Damsel Under Stress
Page 82

“No, you only missed a story on the newscast.”
“Good. Normally I’d suggest we eat at the table, but we do have a TV-watching mission tonight, so what do you say to a living room picnic?”
“I say it sounds great.”
“I’ll get us something to sit on if you’ll go grab us some drinks. There should be some sodas in the refrigerator. Take whatever you want and grab something for me. There’s nothing in there that I don’t like.”
When I returned with a couple of canned drinks, he had a red-and-white-checked blanket spread picnic style on the living room floor in front of the fireplace and television. I hadn’t felt anything in my necklace, so that meant he must have had a picnic blanket handy. Interesting. He flattened the paper bags the food had come in and then laid the burgers and fries out on them. I handed him his drink before I sat down.
“This is more like it,” he said after taking a bite of burger. “Much better than the other night.” He suddenly looked concerned. “Isn’t it? Or am I incorrectly assuming? You said you had fun.”
“I had fun because I was with you. I’m not sure I’d have had fun with the kind of guy who’d have deliberately taken me to that kind of place. Burgers on the living room floor are much more my style.” And, I realized, this indoor picnic in front of the fireplace was a lot more romantic than the limo ride and the fancy restaurant, with or without the weird disruption we’d had.
“Good. And I guess I didn’t realize how little I know about you. I feel like I know the kind of person you are because we have been through some pretty extreme stuff together, but I honestly don’t know what you like or what you do enjoy.”
“It’s hard to carry on a good conversation when every time you’re together, you’re escaping from a fire, falling through ice, fighting off dragons, working, fending off a mob, or anything else we’ve done together.”
“I had to enchant that necklace to know what to give you for Christmas.”
“I bought you a scarf. I think that’s lamer.”
“So, tell me, what would have been a good gift for me to give you?”
“I like the one you gave me. The necklace really has been useful.”
“Okay, then, let’s try this another way. You already know my favorite childhood movie was Robin Hood. What was yours?”
“Hmm. Let’s see, I think I was partial to Sleeping Beauty. They re-released it in theaters when I was about five or six, and we made a special trip to the city to see it. Afterward, I thought that going to live in the forest with a group of wacky fairies seemed like a pretty good life. As an adult, I must admit to being drawn to the dashing prince who fights a dragon.”
“Now, I would have got that one wrong. I saw you as more of a Cinderella girl. You don’t lie around waiting for other people to take care of the situation. You pull yourself together and head out to the ball to get what you want.”
“Yeah, I guess that does make sense, but I still liked Sleeping Beauty’s prince better, and let’s face it, the prince is the part we really like in those movies. It’s your turn now. Let’s see, what can I ask you? Favorite movie now?”
“I haven’t been to the movies in so long that I couldn’t begin to say.”
“Okay, then, how about favorite grown-up movie?”
He worried his lower lip in his teeth while he thought, then said, “A lot of it depends on the mood I’m in. But Casablanca is a consistent favorite.”
“Oh, so you’re a romantic.”
“Well, that’s not the main thing,” he said, even as he turned slightly pink. “I like the idea of knowing you’re part of something bigger than you are, and at the same time, no matter how epic the scope of a situation is, it’s still about people. Plus, Humphrey Bogart was incredibly cool, and he always knew just what to say in a situation. I’d love to be able to toss out smooth lines like that instead of thinking of them hours later or not having the nerve to say them even if I do think of them at the right time.”
“Yeah, you’re a romantic. And worse, you’re an idealistic romantic. You’d totally make the grand, sacrificial gesture for the greater good and then stride off into the fog.”
He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. “Well, maybe I am a bit of a romantic. Enough so that I deliberately ordered our burgers without onions.”
“And you think you’re not smooth,” I said just before he kissed me. It was even better than our very first kiss, which had been magically influenced. We’d kissed a few times since then, but not with the same kind of intensity. As in almost every other thing he did, he was thorough, meticulous, and quite skilled. Fortunately, this time he didn’t withdraw in horror, like he had once before after realizing he was under magical influence. Instead, he kept kissing me, and I let myself relax enough to really kiss him back. After all our struggles of the past weeks, once we got over the initial awkwardness, it felt so very right between us.