Day 29
**Earlier there had been a scene in which Nicole and David were attacked by thugs and overcame great odds, exhibiting their superior fighting skill. After the fight scene David and Nicole went to David's home. **
Special Agent in Charge, David Sawyer, out in the kitchen preparing hot chocolate, is making a terrible racket with the rattle of cups and saucers and banging together of pots and pans. Field Agent Nicole London smiles at the noise as she sits on the sofa in the living room... and thinks.
She realizes and is finally forced to admit to herself that she is beginning to have romantic feelings for David. Such feelings, especially such strong emotional stirrings were a new experience for her. And startling.
She had made it through high school intact as the old folks used to say... a virgin at college entry, but not upon graduation... the proverbial college jock who had taken care of seeing to that was a hard bodied, hard driven, hard nosed, and extremely hard headed dope.
Oh, he had made a great show of doing all the things a sensitive guy is supposed to do for a girl, but Nicole easily saw, a bit too late, that this was merely a sham. He was, she'd discovered in the end, just as two-faced as were every one of the college men she'd dated.
But now, more than five years after graduation, David Sawyer had eased into her life. And two-faced he was not. At least he didn't appear to be. This man, nearly ten years her senior, seemed to be sincere and straightforward, in everything he did.
David had the face of a man who had weathered much adversity, with only a few frown lines, or possibly care lines on his wide forehead, a couple of them somewhat deep, and a long, hollowed out, curving vertical line bordering each of the corners of his mouth. His hair was dark, nearly as black as her own, but without the raven's silvery sheen she'd so often been complimented on. David's eyes also matched hers, deep brown with copper flakes surrounding the irises. He had a nice nose, she thought, not too large and not too small. Just right, she decided. His mouth, similarly was just right, perfectly fitted to the rest of his countenance. Lips? Yes; they were just right, not too full and not too thin.
His was not the trim, tight, and physically fit body of an athlete, but you could tell that he took care of himself. Probably ate all the right foods, exercised regularly, did not smoke tobacco, and drank liquor moderately, or not at all,
Nicole remembered how, just a few hours earlier, David had fought so valiantly beside her. He was, for lack of a better phrase, a real man's man. She recalled reading a line of text recently that stated: "It's a fact of life that conflict works to bond people together, and sometimes it does it in a romantic way."
Is that it? she thought. Is it the daily life or death struggle the two of us share that has made me start to think these thoughts?
#
Later, David and Nicole sat together side by side on the sofa in the living room. He had prepared and carried in brimming cups of steaming hot chocolate for the two of them. Then he poured from the package a handful of delicate looking Pepperidge Farms cookies onto a china plate he had placed in the center of the coffee table.
At one point, after a few sips from her cup of delicious chocolate drink, Nicole reached toward the plate just at the exact instant that David too reached for one of the cookies. Her hand brushed his. She lifted the dainty cookie to her mouth, scenting the pleasant aroma of it's brown baked dough and feeling the softened creamy texture as it touched her lips.
She hesitated.
The brief touch of her hand against his had been nothing more than an accidental momentary contact. That's all. She knew that full well. So, why then should the memory of that quick coming together--his coarser male skin against her softer female flesh--affect her like this?
Like this? Like how? Like, well, like a momentary wave of slight disorientation.
It was not the graceful swoon of the giddy young girls so ridiculously depicted in the Victorian novels. Nicole had always held such blatant machinations with utmost scorn.
I wonder, she thought, if David felt anything. Or did he even notice? He had never indicated even a hint of feeling attracted to Nicole. Or for any woman, as far as that goes.
David was nibbling one of the cookies, and Nicole smiled as she saw that he held a paper napkin under it, being meticulously careful to not drop crumbs onto the sofa or onto the carpet.
Nicole became aware that she was still holding her own wafer between her lips. She bit off a small morsel and pressed the crumbling bits of it up against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, and was immediately caught up in the sweetness and its surprising contrast with some other mysterious flavor.
"Mmm," she murmured, "that is so good."
"My favorite," said David.
Nicole wondered why she had never before noticed how deep and mature his voice sounded.
" It's my favorite too... now," she said.
David looked at her smiling face, cocked his head to one side, and smiled back. "I'm glad."
The two of them sat looking into each other's eyes. For several minutes. Then...
Softly, Nicole quoted:
"Two souls with but a single thought,
two hearts that beat as one."
"Keats," he said.
#
The above scene was hard for me to write. And I am not sure it is effective in doing what I intended it to do, which was to (gently) introduce intimacy into the relationship of these two characters. I'm not sure I succeeded, and I would appreciate some opinions on this from anyone who would care to contribute.
Thanks...
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