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"How 'bout a quick bite first?" |
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"Come on. It's San Francisco. You can't just have room service. Besides, I'm a growing boy." |
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Kyna laughed. "You're a bottomless pit." |
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He drove around Chinatown for twenty minutes before finding a parking place, but then they walked right into a restaurant on Stockton and got a table without having to wait. They split an order of cashew nut chicken and sweet-and-sour porkKyna picked out the cashews and chicken and gobbled down the vegetablesand then shared a pot of green tea. When the check came, Cyrus glanced at Kyna and tossed his fortune cookie, unopened, into the trash barrel on the way out of the restaurant. |
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Kyna drove back to the hotel and parked in the garage. |
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"You still beat?" Cyrus asked. |
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They walked hand in hand down Columbus Avenue to Ghirardelli Square. It soon became obvious that Kyna was skating on the edge of exhaustion; her footsteps were slow, her eyes were rimmed with red and her smilewhen it camewas perfunctory. Cyrus purchased a red woolen shawl in a shop on the second level that specialized in Irish goods, and draped it around her shoulders to help cut the chill. Later, while Kyna was looking in the window of an art gallery, Cyrus wandered into The Nature Company next door. He picked up a stuffed wolf from a display basket of fuzzy predators and stared into its marble eyes. The toy wolf reminded him of his midnight rendezvous with Kazie Mabuto and he glanced at his watchit was almost ten. He would never quite be able to put his finger on the exact moment when his feelings for Kyna crossed the line between business and oh-so-personal, but the fact that they had made the meeting imperative. He was still staring at the stuffed canine when Kyna eased up behind him and slipped her arm through his. |
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"You look like you're a million miles away." She chuckled. |
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