Page 78 of Acting on Instinct
In the distance was the scream of sirens.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kira
Kira was glad that the sun was going down.
She’d watched what there was on TV, which was nothing that she could remember beyond color and movement. With twitchy fingers, Kira tried to scroll through a book on her reading app. But her mind kept wandering.
She didn’t even have her novels to pull her focus into something other than her present circumstances.
Kira knew those novels were safe in Iniquus's hands, but she felt odd that they weren’t with her. They were such an important part of her life, and she’d treated them with such reverence and care. Perhaps this was how London felt when her dog, Princess Beatrice, stayed with Kira. Her feelings mirrored the longing quality in London’s voice when she made her daily check-in calls. Those novels held a woman’s voice and soul. And Kira was responsible for keeping it alive.
Houston had made two indications that there were electronics.
Kira knew a little bit about scent training from Ty’s work with Rory. One of the very first games they played was “Where’s Kira?” as she hid in the woods.
She knew, for example, that dogs could smell a drop of gasoline in a pool of water, which meant that if the wedding album had been stored under the television or behind an ancient VCR, perhaps beside a computer, it might have picked up ambient odors.
That made more sense to Kira than anything else that her imagination wanted her to consider.
Electronics?
Was she being listened to?
What would anyone possibly have heard?
Kira moved into the little bathroom, pulled back the white shower curtain, and started to fill the tub. She picked up one of the complimentary shampoos and breathed deeply of the fresh herbaceous scent.
Undressing, Kira lowered herself into the cold water from the faucet as it began to mix with the scalding hot water she loved, water hot enough to turn her flesh pink and make Ty declare her flesh was asbestos.
At her little house, her brass standalone tub with its rounded neck let her sink into the water, imagining Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters doing needlepoint in the salon while the servants walked in with a jug of hot water from the stove to re-warm up the cooling bath.
If Kira lived at the family compound in Qatar, she would have servants to assist her in bathing and styling her hair. They’d rub her skin with rose-scented oils.
Kira didn’t mind a little pampering on a special occasion, but she found it intrusive as a way of life now that modern conveniences like water heaters made the distracting, cat-footed movements pattering in and out of the room unnecessary.
Kira preferred daydreaming in peace.
Back when she’d decorated her house, Kira had designed her master bath after a scene from the film version of Pride and Prejudice with the bathing Mr. Darcy. Kira had been attracted to his character arc. Many people thought that Jane Austen’s real-world several-hours-long engagement to Bigg-Wither was the template for Darcy, since he, too, was socially awkward. Sometimes life imitates art: Pride and Prejudice was penned years before Austen’s own proposal came ... and went.
One of Kira’s professors maintained that Darcy was a high-masking autistic character, citing impaired social communication, sensory and social overload, literalism, and moral rigidity. But if that were true—and there was no way to tell—then the youngest Bennet daughter, Mary, certainly had similar characteristics.
As for Darcy, Kira preferred this rather than Jane’s interpretation of arrogance and pride.
Kira’s own love story with Ty was not a similar arc.
When she met Ty, he was a character that stepped from a favorite film; all she needed to do was squint her eyes a bit as he moved through the scene, breaking from the script only to save the life of London’s Princess Bea, who had bolted into the road.
There were butterflies in her stomach from the first.
And grief at the impossibility of them ever exploring a future.
Followed by the realization that Ty was a mirage, an illusion, a lie.
And yet, she didn’t throw him out.
She didn’t.
