Chapter Thirty
>>>Wednesday, 7:18 PM
The car which Lex had loaned to Lois entered the underground parking lot below the LexCorp building and glided to a stop beside the executive elevator. Lois felt the cessation of motion but didn’t open her eyes.
The driver opened the door and leaned in. “Ma’am? We’re here.”
She inhaled slowly and murmured, “Mmm-hmm.”
The older man hesitated, then spoke. “If you’d prefer, Ma’am, I could take you on home and then call Mr. Luthor for you, say that you weren’t feelin’ well and went on home to bed.”
“Oh, no, Carl, you might get in trouble. Besides, I’m hungry.”
Carl smiled. “Yes, ma’am, that’s a fine enough reason right there. But I’ll still take you home if that’s what you want.”
Lois slid out the door and let him lift her to her feet. “Thank you, but that’s not necessary. There’s good food and good company right here, and I don’t have anywhere else to go today.”
“Yes, ma’am. Y’all have a good dinner now.”
“Are you going to get anything to eat?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll get me some vittles. But I’ll be back in time to take you home when you’re ready to go.”
She smiled wearily and nodded. “Thank you.”
He gave her a jaunty salute. She nodded in acceptance, then turned to the elevator, once again thankful for Lex’s personal entry code.
She thought about the five times she’d had Carl stop at the drive-through of various fast food places – which he’d cheerfully done without batting an eye – and wondered if he thought she was binging and purging.
Then she decided it didn’t matter. There was food waiting for her, good hot food, with lots of liquid to wash it down.
And, of course, one of the world’s richest men was also waiting for her company.
She shifted her feet and sighed. She was most grateful to Martha Kent for her generosity, but it felt good to wear her own clothes again. It had felt wonderful to shower in her own bathroom. And that boost to her self-esteem had been invaluable as she dealt with the uninterested zombies behind the various government counters she’d had to stand in front of for most of the day.
The process of reclaiming her life and her identity had gone nearly as smoothly as she’d hoped it would. The interviews with the police and the Federal investigators had been less painful than she’d feared, even though she knew she and Clark would have to talk to them again. Her insurance company had promised to expedite her claim and help her buy a new Jeep, and had offered to secure a rental car for her, which offer she’d accepted, starting the next day. She’d even tolerated the new driver’s license picture they’d made her pose for.
She had dreaded making the calls to her parents, and the call to Lucy, but by the time she’d placed them late in the morning, her survival was old news. Lucy had been tearfully thrilled to hear from her, Dr. Sam Lane had alternated between gruff and tender, but her mother Ellen had all but accused her of deliberate cruelty for the deception. Lois had managed to end the conversation without saying anything she knew she’d regret later, but she also knew that her mother would pick up the threads of her tirade the next time they spoke. It was something Lois was not looking forward to.
The reunion at the Planet had gone well. Everyone was thrilled that she and Clark were back. Everyone welcomed them with smiles, and many also contributed tears.
Except Cat Grant. The pale and hollow-eyed gossip columnist had been the last to approach Lois, and instead of bouncing happily or laughing or weeping with joy as others had, the girl had embraced Lois with a terrible fierceness and wept aloud. Then she’d done the same thing to Clark, and she’d hung on to both of them for an inordinately long time, trembling as if possessed by some unidentified terror.
Lois had tried to kid her a little by reminding her that they’d missed their Monday lunch together. But Cat had only stared at Lois with a haunted expression and said, “I’m sorry.”
Then she’d rushed away as if pursued by a pack of angry wolves and burst through the door of the ladies’ room. Lois had looked enquiringly to Clark, who’d shrugged his lack of comprehension. Lois didn’t need the link to know that he’d had less understanding of what had just happened than Lois had.
Something really funky is going on with Cat, thought Lois. She would bear watching.
The elevator arrived with a rich, pear-shaped musical note and opened smoothly on well-lubricated rollers. Two men and a woman, all apparently weary from a full day of making executive decisions, exited, allowing Lois the entire car for her trip up. She stepped in and punched in Lex’s code, then she watched the doors flow shut before the car hummed upwards.
