“Ray is coming with me. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“Mind? No, I like him.” I had to work a little to bring up my mental image of the man Magda had met on the singles’ tour we’d taken some two months before. All I could really remember of him was that he was tall and rather skinny, balding, with mild eyes and an innocuous manner. To be honest, he seemed to fade to near invisibility when Magda was around, but she had that effect on a lot of people. She was full of life and color, with snapping black eyes and a joy of life that was infectious. “So you guys are still going strong, eh?”
“More than ever,” she cooed. “He rearranged his schedule so that he’d have a month to spend with me before he has to go back to Denver. Isn’t that sweet? So I hoped you wouldn’t mind if he came with me to visit you. I swear he’s housebroken, and he’s promised he’ll be happy to just sit and read or watch movies if we want to have some girl time together.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said, parking my car in the tiny carport attached to my equally tiny house. I puffed a little as I hauled all the groceries inside.
“You OK?” Magda asked when I grunted with relief as I dropped the heavy bags on the kitchen table.
“Yeah, just out of shape. And before you ask, no, I haven’t found time to go to the ladies’ gym like I said I was going to.”
Magda giggled. “Plump is in, sweetie. I keep telling you that.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe your plump is in, but mine is spilling out all over the place. Whoever said that pining for a man would make you waste away to nothing was full of bull. I’ve gained ten pounds since I came back from Iceland!”
“Judging by the way you and Kristoff went at it while you were there, I’d say he was a man who appreciated a woman with abundant curves, and you have nothing to worry about.”
The vision rose in my mind of a midnight tryst in a barn, my body suffused with heat as I remembered the sensation of Kristoff’s mouth caressing the flesh of my neck and breasts. But with that memory came another one: that of Kristoff silently withdrawing his mind from mine.