Chapter 31
"You are so beautiful," he whispered huskily just before he captured her lips again. A million years later, he pulled reluctantly away from her.
"We better get back to the party," it was hard to force the words from his lips, but aside from wanting to treat this exquisite girl respectfully, both his parents were bound to notice him missing. It would be beyond embarrassing to be caught here, in the semidarkness of Mr. Wheeler's study, wrapped in each others arms.... whoa. Taking a firmer grip on his hormones, Bob sat up and Amelia did too. Even in the dim light he could see her smile.
Relieved that he had apparently not gone too far, (just heavy kissing) he couldn't resist placing one final kiss on that dimple to the right of her mouth. One thing led to another and they were engrossed in one another again until they heard footsteps approach the door to Mr. Wheeler's study. They both tensed, but the footsteps continued past. Probably a good thing, too.
They had been cozily reclining on the big leather couch, but Amelia now sat up and laughed a little shakily. "Bob, that was, um, great, but, I guess we should talk." She covered her eyes and continued, "This is so embarrassing to say, I mean," she laughed self consciously, "it's probably obvious, but um, I've never really done this kind of thing before, I mean, I've never, um.... her voice trailed off and she suddenly looked unhappy.
Comprehension dawned on Bob. "Oh! Me neither!" he assured her hastily, his voice way too loud, and he lowered it and continued. "Me neither. I mean, I've never met a girl like you before, Amelia, and, um, well, I've dated of course, but, well, you know my parents they, you know, I wouldn't because, it has to be... right, they made sure I knew not to... Not that it’s just them! I mean I respect you as much as I lo- Oh my God." His stammering gibberish faded away into a moan of embarrassment and he clutched his hair, then risked a look at her.
Her eyes were soft and solemn and she lightly caressed his cheek. Apparently she liked gibberish. "I thought I was the only eighteen year old in the world who hadn't, um..."
Finding his voice he croaked "Me too. It's not that I don't want to, I mean, WOW!"
"Oh no, me neither, I mean me too, I mean, just not..." she agreed. At least he thought she was agreeing....
He groped for the right words. " Right, just not...I guess I'm enjoying getting to know you. I'm enjoying the romance." She was suddenly smiling at him and he smiled back. United in mutual ignorance and confusion they were comfortably silent as he settled her more comfortably in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder.
After a while Amelia said dreamily, "Speaking of romance, I saw Trixie's ring, it is so beautiful. Is she engaged to Jim? That's great!"
Trixie engaged? That thought broke the mood. Bob hooted at the very thought. Amelia rubbed her ear in mock reproach. "I take it they are not engaged. You could have just said they were good friends, Bob, I kind of need my ear drums."
"Oh sorry, Amelia, it just sounded so funny." Bob couldn't help tweaking Amelia's ear but he explained, "Jim gave that ring to Trixie when they were kids. Remember I told you about how he ran away from his rotten stepfather and she saved him and all that? Well he was so grateful, he gave her that ring. She wears it every now and then, like at Christmas and stuff, but it's not an engagement ring." He laughed and added, "Jim is like a brother to us Beldens!"
"Well, what's the big announcement then? I thought they were going to announce they are getting married."
"Stop saying that," Bob chortled, "Trixie Frayne, what a crackup! The big announcement is way better. Trixie is going to join Honey's agency. I just knew it! It is so cool! You should have seen her the other day! She may be my sister, but she was still, like, amazing, she totally saved Tempest's life. Being a detective is what she intended all along. " His enthusiasm suddenly faded as he suddenly remembered something Tempest had said while he was half-conscious. "That's weird," he muttered.
Amelia was talking..."Bob? Bob! You still haven't told me exactly what happened with Julie. The news reports are just saying that she was threatening people with a gun, but I bet it was more than that. But it was two days ago and my own boyfriend hasn't even told me the real story!"
"Well you know how it is, when you have to give a statement to the police, it's pretty time consuming." He spoke in his most important voice, but he was trying to buy a little time while he figured out what exactly to say. He'd kind of like to see what Amelia thought, but maybe it was too private.
