Free The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) by John R. Maxim

soon as possible. By their second date, she'd allowed herself to imagine what he might be like. By the end of their fifth date, alone in her bed, she found herself fantasizing about him. He was great. Terrific. In her fantasies he was warm, funny, affectionate, patient, con siderate and excruciatingly sexy. In real life he was all these things as well, except that at the end of each evening he would glance at his watch and suggest, as her father did, that she'd better get some sleep.
     
“Paul, can I ask you something?” They'd been seeing each other for five weeks. It was now her second week end with him in Westport. Except she didn't stay with him in Westport. He had this perfectly lovely condo minium at Beachside Common—they were there now, with a fire going, the threat of snow outside, what could be more romantic?—but he'd always take her back to Allie's for the night.
     
“Beg pardon?” He was in the kitchen, mixing a pitcher of hot spiced wine and setting out cheeses.
     
“I want to ask you something.”
     
“Sure.” He came in, setting the refreshments on the rug by the fire.
     
“Are we friends?”
     
“I hope so.”
     
“Pals?”
     
“Absolutely.”
     
“Just two really good buddies, right?”
     
“Uh-oh.”
     
''Uh-oh, what?”
     
“I think I'm about to get hammered for not trying to make love with you.”
     
“Never crossed my mind. But now that you bring it up. . . .”
     
“Susan,” he squeezed one eye shut and looked at the ceiling with the other as if he hoped to find the appro priate response written there. “How about . . . I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you at the garage sale, which is the truth, and that I've dreamt about it every day since, which is also the truth.”
     
“How was I? Any good?”
     
“Susan. . . .”
     
“Sorry.”
     
“I suppose I've been waiting for the right moment. I guess I didn't want to blow it by moving too quickly.”
     
    “Oh.” The old right moment. Most men, she thought, would probably feel that ta k ing a woman out to dinner, then a show or gallery, then some late-night dancing and getting her mildly blitzed would tend to set up the right moment. They'd danced long enough, slow enough and close enough for her to conclude there was plenty of interest down there and for him to con clude that she was probably not a transvestite.
     
“Want to know what the perfect moment would be?” he asked. “Not that I'd want to wait that long.”
     
“Halftime during the Super B owl?”
     
“Are you going to be a smart aleck or do you want me to tell you?”
     
“Tell me. Not that I'm eager, of course. I know it can be a mistake to rush into these things. If, for instance, you'd dropped your pants when I first saw you at that garage sale. . . .”
     
“Susan, love. . . .”
     
”. . . I guess I would have thought you were the pushy type and I. . . .”
     
    “Okay,” he folded his arms, “I won't tell you. I'll just go ahead and do it with Pia Zadora like I planned all along.”
     
    “I'll shut up now.” She clapped a hand over her mouth.
     
    He poured the wine and handed her a glass. “The perfect moment is about six weeks from today.”
     
     

 
     
Paul smiled at a barely audible “Oh, shit” coming through Susan's fingers.
     
    “The time,” he continued, “is about midnight next January ninth. The place is in a private compartment aboard the Orient Express somewhere between Paris and Zurich.’’
     
Susan's eyes went blank. Her hand fell away.
     
“I'm in black tie,” he went on, pausing overlong to sip his wine, “and you're wearing an evening dress; black, low cut, it barely covers you from the waist up. You're probably wearing some kind of flapper headband with feathers in it because we'll have just left a dining car that looks exactly the way it did in 1928. . . . No, that's not right.”
     
“No?” Perhaps she said “Oh?” Her mouth hung slack and open.
     
“No, because right after