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encouraging,every movement as suggestive, despite the fact that no suggestion
was meant. (Truthfully, this tendency is by no means confined toyoung men)
Kevin was no exception. Mercredi's wink had started a train of thought, and
once started that train was difficult to derail. The sight ahead of him, of
Valerie's slim legs and gently swaying bottom, kept it firmly on track.
As usual in the Fortress of Doom, going from any one place to another
involved wending through narrow passages and traveling up and down stairs.
Every now and then Valerie would turn her head to give Kevin a flirtatious
smile. Or at least it appeared so to Kevin. Several times she stopped, causing
the Prince to bump up against her. Kevin was almost certain she was doing so
on purpose. By the time they actually reached her room his expectations
hadrisen to stratospheric levels.
The sight of her room did nothing to lower them. If anyone, upon meeting
Valerie, doubted for a second that she was a Bad Girl, a few minutes in her
room would have set them straight. The walls were covered in red flocked
wallpaper. There were mirrors on the ceiling. The candles were colored and
scented. There was a settee that was upholstered in black lambskin leather,
and a bearskin rug lay in front of the fireplace. There was a very large
four-poster bed, its satin sheets slightly tousled. The sheets were a deep
burgundy color, and Kevin could understand why such a bed would set off
Valerie's black hair and pale skin like a diamond in a jeweler's case.
Now she leaned into the fireplace and poked at the chimney with a pair of
tongs. Her key ring jingled as she bent over. "The smoke backs up in here. I
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think there's something blocking the chimney. I knowit's summer, but we're in
the mountains. It gets cold at night."
"Could be a bird's nest," said Kevin. Okay, he was thinking. She's bending
over from the waist. No one bends over from the waist like that, unless she's
deliberately trying to show off her figure. She's definitely flirting.
This immediately raised the next question: What was he going to do about
it?Taylor warned about this in his book, Kevin remembered. He had an important
mission to perform. The practical hero would put off sleeping with the Evil
Assistant until the Ancient Artifact was secure. Kevin dismissed this without
a second thought. Every young man knew that the possibility of getting laid,
however slim, took precedence over all other factors. The Ancient Artifact
could wait. It wasn't going anywhere that afternoon. The next issue was Becky.
Unofficially, Kevin and Becky were engaged. It was wrong, Kevin decided, for
him to make it with another girl when he was engaged to Becky. Not quite as
wrong as if they were actually married, but wrong nonetheless. A man who was
engaged to be married should not even consider sleeping with other girls.
There was no question in Kevin's mind about this.
He thought about it some more. The key word, he decided, was "unofficial." He
and Becky were notreally engaged. The truth was that Becky, at this point, was
promised toLogan . Granted, she didn't intend to marryLogan if she could help
it, but she was still promised to him. You could make a pretty good case that
Becky was more engaged toLogan than she was to Kevin, and Kevin was therefore
free to do as he pleased.
Kevin went through this whole line of reasoning in something less than an
eighth of a second. It wasn't much time to spend on this sort of decision; but
he knew it was a weak argument anyway and not really worth dwelling on. The
important point, he felt, was that he didn't act like one of those lowlife
guys who hopped right into bed with a girl without considering the
consequences. A man who wanted to be honest and decent would think about the
consequences before going to bed with the girl anyway. Now his conscience was
clear. He was certain he was doing nothing wrong to Becky.
And hopefully she'd never find out about it.
Unfortunately, this exercise in protective rationalization was a complete
waste of time. Yes, Valerie was indeed flirting. But Valerie, like any good
Evil Assistant, was a Bad Girl, the kind for whom flirting comes as naturally
and unconsciously as breathing. While it might not be one hundred percent
accurate to say she'd flirt with a statue if no one else was about, she had on
several occasions flirted with oil paintings just to keep in practice. And
like most flirts, she had no intention of following through. In her case
especially, it was part of the job.
Kevin, nonetheless, continued to make his move. "Have you been working here
long?" he asked, which was by no means an original line but served well enough
to keep the conversation going.Which is why it has been used by so many men
for so many years. He took the tongs from her and peered up the chimney.
"About five years," said Valerie. "I started back in Angostura. Stan likes to
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