Fourteen
“Oh my God,” Miranda breathed. Then she came back to herself long enough to say, “No, it’s okay. He’s okay.”
Behind her, Kat cleared her throat loudly.
She half turned, looking from Kat to David and back again, her heart and mind going in a thousand directions at once and her insides threatening to explode from her skin. “Oh . . . um . . . guys . . . here, come in.”
Her legs felt like Jell-O, but she moved back out of the way to let the Prime in. He stepped through the doorway and all the air went out of the room; God, she’d forgotten that he did that. His energy overwhelmed the apartment even as tightly shielded as he always was. She might have been the only one who felt it, but still, everything from the way he stood to the unnatural brightness of his eyes set him apart from her friends.
Kat’s eyes were wide and speculative, looking David up and down with obvious appreciation for his hand-tailored attire, and no doubt also for his magnificent build. “Hi there.”
He took his gaze off Miranda long enough to size up Kat. Miranda could see the calculation in his face: human, female, harmless. “Hello.”
He gave Drew a disdainful glance and, after that, barely allotted him the notice he would give a troublesome insect. Miranda found that weirdly hilarious.
“This is David,” she said. “He’s the friend I mentioned from when I was away last summer. David, these are my friends Kat and Drew.”
He nodded to them. Miranda’s addled mind found it a little offensive that they didn’t bow.
“So you’re Rehab Guy,” Kat was saying, having recovered her aplomb. She strode forward to shake David’s hand; for a second he stared at it like an alien object, then took her hand and kissed it, causing Kat to turn pink at the ears and stammer just a tiny bit.
In another time, when her worlds weren’t colliding quite so violently, Miranda would have laughed at that, too. Kat was never shaken up by attractive men. Her apparent lack of interest in the male gender was what got her so much sex.
David looked over at Miranda. “Rehab Guy?”
Miranda shrugged. She felt behind her for something to lean on and came to rest on the couch.
“Were you a counselor at the clinic or something?” Kat asked. “Mira says you helped get her back on her feet.”
Now David smiled, turning again to Miranda. “Mira,” he said. “I like that.”
She nodded, unable to meet his eyes just yet, though she could feel every inch of his gaze traveling over every inch of her. “My mom used to call me that. Snow White was my favorite fairy tale when I was little—she’d say ‘Mira, Mira, on the wall . . .’ you know how it goes.”
“This was before Shakespeare, I assume.”
She smiled. “Yeah.”
Kat looked from him to her and back, then over at Drew, then back at Miranda. Kat wasn’t psychic, but she was no fool either. “I think we should get going,” she announced. “Drew, honey, grab your coat. Miranda, maybe we’ll see you later this weekend? I’ll e-mail you.”
She grabbed Drew by the arm and practically dragged him to the door, despite his protestations. As they passed by the couch, Kat said in a loud whisper, “I want details.”
Miranda rose to lock the door behind them and paused a minute with her hands on the deadbolt, trying to steady her breath. When she turned back, David was standing by the hook where her coat was, his hand touching the scarf that Drew had left that she kept forgetting to give back.
There was a moment of tense silence before David said, “He seems nice.”
She snorted. “Sure.”
He let go of the scarf. “What?”
“Nice. He seems nice. You said it like you’d say ‘nice’ to a light blue tuxedo or a case of genital warts.”
He frowned. “Are you angry at me?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Well, what do you think? You haven’t called or e-mailed or acted like I exist for six months; now you show up on my doorstep and, what, want to go out for coffee?”
“Something like that,” he replied.
She stared at him. He stared at her.
“Fine,” she said.
His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
She yanked her coat from its hook. “Yes, really. Come on.”
“I don’t . . . actually drink coffee,” he said, sounding a little thrown by her behavior. “Caffeine makes me jittery .”
“That’s not where we’re going.”
To his credit, he didn’t protest, but let her haul him along behind her out the front door and into the night.