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She stood up when she saw him, her face lighting with pleasure, said something to the other women and then hurried towards him.
"Hello," she said softly.
Conor was not a man given to public displays, by nature or by vocation, but when he saw the way she was looking at him, his heart swelled.
"Hello, yourself," he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her.
Miranda gave a breathless little laugh.
"We're being watched," she whispered.
"I don't care." He smiled, tilted her chin up and kissed her again. "Do you?"
"Not a bit."
"I missed you."
"Not half as much as I missed you." She linked her arm through his as they strolled to the exit. "And that's not just sloppy sentimentality, either, O'Neil, so don't let it go to your head." She smiled up at him as the automatic doors slid open and they stepped out onto the street. "Or have you forgotten that while you were out, doing whatever manly thing it is you were doing, I was trapped in a room full of frills and froufrou?"
"With the harpies back there?"
"Uh-huh. Heaven save me from ending up that way."
"What way?"
"They're nice women, but scary. All of them afraid to eat an extra lettuce leaf, exchanging the addresses of their latest plastic surgeons..." She shuddered. "Can we get something to eat? I'm starved!"
"Sure. But I thought you just had lunch."
"We had something the menu called a Spring Surprise." She giggled. "The surprise was that nobody could get a fork in it long enough to hold it still and saw off a piece."
Conor laughed. "How does a hamburger sound?"
"With onion?"
"Raw or fried?"
"Raw," Miranda said indignantly. "Only the potatoes on the side should be fried."
"Beckman, you're a woman after my own heart."
"I don't suppose I could get a malted with my burger and fries?"
"Even a pickle," Conor said.
Miranda grinned. "You're on."
* * *
He took her to a place he knew on Tenth Avenue.
It was a diner, a glittering chrome palace of a place, complete with a jukebox stocked with records from the sixties. Elvis sang about the Heartbreak Hotel while they attacked their hamburgers, which Miranda pronounced perfect.
"I have," she sighed, "died and gone to heaven."
"What happened to that finely educated French palate?" Conor said, smiling as he watched her pluck a French fry from her plate with her fingers.
"O'Neil, I'm not a dope." She dunked the fry into a glob of ketchup, then popped it into her mouth. "There are some things only the French do well, like champagne or crème brulee, but when it comes to hamburgers, pickles and greasy fries, only the Americans know their stuff."