Amelia, teasingly impatient, picked up a small pillow and hit him on the head with it, "Come on Bob, give me the scoop and while you're at it, give me some credit, I said all along Julie was in on it."
"Hey! I do give you credit, and Jerry too! It's just that, well, it was kind of creepy, what happened." He bonked her on the head with matching pillow rather half heartedly.
Amelia looked puzzled, then concerned and she kissed his cheek gently. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
She was so sweet, so understanding, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. What did he ever do to deserve her? He looked at her dreamily and said, "Well, thanks. It was kind of.... I don't know, it is hard to talk about in a way..." Could Tempest have really have meant...
He sighed and looked up. Amelia's eyes were glowing with a strange light. Was it ... did he dare say it to himself, was it love? He leaned forward and the pillow smacked him hard against his face.
"Ow!" he yelled, surprised. "That hurt!"
"What are you talking about?" Amelia punctuated her speech with more blows from the pillow. "After all my worry about you," (whack!)"After what could have happened to you" (Thud!)"And you won't even tell me about it? I am dying here for information!" Wow, her voice could sure get shrill he noted, absorbed in dodging the pillow, which was adorned with a very big, very hard button right in the middle. The button smacked him in the nose and he sneezed suddenly.
"Quit it!" he growled.
"Tell me, Bob or I will tell your sister you are a chauvinist trying to protect the little woman!" She was still whacking him with the pillow, half laughing, but he could see tears glistening on her cheeks and felt torn when she said passionately, "Don't you know how scary it was to realize you were in there with some crazy person with a gun? You could have been killed!"
He took the pillow from her, kissed the tears away and whispered, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd been so worried. I'm sorry, I'll tell you everything" he assured her, telling himself that he was probably imagining things about Tempest.
"Oh my God, Bob I'm the one who is sorry, what got into me?" she exclaimed, shakily
Love, Bob's mind shouted, but he wisely kept that thought to himself, as she said, "You don't have to tell me anything. Honest."
"It's OK, Amelia. It's not any deep trauma, just, well, creepy. Julie was really creepy."
He swallowed. Pushing the memory of Julie's laughter out of his mind, and reminding himself to avoid the dramatics, he said slowly, "It's kind of complicated. See, at the same time Trixie and I found some evidence that Julie was the one who threw the ink on the ice, Ed was getting some weird phone messages about Tempest. When we realized he'd been lured to the rink by Julie, I was in a total panic, so was Ed." He shook his head, embarrassed, then brightened.
"But, man, you should see Trixie in action! She was totally barking out the orders, phoning Honey to get to Skate Connection, driving there like a stunt woman, herself! We got there in, like, two seconds! You know about the power outage at the rink, that was coincidence from a car hitting an electric pole, but I guess with everyone leaving, Julie saw her opportunity. So, when we went looking for Tempest, we found them out on the ice and Julie had a gun."
He looked down at Amelia, now back in his arms, and thanked his lucky stars that she hadn't been there. She looked back at him solemnly. This was not Bob's usual expository style. She put her hand on his. "Bob?"
He took a steadying breath, "Well, Ed went off to call the cops. Must have been awful for the guy to stay out of sight but he just had to. So, me and Trixie were going to try and keep Tempest from getting shot. Tempest was pretty smart, never lost his cool for a minute, kept her talking. Trixie sent me crawling around behind the boards to try and reach Tempest from the other side of the rink."
"Now this is where it gets confusing. At the ice show, Guy had put special effects things on the lights that were supposed to make it look like the lights were smoking and the place was on fire. But Julie rigged the light near Tempest to actually explode." He shivered and held Amelia a little closer.
"But why?" Amelia burst out, "Why did she want to hurt us?"
He could feel her trembling and he held her closer. "It wasn't you, it was never you. She had a grudge against Ed Duggat from way back, and well, she had this idea she could get back at him through Tempest. When she found out about Marge and Guy's plot, she went along with it to cover her own tracks." Amelia did not look noticeably reassured, but Bob rushed on,
"When Trixie realized Julie was involved, she figured if Guy had been telling the truth, the special effects things were still there and they were, so she turned some of them on for a diversion and literally created a smoke screen. We couldn't get to him any other way, Julie had the gun about three inches from his knee, she wanted to cripple him."
