Kej Huper - Hiding in the Shadows

Kane Macgregor looked up from the morning newspaper as she came into the kitchen, and reflected not for the first time that Dinah Leighton was the only woman he'd ever known who managed to create the illusion of incredible bustle while never moving faster than a lazy stroll. It was a peculiarly endearing trait.

"I am so late," she said by way of greeting, dropping her briefcase into a chair across from him at the table and going around the work island to pour herself a cup of coffee. He always made the coffee in the morning, favoring a gourmet blend rich with taste, a selection Dinah accepted cheerfully even though she considered the beverage merely a simple and efficient means of getting caffeine into her system as quickly as possible.

"You turned off the alarm again." She didn't sound annoyed, just matter-of-fact.

"After all your long hours recently, I thought you could use a little extra sleep. Besides, it isn't all that late. just after nine. Do you have a meeting this morning? You didn't mention anything last night."

"No, not a meeting." She spooned enough sugar into the coffee to make him wince, and poured enough cream to make him wonder why she even bothered with coffee. "I just ... They allow visitors only twice a day, and I'm always too late in the evening."

It was Thursday. He'd forgotten.

"I'm sorry, Dinah. If you'd reminded me..."

The smile she sent him was quick and fleeting. "Don't worry about it. I still have time, I think."

She put two slices of bread in the toaster and leaned against the counter.

Kane looked at her, wondering as he had wondered often in recent weeks if it was his imagination that Dinah was a bit preoccupied. He'd thought it was because of the accident, but now he wasn't so sure. She tended to get wrapped up in her work, sometimes to the exclusion of other things. Was that it? Just another story that had drawn her interest and engaged that lively mind?

He wanted to go to her, but didn't; he was experienced enough to recognize the warning in both her actions and her body language. She had not touched him, had not even come near him, in fact.

She was across the room with the island and the table between them and showing him most of her back. She might just as well have worn a no-trespassing sign. In neon. It irritated him.

"Will you stop on the way to work?" he asked, keeping the conversation going while he decided whether or not it was time to do something about this.

Dinah checked the wide, leather-banded watch she wore and nodded absently. "For a few minutes."

"You don't have to go twice every week."

"Yes," she said. "I do."

"Dinah, it wasn't your fault."

"I know that." But her voice lacked certainly. She seemed to realize it, because she cleared her throat and quickly changed the subject while she buttered her toast. "Anyway, we'll be going in opposite directions this morning. Just as well, I expect. Steve has me chasing after that building inspector for an interview and the wretched man is never in his office, so I'll need my jeep."

Steve Hardy was Dinah's ed' or at the small but it well-known magazine where she worked, and he tended to push her almost as hard as she pushed herself.

"Another expose?" Kane said lightly. "Bribery and kickbacks in the city?"

She laughed. "I wish. No, this is just for a series on our local officials. You know a day in the life of, and how, exactly, your tax dollars are being spent."

"Easy stuff for you."

Dinah shrugged. "Easy enough." Kane watched her load the toast with grape jelly and take a healthy bite. She was, he decided, very matchable no matter what she was doing. She wasn't beautiful, but dammed close. Regular, not-quite-delicate features that fit together well, the best of which being a pair of steady blue eyes that sometimes saw more than one would guess. Her pale gold hair was cut casually short in tousled layers "wash and wear," she called it and her tall, voluptuous body was clothed in a simple tunic sweater and leans.

Dinah didn't care much about clothes, and it showed.

On the other hand, what she wore hardly mattered because the enticing figure underneath was what caught the eye. The male eye, at any rate. His eye, certainly, more than six months ago.

It hadn't taken them long to get intimate, but getting to know each other had become a much more complex, drawn-out process. And a cautious one.

Both were fiercely independent, with busy careers and cluttered lives and rocky past relationships that had left scars, and neither had been in a hurry to delve beneath surface passion.

It had been enough, for a while.

But even wary relationships either evolved or fell apart, and theirs was evolving. Almost against their wills, they had been drawn together to share more than a bed, tentatively exchanging views and opinions and comparing tastes and basic values.

They liked what they had discovered about each other.

At least, Kane thought so.

They were not quite living together, but after nearly four months of my-place-or-yours, Kane had been wondering if he should be the one to suggest they stop the shuttling back and forth almost every night.

And then, a little more than a month ago, the accident happened and Dinah began to distance herself from him. He had assumed the cause was Dinah's worry for her friend and the ridiculous guilt she felt.

For the first time, though, he asked himself if that was the case.

"I'll probably be late tonight," Dinah said, eating the second piece of toast.

"More research?" It had been her excuse so often of late. Was it time for him to pick a fight and clear the air between them?

"Just something I need to check out. I'll probably be closer to my place than here by the time I get finished, though, so..."

"Why don't I meet you there?" he interrupted, unwilling to hear her suggest another night apart.

There had been several recently. Too many. "Eight? Nine?"

Her hesitation was brief. "Eight. I should be through by then."

"I'll bring Chinese," he said. "Or would you rather have something else?"

"No, Chinese is fine. Sesame chicken."

"And no egg rolls. I remember."

Dinah sent him another brief smile, but her mind was clearly elsewhere.

Kane sipped his coffee and watched her. He could accept that her job was important to her; his was to him, after all. So it would hardly be fair of him to protest her abstraction, to demand all her time and attention for himself. But was that really it?

An easy story about the city officials of Atlanta was the sort of thing she could do with her eyes closed. But she had more than once juggled two stories at a time, one of them unknown even to her editor; it was her way of combining the routine work of a magazine writer with the more gritty and urgent instincts of an investigative journalist.

"Dinah?"

Finishing her toast, she sent him a glance, brows lifting inquiringly.

"Why don't we go away this weekend. Maybe drive out to the coast?" He had a beach house, a peaceful retreat that both of them found a welcome change from the hectic pace of the city.

Her hesitation was almost imperceptible. "I wish I could. But I have an appointment on Saturday."

"Can't reschedule?"

"No, I'm afraid not." She smiled regretfully.

"There's an assistant D A. I'm supposed to talk to, and she's got a big case coming up, so her schedule is full. It has to be Saturday."

Kane thought she was talking to him. "Well, it was just a thought. Maybe next weekend." He let the exasperation in his voice lie there in the silence between them.

Her eyes flashed, but her voice remained calm when she said, "Relationships are hell, aren't they?"

"Sometimes."

"I gather you're feeling neglected?"

"Dinah, don't try to make me feel and sound like the typical selfish male."