no. I just...” But she couldn’t think what she just. He was going to move into her suite— just like that! If he did move in, it would make the maximum opportunity syndrome very maximum, all right.
She couldn’t get her conscience-stricken vocal chords to do anything. But with some concentration she got her head to go up and down— once each way.
He accepted that lame movement as agreement and said, “Robert and Jean will be so glad. This way, in my suite, they can close the door on the kids and have the living room sofa bed all to themselves and not have all of them jammed together into one room. That’s restrictive for couples with kids.” He added that thoughtfully.
He still held her hand as they walked along. She’d met him about— what— five hours ago? And here they were, walking along, holding hands. He’d already kissed her within the first minute, and now he was going to move into her suite.
Her seduction was really going along very quickly. She ought to be jubilant with things working out so well. But instead, she felt rather as if she’d stepped on a merry-go-round and was having a little trouble balancing to its speed as it carried her around quite madly.
He said with quick efficiency, “I’ll just run upstairs and nab Robert to tell him the good news, and I’ll be down to your suite with my things in about five minutes. If we go by your place, you can let me have your lock card and wait for me there.”
So that’s what Amy found herself doing. They took the garage elevator up to the third floor and walked around the deck to her place. She unlocked her door, handed him the card and he left.
Bemused, she wandered on through the bedroom, down the bath hall and stood in the living room. She was feeling as if she’d just now stepped off that merry-go-round and was unsure which direction she was supposed to go.
It did occur to her then that surely some of Chas’s clansmen had an extra bed. But if she was intent on seducing Chas, this certainly presented a remarkable opportunity. Another handy opportunity.
She had snatched the first one, and now here she was, that much closer to her goal. Any man would be dancing and grinning and exuberant!
Her prize was at hand! And there she stood, wide-eyed and astonished. It would begin. So easily! Actually, it had started. How would it end?
Her deck door opened, and Chas busily wheeled in a double-ended hanger luggage cart. He efficiently emptied it as she simply stood there and watched, with her arms hanging from her shoulders.
He put things in the bath, in the bedroom closet and in the vacant bottom drawer. He added things to the refrigerator. He was moving in.
He smiled, gorgeously. “We’ll have to go down to re-register me with you. I’ll split the bill. No long-distance calls without my okay. Know anyone in China? India?”
Very seriously, she shook her head.
“Peru?” He was being funny and enjoying it.
But he was also laying down rules. She understood that. He was. It was her suite, and he was laying down the rules.
Well, that was good. There had to be some ground rules if they were going to share the suite. He in the living room, and she in the bedroom.
Three
Chas and Amy went back up to the sixth floor to find out if there were any specific clan plans, which they might want to consider. They found a rather organized chaos. Some of the kin were planning to fish in the Gulf the next morning, and some were driving over to Disney World.
And as they moved around, they encountered another cousin, Kenneth Cougar, who was promising Sally he would be back the next night for the bachelor’s party.
“Leaving us, Ken?” Chas asked.
“Just a quick trip.” Ken named the city. “I have to see a rising kingpin, Martin Durwood, and this is a good opportunity.”
“Martin Durwood?” Amy found herself asking.
“Yes. Know him?”
To leave the festivities, the meeting with Martin Durwood would have to be important to Ken, her new “cousin.” Amy replied, “Yes.” Then she inquired carefully, “Do you know him?”
“No. Not really.” Ken gave her a steady, measuring glance.
She cautioned, “Be careful.”
Both men focused on Amy almost as if they had opened second eyelids, their gazes were so intent and piercing. Ken asked, “Why?”
Chas asked, “How do you know Martin Durwood?”
Tellingly, she replied to Chas first, “A...survey.” She frowned a little at Ken. “What I have is privileged. Just be careful.”
“You don’t like him.”
“There’s a saying. Let’s see. Yes, ‘If you shake hands with him, count your fingers.’”
“Oh?” said Ken. He lifted his head a little, intensely alert. Then he lowered it as he pushed up his lower lip and nodded several very small movements.
Chas then told Ken, “Listen to her.”
And Ken smiled at Amy. “Thanks, cousin. I’ll let you know tomorrow night what I find out.” He gave Amy a rather formal nod with a warm smile. As he left, Ken clapped Chas on his shoulder and quite cheerfully said, “You lucky bastard.”
And for some reason, Chas laughed.
It was just as Elsie always said: Men are different.
It was amazing for Amy to be absorbed into the wider group of strange people and accepted by them as one of them, without any effort on her part. Again she understood it was Chas who had maneuvered the phenomenon. So it was their trust in Chas that was involved. He had accepted her, therefore the rest did.
* * *
The most startling thing was how freely they spoke of the most intimate things. As Amy had thought once before, in listening to them in the elevator, they were fortunate she wasn’t from a gossip magazine.
As sometimes happens in a crowd, a quiet fell, and one conversation suddenly became general. A cousin was saying, “Well, after that they couldn’t allow her to be buried in the family plot. She’s off to one side, at the edge of the cemetery.”
“Who?” someone asked.
Another cousin hastened to assure them, “She wasn’t an in-law. That would account for several who never made the family plot, but Letty was a Cougar. Letty Cougar Milstone Wiggins LaCross Bernard. Those are the ones she married.”
“It wasn’t her interest in men that shocked everyone,” a female cousin said in a fact-keeping way.
“No. You’re right,” agreed another cousin. “The Cougars have always had a strong attraction for the opposite sex.”
That caused a good, indulgent
