Flushed by Sally Felt Read Free Book Online Page B

turned to see how the
punks had taken his improv wall dance, it wasn’t only kids watching. A vision
dressed like a film star from the forties stared at him. Even with her hair
hidden under a sleek little hat, there was no mistaking the sexy flush on the
face beneath. Isabelle Caine had come to Wall Werx.
    “Isabelle,” he said, unable to think.
    By her side, a kid wearing a Texas Aggies t-shirt and braces
on his teeth said, “This lady was looking for Damon.”
    “Thanks, Cameron,” Kim said, remembering the kid’s name from
a past climbing basics class. He waved the others off. “As you were,” he said,
“nothing to see here,” which was far from true.
    Isabelle’s old-fashioned suit was the color of fertile,
Midwest river-bottom soil and followed every delicious curve of her. The jacket
buttoned to a low V-neckline she wore nothing beneath, showing plenty of creamy
skin, though the suit was perfectly decent, even downright modest compared with
what Shawna and Jules and other female climbers wore.
    She was definitely not the average climber. She was a
bombshell from another era. The hat centered his attention on her face,
especially her mouth. He’d thought about that mouth a lot last night in all the
hours he hadn’t slept.
    He stepped nearer so he wouldn’t have to shout to be heard
over the music. He was keenly aware of the perspiration gluing his shirt to his
skin. He hoped he didn’t stink. “What a surprise,” he said to her. But she
wasn’t looking at him. She was looking around. She was looking up. She was
looking paler with every moment.
    “How high is it?” she asked. Her throat worked as if she
struggled to swallow a large pebble.
    “Fifty feet. Actually fifty-one and four inches. We’ve got a
full sixteen inches of concrete, topped with cushion, so every anchor is
bombproof. Do you climb?”
    “Up? Up there? Oh my, no,” she said.
    “I hope you’ll decide to change that.”
    She was lovely. In Kim’s experience, women generally had one
part of the day that suited them best. Isabelle Caine had been a warmly sexy
candlelit woman. Now he saw she became a translucent-skinned beauty in the
building’s combination of fluorescent boxes and natural sky-lit afternoon. He
wondered if she might be a morning troll, if only out of fairness to the rest of
womankind.
    “Ms. Caine?”
    Her eyes tracked to his voice, but they didn’t seem to focus
on him. There was something wrong. Her throat still worked at that pebble.
    “Come sit down,” he said, taking her arm. Damon had brought
a selection of garage sale furniture to the Big Top’s open center so climbers
could watch each other in relative comfort. Kim steered Isabelle around the
faux leather sofa and torn recliner to the piece that had once been someone’s
dining room chair, straight backed and armless. She sat. The flush had faded
from her cheeks. Her lips were pressed together. He squatted beside the chair
and took her hand.
    It seemed to help her. “So rough,” she said.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    “I like it.”
    She liked it. Why did that make him happy? He nearly came
back with something about her liking it rough, but this wasn’t the moment. He
contented himself with the thought that she liked his touch and waited for her
to pull herself together.
    Cameron was already halfway up the Bender route while his
climbing partner, a teen in a yellow tank top Kim didn’t recognize, watched on
belay.
    The kids who’d wanted to play their own music experimented
with the beat Kim had chosen, climbing double-time, stopping in rest position
and rotating their weight from limb to limb. They seemed to be having fun.
    “How embarrassing,” Isabelle said, her breathy tone somehow
lighting vivid sensory memories of succumbing to the urge to kiss her last
night, her thawing in his protective embrace. “I come here to ask you a favor
and then I get flustered.”
    Kim blinked. “Favor? Me? I thought you came looking for
Damon.”
    “No. Yes.”