The ride up was long and tiring, despite her new-found powers. She wondered if Clark ever got this worn out or if she was just behind on her eating.
She looked around at the inside of the car, mentally calculating the cost of the carpet, the textured walls, the painting on one side, and she decided that this one elevator car had cost more than the Kents’ home was worth, barn and chicken coop included.
The disparity struck her. She was contemplating something long-term, if not permanent, with a man who lived in this environment all the time. Her tastes didn’t run to the opera and the ballet, or the high-toned cocktail party where everyone plastered on plastic smiles and made the odd (or sometimes the illegal) deal, or to the elegant dinner parties she knew Lex sometimes hosted for the Metropolis upper crust.
Despite her ease in moving through such a rarified atmosphere, her preference was pizza or Chinese or a simple hamburger, accompanied by a dollar movie or a video rental, and followed by a walk through the park or down by the lake. She wondered if Lex liked to do those things too, and then she considered that he might not do them because of security risks.
Maybe she could go out with ‘Alex Winfield’ again sometime soon. That had been fun. As long as it didn’t cause problems for him.
As she passed the eighty-seventh floor, she wondered what Lex was doing at Thanksgiving, and beyond that, at Christmas. She knew he didn’t have any close family in the city, and he certainly wouldn’t invite his ex-wife to a holiday celebration, so maybe the two of them could forge some pleasant memories together for the benefit of both.
Thanksgiving and Christmas weren’t pleasant times for Lois, but it wasn’t because she disliked the holiday season, it was because her strongest memories of such holidays were of her family either fighting or behaving in a cold and distant manner. Her parents’ battles were the stuff of legend, and when she’d seen the movie “The Lion In Winter” starring Richard Harris and Katharine Hepburn, she’d turned off the TV during one of their early verbal sparring matches. The feelings the scene produced in her heart were too close to the feelings produced by Sam and Ellen Lane’s own battles.
She forced the memory away as the doors whooshed open. Lex was standing beside a wooden-topped table with folding legs, not unlike those in a school cafeteria. He wore an impeccably fitted light brown business suit, but his tie was pulled down and his collar button was undone. Asabi stood beside him, wearing his usual traditional Indian garb and a knowing smile on his face.
Lois stared slack-jawed at the feast spread out on the table. Instead of the formal-style dinner she’d been expecting, she was greeted by what looked like the entire contents of a private delicatessen, including two pies and a three-layer chocolate cake.
Lex smiled. “Carl called to tell me you were on your way up. He also mentioned that you might be quite hungry.”
She blushed slightly. “Well, yeah, I guess I am.”
“Good!” He pulled out a chair – a padded metal folding chair, of all things – and gestured for her to sit down. “He also said – let me see, how did he put it? Oh, yes, he said you had been ‘blowing and going’ all day and that you were sick and tired of dealing with bureaucrats who didn’t know their elbow from their – ahem – left kneecap. So I decided it would be better – “
Lois laughed aloud as she sat down. “Left kneecap?”
“Well, that’s not an exact quote.” Lex sat in a chair to her left and around the corner of the table. “Carl is from West Texas, and he grew up handling cattle on his uncle’s ranch. He was apparently exposed to a number of colorful euphemisms during his formative years, and he has developed an intense aversion of self-important or deliberately obstructive people in all walks of life. For you, however, I believe he would gleefully take on any number of opponents.”
“Really? He said that?”
“Not in so many words, but his intent was clear. You seem to have a talent for charming my staff.”
“Can’t help it. Blame it on my engaging personality.”
“You certainly have that, my dear, and in spades.”
Lois smiled and accepted the glass of fruit juice Asabi poured for her. “Thank you. Oh, could you pass the wheat bread and sliced cheese and mayonnaise?”
Asabi smiled. “Of course. Would you also care to sample the sliced pickles? We have sweet dills from Texas, unless you would prefer the kosher dills from New Jersey.”
She grinned back. “Next course, I promise. Now, if you don’t mind, I prefer not to talk while I’m eating.”
