Warming Trend by Karin Kallmaker Read Free Book Online

Ani blushed. It started low, just a faint pink at the cheeks, then it blossomed into a full-scale red that washed down to her throat. “After a couple minutes of conversation you thought I might want to see the lights, that’s all.”
    “Right.” The red deepened.
    How cute is that, Eve asked herself. How surprising, too, that she took delight in torturing the woman into blushing, but it felt like a defensive tactic. Like she needed to prove she could get under Ani’s skin because Ani able to express appreciation for something as simple as a deviled egg might be able to get under hers. It had been a really long time since anyone had even tried to chat her up. She was over thirty, by a year, and students were usually horrified by the idea of involvement with someone they’d call ma’am . Men seemed to appreciate her curves which might be a little too plump at the middle but still filled out jeans nicely, in her opinion but not so much the lesbians. There just weren’t that many of them, and, well, the Monica Tyndells of the world weren’t interested in a curvy caterer. With someone like Tyndell around, those who might find Eve attractive were too dazzled to notice. Profs dated profs or dabbled with their grad assistants. Anyway, Professor Tyndell wasn’t her type, and she’d watched the good professor work a room at parties like this one dozens of times. She couldn’t escape the feeling that even in an intimate relationship, Tyndell still worked it.
    Ani’s blush was fading and Eve thought she was on the verge of mumbling something and leaving, so she quickly said, “I guess the only way to prove the innocence of your intentions is to go with you and see if you spring any etchings on me.”
    Ani blinked again, but this time there was an obviously appreciative gleam of humor in her eyes. “We’ll see, then.”
    “I’ll be out of here at nine thirty, and probably done with what I need to do at home by eleven. I have to go home first, dirty dishes cannot wait for morning.”
    “Okay. How about I pick you up?”
    Eve couldn’t resist. “Didn’t you just do that?”
    Ani blushed again it was absolutely delightful. This blush wasn’t as deep, probably because Ani was grinning. “Why yes I did. What’s your address?”
    Eve told her how to find the house and spent the rest of the party in a subdued state of puzzlement and excitement together with dread and curiosity. She hadn’t been on a date in at least a year. What would she wear? Would she have time for a shower? She hadn’t any clue what music was hot right now with the college crowd that’s what she got for having no space in her life for MySpace. The demon of self-doubt said things like “She’s just a kid” and “It won’t last the summer” to which the angel of spontaneity asked, “What does that have to do with it?”
    Scrubbing herself in the five minutes she thought she could safely allow for a shower, she calmed her nerves by pointing out that just because Ani had decided she was a decent conversationalist didn’t mean there was any reason for anything to go any further. Watching northern lights on a glacier was Ani’s way of asking her out to coffee, and that was all. It wasn’t a pity date, either. She knew exactly what that felt like and Ani had not seemed the type to expect good things merely because she’d asked out the non-beauty queen.
    She quickly brushed the snarls out of her hair as she blasted it with the hand dryer. Why hadn’t she said eleven thirty, and given herself time to at least put on some eyeliner or blush? Her mother’s steadfast insistence that Eve’s face was interesting, and would be handsome when she was older, didn’t change the fact that her nose was a little too pert, her eyes a little too wide and unremarkably blue and her lips too pink and thin. Her little brother had called her hair yellow when she’d been about seven, cementing her belief that no matter what, she’d never be a blonde . In a