Page 51 of Just One Look
Skin Chemistry
She foundhim again pretty easily. That was because he was a head taller than everybody else, and also, possibly, because he’d collected a crowd. At the moment, in fact, he was taking a selfie with a middle-aged woman, and another woman was all but quivering in the starting blocks. This one was blonde, she was wearing a short skirt and heeled sandals, and she looked fresh, young, and polished. You know. Rugby-girlfriend material. She also had her phone out and was generally appearing ready to lunge the second Lady Number One started moving and the field cleared.
Luka looked over at Elizabeth, said, “One second,” snapped the picture, handed the phone back, and told the young-blonde-pretty woman, “Got time for one more, if you like.”
“Oh, good,” she said happily, then moved next to him, tossed her hair back, put her arm around his waist like a woman who’d never doubted herself in her life, and posed in that way some women learned to and Elizabeth never had, in a sort of three-quarter profile and with one foot in front of the other, so you looked slimmer, presumably. Angles. “It’s for my mum,” she told Luka with an attractive, carefree, extremely annoying laugh. “She has a bit of a pash for you. Dad teases her mercilessly.”
Luka got that crumpled-forehead look again, and then he took the picture, handed the phone back, and said, “Cheers.” After that, he made it to Elizabeth in about two strides and said, “Come on. And don’t say it.”
“What?” Elizabeth said, letting him steer her by the hand around the counter and away from the casually-lurking knot of women. “That you’re catnip to the older ladies? To hermom?”
“Crushing,” he said. “But not.” Then he drew her closer, since he was still somehow holding her hand, and pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair. “You can try on scent in your work clothes, but I reckon it’ll be easier if you’ve got the sexy hair again.” His hand was still in there, too, rumpling it up a little, but when he was done, he didn’t grasp her passionately or make any fevered declarations, just stood back and said, “There. Sorted. Want to hear the plan?”
“Oh.” She needed to catch her breath, because somewhere in there, she’d forgotten to inhale. “Yes. Please. Since we’re here.”
“Since we’re here,” he agreed. “First, you’re right, we need to narrow things down a bit. I did some reconnoitering. Do you trust me enough to put yourself in my hands for this?”
For perfume shopping. For perfume shopping. “Yes,” she said. “But only because I already tried and failed, and improving one’s skills is a lifelong journey.”
She got a slow smile, then, showing all those creases around his mouth and eyes. “Good. Come on.”
When he stopped amidst the endless displays of perfumes, plucked a grenade-shaped bottle from a shelf, pronounced, “Flowerbomb,” and sprayed it on her wrist, that was fine. When he said, “Wave it around a bit, get it to dry,” that was fine, too. Also, “It’ll smell different after a minute, and more different after fifteen.”
“Why did you choose this one?” she asked. “There are somany.How can there be so many?”
“Because some women own so much scent, I reckon. I dated a girl once who loved it. Nearly a hobby for her. She’d wear different ones from her collection and ask me to guess. I found I quite liked the guessing.” Some more of that smile. “And after that, with other girls? I started noticing, and asking. I know which are my favorites, and which are popular. Scent smells different on every woman, though. Skin chemistry. How warm you are, maybe. That’s what makes it interesting.”
“Oh,” she said, and sniffed her wrist. “I run a bit warm for a woman, for what that’s worth. This is nice, I guess.”
He took her hand and asked, “May I?”
Now, she was definitely warm. “Uh … I hope so. That’s the point.”
He lifted her wrist to his face. “No,” he said, letting it go again. “Not to me. A bit sharp on you, I’d say. Not something to linger in.”
She sniffed again and shrugged. “Maybe.”
“If you shrug,” he said, “it’s not beautiful. When you find the right one, you’ll close your eyes, because itwillbe beautiful. Otherwise, what’s the point of paying, uh …” He checked the box. “Two hundred thirty-nine dollars for it? Right, then. Next one.”
“I am not paying two hundred thirty-nine dollars,” she said. “Not for a bottle of infused oil and alcohol, I’m not. Theycan’tall cost that much.”
“In New Zealand? Yeh, they can. For the wrong one, it’s too much. For the right one? We’ll see.”
She was still doing fine three perfumes later, even though he’d run out of wrists and was spraying on her forearms now. The tiniest spritz, then him stepping close to her and inhaling, the tip of his nose brushing her skin. It was making her tingle, but he didn’t have to know that. Around them, shoppers ebbed and flowed, the escalator rose endlessly, and music played, competing with the voices. Something vaguely classical with piano and cello that was supposed to invite you to shop, she guessed. Right here, she was letting him spray her with something else, telling herself she wasn’t paying two hundred dollars, and somehow telling him, “You have almost the same nose as me. Do you realize that?”
“Yeh,” he said, “but mine’s been broken. Didn’t always have so much bump at the top.”
She put a hand up and touched it gently. “Mm. I feel that, where the cartilage has mended. You could have it fixed if you wanted. That’s an easy fix.”
“No point. Not while I’m playing, anyway. It’ll just get broken again, and besides—nah. If it were flattened, maybe, but not for a bump. Besides, I quite like my bump.” His thumb was brushing over her own nose now. Which was not romantic, or sexual, or anything else. Not a man touching yournose.YourRomannose. Which had a bump. “I quite like yours as well,” he said, with some more of his slow smile, so … yes. Possibly slightly sexual.
“I hated my nose, growing up.” It was hard to talk. He was too close. He was too warm. He was toobig.“I hated my face. My features were too strong. But somehow, I’ve never bothered to change my nose.”
“Not too strong. Bold, maybe. Striking.” He lifted her wrist again and smelled each of the spots along her forearm, then did the other one, and she got some more of that breath-holding thing. “Try them now. See what you think. Don’t try to remember which spot has which scent. Just tell me which you like best.”
“Ah …” She checked. “This one. And this one, I guess.”
She wasn’t getting “casual” from him. She was getting “intensity.” His eyes on her face, her wrist in his hand. He asked, “Why?”