“Of course, Lois. Asabi and I will remain as silent as church mice.”
“Good.” And she began to pack it in with gusto.
She sensed Lex’s amazement and Asabi’s amusement as she put away enough food to feed a small crew of lumberjacks. As she finished off her fourth tuna salad sandwich and her third piece of cake, she leaned back and sighed. “Thank you, Asabi, that was wonderful! I can’t remember when I’ve eaten so well.”
Asabi chuckled low in his chest. “In that case, Miss Lane, I will endeavor to provide similar quality and quantity each time you visit.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that! Tonight was a special occasion, I promise.”
She hoped it was special, anyway. It wouldn’t do for her to keep eating like that and never gain an ounce. Once again, she sincerely hoped Bob was right about her metabolic shift progressing well.
“I’m glad to hear that,” offered Lex. He shook his head and muttered in Asabi’s ear, “And I thought formal dinner parties were expensive.”
Lois, sensing that she wouldn’t have heard that last comment save for her extended hearing capabilities, ignored it and patted her lips with – to her amazement – a paper napkin. Lex Luthor in full picnic mode, she mused. What a concept.
“Lex, thank you for a delicious and most filling dinner. I doubt I’ll eat anything so tasty for a day or two, at least.”
Asabi stood and began clearing the table. Lex said, “Thank you, Asabi. Lois, unless you’re too tired from your day’s labors, I’d like to invite you to share my balcony for the evening.”
She quirked one eyebrow. “Little cold for that, isn’t it?”
“If I hadn’t lowered the Plexiglas shield, it probably would be, but as it is, we’ll be as toasty warm as a hot dog at a baseball game.” He offered his hand. “My dear?”
She smiled and stood with him. “How can I refuse? I’ve always wondered just how warm hot dogs really were.”
*****
He arranged two chairs side by side and offered to help Lois into one. She smiled and took his hand again, then leaned back into the chair as it reclined to a forty-degree angle. Even with her new-found invulnerability, she could appreciate the comfortable chair.
He sat beside her and leaned back at a similar angle, then reached over and gently took her hand in his and gave her a soft squeeze. “You know, Lois, you gave me a terrible shock.”
She squeezed back. “I’m sorry, Lex. If there had been a way to let you know without possibly tipping off the bomber, we would have, I promise.”
“I know.” He sighed. “It’s just – I know we haven’t known each other for very long, Lois, but I can’t help but feel strongly about you. You have challenged my heart in a way in which no other woman ever has.”
A chilly thrill ran down her spine. What was he saying? What did he mean?
“You know my reputation,” he continued, “how I’ve been seen with and rumored to be connected to dozens of famous women. And, unfortunately, a small number of those reports are true. I have, occasionally, been seen in the company of beautiful women. Even less occasionally, those women have not been merely decorative attachments for public display.” He looked directly into her eyes. “But I can truthfully say that I have never been in the company of any individual woman who was both as beautiful and as intelligent as you.”
Lois tried to ignore the piercing red ‘Flattery Alert!’ warning lights flashing in the back of her mind. “I find it interesting that you make that a joint condition instead of an either-or condition.”
He smiled warmly. “I did have dinner with a woman who shared the Nobel Prize in physics two years ago, and I had lunch with the five finalists for the Miss World competition last year. But the physicist, while quite brilliant on any number of levels, was only moderately attractive and quite unaware of the ‘common’ world around her, while those particular beauty contestants would have had difficulty in spelling the word ‘physics’ if you spotted them the ‘phy-‘ prefix, much less understanding anything about it.”
“Are you sure they weren’t just hiding their brains behind their good looks?”
“If they were, they had forgotten where they had hidden them.”
She laughed. “Surely it wasn’t that bad.”
He rolled his eyes like a teenager. “One of them was asked by another what she thought of Superman. Her answer – and this is an exact quote – was: ‘He’s a great guy because he helps all those little people who can’t help themselves, like when a volcano overflows or something kinda bad like that, and he never sends them a bill.’”
She stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Not in the least. When she finished her statement, the other four actually put down their utensils and applauded her bold and forthright declaration. No, Lois, they were not at all like you. You are at least as brilliant as the scientist, and you are at least as beautiful as any one of those contestants.”
The warmth began somewhere deep inside her and quickly spread to her fingertips and toes. “Thank you. And thank you for allowing me to share this time with you. It means a lot to me.”
He smiled and kissed the back of her hand. “I hoped you would see it that way. Would you care for an after-dinner cocktail?”
Knowing that it couldn’t affect her, she almost said ‘yes,’ but then she thought that her new-found increase in stamina might make Lex suspicious. “No, thank you. In fact, it’s getting late, and I’m very tired, so maybe I’d better go on home tonight.”
He stood and offered his hand. “If you think it best, then I will bid you a reluctant good night.”
He tugged her to her feet but didn’t step back. She looked up into his face and saw desire warring with iron self-control.
He licked his lips. “I – I hope you won’t think me either too forward or too juvenile if I ask your permission to kiss you.”
She smiled and leaned closer. “I don’t think either of those things. And if you did kiss me, I wouldn’t object.”
Their breath intermingled. “No objections?” he murmured.
“None,” she breathed.
Their lips met and melded together. She smelled his aftershave and his cologne and the musky scent of his body – not bad, she thought, not bad at all – and she felt his arms slowly snake around her waist. Then she realized that her arms were making their way around his neck.
And she didn’t try to stop them.
Carl could just wait a little longer.
>>>Wednesday, 7:18 PM
He was nervous again.
But he couldn’t help it.
Rebecca had been very gracious about delaying their dinner until seven-thirty, and that made him nervous because he didn’t know what else she might be thinking about besides preparing dinner. Despite her earlier uncertainty concerning more movie-watching, he had a DVD copy of “The Princess Bride” in one hand – just in case the evening lagged – and a small bouquet of daises in the other. He hoped it would convey both an apology and offer of friendship.
He pressed the doorbell and heard her bouncy “Just a minute!” from inside, then a brief clatter of utensils and the flutter of running feet. Then she opened the door.
The transformation from her earlier appearance was nothing less than startling. She had showered, put on makeup, donned dressy casual clothing, and had arranged her normally unruly hair in a cascade of curls around her face. On another woman the effect might have been a distraction, but on Rebecca it was elegant, almost breathtaking.
She smiled brightly. “Clark! Come on in. Dinner will be ready in a moment.”
The flowers drew her attention. “Oh, Clark, are these for me? Thank you! They’re very nice. Let me put them in some water.” As she hunted for an appropriate display vase, she said, “Just put your jacket on the chair beside the door. It’s my unofficial coat rack.”
“Thanks.” He made a show of looking around the apartment and noted that the table on which the computers the Dangerous Boys had used was now empty. “Nice place you got here.”
She chuckled. “Oh, how droll. Do all the girls think you’re hysterically funny?”
“Just the beautiful redheads.”
She stopped and gazed longingly at him for a moment, then ducked her head and turned towards the kitchen. “Flattery will get you somewhere, Mr. Kent, but maybe not where you want to go.”
“You mean we can’t watch ‘Princess Bride’ from your couch tonight?”
“You brought a movie even after all my waffling?”
“Just in case. We don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.”
She sent an electric smile his way. “Sure, we can put it on after dinner. Just don’t try anything you’re not sure I want you to try.”
Oh, wonderful, he thought, I have to read her mind, too. Never been good at reading the mind of any woman, much less one who thinks she might love me. Even Lana’s mind had been impenetrable at times.
It would behoove him to tread lightly on this night.
He watched her carefully for cues, trying not to be obvious, as Rebecca put the salad on the table beside the breadbasket. “Go ahead and sit down. I’ll get everything ready.”
“Are you sure I can’t help?”
She smiled again. “I’m sure you could, since you already know your way around my kitchen, but tonight I get to feed you. Now sit, please?”