Amelia gasped, her eyes horrified. He held her closer, "I know, I know, and she kept laughing the whole time, you see why it was so creepy? Tempest has really downplayed it, but it must have been a nightmare. Anyway we couldn't tackle her without that gun going off, that's why Trixie turned on the special effects. It was pretty misty, before Julie noticed, so Trixie just walked across the ice." He shook his head, he would never forget how fierce his sister had looked."And when Julie finally noticed the mist, she let the gun drop just enough for Tempest to knock her over. As soon as she fell, I jumped over the boards to grab Tempest while Trixie tried to get the gun away from Julie, just like we planned. There's mist all over and we can barely see and all of the sudden, Tempest picks me up and tosses me over the boards!" He demonstrated, leaping up and diving over the back of the couch, making it funny, making her laugh, but the more he thought about what Tempest said, the more he was convinced.
Tempest had fallen hard on the cement (that's how he broke his nose) but he had held Bob down in an iron grip while the bullet splintered the boards only a foot or two above their heads, then suddenly went limp. Bob had been terrified that he'd been shot. Apparently he was just dazed and he must have thought Bob was Trixie and he'd spoken almost dreamily.
Bob had been too frantic about Trixie for the words to really register till now. He lay on his back behind the couch staring up at the ceiling of Mr. Wheeler's study. Amelia's head popped into sight, leaning over the back of the couch staring down at him.
"Well," she exclaimed, "Why did he do that? And is that when Trixie get the gun away from her?"
Bob propped head on elbow, and started to say “Not yet...” then they both gasped as they heard the door to the study open, and Mrs. Korbes' voice spoke, "So here you are Amelia! What on earth are you doing? Come and join the party!"
Amelia's long hair slapped the back of the couch as she turned to the door. "Oh, Mrs. Korbes, um, I'll be right there."
Mrs. Korbes must have approached the couch as her voice, softly scolding, got closer, "Now dear, you come right now, Mrs. Wheeler has been looking all over to compliment you on your skating. What are you doing in here, anyway?"
Their voices faded and the door closed quietly. Bob sat up. The room seemed oddly empty without Amelia’s bright presence. He breathed a sigh of relief that Mrs. Korbes hadn’t come in five minutes sooner. She was a nice lady, but Bob was not sure she would have understood. She was pretty old, kids probably didn’t make out when she was a girl. He stretched out his legs, and still sitting on the floor behind the couch, put his hands behind his head and waited. It would be pretty obvious what they had been doing if he popped out of the study two seconds after Amelia.
He frowned. If Tempest called Trixie his “Unintended” did that mean he was, well, fond of Trixie? His mind shied away from the thought of Trixie in a romantic relationship, but Tempest was really nice, on the other hand. Bob decided that he would have no objection if Tempest wanted to date Trixie. With that magnanimous decision, he rose to join the party. As he stood, he caught sight of himself in the large gilt mirror over the fireplace and paused. Was that lipstick on his face? A lot of it! Oh geez. He looked around for some Kleenex tissues in vain. He’d have to use his shirt. He pulled it over his head and turned it inside out. Good thing it was black. As he scrubbed at the mark on his cheek with his shirt, the door knob turned. Embarrassed, he dropped back down behind the couch.
“Go away, go away, go away” he thought, but instead he could see in the mirror Tempest enter the study. He picked up a dufflebag and rummaged in it a moment. In the mirror, Bob could see that although Tempest was smiling, he did not look especially happy as he pulled out what looked like a tattered blue girl’s sweater. Tempest hastily shoved it back in his duffle and pulled out a blue flannel shirt. He turned to the door and Bob breathed a little more easily, and then had to stifle a groan as the door opened and Trixie’s voice floated in, “So here you are, I’ve been looking for you!”To Be Continued