The Importance of Being Alice Read online

  “Oooh, pie,” she said, her eyes growing large. “Lemon meringue. Oh, I know—key lime!”

  “That does sound good,” he agreed, and gestured at the waitress. “I shall ascertain whether or not this establishment carries such a thing.”

  “You’re just talking like that to make me laugh,” Alice said in between giggles.

  He waggled his eyebrows at her in a manner that both shocked and amused him. He’d never waggled his eyebrows in his life, and here he was waggling at a woman he just met, one with tantalizing lips, and nicely rounded breasts, and an even rounder ass. He liked Alice’s ass. He liked everything about her, but her ass was especially wonderful. He had a sudden mental vision of sitting with one hand on her naked ass, while the other held a piece of berry pie, and he knew he had to get them out of there before he explained the vision to her. “I believe we should leave. This smoke is getting to be a bit too much.”

  “Not until we eat,” Alice begged. “I’m so hungry. Oh, look, the waitress is coming back. That looks like dinner. You’re going to love this, I promise.”

  “Very well. We shall leave directly after we’ve eaten.”

  The waitress set down a platter that contained twelve fried eggs and immediately left. They looked at the eggs.

  Alice frowned at them. “I don’t understand. Where’s the wat?”

  “What’s on first? No, that’s second base,” Elliott said, laughing silently so hard that his shoulders shook.

  Alice prodded aside one of the eggs. “Is it under the eggs? I don’t see it at all. Did they forget it?”

  “‘Did they forget it?’ is on third.” This time, he laughed out loud, unable to keep his amusement in any longer. Dear lord, who knew he could be so intensely funny? Perhaps he ought to consider writing a humorous novel next.

  Alice stabbed one of the eggs with a fork and gestured at him with it. “You, sir, are punch-drunk.”

  “I have had no punch. Are you intending to accost me with that egg? Because if you are, I will be obliged to inform you that I do not care for fried eggs.” He looked closer at the plate of them. “Although I will admit, those appear to be particularly fine examples of eggdom. Perhaps a taste or two is in order. For politeness’ sake, you know.”

  “Politeness?” Alice asked, looking with growing interest at the egg on the end of her fork.

  “Yes, since you went to all the trouble of ordering us many eggs, it would be rude of me not to eat at least some of them.” He scooped several eggs onto a small bread plate and passed it to her, then repeated the process for himself. “Bon appétit.”

  “I wonder if this is the Dutch idea of an appetizer,” Alice said around a mouthful of egg. “Not that I’m complaining, because you’re right, these are really good fried eggs, and I’m not normally a big fan of them, either. But still, it’s odd that I ordered us delicious wat, and we got fried eggs instead. I like the crispy bits at the edges the best. Yum.”

  They consumed their eggs in silence for a few minutes. Elliott had to admit to feeling much more relaxed than when he began the evening, a pleasant sense of well-being making his limbs tingle. And his lips. For some reason, his mouth was highly sensitized. He looked at Alice. He wondered what kissing her with tingly lips would feel like.

  “I’ll just save these last couple of ones in case we get hungry in the middle of the night,” Alice said, sliding three fried eggs into her small handbag. “Unless you wanted them?”

  “No, I believe ten eggs is my limit,” he said, wiping his mouth carefully, extremely aware of the sensation of the roughened cloth across his lips. “If your hunger has abated sufficiently, we should probably leave before we become even more affected by the environment.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be good to show up at the ship stoned out of our gourds, especially since we didn’t hookah. I have to say, though, that I’ve become fond of this one.” She gave one of its brass appendages a pat. “It just kind of represents Holland, doesn’t it? I know every time I see a hookah, I’ll think about having dinner with you here.”

  He stood up, and made a bow to her that got a little involved when he straightened up and knocked his head into the hanging fern. “Allow me to present it to you as a souvenir, madam. Ow. Waitress! How much for the hookah?”

  She giggled and giggled and giggled, and was still giggling when, some twenty minutes later, they arrived at their ship. Luckily, most of the others were off having dinner, although they did encounter Tiffany as they were attempting to make the key work at their cabin door. She eyed the hookah with pursed lips.

  “It’s a souvenir of a most delightful evening,” Elliott told her.

  “Like an egg?” Alice asked, opening her bag and offering it to Tiffany.

  Tiffany peered into the bag’s depths. “Erm . . . no thank you.”

  “She’s one of those non-egg people, clearly. She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Alice said once he had the door opened. “Damned good fried eggs they do here. Boy, it’s ten already? I didn’t think we were at the restaurant that long.”

  “Time flies when you are having eggs,” he said, laughing inwardly at the sudden emergence of his humor. Definitely, he needed to write a funny novel.

  “Elliott.”

  “Hmm?” Perhaps a whole series of funny novels. Ones with eggs, and hookahs, and women with wondrous asses. He could be the new P. G. Wodehouse!

  “I want to thank you for the pity kiss earlier, and the only way I know how to do that is to give you a nonpity kiss.” She stopped for a moment, her face screwed up in thought. “Or do you think all that secondhand smoke has made me horny?”

