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Chapter 3 - "So Much In Me That’s New"
It was indeed Friday when McDaniel flew back to his home city. There was a small office in the hangar where he stored his plane, an immaculate though 30-year-old Cessna 310. He used the washroom in the office to prepare a gift for Jayla before calling her and telling her he was on his way.
Though it was only early afternoon when he stepped from the garage into his house, the drapes were drawn and the lights off so that the rooms were dim though not really dark.
"Jayla? Beautiful? Where are you? I’m home!" *God, how corny*, he thought as he set down his gear and started looking for her. When he had called from the airport, she had promised to be home. In fact, she had said she had a gift for him.
"Jayla?" he called again, walking down the hall.
"In here," he heard, coming from the bedroom.
Stepping through the door, he saw a carefully arranged tableau, though for once there was little of Jayla’s trademark subtlety. Of course, her inspiration had not been terribly subtle either.
Jayla had recreated the scene from the movie they had seen where the hero finds the damsel in suitable distress. She was wearing an artfully-torn t-shirt modeled on that worn by the movie heroine. Her shorts were, if anything, even tinier than those in the movie and Logan knew she had ‘fixed’ the ones she wore because none had been that brief before. Even her hair was styled with a sultry, one-eye-hidden tease that extended an invitation he was definitely willing to accept.
The crowning touch, though, was that his lovely, disheveled wife held her hands behind her back.
"Have you come to rescue me, my hero?" she asked throatily.
Logan would have been happy to say yes, if only he could have formed words at that moment. Of course, to have done so would require that his jaw pick itself up off the floor. And for that to happen, his tongue would have to be gathered up and put back into his mouth. So he didn’t waste any time with words.
Jayla’s first evidence of his own gift to her was the unexpected feel of lipstick sliding on lipstick when they kissed. It surprised her enough that she pulled her head back and looked at her husband’s face in the romantically dim light.
"You’re wearing makeup!"
"And you’re wearing handcuffs," he counter-charged.
"I did it for you," she explained, tugging at her bound wrists. "After the way you reacted to that movie, I figured you’d find it, um, interesting."
"To say the least," he said, turning her so he could see her hands.
"Where’s the key? I’ll let you loose."
Instead of answering, she had a question of her own she considered higher priority. "Why are you wearing makeup?"
"I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t really upset about wearing it last week," Logan explained, still examining the cuffs.
Jayla spun from his grasp and turned to face him. "You weren’t?"
"No, love," he said, smiling. "I told you I wouldn’t do it just for myself, but I don’t mind all that much, and I’d do . . "
"Anything for me," she finished for him. Jayla tried to reach for him to give him a hug, but her arms were still restricted. "Ooh, damn," she said, laughing at her self-imposed problem.
"I already asked how to take those off," he reminded her.
"Don’t they excite you?" she asked, letting her body mold itself to her husband in a sensual wriggle. "When you came in the room, it seemed you were, ahem, interested."
"It was just a, um, surprise."
Jayla rubbed her waist against him and said, "I’m not sure all of you agrees with that."
"Don’t you want me to let you loose?"
"Sure," she said airily. Then her voice dropped back into a sultry whisper as she said, "eventually."
Any further comment she might have made was stifled by the painted lips that once again danced on hers as his arms came down to complete her capture.
Again her own arms tried to move around him as well, and again it was a futile effort. His fingers, though, were very much free and started to dance along the torn edge of her t-shirt, then under it. Jayla moaned and leaned back to give him better access even as her hips pushed harder against his.
"This shirt is already torn," she gasped out an implied suggestion.
"Why, so it is," Logan agreed, freeing it without the need to free her arms. Her shorts followed quickly, then his fingers were scrabbling at his own clothing.
It broke their embrace for a moment though, as he stood back to take off his own shirt. Looking at him fumbling in his haste, and unable to do anything to help, Jayla laughed instead.
"This would be silly, if it weren’t so much fun," she observed.
"Are you really having fun?" Logan asked.
"Yes," she said. "It’s sort of awkward, of course, and distracting, but it’s also kind of fun. I like the feeling of, um, needing you. And yet, you seem to be the one who is helpless right now. Clumsy."
Her husband laughed as he finished undressing. He reached for her again, a bit more in control of his passions than driven by them, and wrapped his arms around her. He tugged at her cuffs, a question lifting one neatly-contoured brow.
