sprawled and rolled in two gentle undulations toward a small creek and a patch of woodland beyond. The Victorian Club had, in its prime, been a property of estate proportions, thus the grounds were measured in spacious acres. Here and there tall oaks lifted their bare branches toward the stars, and a line of evergreens created a black barrier against the slightly lighter hue of the night sky. They sauntered downhill. Winnie felt the heels of her shoes sinking into the grass at times, throwing her slightly off balance. Whenever she lurched, Joseph's fingers gripped hers more tightly.

Ahead of them the white latticed foundation of the gazebo clarified as they approached, its hexagonal rails and roof beckoning as they moved closer and closer. Again Winnie sensed the same queer time-lapse sensation. Déjà vu, perhaps, brought about by the fact that the gazebo, like so many other props today, was a hallmark of another time. In her slim-hipped dress and dated hairdo she felt as if she belonged in the nostalgic enclosure.