  Hell, he could even make a character named Egg. Wodehouse always had oddly named characters. He stopped that train of thought, suddenly diverted by what she was saying. “You wish to kiss me?”

  “Yes, I do. Would you mind terribly? I mean, I won’t if you’d be offended, or repulsed, or if you’re gay and just aren’t into women, but I don’t think you are gay, because gay men don’t usually go around kissing women, not even pity kisses.”

  “It wasn’t a pity kiss. It was an ‘I fancy you’ kiss,” he explained, wondering even as the words left his mouth why he was saying them. He certainly had no intention of doing so earlier. He even had a vague memory of patting himself on the back for his deft handling of the situation. “I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me, although to be honest, I’d rather kiss you.”

  Her face screwed up again in obvious thought. On any other woman, he would find such an act off-putting, but on Alice, it was nothing short of adorable. She pulled an egg from her bag and absently nibbled on it. “Is there a difference?”

  “There must be. Shall we see? You may kiss me first, and then I will kiss you, and we will compare the experiences.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She kissed him.

  “That was nice,” he said, trying to form subjective thoughts about the experience. “I believe it would be nicer without the egg, however.”

  “It did kind of get between our mouths, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. I shall conduct my kiss without it. Do you mind?” He plucked a bit of fried egg from where it dangled from her mouth, and placed it carefully back into her bag, then took her in his arms, and tilted his head slightly to the left so he wouldn’t smash his nose into hers. “Ready?”

  She giggled. He took that as an assent, and kissed her. She tasted decidedly less sweet, and more eggy, than earlier in the evening, but still, it was a highly pleasurable experience, one that his tingly lips greatly enjoyed. Even his tongue gave a thumbs-up when it got into the action, playing with hers in a way that reminded him of dolphins leaping about the bow of a ship in the Aegean.

  “That was better without the egg,” she said when he had to come up for air, since he evidently had forgotten how to breathe while kissing. “What did you think?”

  “Dolphins,
” he told her. “Riding the bow wave.”

  She blinked at him. “OK.”

  “I think we should go to bed.”

  “Yeah, I’m tired. Wait, did you mean together, or separately?”

  He glanced down at his trouser front. Alice glanced with him. There was a pronounced bulge behind his fly, and a distinct ache in his groin. He looked back up and met her gaze. “I’ll leave that to you.”

  “Well, I see you’re willing and able and all, but I’m heartbroken and devastated by Patrick’s betrayal, so I’m going to say separately.”

  He made another bow, smacked his forehead on hers, and said while rubbing his head, “As you wish. I shall bid you good night.”

  She giggled some more while rubbing her own forehead. “I love it when you talk like a lord. Night, Elliott.”

  He retired to bed, not finding it necessary to remove his clothing or his shoes, so relaxed and peaceful was his mental state. Clearly she felt the same way, and they were both soon asleep.

  Chapter 5

  Diary of Alice Wood

  Day One (for real this time—the other two Day Ones were practice)

  It was a new day, a new dawn, and a new life. Unfortunately, awareness returned to me with all the stealth of a manatee clad in anvil shoes. “Urgh. Pleb. Flrng. Stupid drug hangover effect thing.”

  “I second that ‘flrng,’ and raise you a ‘What the hell was I doing last night?’ Which prompts me to ask: What the hell was I doing last night?”

  One eyelid peeled back with an almost audible fwapping sound, kind of like a wet blind being pulled up. I rolled my eyeball over to see what was wrong with Elliott, but his bed was empty. Had I lost my mind? Were his spy ninja–like skills so great that he could speak to me without being in the room? Was he talking to me via a hidden intercom?

  A slight movement caught my peripheral vision. I leaned down over the edge of my bed and considered the man lying on the floor on his back, fully clothed, hair adorably tousled, and eyes scrunched closed.

  “Hello, Elliott. I’d ask if you were checking under the beds for assassins, but since there’s drawers under the bed, and no space for a person, that can’t be.”

  His eyes opened. I winced when I saw just how bloodshot they were. “Assassins?”

  “Yeah.” I thought for a minute. My brain seemed to be working very slowly this morning, kind of like a fog bank had rolled into my head and was smothering all those hardworking synapses. “You know, like double agents and their ilk. People sent to kill you in order to keep you from talking about what you know.”

  “That’s a strangely specific thing to believe might be under your bed.”

  I remembered at that moment that I was supposed to be covertly digging into his past, and that mentioning the assassins and double agents that no doubt were once part of his daily life didn’t quite qualify as covert. “Um. Yeah. Ha ha. Just a joke.”

  “How you can make a joke at a time like this is beyond me.”

  “A time like what?” I squinted at the small clock on the dresser. “Seven after eight? Are you not a morning person?”

  “Not at a time when my head feels like it’s full of cotton. Usually, I am a morning person. At least, I am when I don’t feel as if my entire body has been run through one of those damned historic windmills. What did I do last night?”

