Page 82 of Clara Knows Best

“You only have twenty-eight minutes now. Chop chop.”

“I’ll be ready.” He turned to grab his coffee, and noticed her mother in the next room. “Oh, hey, Doc. Got any Orajel?”

“No, but I know an excellent dentist,” Dr. Wilder offered.

“I don’t need a dentist,” he muttered, and went stiffly up the stairs.

29

He was in the kitchen eating eggs he had cooked in the microwave when he heard Clara coming back down the stairs. The Colonel had come in from outside, glanced at him without saying anything, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down beside his wife. Dr. Wilder was buried in her newspaper, and it had been dead silent in the room for close on ten minutes.

“I’m ready. Are you?”

“Yep,” he said, and without looking in her direction he got up, tossed his napkin in the garbage and stuck his plate in the dishwasher. “I can drive if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. Bye, Dad,” she said, kissing her father. “Bye, Mom.”

“Have a good day, you two,” Dr. Wilder said absently.

It wasn’t until they were outside that he allowed himself to look at her, and even then he waited until she wouldn’t notice. She looked chic in a deceptively demure gray dress that was probably a remnant of her corporate days in New York. It fell to just below the knee and hugged every curve on her body.For a girl who made faces about jogging and joked about lifting weights, Clara had a great figure.

He looked up at the sky for a minute, wondering why his teenage self couldn’t have been placed with a family of abusive rednecks instead of this group of unnaturally beautiful humans.

“Changed your nails again,” he remarked, sitting down next to her. “Aren’t they supposed to last a few weeks?”

“I redo them once or twice a week,” she answered, shifting into drive. She flexed her hand on the steering wheel to show him her work. “I wanted something a little more…somber. Today’s Ash Wednesday, you know. This is lilac greige.”

“Sickly purple.”

“Aw. You don’t like this one?”

“Uh-uh.” He was lying, of course. They looked great, and knowing that her toenails were the same shade was giving him the warm fuzzies. Guys like Charles would have to look at the pointy black high heels and wonder. “You can drive okay in those crazy shoes?”

“Of course.”

He liked the shoes, too, and he liked seeing her in the Maserati. He didn’t know if it was on account of the kiss or if he really did have a concussion, but his head was not right today.

The kiss.Ruthlessly, he wrenched his mind away from it. The first rule of kissing Clara? It never happened. Forget it.

But he could smell her perfume, and he happened to know that olfactory memories were the strongest, most vivid and most persistent.

“You’re wearing too much scent.”

“I am not,” she said at once. “Maybe your brain damage is making you more sensitive to it.”

He didn’t deny the possibility. He was starting to suspect the same thing.

“You don’t like my perfume, seriously?” she asked a moment later, sounding uncertain. “I love it.”

“It’s fine. I’m kind of nauseous, so it seems strong.”

“Maybe you should go back to the hospital for another scan,” she said doubtfully.

He was such a jerk. “No, that’s okay. Forget it.”

Clara lifted her wrist, sniffing it with a frown. “I can barely smell it. Maybe you’re right! Maybe I have nose blindness.”

“I said forget it.”

---