Blind Fools

Blind Fools: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ophelia really and truly needed her coin.  The man in front of her was just too delicious to be looking – um, maybe concentrating was a better word...he was too delicious to be concentrating on her like this.  He was gorgeous, and she was ordinary, and he almost certainly had a skinny, porcelain girlfriend waiting on him somewhere out there.  Ophelia sighed once more, getting all fidgety again.  His full mouth turned down in a concerned frown, hearing the distress in her sigh and probably thinking it was directed at him.  Which wasn't the case at all...mostly.

“Really, ma’am – uh, do you have a name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I can’t keep calling you ma’am.  You don’t sound any older than my baby sister, and I don’t want to insult you with the old lady title.”

Baby sister?  Ophelia tilted her chin up stubbornly…wasting the visual effect on him.  “I’m twenty-eight,” she claimed hotly.

“And so is my baby sister,” he said smugly.  “She has a name, too.  I do hope you share that common factor with her.”

What was he going on about now?  Oh…right.  A name.  “Ophelia,” she said.  “My name is Ophelia.”

“Ophelia,” he repeated, a funny tip to the corners of his lips.  “Like from Hamlet?”

“The one and same,” she said.

He stepped closer, and she backed into the Mark Twain display.  “I believe that’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard,” he breathed.

Ophelia cleared her throat.  “Yes, well…my mother was always optimistic,” she said.  “Unfortunately, I’m doomed to tragedy.”

“Why is that?”

“Ophelia?  She went insane and killed herself?”

“And you believe that you will suffer the same fate because of your name?” he asked, amused by her.

“Well, no…um…Mina!  Wilhelmina from Dracula.  She was a character that overcame surmountable odds.  She is highly esteemed and idolized…and would make a perfect heroine for your niece to write about.”  Ophelia turned her back and searched the nearby shelves for a copy of Bram Stoker's novel.  Peeking under her lashes at him, she saw him holding back another grin.  She found the book and thrust it at him.

“If you’re handing me something, it’s best if you actually put it in my hands,” he said to her, biting his cheek.

“Oh!  Sorry,” she murmured, and was glad he had what he was looking for so he could leave now.  Never before had she ever felt like such a numskull.  Not even the time she tumbled into a glass ball sculpture at Tiki's exhibit opening.

The front door jingled again, and a young girl strolled through, straight blond hair hanging to her elbows.  “Uncle Ian?  You in here?”