He shrugged in surrender and sat in one of the two chairs remaining at the table. She brought out a heaping platter of fried shrimp and put it on a ceramic trivet between their plates, then filled two glasses with iced tea and put them on the table, followed by the pitcher. “Go ahead and sweeten yours like you want it. I take mine plain with a squeeze of lemon.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
She took off her gloves and put them beside the sink. “Don’t get too full on the shrimp and bread. I have a strawberry cheesecake that’s to die for.” She blinked suddenly and her face lost all animation. “Oh. Stupid, stupid! Clark, I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say.”
He smiled slightly. “It’s okay, Becca, I know what you meant.”
“Good,” she exhaled. She sat quickly before Clark could help her with her chair and smiled at him again. “You start, I’ll follow.”
“Thank you. It all looks delicious.”
She dimpled as she smiled. “I hope it’s as delicious as you look.”
He hesitated and glanced at her, but she turned her attention to her plate and gave him no further clues for the moment.
*****
As they ate, he gave her an outline report of his day, including his and Lois’s reappearance at the Planet and the enthusiastic greeting they’d received. He also gave her a humor-slanted version of the grilling he’d endured from the Federal investigators, who had not accepted his version of Superman’s rescue efforts as easily the Metropolis Police Department had. He exaggerated the posture and mannerisms of one of his questioners – who really had been something of a jerk – to the point where Rebecca’s laughing fit had forced her to leave the table and run to the bathroom to prevent an embarrassment.
When she returned, they finished dinner accompanied by more sedate and mundane conversation, including the current cooling trend in the weather, the city’s plan to put up traffic signal cameras and mail out fines to drivers who violated traffic laws, and how the operating system on Rebecca’s workstation had been ‘upgraded’ recently, causing it to automatically restart whenever she opened more than three windows on her desktop, which made it difficult to perform her job function. But she expected it to be corrected by the time she returned to work the next day.
That statement coincided with the cheesecake and an awkward lull in their conversation. Clark tried to get past it as he finished his dessert. “Hey, this is really good. Very tasty.”
She smiled. “Thank you. It’s not something I eat a lot of, you know.”
He glanced at her figure, then up again at her face. “I can tell.”
She nodded once to acknowledge his compliment. “And this brings us to the end of the meal. You sit there while I clear the table.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.” She gathered the dishes and carried them into the kitchen. “You get comfortable and prepare for some conversation.”
The thought that ‘the condemned ate a hearty meal’ flickered through his mind. “Is this a conversation where I’ll have the chance to plead the fifth?”
She put the uneaten portion of the cheesecake in the refrigerator. “This isn’t a trial, Clark. It’s not even an interrogation. I just want some answers.”
He hesitated. “Do I get to ask some questions, too?”
She refilled their tea glasses, then sat. “Of course. And my rubber hose is locked up in my bedroom closet, I promise.”
He grinned. “Okay. What do you want to know first?”
She looked away and played with her glass for a moment. “There’s a rumor going around the company that Dr. Baines shot Dr. Platt just before the bomb went off. Is that true?”
He frowned. “You can read more about it in the Planet tomorrow morning, but yes, it’s true.”
“Does anyone know why?”
“We don’t know for sure, but we suspect that Dr. Baines was working for someone who was trying to sabotage LexCorp’s work on the shuttle. Jimmy found a Swiss account in her name and a Cayman Islands account in the name of a shell corporation that she owned fully. The Cayman money will probably be seized by the Feds eventually, and hopefully they’ll be able to trace the money transfers back to whoever was giving her instructions, but the Swiss account will be a harder nut to crack.”
“Okay. But why shoot Dr. Platt?”
“The police think she was trying to kill Lois and me and Platt got in her way. Her office wasn’t in that building, and her secretary thought she had a doctor’s appointment. And she doesn’t show up in the visitor’s log. She wasn’t supposed to be there, and unless someone else had seen her, no one else would have known she was there that day.”
“Oh. So, you think she was there just to kill you and Lois?”
