“Okay,” she said, feeling remarkably lighter than air, skinny and beautiful and real.
“And perhaps a bit of cake,” he said, standing up and taking her hand in his. “I’ve had a craving for butter rum cake for a few days now. Isn’t that odd?”
He had no idea how odd.
Chapter Eleven
Rachel suggested a coffeehouse that featured would-be poets, a place Flynn knew quite well. He kept that to himself, however, and with a smile agreed to meet her there.
Naturally, the usual coterie of poets was there. Flynn recognized a few, and one could spot them a mile away. They congregated like a flock of penguins around the bar, all atwitter as they waited for their café au laits to be steamed. He escorted Rachel to a secluded corner table he also knew very well, bought a fu-fu coffee for her, a hot tea for him, and a large cinnamon bun to share. As she went about the task of cutting up the enormous bun with a little plastic knife, he said, “Funny, but I wouldn’t have guessed you were a teacher.”
Her astounding blue-green eyes sparkled charmingly with her smile. “Maybe that’s because I’m not a teacher.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Weaving aside,” she said, “which I’m only doing to earn a little extra money . . . except that I haven’t earned even a dime, because the cost of renting space at the design school and all the materials have skyrocketed, and I can’t bring myself to charge more than I do for the course.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “That was probably in the too-much-information category.”
“If you’re not really a teacher, then you ought to be,” Flynn said sincerely. “You’re quite good.” Actually, he’d been very impressed with her ability to engage such an eclectic group of people, particularly with something as horrendously boring as weaving.
“So what would you have guessed me to be?” she asked as she resumed the sawing of the world’s largest cinnamon bun.
“Hmmm . . . excellent question. You’ve been so bloody mysterious . . . I had you pegged as a mass murderer at first, but then you were too kind to Chantal, who one might guess is a likely candidate for mass murder,” he opined.
“Mmm, no,” Rachel said thoughtfully, shaking her head. “Chantal’s too loud for just the casual sort of murder. She’d require something completely diabolical.”
“Quite right,” he said. “And I hadn’t pegged you as the diabolical type.”
“No?” she asked, looking slightly disappointed.
“Clever. But not diabolical.”
“Ah,” she said with a nod, her eyes sparkling.
“So, clearly not a mass murderer. What about . . . sorceress?” he asked.
Rachel snapped the plastic knife in the bun, and clutching the bottom half of the knife, she blinked up at him “Seriously?”
He grinned, shrugged a little, and fished the other half of the knife from the bun. “Why? Are you?”
“I’m not a sorceress,” she said in all seriousness.
“Is that true, or are you afraid to admit it?” he asked laughingly.
“No, really, I just—” She suddenly stopped, bit her lower lip, and looked at the cinnamon bun. “I love cinnamon buns. I’ll be right back,” she said, and popped up before he could stop her.
She returned a moment later, a new plastic knife in hand, and picked up with a vengeance where she’d left off on the cinnamon bun.
“If you are not, in truth, a sorceress,” Flynn asked, amused by how intent she was on the bun, “then what do you do?”
She stopped sawing on the bun, perhaps because she’d divided it into equal parts of eight, and set aside the plastic knife. She clasped her hands together on the table. “I am a student.”
“Are you! What type?”
Rachel picked up her coffee and looked around the room and muttered something unintelligible.
“Beg your pardon?” he asked, leaning forward to hear her as he helped himself to the bun.
She sighed irritably and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Of history!” she said, a little louder.
“How impressive,” he said, taking another bite of what was a delicious cinnamon bun. Full of . . . something like vanilla, he thought.
“Not really,” she said with a snort. “It will probably floor you to know that I’ve been in a doctorate program for almost four years.”
Flynn looked up to see if she was joking. She did not, however, appear to be joking, and in fact, shook her head to indicate she definitely was not. “Any plans to finish?”
“Yes!” she cried heavenward, but caught herself and smiled. “Sorry. A little history there,” she said. “So what about you? What are you doing in the States?”
“Consultant,” he said.
“What sort?”
“Computers.”
“Really?” she asked, her brow wrinkling a bit. “And was it a computer that gave you the black eye?”
Flynn had forgotten about that nasty little bruise, and unconsciously touched his eye.