Free Rendezvous with Hymera by Melinda De Ross Page B

cupboards and pantry.”
    Clara punched him lightly in the shoulder, roaring with laughter.
    “Are you kidding me?!”
    “Nope,” he replied soberly. “Mrs. Grey is annoying, persistent and completely nuts. A lethal combination. Unfortunately, not to her,” he added dryly, provoking another giggling fit. “But poor Mr. Grey could have certified that.”
    Chuckling with amusement, they made their way through the crowded parking lot.
    “What do we do now?” she asked, after settling comfortably on the passenger seat, which she always left down in the back, like a sun lounger.
    To her great surprise, for the first time since she knew him, a shadow of uncertainty passed over his handsome features.
    He moved his fingers on his chin, covered with tiny dark spikes that had emerged in the twenty-four hours he hadn’t shaved. Clara had noticed that this gesture marked a state of reflection or nervousness. She said, “As long as we’re in... detecting partnership, I think we should stick together as much as possible. I mean... I don’t have anything against your spending a few days with me at the cottage.”
    Then, crossed by a thought, she added quickly:
    “Of course, that is…if you don’t have other plans or...”
    She left the phrase hanging, not wanting to resemble a stressful, nagging female, who tried to mess with his business or constrain him with a possessive and unsure attitude.
    However, Colin took her hand into his and she saw the charming humor coming back into his eyes.
    “How is it that you can read my mind?” he demanded.
    Although the question was probably rhetorical , Clara answered, very serious:
    “Telepathy. Or so my father says. Ever since I was a kid, I had moments when I could know, actually intuit, what someone thought.
    Generally, only persons close to me. This capacity amplified after I started practicing yoga.”
    He listened alert and somewhat intrigued.
    “Yoga? You mean things with meditations, levitations, strange postures and other stuff?” he asked mystified. “Is that why you have such mobility and energy?” he continued, on an insinuating, evocative tone.
    Clara laughed, frankly amused.
    “Hardly... I haven’t reached the levitation level, only very high masters reach those performances. I only practice Hatha Yoga and Pranayama. Those are the first steps, some postures and breathing exercises, which help maintain the physical and mental health, the interior equilibrium, so to speak.”
    Colin was watching her fascinated. Eventually, he said:
    “You’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever met, a labyrinth in which I always discover new corridors.”
    “And you are a poet, a magician of the metaphor,” she replied, smiling.
    “If there’s anybody magic here, it’s you, princess! Speaking of poetry,” he resumed, starting the engine and slowly blending in the twilight’s heavy traffic, “I read something this morning. Two gorgeous stanzas, the author of which I presume you to be. I know it was wrong of me to trespass on your privacy. I only wanted to see what time it was, but a folder caught my attention and I opened it.”
    He thought about the infinite nostalgia that transpired from those verses, at the hopelessness encrypted in words.
    “They were the most beautiful verses I’ve ever read,” he went on, “but... why were you so sad when you wrote them?”
    Her belated response seemed to come from another universe, not from the ordinary reality in which he was driving the car on streets where darkness was now banished by hundreds of lights coming from windows, street lamps, illuminated stores and chased headlights hurrying to be lost in the night.
    “I don’t like talking about this, in fact it’s a somber-boring story I’ve repeated dozens of times.”
    Clara was speaking in a slow voice, almost impersonally, gazing through the windshield. With a heavy resigned sigh, she continued:
    “As you probably know, ever since high school I was seriously coquetting