Darlene Graham - This Child Of Mine

Mark extended his hand to the blonde, and she offered hers with that fingertips-only handshake some women employ.

“Sit down!” Jeff yelled and slapped Mark’s back, pointing to the seat next to Lauren. Then he squeezed into the booth beside Kitt.

Were Kitt Stevens and Jeff Smith a couple? Mark studied Kitt. The moment he’d seen her at that ice-cream social, he’d thought, Now there’s an interesting woman. Okay. More than interesting. Attractive. He’d found her even more intriguing at Gadsby’s, and downright fascinating as he observed her in her offices today.

She glanced at him, brushed her bangs out of her eyes self-consciously, and he realized he was staring. He turned his face toward the singers. Steady, boy, he told himself. Think of Tanni. Always of Tanni. Don’t let yourself get all hot about a woman you don’t even know.

“How about a beer?” Jeff, the grand host, offered.

“Have a Harp,” Kitt shouted, “the best of Ireland.” She raised her glass. The orange glow from the green-shaded lamp hanging over the table enriched the color of her hair to a honey gold.

Jeff jerked his thumb at Kitt’s glass of Harp. “The only alcoholic thing she’ll drink, but she claims Harp is some kind of patriotic ritual. Murphy’s and church are about the extent of her social life, you know.” Jeff winked at Mark and then grinned at Kitt indulgently.

Kitt smiled at Mark. An impudent little smile. “Irish music and a glass of Harp are good for the soul,” she said, then closed her eyes and broke into a mellow, perfect-pitch harmony with the singers onstage. Some song about a minstrel boy.

Above her singing, Jeff teased, “Maybe good for the soul, but not the ears.”

Without opening her eyes, Kitt jabbed Jeff in the ribs, and sang louder. Jeff clutched his side, feigning injury, then covered his ears.

Ignoring this silliness, Mark fixed his gaze on Kitt, but spoke to Jeff. “Actually, she has a beautiful voice.”

Abruptly, she opened her eyes and stopped singing. She blushed, he noted with satisfaction, most attractively.

“Please. Don’t stop.” He smiled.

She gave him a quick wide-eyed stare, then dragged her gaze to the singers onstage, and picked up the melody. But her singing was softer, more subdued now.

As the last strains of the music died away, Kitt looked into Mark’s eyes. While they studied each other, a crease formed between her eyebrows, and her lips parted. Mark’s gut tightened and a quickening shot to his groin as he watched her mouth.

The crowd was applauding and cheering, Jeff and Lauren with them. But Kitt and Mark continued to analyze each other in motionless silence.

The waitress came. Mark smiled up at her, then fixed his gaze back on Kitt and said, “I’ll have a Harp, please.” He glanced back up at the waitress and added, “And could you run me a tab?”

“Sure,” the waitress said as she scribbled on her pad. But then she gave Mark a closer look and hesitated. “Uh, may I see your ID, sir?”

Mark leaned forward, extracted his billfold and flashed his driver’s license.

“Thanks.” The waitress gave him a second glance, smiled in apology and left.

“Bet you get sick of that,” Jeff piped up. “How old are you, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Twenty-seven,” Mark said flatly. “And you?” He asked this with his eyebrows raised as if this were a real conversation and not a put-down contest. From the first, he’d suspected Jeff had some kind of territorial thing about Kitt.

The little blonde smiled into her beer glass.

“Old enough not to get carded,” Jeff answered, and draped his arm on the booth behind Kitt.

“Congratulations,” Mark said dryly.

This time it was the blonde who stepped in to calm the waters. “So, Mark, you’re in Washington on an internship,” she said.

He turned to Lauren. She was pretty, but not like Kitt. Not fascinating. “Yes,” he answered. “And I’m also doing some stringing for the Dallas Morning News.”

Kitt nearly lunged across the table, grabbing his wrist. “You’re a reporter?” she said.

He looked at his wrist. She released it. “Not yet,” he answered. “I’m only a cub. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Yet.”

“That’s why you took this internship,” Kitt said, realization dawning on her face. She made it sound like a crime or something. “And you’re already stringing for the Dallas Morning News,” she challenged. “That’s what you were doing with that microrecorder.”

“I was putting out feelers for a feature, that’s all. Just an idea. They don’t have to buy it.”

Now Kitt’s green eyes flashed like heat lightning. “Don’t you have some ethical obligation to tell us that?” She was practically shouting. Mark noticed that people at surrounding tables were glancing their way.

“If I decide to actually write it, sure. But right now I’m just researching, seeing if there’s a story there. You know, something along the lines of the tiny idealistic coalition taking on the media giants.”

“Just researching? You were recording people’s remarks.” Now Kitt was shouting, and her face was getting redder by the second.

The duo onstage struck up a livelier song, a Scottish ditty about two young ladies peeking under the kilt of a passed-out drunken Scot.

Kitt pointed an accusing finger at Mark. “You were extracting material from sources who didn’t know they were sources.”

“Kitt, this is not a courtroom,” Jeff tried to calm her.

“Oh shut up.” She whirled her head at Jeff, and her hair made a glittering saffron fan over her cheek.

Mark pointed at the pint glass of Harp in front of her. “How many of those have you had?”

She spun her face back toward Mark. “I’m perfectly clear-headed.” Kitt pounded the table with her fist. “What I want to know is what you were planning to do. Paint our organization as zealots—fools? Anything to undermine the CRM’s efforts to limit the violence and filth glutting the media? Anything to help your daddy profit off his dirty rock-and-gangsta rap? Anything to clear the way for your precious LinkServe to operate free of constraints? Is that it?”

Mark eyed her. Even if she was a little stewed, it was obvious she meant every word. He matched her ardent fire with the cold sobriety of a stone. “No, ma’am. That is not it. I do not work for my father. And I wasn’t being sneaky. I told your people I was recording them. And I haven’t done a feature article yet that wasn’t totally unbiased—”

“Unbiased? How can you even pretend to be unbiased about the CRM when you yourself are the developer of that…that LinkServe monstrosity?”

“Monstrosity? Monstrosity? This happens to be the twenty-first century. Technologies like LinkServe are here to stay.”

“The CRM is only trying to protect children from undue violence and sexually explicit material. Seems to me that used to be a given in this country, before kids with guns and dirty music became commonplace. No thanks to Masters Multimedia.”

“Masters Multimedia has nothing to do with guns, and as for dirty music, et cetera, we didn’t exactly invent it.” He cocked his head toward the stage, where the duo was still singing the bawdy Scottish song. “Just listen.

“This nonsense has been around for ages. Think of all the old Scottish, Irish, Appalachian ballads that are full of murder and mayhem, not to mention—pardon my French—sex.”

Kitt glared at him, picked up her Harp, took a swig, then carefully lowered the glass to the table. “Oh, this nonsense—” she made quote marks in the air with her fingers “—has been around all right, in the form of subtle innuendo. Like that last one. But not a dirty word in it. Even in the most tasteless old drinking songs, it’s all innuendo. Nothing explicit. I have nothing against sex…or fun. But there is a vast difference between bawdy old tunes for adults and the stuff your father’s company—” she shook her finger at him—twice “—your company, is producing, packaging and distributing to children—”