by Marcy Wilson-Cales

Barnabas found himself staring at her hands.

They were small, and delicate, but nothing else could be considered feminine. Julia had trained to be ambidextrous with her equipment, and it showed, in the sides of her fingers where calluses had worn hard skin from holding strange tools, a small splotch above her left ulna where a labmate in college, she said, spilled an acid...two small lines from when Willie had made the mistake of cleaning the lab once; he had moved the Bunsen a few inches to one side, and Julia, having not personally moved it herself, had not been ready for it to be there, and burned herself. It was one of the few times when her considerable temper had come into display, but she had visibly reigned it in when the poor man was nearly reduced to tears.

Julia's hands were nothing like Josette's, or Angelique's, or Kitty's or Roxanne's, or even Carolyn's or Vicky's, where a lady took great pains to keep their skin fine and soft, their nails long and halfway useless, and displayed their fingers in trained positions to show how they tapered, long and graceful. Julia left her expressions for her face to deliver; the rest of her body was still and lake-placid. She wore the usefulness of her hands--and her capabilities--for the world to see, and took as much unspoken confidence in them as any highly born and bred lady.

He wanted to reach over and take his hands with hers, but how often could he expect her to reach out, only to expect him to pull away? So he did nothing, remaining torn between fantasy and harsh reality.

To Be Continued

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