Mr. Wonderful Read Free Page A

was no rack, so he handed me each plate after he’d washed it. With the third plate he didn’t let go. I looked up, and while soapsuds dripped on the floor, he bent over and kissed me. His arms went around me, or I might have slid to the floor and dissolved with the soap bubbles.
    “Alison,” he whispered, “the plate.”
    So that’s what was dripping behind my back. After he set the plate on the drain-board, Brandon put his arms around me again. He kissed me swiftly as if I might dissolve into suds too, then he put his arms on my face and looked into my eyes. I felt his heart pounding through his sweater.
    “I feel fibrillations,” I murmured. “Is that your altitude sickness again?”
    Brandon’s hand found the small of my back, with his other hand he traced his finger around my mouth. “It might be something more permanent. I’ll have to see how I feel back at sea level.”
    “You maybe completely over it by Monday morning,” I suggested, trying to prepare myself for his ultimate departure out of my life forever.
    “I was fine until I met you.” He took off his glasses and put them next to the dry dishes. “You’re responsible.” His warm lips on mine sent shivers up my spine and he held me tighter.
    “What about you?” he asked finally in a low voice. “How do you feel?”
    “Kind of strange,” I confessed. “It started last night, right after you got here.”
    “Hmm, I think you’d better get to bed early tonight,” he prescribed.
    “What about you?” I asked.
    “I’ve had an exhausting day. I’m going to finish the dishes and I’ll be up.” He gestured toward the living room. “They’ll understand, won’t they?”
    “Only too well, I’m afraid,” I said with a helpless shrug. I could picture my sister gloating over her success in matchmaking when really there was nothing to gloat about.  Not yet.
    Brandon put his glasses back on, and his eyes were round and innocent. Then he said loudly, “Good night, Alison. See you tomorrow.”
    He didn’t know my sister, if he thought she’d buy that! I tiptoed into the living room. Phyllis was hunched over the checkerboard, and Roger was poking at the smoldering fire. Neither one looked up when I mumbled, “Good night.”
    I staggered up the stairs to my room, feeling strangely dizzy. I was standing in the dark at the window watching the fir trees wave back and forth in the swirling snow when I heard Brandon thump up the stairs. This time he didn’t knock. He found me in the dark and put his arms around me.
    “This has never happened to me before,” he whispered.
    “What? Coming to the wrong room twice in one weekend?” I asked innocently.
    He chuckled against my hair. “Alison, they told me all the wrong things about you. Nobody told me you’d make me laugh or lose my balance. I never know what you’ll do next.” He took a deep breath. “Of course it was a big disappointment to find out that you couldn’t ski very well.”
    I smiled in the dark. “But I’m a fast learner. Doesn’t that count for something?”
    A large thump on the roof shook the house. We looked out the window.
    “The wind must have blown a limb down,” Brandon said.
    “What should we do, get under the bed?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
    “You’re thinking of an earthquake,” he said. “The safest place in a snowstorm is actually in the bed.” He stroked the back of my neck.
    I never got to answer because Roger shouted, “Oh, no!” from the living room. I flung the door open to look down the stairs on clouds of thick smoke billowing from the fireplace. Phyllis was opening windows to clear the air. Roger was standing next to the chimney with a poker in his hand, a bewildered expression on his sooty face.
    Brandon went down the stairs three at a time, and I wasn’t far behind.
    “What happened?” I shouted as Brandon looked into the belching fireplace.
“I don’t know,” Roger confessed.
    “The chimney, Alison.” Brandon