"Would you let me wear them, just this once?" she asked.
"You really want to?"
"I think so. I don’t think I could lay back on them, though, so . ."
"So we’ll work something out," he declared. And they did.
Later, he asked her, "Did you enjoy that?"
"Did you?" she countered.
"If you have to ask, I must not have been doing it right," he laughed, then he got serious again and asked again, "but the cuffs. Did you like wearing them?"
"Yes, though I’m not sure exactly why. I think it was because they’re different. But I have to admit, my arms are aching a bit now."
"Oh, I’m sorry. Where’s the key? I’ll get them off you in just a second. I shouldn’t have let it go this long."
"Gee, I think I said something similar the other night."
"Huh?"
"I seem to remember saying I shouldn’t have made you go out to dinner while you had makeup on."
"You didn’t really make me. I could have told you no."
"And . . . ?"
He grinned ruefully at her and said, "Okay. And you could have told me no about this."
Jayla’s bright smile lit up even the now-dark room as she slid off the bed. "The keys are in my jewelry box, over here."
As Logan was working the cuffs off her wrists, he said, "There is an important difference, though. These things are hard and could hurt you. A little embarrassment is not much of a risk."
"Don’t be so sure," she said, massaging her arms once they could move. "Some people would die before they’d look like a fool in public, men especially, and even more so if the foolishness undermined their masculinity."
"Do you think I’m less masculine because I decorated my face to please you?"
"No," she affirmed again. "I already told you that I like it. But not if it hurts you."
"Like these cuffs hurt you?" he asked, holding them up.
"Actually, they were, um, exciting. I mean, they were frustrating at times, and a little uncomfortable especially toward the end. But for some reason, taking my arms ‘out of the loop’ really made the rest of me seem, I don’t know, hypersensitive."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I think it’s like what they say about blind people hearing better or something. Knowing I couldn’t, um, reach out and touch you made me really aware of the ways you were touching me."
"Oh. If you say so," Logan said doubtfully.
"Sometime you’ll have to try it," she said, winking at him.
"Ah, well, maybe."
"Anything for me?" she challenged him with his words.
"Oh, yeah. Um . . ." he stammered, frowning.
"Lighten up, lover," she said, offering him relief from his inner struggle. "I don’t really want you to do it, unless you want to. Right now I don’t even want to use those things again . . . but I have a feeling I will someday."
She turned a light on and then laughed. "Well, best beloved, you certainly made a mess of your so-interesting makeup. Why don’t you freshen it up while I, um, freshen up?"
"Why, are we going out again?"
"Not unless you want to."
"Um, no, not really. Driving home from the airport was bad enough. I guess, since you like it so much, I sort of like getting made up, but it’s for your eyes only."
"And I really appreciate it. You don’t even have to, um, redo it if you really don’t want to, though. Just make sure you get your face clean."
"Um, sure," Logan replied, but he seemed distracted.
When Jayla came back from the bathroom, she found him sitting at her vanity busily painting away.
"I thought you were going to take all that stuff off?"
He looked up in surprise. "I thought you wanted me to fix it up?"
"No, I didn’t. I told you to just clean your face well."
"No, you said I *could* do that, if I wanted, but first you said . . . Look this doesn’t matter. I thought you wanted me to do myself up again, but were offering me an out if I really didn’t want to."
"Well, it’s true that I didn’t get much of a chance to see what you really look like, in the dark and all," she said, smiling.
"Don’t blame me," he said, laughing. "I drove all the way home like this in broad daylight."
"Speaking of daylight," she murmured, looking closely at his reflection in the mirror. "Do you mind?"
Jayla reached for an applicator and opened up a different set of colors than Logan had seen before.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Oh, it’s just that, since it’s already evening, and since we’re staying in tonight, I thought I’d experiment a little. More of a glamour look for you with brighter, bolder colors. No one will see but you and me. Do you mind?"
"Only for you, dear," he sighed, leaning back. But the smile in his eyes gave his real consent.
"Tell me about your trip while I’m working on you," she suggested.
"Oh! That reminds me," Logan said, sitting up and almost getting an applicator in his eye as a result. "You wouldn’t believe what happened."
"With what we’ve been into the last few days," Jayla smirked, "I wouldn’t even begin to try. But sit still."