  “We went to a coffeehouse. I guess that secondhand smoke was more potent than Patrick let on. I’ve definitely got a drug hangover thing going on, and since you said you get the same way, I assume that’s why your head is full of cotton.” I touched my forehead. “Mine feels more like my brains have turned to molasses.”

  “Coffeehouse. That’s right. You dragged me to a coffeehouse and insisted I kiss you.”

  “I did no such thing. That was a pity kiss, and it was bestowed upon me of your own volition, not that I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I’m a little less happy with it now, although I seem to recall kissing you later on, too.” I rubbed my temples. “I’m having a hard time braining, to be honest.”

  “I empathize completely.” He sat up, moaned a little, and, with an unseemly grunt that I thought it best not to point out, got to his feet. “My mouth tastes like the inside of a tart’s piano. Do you have immediate need of the facilities, or may I use them?”

  “Knock yourself out. I took a shower in the middle of the night. Don’t you remember?”

  “At this point in time, I remember nothing other than there is a reason I dislike this country.” With great dignity, he staggered into the bathroom and closed the door.

  By the time he emerged, I was dressed, had collected my gear for the day, and was flipping through a guidebook to review what sites were to be visited. “Evidently, we’re in Cologne, Germany, already. Cool. And we’re going to see the cathedral this morning. It sounds really interesting.” I looked up, making a sympathetic face when Elliott walked stiffly by me. “You really look like you’ve been through a war or two. You going to be OK?”

  “Possibly.” He sat down heavily at the small table, pushing his laptop away as if it was suddenly repugnant. “Possibly not. If I do not survive, would you see to it that my mother receives my personal effects? Also, tell her I forgive her.”

  “For what?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me once again.

  He waved a hand about vaguely. “Everything. Anything. Nothing in particular. What are you doing?”

  I had opened up my bag to tuck the guidebook into it, but stopped. “I’m wondering why I thought it was a good idea to fill my purse with eggs.”

  He blinked at me.

  I pulled a cold, flabby fried egg from my bag, followed by its twin, holding them up so he could see. “Eggs.”

  “You couldn’t carry a packet of peanuts like a normal person?” he asked.

  I smiled. “I’ve never done normal particularly well. I won’t ask you to go up to breakfast with me, since the way you’re looking at the eggs indicates extreme revulsion, so I’ll just say happy writing, and get out of your hair.”

  “Actually . . .” He waited until I reached the door before stopping me. He rose and stood in the middle of the room, with a chagrined expression on his face that I found oddly endearing. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Actually, I thought I might give myself a day off. I did quite a bit of writing yesterday, and it’s no use trying to write anything coherent when my brain feels the consistency of one of the eggs in your bag. And I’ve always liked Cologne.”

  “And you speak German, right? You can translate stuff! That’ll be awesome, because we’re on our own after the tour of the cathedral, and I have to admit I was planning on glomming onto one of the other people because I’m intimidated by German. But now we can go off by ourselves, because you won’t let me get lost and end up at some kinky sex club full of dominatrixes.”

  “You are wise to avoid that eventuality. Why come all the way to Germany for bondage experiences, when I assume you could have the same at home at a greatly reduced cost?” He slipped his wallet into his pants, and pulled a lightweight sport coat from the tiny little closet.

  He had that same deadpan look on his face as when he joked he’d have to kill me if he told me the truth about himself, so I couldn’t tell for a minute if he thought I was seriously into kinky sexual acts, or not.

  He stopped in front of me, gently placing a finger beneath my chin and pushing upward to close my mouth. “I was joking.”

  “Oh, good, because I’m really not looking for sex, kinky or otherwise.”

  “You are devastated and traumatized by Patrick’s betrayal, yes, I remember.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you mocking my devastated trauma?”

  “I would never do such a thing.”

  His eyes revealed nothing but a hint of amusement.

  “All right, because I have been really upset. I mean, I w
as supposed to be getting married.”

  He tipped his head to the side, grimaced at the obvious pain that followed such a careless act, and carefully straightened back up. “Would you be offended if I made a comment regarding that?”

  “That depends,” I said warily, wondering if he was mocking me. “You tell me the comment, and I’ll tell you if I’m offended.”

  He was silent for a moment, then brushed a bit of hair off my cheek in a gesture that suddenly made it seem like there wasn’t enough air in the cabin. “In all your ranting about Patrick, you seem to be more focused on the fact that you aren’t going to be married than regretting the loss of a man you assumedly loved beyond all others.”

  I opened my mouth to dispute that fact, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, I took a step forward and poked him in the chest while pointing out, “He kicked me out of our condo.”

  “Yes, and that was not at all well-done of him.”

  The smell of him—the slightly piney aftershave tinged by something that I decided was pure pheromones—seemed to spiral around me in little tendrils of sexual interest. I reminded myself that I wasn’t attracted to him, but the more I argued that, the more the tendrils of pure chemical lust wrapped around me.

  “He dumped me for another woman!” It took a major effort to get the words out—I wanted nothing more than to nestle against his neck and breathe in the heady scent of him—but I managed by telling my body that nothing was going to come of the nonattraction.