Secrets of the Apple Read Free Page B

hurried off down the hall.
    Ryoki didn’t get the joke, and felt a nagging suspicion he should have. She was always pulling that disappearing act, and every time she left he sensed some undefined quality evaporated with her, though he would never have admitted it. He should have had a little introductory talk with her earlier, a private chat, not necessarily work-related, just to be polite, to break the ice. In his haste, he’d neglected to do so yesterday and hoped to remedy the oversight after lunch. Unfortunately he didn’t see her again until three-thirty that afternoon, and by then she seemed distracted, hugging a scuffed and stained leather binder to her chest, cloaking herself in mundane tasks like someone who wished to be alone. He held back on the small talk, figuring tomorrow would be better for them both.
    However, the 11:00 a.m. meeting proved so successful that the following morning found them plunged neck-deep in draft EPS calculations and sticky licensing agreements. True to her word, Kate focused directly on her work, staying late, keeping close, but never taking time for idle chit chat—which is how Ryoki came to be surprised on his fourth evening in San Francisco when he went to Brian’s home to attend a Porter family dinner. He had already kissed the cheek of Brian’s wife, whom he’d never called anything but Aunt Grace, and had begun a round of jolly back-slapping talk with Tom, the oldest of their four sons, when Kate breezed in without knocking and said “Hey, Claire” to Tom’s wife, giving her a hug and asking when she and Tom had arrived.
    “Kate, where have you been? You should have been back an hour ago,” Grace said.
    “Bad traffic,” Kate said.
    Ryoki looked at Kate’s soft pink dress, her hair loose and wavy around her shoulders. She seemed so different from the office, more relaxed around the mouth, an odd loopiness in her movements.
    “Bad traffic, or a wrong turn?” Grace asked, cutting into his thoughts, her head coyly cocked and one eye narrowed to a slit—the same face she pulled the time he and Tom tried to convince her that their broken headlight was a hit-and-run, absolutely nothing to do with Tom’s bat-wielding ex-girlfriend. Ryoki knew that look well.
    Kate looked at her toes, muttering something about the confusing number of exits between Oakland and the Bay Bridge, and visibly jumping when she turned around and noticed Ryoki.
    “I believe you already know our Ryoki, isn’t that right?” Grace said.
    “We’ve met,” she said simply, her elbows stiffening to her sides as though someone had poured starch over her dress.
    “Put down your things and freshen up. We’ll wait,” Grace said, her tone more mother than hostess.
    Ryoki had stood staring for the whole exchange, his fingers absolutely still on the back of a chair. That was the dress she could wear on the cover of a romance novel. Not a bodice ripper, but something classic, an Austen romance. He blinked.
    Austen novels popping into his head made him feel uncomfortably in touch with his feminine side, a feeling paradoxically at odds with the reason he stayed behind the chair, taking conscious regular breaths, and trying to think about baseball.
    Kate returned a few minutes later with her hair brushed out and fresh lipstick. Ryoki allowed himself a brief, courteous glance before averting his eyes as Grace herded them all into the dining room, directing him to a seat on her right, opposite Kate. Tom took a seat next to Kate, opposite Claire, and Brian presided at the head of the table.
    During the salad course, Tom elbowed Kate, causing her to smear dressing on her cheek. “So, Kate, how’s your vacation going?” he asked with a smirk. She feigned deafness as she wiped her face, her fingers inching toward the cruet as though she might pour the contents down his neck, but a look from Grace stayed her hand.
    “Brian, we’ve raised a pack of savages,” Grace said, looking apologetically at Ryoki, but he