Logan let himself be positioned again, then said, "You know the meeting was set up for 2:00, and that gave me time to get to Denver and check into a hotel. I did like I usually do, putting on my good suit and brushing my hair before I hooked it into the clasp. When I got to the meeting, I got the strangest looks from a couple of the people who were already there. No one said anything. I mean, they said hi and all, but no one explained why they were looking at me so strangely. For a while, I wondered if I still had on some of your makeup or something."
"No you didn’t, unless you put some on after you left. I checked before you walked out the door," Jayla said.
"I know. Well, I mean I know I didn’t have any on, but anyway, they were still looking at me funny when the boss walked in, Mr. Harrison."
"Did he look at you funny, too?"
"I’ll say. He stopped right in the doorway, which caused the person walking behind him to bump right into him."
"Is there a point to all this?" she asked, smiling as she continued her work.
"That other person is the point," he said. "This woman walked in behind him, and she had red hair just like mine, pulled back into a pony tail like mine. It was even about the same length. And she was wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit, too, though of course hers had a skirt. The really kicker, though, was that instead of one of those little round things that women wear at their necks, she even had a man’s sort of shirt collar and a regular tie. It was almost exactly like the one I was wearing. We couldn’t have been dressed more alike if we had worked it out ahead of time."
"Oh, dear, that must have been something to see."
"You can say that again. I figured I was history. Either someone would figure I was sucking up to get the job, or that I was making fun of her, or, well, any number of things. All bad."
"What happened next?"
"The girl, woman I mean, laughed and then did a little, ‘Eeek, same outfit! And you look better in it than *I* do.’"
"Did you?"
"What? Look better? Oh, um, no, not really. I mean, she wasn’t any great beauty, mind you, but of course she looked better than I did."
"Why?"
"I don’t know, exactly. She just did."
"Just because she was a woman? Wearing makeup?"
"No, that wasn’t it. I mean, she was wearing makeup, but that didn’t really matter, at least not to me. Hers was really subtle, almost up to your standards, and I know what difference that would make."
"So, what else was different?"
He shrugged, disturbing her work again. "I really don’t know. I’m sure you’d know immediately, but it was just a feeling I had. As though she were, oh, neater or something."
"Who was she?"
"Oh, sorry. She’s some VP of one of the operating units. Customer service or something. They’ll need access to the database we’ll be building. Her name was Spencer, I think. I can look it up. I don’t think we’ll be working all that closely, except in getting some requirements defined."
"Do you have a picture or anything?"
"No," he replied. Then he said, "Wait a minute. I might. I’ll bet her picture is on their website. We can . . "
"We can look at it later," Jayla said, pushing him back into his seat. "I’m almost done. Just sit still for a little longer and tell me how the rest of the meeting went."
"Oh, yeah. Well, after she laughed and defused the tension, things went really well. It was as though the idea of, I don’t know, doing weird things to win the contract was considered and dismissed and we were back on more normal considerations. If anything, it might have helped a little because the geek crowd started talking data structures right away like it was a done deal that I would be working with them. Being too weird for upper management was just fine with them."
"One of their Information Technology guys, I think I’ll be working with him quite a bit, his name’s Tyler something. Tyler Andrews. Anyway, he has a ponytail as long as mine, and he had some earrings. And another of the guys has the shaggiest beard you ever saw, real ‘Grizzly Adams’, only he’s barely five feet tall. And just to show there’s no prejudice, I guess, one of the IT guys was wearing a pinstripe suit and tie just like Harrison. Maybe he’s Harrison’s nephew or something," Logan said with a grin.
"Anyway, Harrison interrupted after a few minutes to ask me to step out so they could discuss my proposal, but I could see I had the job. A couple of minutes later they invited me back in and kicked the technical types out so we could negotiate the terms and conditions. The next day I started work."
"Good," she said. "Almost done." True to her word, it was only a few more minutes before she stepped back. At first, she didn’t say anything. Then she looked at Logan with an almost apologetic expression in her eyes.
"That bad?" he asked.
She still didn’t say anything, just motioning him to look for himself in the mirror over the vanity.
"Dear, sweet, Lord," he breathed.
"I told you you had great cheekbones," Jayla said quietly.
"I think this is more than just cheekbones," Logan replied, looking at his face in the mirror. This time Jayla had not held back in any sort of attempt to be almost too subtle to notice. The look he saw reflected was still understated and elegant, but the ten foot rule had gone completely out the window. From almost any distance, his face would look dramatic and glamorous. And very, very feminine.