“No. Lois and I think the police have it all wrong. We think that she went there that day to kill Platt and just decided to kill us on the spur of the moment. I have no idea how she planned to get out, or what explanation she wanted to use for Platt’s murder.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame, too. Samuel Platt left behind a wife and a wheelchair-bound daughter. The space station was supposed to do research into spinal nerve tissue regeneration, and Amy – the little girl – is a prime candidate for that kind of treatment.”
Rebecca shook her head. “That’s all so – so horrible, Clark. I can’t imagine why anyone would do such things.” She shuddered. “Makes me glad I’m working towards being a marine biologist. Sea creatures don’t do things like that to each other. They only kill so they can eat.”
“Don’t dolphins have a kind of ‘pecking order’ in their groups? I thought they established a hierarchy just like wolves do.”
“Well, yes, but they don’t kill each other! And they certainly don’t blow each other apart en masse!”
He lifted his hands to deflect her verbal thrust. “Easy there, Becca. I only wanted to point out that no class of life form is perfect, not humans and not sea mammals.”
She sat back and crossed her arms. “Sorry,” she said, without sounding all that sorry. “The whole thing just makes me angry.”
“It should make you angry. It makes me angry, too.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “We’re going to find out who did this terrible thing, and we’re going to bring him, her, or them to justice.”
She relaxed her arms but looked away from him. “Why doesn’t Superman find them and just toss them up into outer space? That would take care of the problem pretty permanently.”
He frowned. “Two really big reasons. First off, Superman isn’t an investigator. He responds to emergencies he sees in front of him, but he doesn’t dig up criminals so he can catch them. Second, and probably most important, Superman isn’t a judge, a jury, or an executioner. There’s no way he’d ever deliberately snuff out a life, even if that person is a known murderer. He’d take someone like that to the appropriate authorities, but he’d never kill that someone out of hand.”
She looked back at him. “You feel pretty strongly about this, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca nodded slowly. “I guess I agree with you. If Superman went around whacking suspects, he’d eventually whack an innocent person by mistake.”
“True. Besides, we don’t need any super-powered vigilantes hunting down lawbreakers. People have to regulate society themselves. Superman does not need to do that for us.”
She gazed at him quizzically. “You sound as if you’ve spoken to Superman about this before.”
“I know what he thinks and how he feels about this subject.”
“Hmm. How well do you know Superman?”
“About as well as anyone does, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
She waved her hand airily. “I’m just gathering information about you, Clark. You know, for future reference?”
“Oh.” Her desire for information for ‘future reference’ made him a little uneasy. And it also made him wonder once again just how deep Rebecca’s feelings for him went.
He hoped he could cope with those feelings whenever she decided to make them known to him.
Then she surprised him once again. “Speaking of gathering information, why don’t we look at that movie you brought?”
He blinked. “That was an abrupt change of subject.”
She smiled as she stood and began clearing the table. “You’d better get used to it, Clark. I’m a little unpredictable.”
More like totally random at times, he thought.
But after he thought about it for a moment, he realized it wasn’t a bad kind of random. She was fun to be around.
*****
The closing credits rolled past the screen and Rebecca leaned forward in surprise. “Mark Knopfler did the music for this movie? The same guy who played in Dire Straits?”
Clark nodded. “Yep. That’s him singing the closing song. I think he did a very good job, too.”
She grinned back at him. “He sure did. I still listen to ‘Sultans of Swing’ or ‘Walk of Life’ at least once or twice a week.” She sat back and relaxed, a little closer to Clark than when they’d been watching the movie. “Do you sing or play any instruments?”
He shook his head ruefully. “Sorry, no. My mother got me to sing with the youth choir in our church when I was about fourteen, and after the second rehearsal the director went to my mom and asked if he could find some other way for me to participate in the group that didn’t involve singing.”
She giggled. He looked slightly hurt. She laughed aloud. “I’m sorry, Clark, but that’s really funny!”
A lopsided grin slowly appeared on his face. “Yeah, it is, a little. My dad doesn’t sing much, but my mom is pretty good. Not ‘Broadway professional’ good, mind you, but she used to belt it out with the Smallville Little Theater group when I was a kid.”
