had a look about them that was hard and scary. It could well be that women changed, too, as their life-style was changed, and...
Such thinking was all completely idiotic. She’d been working too hard. Her imagination had never taken control this way, before now. Of course she’d never before deliberately set out to seduce a man.
“Where is your home?” Chas asked.
She blinked once to come back to the reality of being with Chas. “Home? A suitcase. I travel.”
“Oh? And what makes Amy run?”
“I’m in research. Polls.” That wasn’t too far from the truth.
“That must be interesting. What do you ask?”
“Depends on what we’re researching.”
“House to house?” he inquired.
“That, too, depends on what we’re researching.”
“Phone banks? Boiler-room surveys?”
“Even that sometimes.” Her reply was also true.
“What is your firm?”
“Freelance.” She had to smile at his effort to pin her down. He probably would never fully know how adroit she had been in replying. Too bad. He would appreciate the game.
Now, how did she know he’d appreciate her intrusive game? If he knew she was being tricky, it would more than likely make him mad. Men didn’t like being fooled.
But what he liked didn’t matter. It was what she liked or wanted that mattered. And she could well decide to want Charles Cougar. Cougar. Men were supposed to walk like cats. He walked like a hunter of cats.
They separated to change into dry clothing and met in the glassed corner of her floor’s discreet nook of chairs and tables. He rose as she came around the corner to him, and he suggested, “Why don’t we go up on sixth and meet the others?”
“Others? There’re more of you?”
“Oh, yes. And not all of us could come. So there are even more of your newfound family for you to meet another time.”
He said “another time” so casually, as if there could be a future for them. “How many of you are there?”
“They all have kids so fast we ought to be called rabbits instead of cougars. I don’t know what the latest count could be. We’ll see if anyone on sixth knows. Come on. They’re dying to talk to you. And of course you’ll go to the wedding. Will you need a gown?”
She shook her head. He went on, “Some of the pools are heated. We might swim later, before supper. We’re on our own tonight. Do you play chess?” He gestured to the waist-high chess pieces on the clever brick board sitting idle in the soft rain.
Again she shook her head.
“Well, how about putting? When the rain stops, we can do that?”
She nodded. She’d been a runner up in a golf competition at their club during the summer she was twenty. She could handle golf.
He was telling her, “Tomorrow night’s the bachelor’s dinner in the main dining room. Everybody goes to the dinner. That’ll be fun. You’ll learn a lot about the family skeletons there. Tad’s family are nice people. You’ll have a good time.”
They were inviting the fox right into the chicken house? She smiled in a foxy way. It would be an experience. What a story this would make when she next saw her best friend Elsie! Elsie would say, “You did what? I don’t believe it.”
But Elsie knew Amy didn’t have enough imagination to make up this impulsive madness. Elsie would have to believe it. Or...would she ever tell Elsie? She’d have to wait and see how it all turned out.
They went up to the sixth floor where the wing’s whole series of suites were opened together, taken over by the Cougar Clan. Chas and Amy went from suite to suite and were welcomed with laughter and chatter. Amy kept saying, “I may not be any kin at all!” The truth can be said so that one is safely misunderstood and accepted. How strange that was.
“If you aren’t, we’ll adopt you,” Matt announced, and Connie gave Amy a rather cool look.
So Matt was a flirt? Connie was jealous? Would Connie finally move in with Matt just to keep him? Ah, What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! How unknowingly we influence other lives. Would her bold intrusion cause Connie to do something rash? Would she do something she wouldn’t ordinarily have done?
The Cougars accepted Amy. That unquestioning acceptance made her a little uncomfortable. And Chas stayed close. He would say, “I’ll tell her about it and see to it she gets there.” And that easily, Chas established them as a pair.
Did women fall into men’s laps this readily? Did men simply decide who they wanted and then just wait for it to happen? It was amazing! No wonder men were womenizers. There was no sweat to it at all.
Chas, the catch of the entire clan, was hers! And it was he who’d paired them off. After this, she should be able to get him into bed in two days at least. By Saturday. Right on schedule.
The clan all had lunch together, still talking. The clouds broke, the sun came out, the sand absorbed the rain and dried on top.
The wedding dresses arrived, and some of the women went to try on the dresses. Tad was teased about whether or not he had the ring or had ordered the flowers. He was tolerant. For Amy, it was like really being a member of a large clan. It was nice.
After lunch, Chas pulled Amy to her feet and said they were leaving. They made their goodbyes and went back out into the bright afternoon. They strolled through the marvelous myriad latticed walkways, around and over and throughout the complex, through the open and sometimes on hidden, secret stairs.
As they chatted quite casually, Chas said, “Since you’re a cousin, I wonder if you’d volunteer to help out the family. My cou— our cousin Robert and his family, with four kids, haven’t a reservation.”
Chas explained in an aside, “The eldest didn’t have chicken pox after all. If you wouldn’t mind, I could bunk with you, and they could have my place.” Chas’s face was bland and logical.
He elaborated, “If we can’t double up enough, they’ll have to stay at another hotel, and they’ll miss half of the fun. I can give them my suite, but I don’t want to move away from the hotel, either. How about letting me sleep on your living room couch?”
Now that was fast! In the space of a couple of hours, she’d not only been accepted as a cousin into their clan, but now Chas was using “family connections” to move into her suite. Good grief!
Amy’s mouth fell open and she gasped. Then as her blue eyes hit his very green, very steady watching eyes, she thought: In this situation, a man would jump at the chance! Really? This wasn’t... She hadn’t planned... This was really very fast. She said, “Uh...”
“We’re cousins,” he reminded her mildly. “It would be okay.”
“Well...
