Free Blue Desire by Sindra van Yssel Page A

Brett again. She wanted to sleep next to someone big and
strong, and going to his home after midnight she doubted he’d insist on taking
her home. She didn’t think Angus would try to find her in her hotel room, but
she knew if she was there alone, she’d lie awake thinking about it. He wasn’t
stupid, nor was he easy to predict. He wouldn’t want to get arrested for
anything serious, although music could be a crazy business, and even bad
publicity could be good for sales. Heck, it would probably help get the word
out that she’d gone solo if she had a big public confrontation with him. What happened
in the Caravan Club would probably work to her advantage. The next meeting
might not. It could get out of control so easily.
    He
glanced at her curiously, and she expected him to ask what she was thinking or
offer her a penny to share. He didn’t. Usually men were more nervous about
where they stood, and if she got lost in thought, they started wondering if
something was wrong. It was a nice change to be with someone more confident,
she supposed, but it started making her wonder if something was wrong.
    He
parked on the street in front of a row of brick town houses after driving a few
minutes. “Where is this?” she asked. It was time she started to get to know the
area, and this seemed pretty nice for the middle of the city. Some of the
buildings were old, but there wasn’t the feeling of incipient violence she got
when she looked out of her hotel room late at night.
    “It’s
called Kalorama Triangle.”
    “Pretty name.” She looked about. “It doesn’t even
look like we’re in DC anymore.”
    He
nodded. “We’re very much in DC, but this area was developed before the city as
such got out here, so it’s not on the same grid plan as everything else. Over
that way”—he pointed down the street, but which street it was Kat didn’t
know—“are some very rich people indeed, and big houses with lawns that would
look at home in suburbia. Go the other way, and you’d get a mile before the
neighborhoods get decidedly dicey. But right here it’s what I guess you’d call
middle class. I’d rather have a small apartment here than a house in the ’burbs,
so I do.”
    His
apartment was in a four-story old town house, and they had to climb three
flights of stairs in a narrow dark stairway to get to it. She’d been wearing
the boots too long, and the heels were starting to get to her, but walking up
was better than walking down. There were two nondescript doors at the landing,
one labeled 41 and the other 42. He unlocked 42 and let her in.
    “ Life, the Universe and Everything ,” she
murmured, as she walked into the apartment. He wasn’t lying about small, but it
was bigger than her hotel room. The kitchen was open to the living area, and
she could see a single bedroom off that through an open sliding door. On the
table in the living room there was a sewing machine, bolts of colorful fabric,
and bits of shiny metal. There was a table for two near the kitchen that she
presumed was used for eating.
    “Douglas
Adams,” he said. “You read much science fiction?”
    She
smiled. “Yeah. You?” She
looked about for a bookshelf, but there wasn’t one.
    “Yep. Mostly the classics.”
    “Where
are your books?”
    He
pointed to a leather-clad e-book reader, which sat on top of a couple of
library books. “Used to have two bookshelves full, but they took up a lot of
space. So I donated them all to the library book sale and bought electronic
copies of most of my favorites.”
    We seem to have some
things in common .
But that pleasant thought only reminded her of what was nagging her since she’d
seen him in the club. “Why were you at my concert?”
    “When
I saw the ad in the paper, it clicked with me where I’d seen you before. On a CD cover.”
    So it wasn’t just a
line, after all, when he said he’d seen me around before . She didn’t think of
herself as a person who jumped to conclusions, but it seemed