Rebecca sighed. “Those sound like nice memories.” She patted his forearm tenderly. “I’m glad you have them. Don’t ever take them for granted, okay? They’re like fresh air to a deep-water diver.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I never thought of it that way, but I can certainly see your point. Good memories can help us get past some really difficult times.”
She stopped patting his arm and squeezed it for a moment, then released her grip. “That’s why I was so blown away when I thought you were dead.” She picked up the remote and muted the soft guitar music still issuing from the television. “We hadn’t had the chance to make many good memories yet, and the thought of never making any with you was just – you’d probably have a better word, but I guess you could say I was totally devastated.”
He pulled a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry. I promise you, I wouldn’t have fooled you like that if we hadn’t thought we had a better chance to catch the bomber if we played dead.”
Still looking at the TV, she asked, “Did it work?”
“No. We didn’t learn anything useful.”
She nodded. “But it was a good try, wasn’t it?”
Clark took her hand in both of his. “Rebecca, please don’t be mad. Yes, it was a good try, one that didn’t work. I’ve tried things before that looked promising but fell through, and I’ve always managed to learn something from the experience. Maybe there’s something we missed, maybe we’ll put some things together later that will help, and maybe we won’t get anything. But we had to try.”
She sighed and turned to meet his gaze. “I know. I understand, Clark, really I do, but I can’t help the way I felt. I know you haven’t exactly declared your undying and eternal love to me, and I don’t expect you to do it now so don’t, but I felt like I’d missed the best part of my life when Mr. Asabi told me you might be dead.”
His mouth opened but no words issued forth. For the first time in recent memory, wordsmith Clark Kent was unable to put his thoughts into speech.
“Oh, nuts.” Rebecca shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt.” She stood and began pacing between the coffee table and the television set. “My mother used to tell me that I was too blunt, that I said things I shouldn’t say, that I run people off because I’m too open or not open enough or because my hair is too red or I’m too short and I try to make up for it by pushing too hard and too fast and – “
Clark stood and captured her shoulders with his hands. “Whoa! I never said you were too blunt. I’m just – I’m not used to being told things like that.”
She sniffed. “Clark, I don’t want to – to push you into something you don’t want or something you aren’t ready for, but I think we could have a future together.” She stepped closer and softly put her hands on his waist. “Do you think we could – we could find that out together?”
He looked down into her sea-green eyes and felt the depth and power hidden there. “Rebecca, I – I don’t want to lead you on or give you some ideas that might not be true.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Her eyes held his gaze in a vise. “I won’t try to hold you against your will, Clark. And I won’t try to guilt you into doing something you don’t want to do.” She blinked and gestured towards the exit with her chin. “There’s the door over there. I’d like for you to stay – in fact I’d really be upset if you left at this moment – but I don’t want to put any pressure on you. Do you want to leave? If you do, I promise I won’t try to stop you.”
He hesitated. He didn’t feel as deeply towards Rebecca as she seemed to feel towards him, but there was something about her that drew him in, an allure that captured his imagination and his attention, and while he knew he could turn and walk away, he didn’t want to. He was tired of being lonely, and she was offering her company with no strings attached.
“No,” he finally answered. “I don’t want to leave.”
A Cheshire smile slowly overwrote whatever had been on her face. “Then let’s sit down and talk some more about ourselves.”
His head tilted and one eyebrow rose. “You want to talk?”
“Of course. Best way I know of to learn is to ask questions and listen to the answers.”
He grinned widely. “Now you sound like a reporter.”
She stepped back to the couch and drew his hands towards her. “I’m a scientist, Mr. Kent, and I have the best research subject I could ever hope to find.”
He stopped for a moment while his father’s warning that someone might want to dissect him like a frog echoed in his head. But then he banished it by telling himself that there was no way Rebecca was threatening him. She was only trying to lighten the mood.
As he sat beside her, she turned serious again. “There is one rule, okay? No discussion of anything permanent between us, at least for a while.”
He nodded cautiously. “Okay, if you say so.”
“I do say so. I sure don’t want you to scare me off at this early point in our relationship.”