It wasn’t the girl-next-door cuteness that Jayla displayed, by any means. His face had stronger features than that with a sharp chin and narrow nose and those terrific cheekbones. But his eyes were large, and her magic made them larger. His lips were dramatically accented in a color that was darker than anything natural, yet by no means gaudy. It was a more refined, almost severe face than Jayla wore. By the standards of women it was only moderately attractive, of the sort that is often characterized as handsome in a sense that is actually damning with faint praise. But by the standards of men, well, it just didn’t fit into those standards any more. Of course, the polo shirt he had pulled on after they got dressed - and the shape within it - didn’t do much to enhance the image. What was more important, though, was that they didn’t do much to undermine it. His slender build was also well within the range of women, albeit a minimally-endowed one.
"Some experiment," he said, after a very long pause.
"Um, yes. Well, now I know."
"Know what?" he asked, still unable to take his eyes off the image in the mirror.
"I know what my glamour colors look like on a very elegant face," she explained. She sounded almost reluctant when she said, "Sit down again and I’ll clean it off."
"Why?"
"You mean you want to stay looking like that?"
Logan turned away from the mirror and looked at his gorgeous wife. "I’m not the one who will be looking at it. If you want me to clean it off, fine. If you’d like me to stay this way, then it doesn’t matter to me."
"I, um, see what you mean," she said, examining his face. "I guess it wouldn’t hurt to leave it that way for a while."
"Whatever you want," he said.
She shook herself a little, tearing her gaze away from the surprise she had created, and said, "So, show me this bimbo that almost kept you from getting this job."
They moved to the study and Logan fired up the computer. In the dark screen he could see a fairly clear reflection and Jayla caught him tilting his head to get a slightly different angle. She snickered and said, "Not bad, huh?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, it’s certainly different."
He got busy calling up the right websites, then surfing through to find the corporate officers. In a moment, he had Spencer’s picture on the screen.
"What did you say?" Jayla asked, then answered her own question, "’Not any great beauty?’ I’ll say. You’re a lot better looking than she is."
"Well, right now that might be true. But there’s still something.."
"It’s her hair," Jayla declared suddenly. "Her hair is . . . or, um, the best way to put it might be that your hair is sort of, uh, flat."
"Flat?"
She nodded and said, "You just pull yours back into the clasp, letting it sort of lay there. She’s had hers really styled, with some bangs she can brush to the side but they don’t get pulled down tight to her head. And her hair is wavier so it looks thicker. If you did your hair like that, you’d be lots better looking than she is."
Logan shrugged and said, "If you say so. I don’t guess I really care."
After a moment, Jayla’s face showed that she had reached a decision and she said, "If you don’t mind, I can seriously use your help in working on some makeup designs for redheads, especially the lean and elegant look. I, um, I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you really do look good enough that I can learn a lot from working on your face and your look, but that’s just, ah, experimenting. It’s not something you need to do for me on a regular basis."
"Don’t want a hubby that looks like a wifey?" he laughed.
But Jayla didn’t laugh with him. He looked sharply at her to find out why she was not sharing in his humor and found a more thoughtful expression.
"Earth to Jayla," he said softly.
"Oh? Um, sorry," she said, blushing.
"What were you thinking about?"
"Oh, nothing really," she said, but at his unbelieving expression she continued. "It’s just that, well, you really look good like that. I guess I was wishing that it was okay for men to wear attractive cosmetics because I really like the way you look. The things that make makeup styles work for women, brighter eyes, smooth and healthy looking skin, eyecatching lips, those things all look good on you, too."
She shrugged and said, "I know it’s not fashionable and it would be embarrassing to go outside like that. But if it weren’t for old-fashioned rules, I’d like it if you could look that way all the time."
Logan stood and wrapped his arms around her. "Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Okay, I’ll do it whenever you ask. I don’t particularly want to be gawked at in public, but you’re not asking for that. And frankly, as long as it takes to do, I hope you won’t want me to get all painted up every night. But anytime you want, either to experiment or just because you ‘like the look’, just say the word."
"It doesn’t make you feel, um, ‘unmanly’ or anything?"
"Beautiful, if you can ask that after the way we spent this afternoon, then I am *really* doing something wrong."
"Point taken," she said, smiling.
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