Unknown Diners

Chapter Fifty-One

They were only a few minutes into the cuddle when the phone rang. Lorne reached for it and clicked it on. "Hello."

"Denise here. I don't have access to the fourth. My fob works only for the third."

"Where are you?"

"In the lobby now. Figured it would be easier for you to bring the list here. I'll wait at the elevator."

"Yeah. Great building security, but awkward sometimes. Be down in a minute." He clicked off, kissed Catherine, grabbed his fob, the shopping list and two cloth tote bags, and headed toward the door. "I'll be right back."

"I'll miss you." Catherine smiled and giggled.

A minute later, when he returned, he briefly outlined the building security system to her. "Electronic fob access to the outside doors and the parking and owner's floor in the elevator. One-way stairwell doors giving access only to ground level except to the owner's floor by key."

"So you'll have to go down again when she comes back. You keep leaving me." She pouted and laughed.

"No, she'll push our code on the entry phone, and I'll buzz her in, giving her access to the fourth floor. It's a good system, filters out the unwanted as long as owners are careful with it."

They resumed their cuddle on the couch.

"So the lip stretching thing? What's that about?"

"Some of it is the desire to have something dangling down there." He looked at her and shrugged. "But then there's the craze by those who think their lips are too large. They have them surgically reduced. Many do it to themselves."

"Fuck? Really?" She lifted her head and stared into his eyes. "I'm so glad I'm in the middle. I love my body."

"That's why it's so beautiful, why you're so beautiful. Your beauty radiates from within you, it oozes out through every pore." He gave her a little squeeze. "Your beauty blesses everything around you. I've always been amazed by your grace, your poise, your ease."

"Wow! I love the way you see things. You're so good for my ego." She squeezed him back and kissed his neck.

"You're genuine, not pretence. You don't wear make-up, your breasts are real, not plastic, you don't pay three or four times too much for bags, purses or clothing simply because they have labels stitched on the outside instead of in."

"Crazy, those things, aren't they?"

"Yeah. What I've been seeing is that the fuzzier the dividing line is between being male or being female, the crazier the stuff."

"Yeah, there are many shades between blue and pink."

"Many shades of purple in the middle."

"You ready to dig through at more purple?"

He ran a hand inside the front of her yoga pants and found moist warmth. "I'd rather do pure pink at the moment."

"Oh, God! How far's the supermarket?"

"Far enough. Early evening crowd usually thick."

"Here?"

"Bed." He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She was undoing his shirt as they went.

Twenty-five minutes later, the phone rang as they were relaxing in the afterglow of a mutual. He withdrew, quickly wrapped himself in a turban of Kleenex and picked up the bedside phone. "Hello."

"Hi, it's Denise. I'm downstairs."

"I'll buzz you in." He entered the code and clicked off, then turned to Catherine. "We've thirty seconds, maybe forty. My spare bathrobe's in the bottom left drawer. It's the red thing, hard to miss."