isn’t John Mellencamp’s real name. When he first started, his record company named him John Cougar. Our name comes down three hundred years from Billy Cougar. He was a hunter in the Appalachian system. He wore a cougar’s skin on his back with the cat’s head on his head. That’s how he got his name.
“We know he was a Brit. An Englishman. But we have no idea if he was a younger son come here to the New World to make his way, or if he was deported.” He grinned at her. “But he was a hunter, a trader and an organizer.”
“Yes.” She was still not working on all cylinders. She was distracted by the fact that she was trying to figure out a way to get another chance at a cousinly kiss. “How did you know my name?”
“I was in back of you when you registered.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t being too swift at conversational allure. If she planned to entice this man, she needed to be a great deal more sparkling and interesting. She inquired politely, “Did your wife come with you?”
He couldn’t prevent a laugh. He controlled it quickly, but he had laughed. He replied nicely, “I’m not married, are you?”
She solemnly shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. Why was he so amused?
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he suggested. “It’s getting a little wet out here.” He took her arm, and they went on back.
The shells bumped against her thighs as she lengthened her stride to keep up. She felt like a fool. She ought to tell him right now she was a sham. Yes. She took a breath and said, “Ah...”
“You will come to the wedding? It’s going to be in those rooms off the lobby. With the fountains? Have you seen them? If it’s still raining, they’ll cover the roof so it’ll be warm enough. You will come?”
She nodded, still very serious, but she realized just how fragile this opportunity was. She needed to take hold and use it. No man would be tongue-tied and silent. He’d flirt a little and smile. Did men have to work this hard?
She stretched her mouth incredibly and managed a small grin. Then the whole ridiculous situation hit her funny bone, and she laughed. She boldly took his hand and pushed back her hood enough so that she could look up at him, striding along beside her, and she actually swung his hand a little as she laughed again.
He grinned back and his big, warm hand enclosed her small, cold, wet one. He was playing along! Did preying men feel this sense of exhilaration? But as she watched his smile, her eyes lifted to his, and his eyes were guarded. He was suspicious of her.
Did she look like a predator? A predator like some of the men who had pursued her? There are men who women instantly recognize as dangerous so they can avoid them. Had her intent changed her into something else? Had it changed her from the safe, businesslike woman into a huntress? Did her very pores smell of danger to men, telling them to beware?
And Amy considered that the men who looked predatory had probably once looked bland and safe. Criminals eventually had a look about them that was hard and scary. It could well be that women changed, too, as their life-style was changed, and...
Such thinking was all completely idiotic. She’d been working too hard. Her imagination had never taken control this way, before now. Of course she’d never before deliberately set out to seduce a man.
“Where is your home?” Chas asked.
She blinked once to come back to the reality of being with Chas. “Home? A suitcase. I travel.”
“Oh? And what makes Amy run?”
“I’m in research. Polls.” That wasn’t too far from the truth.
“That must be interesting. What do you ask?”
“Depends on what we’re researching.”
“House to house?” he inquired.
“That, too, depends on what we’re researching.”
“Phone banks? Boiler-room surveys?”
“Even that sometimes.” Her reply was also true.
“What is your firm?”
“Freelance.” She had to smile at his effort to pin her down. He probably would never fully know how adroit she had been in replying. Too bad. He would appreciate the game.
Now, how did she know he’d appreciate her intrusive game? If he knew she was being tricky, it would more than likely make him mad. Men didn’t like being fooled.
But what he liked didn’t matter. It was what she liked or wanted that mattered. And she could well decide to want Charles Cougar. Cougar. Men were supposed to walk like cats. He walked like a hunter of cats.
They separated to change into dry clothing and met in the glassed corner of her floor’s discreet nook of chairs and tables. He rose as she came around the corner to him, and he suggested, “Why don’t we go up on sixth and meet the others?”
“Others? There’re more of you?”
“Oh, yes. And not all of us could come. So there are even more of your newfound family for you to meet another time.”
He said “another time” so casually, as if there could be a future for them. “How many of you are there?”
“They all have kids so fast we ought to be called rabbits instead of cougars. I don’t know what the latest count could be. We’ll see if anyone on sixth knows. Come on. They’re dying to talk to you. And of course you’ll go to the wedding. Will you need a gown?”
She shook her head. He went on, “Some of the pools are heated. We might swim later, before supper. We’re on our own tonight. Do you play chess?” He gestured to the waist-high chess pieces on the clever brick board sitting idle in the soft rain.
Again she shook her head.
“Well, how about putting? When the rain stops, we can do that?”
She nodded. She’d been a runner up in a golf competition at their club during the summer she was twenty. She could handle golf.
He was telling her, “Tomorrow night’s the bachelor’s dinner in the main dining room. Everybody goes to the dinner. That’ll be fun. You’ll learn a lot about the family skeletons there. Tad’s family are nice people. You’ll have a good time.”
They were inviting the fox right into the chicken house? She smiled in a foxy way. It would be an experience. What a story this would make when she next saw her best friend Elsie! Elsie would say, “You did what? I don’t believe it.”
But Elsie knew Amy didn’t have enough imagination to make up this impulsive madness. Elsie would have to believe it. Or...would she ever tell Elsie? She’d have to wait and see how it all turned out.
They went up to the sixth floor where the wing’s whole series of suites were opened together, taken over by the Cougar Clan. Chas and Amy went from suite to suite and were welcomed with laughter and chatter. Amy kept saying, “I may not be any kin at all!” The truth can be said so that one is safely misunderstood and accepted. How strange that was.
“If you aren’t, we’ll adopt you,” Matt announced, and Connie gave Amy a rather cool look.
So Matt was a flirt? Connie was jealous? Would Connie finally move in with Matt just to keep him? Ah, What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! How unknowingly we influence other lives. Would her bold intrusion cause Connie to do something rash? Would she do something she wouldn’t ordinarily have done?
The Cougars accepted Amy. That unquestioning acceptance made her a little uncomfortable. And Chas stayed close. He would say, “I’ll tell her about it and see to it she gets there.” And that easily, Chas established them as a pair.
Did women fall into men’s laps this readily? Did men simply decide who they wanted and then just wait for it to happen? It was