Douglas, Nelson - 2Golden garland

"I don't have exotic bedroom habits."

"You remember."

"That is not your problem, Max. My memory."

"No. My problem is what it always was, the moment I decided that the IRA had to pay for my cousin's death." He absently moved the empty drinking glasses aside, though that would no doubt infuriate the waiter/chef. "You know those two thugs who accosted you? The ones whose rap sheets I brought up on the computer at Gandalf's house?"

She nodded.

"I've been trying to track them down. They were known around Vegas, but they haven't been seen since. My out-of-state sources come up blank. I don't think they'll ever hurt anyone again."

"They're dead?"

"And buried out in the Mojave, I'd bet. Whatever is going on in Las Vegas, someone wants a lid kept on it, at any cost. Do you feel safer?"

"That those men are dead?" Temple looked around, but no one was wearing a spy trench coat. "I don't think so. I don't need them dead. I hope you didn't--"

"No. Execution is not my specialty. Information is."

"Max, that's, ummph, so cold."

He nodded.

An entity appeared between them, naming, and landed as softly as a chocolate UFO on the tabletop. Drizzles of white chocolate and raspberry sauce latticed the central core of white-and-dark-chocolate-checkerboarded cheesecake.

"I can't believe," Temple said, "that we're going to eat this exquisite gazebo of chocolate and discuss what we're discussing."

"We're not." Max's clenched fist on the table relaxed suddenly. Temple hadn't noticed it before, but as his fingers parted she spied a small black-velvet box beneath them.

"You said no magic." Her tone was accusatory, but just barely.

"No magic. I had it in my coat pocket and brought it out while you were distracted by Mata Haris."

Well, what woman, no matter how thoroughly modern, no matter how un-Mata Hari-like, is going to ignore a small square jewelry box?

Temple's icy fingers edged it to her side of the tiny table, then she pressed the catch so the lid flipped up.

The lighting in this nameless (to her) restaurant left as much to be desired as the specifics of the menu, if not the skills of the chef.

Still, a ring is a ring and hard to mistake. But it was not just a ring. It was a free-form flow of pink gold guarding a low-profile opal of incredible fire and subtlety. Diamonds stood guard, flashing their own more obvious fire.

"Max, this is exquisite, but what is it?"

He understood that she wasn't asking about the ring's components, but its meaning, to him, to her.

"A friendship ring?" Mischievous. "A pre-engagement ring?" Testing. "A what-the-hell, it's-gorgeous, I'll-grab-it-and-let-the-guy-think-what-he-likes ring?" Cynical. "It's my ring, to you. I hope you like it. I hope you'll wear it. I hope it means we have a future." Bottom line.

Temple lifted it off the small velvet tab that held it upright. Although made like lace molded from hot lava, it was a strong, solid design, broader than she would think a small hand could carry off. The dying light of the cheesecake (or whatever) flambe made it into a glimmering raw vein of ore: fugitive, elusive, like Max himself.

She lifted it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Which finger should she try it on? There was only one; even recognizing that was a commitment she hardly dared think about.

She slid the band over the first knuckle of her third finger, left hand.

It fit like magic. Not too tight or too loose. A Cinderella shoe of a ring. She would expect nothing less from Max. She showed him her hand, which he took, his face a textbook picture of anxious concentration. He hadn't been sure it would fit (though he knew better), he hadn't been sure she would like it (though he hoped so). He certainly hadn't been sure she would wear it.

He glanced up, and in this dim restaurant, his eyes were light, but of no color, as water nullifies the hue of whatever it reflects into a translucent memory.

"Will you come home with me tonight, Temple?"

She never even thought to ask where home was.

Chapter 38

Encore! Encore!

"It reminds me of the Algonquin," she observed as they moved past the cozy lobby to the old-fashioned front desk with its pigeonholes of room keys behind the clerk.

"So would a lot of small hotels of this age in New York," Max said. "This one is quieter than the Algonquin."

He asked for the room key, standing on her left, her bare, beringed hand in his, as it had been since they had left the restaurant in a cab.

Temple's fingers weren't cold any more, heated in the furnace of Max's grasp. He took the room key and its old-fashioned wooden plaque in his left hand as smoothly as if it had been his dominant right; eerily flexible, Max Kinsella, and in moments they were huddled before the gingerbread brass grille of the elevator, waiting for the single car to waft them upward.

"Still cold?" he asked, bending his head so she could hear him.

"Not exactly," Temple answered with admirable understatement.

The elevator grille, and then the doors, opened. A wizened old man in a uniform, a hunchback, a wizard, opened the grille tor them.

Max filled the small elevator like a giant, and their separate and entwining emotions suffused it like an aphrodisiac, Max crushed her into a long, tortuous kiss against the back wall. The old man's neck was too stiff to turn and see, but Temple sensed him smiling into closed wooden doors.

Max thrust a tip into his hand as they left the car. Temple had never heard of anyone doing that, but the operator said "Thank you, sir and missus. Merry Christmas to you too," right out of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

"Poor man thinks we're married," Temple said, feeling fraudulent and anxious to get reality on record.

"I don't think so."

The room wasn't far down the narrow hall with its ancient brocade-pattern paper in gilded trellises that gave a sense of greater vistas beyond, and yet of confinement.

"I've got to call Kit and tell her I won't be coming back tonight."

"She knows."

"How do you know she knows? Yes, she's pretty hip for an aunt, but she might worry."

"She might worry more if you did go back tonight."

"Oh, really. That sure of yourself?"

"Of me, maybe. Of you, never. Just of her."

"I'll call."

"Fine. Now do you want to come in, or not?"

"Of course I do." Temple turned around when she was in the room. Small, high ceiling, high bed, lots of mahogany furniture from the forties, once splendid, and still pretty spiffy. A narrow door to a closet. A narrow door to a bathroom. And probably a hundred and eighty dollars a night, as a single. Oh! She was an illegal guest. A smuggle-in. A New York wetback.

"Temple. We've been here before. This is nothing new. Calm down."

"Where's the phone?"

He pointed to the bedside table, and to one of the closed doors.

"A phone in the bathroom? In a place this small?"

"They pride themselves on modern conveniences."

"I'll dash in, then."

She dropped her tote bag on the floor, and her coat and earmuffs and gloves, or Kit's rather, and vanished through the indicated door.

All white tile, with that ancient octagon-of-white-tiled floor grouted with black. Twenties. The phone was a wall model. Brand-new. She punched in Kit's number, glancing at her watch. Almost midnight. Going to get the old girl up . . .

It was answered on the first ring. "Hello." Kit, no doubting that husky contralto.

"It's Temple."

"No kidding."

"I just wanted to let you know that I. . . we .. . wouldn't be making it back to your place tonight."

"No kidding."

"Kit! You're my aunt."

"That doesn't make me dumb, does it? Don't answer that."

"Oh, Kit. I... I don't know. I'm not ready ... I just have the dopey clothes I had on at your place and--"