The Touch of Magic Series, page 96
It was just as well. Rae would have been forty pounds heavier by the end of the night if she had continued to take out her anger on the dip. She grabbed one of the small strawberry shortcakes anyway and headed to the couch. Tucking herself into the crook of the other arm, she looked up as Alex burst through the door. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not yet! Shhhh.” Lisa pointed the remote again and scooted over a little to make room for Jack between them.
Sam waited until just about everyone else was seated then cleared himself a spot on the floor in front of Sheree’s spot in the armchair. He was about as far away as he could possibly be. If that was a good indication of how angry he was, well then, she didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.
Well, she hadn’t ever stood a chance. The problem was she kept checking back in as though that would change. It wouldn’t. She was angry at herself for hoping.
The strawberry shortcake was going to pay for her sin, too. Had she been alone, Rae would have apologized to the little cake first. Instead she just began lifting the strawberry slices from the top and eating them one by one. If it could be called eating. She bit in with fervor, chewed it to a pulp and went back for the next one. Halfway through the top shortcake round Jack’s voice cut through a commercial. “Rae? What are you doing to that cake?”
“Eating it!” She wished she hadn’t sounded so irate. She’d like to blame that on Sam, too.
“You do know where the forks are?”
Five pairs of eyes were turned to her, as she sat with another slick strawberry between her fingers. “I like it better this way.”
Jack shook his head. “It just seems silly that Lisa went to all this work to stack those little things.” When Jack hosted crime night there were Doritos and beer. Rae had to make her own popcorn those nights.
“Hey!” Lisa smacked him on the arm with an irritated grin. “I did go to a lot of work to make them, and Rae is clearly enjoying it. There’s no fork law in this house, and you should be the first to admit that.”
Rae beamed at Lisa. “Thank you.”
Right then Alex’s voice cut in, “Besides, I’m enjoying watching her eat it that way.”
Her fingers stopped just at the moment the strawberry hit her lips. Her eyes widened. It hadn’t occurred to her that there was anything involved here other than a shortcake and a vengeful tongue. She hadn’t meant to be giving any male persons any ideas.
Her gaze flew instantly to Sam, but he was watching the commercials, not her mouth. Rae resigned her lips to their lonely existence, and went back to polishing off the cake. If Sam wasn’t watching, then it could only be about the taste.
A few commercials later, Lisa asked whose turn it was to pick Friday night.
“Mine.” Sam finally pried his eyes away from the television and turned to Lisa, making solid eye contact. It seemed he would talk to anyone but her.
“So what’s your pick?”
“Bowling.”
“Hmm!” Lisa perked up. “We haven’t done that in a while.”
“That’s why I thought of it.”
“So,” Lisa looked back and forth between Rae and Sheree, “Should I make nail appointments for all of us for Saturday morning?”
Rae smiled. That would be good. It would take her mind off how grumpy Sam would most likely have been to her the night before. “Count me in.”
“Me three.” Sheree managed to squeeze in before the show came back on and the two cops were back to running down the street after the perp.
Rae took the next commercial break to get up and get more food. She wasn’t that hungry, but it always tasted so good when it was Lisa’s night and it gave her something to do with her hands beside fidget like a nervous twit. Sam was up and on his way to the table when she stood. But the second she approached him he waved her by and turned to go down the hall toward the bathroom.
Her breath sucked in and she fought for control of her jaw which was desperately trying to open to a great cave. He had been headed to the dining room. He couldn’t even stand to be at the same table with her? That ass!
She almost chased him down the hallway just to yell at him, but decided that it was all better unsaid. Clearly, she didn’t want anyone else involved in this little fantasy world she had constructed where she believed she’d stood a chance with champion quarterback and hot shot lawyer Samuel Levi Brock. Weaseling in when he was sick was probably just too much for him, from a girl he’d made the mistake of kissing senseless. A girl who would read that kiss as something that it definitely wasn’t. She’d taken it as better than it actually was. Certainly as more than he meant it to be.
She told herself it was all for the best, finding this out now. He was such a jerk that she couldn’t possibly have any feelings for him. She decided that she’d made a terrible mistake. She repeated this to herself like a mantra and told her heart to pay close attention. She attacked the stuffed peppers.
“For God’s sakes!”
Sam stood in the open doorway of his garage looking out over the wet driveway where Jeremy held the formerly fluffy towel he had just blackened to pitch. It was one of the nice ones Rae had left him. Sam sighed. At least the boy was actually doing a good job of getting the car cleaned.
“What?” Jeremy managed to make a shrug look righteously angry.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Sam sighed again and sucked it up. He had told Jeremy to use the white towel. He had just meant from the other bathroom. Where the old, good-for-nothing-but-car-washing, already grubby white towels were. “I like the glow. How much longer?”
The little coupe would shine like oil. So that Sam could drive it out tonight to not pick up his hot girlfriend that he didn’t have. He would go out bowling and watch Rae not speak to him.
Another shrug from Jeremy and the boy and his beat-up leather jacket turned back to the car. He didn’t acknowledge Sam now in any way other than voice. “Twenty minutes.”
“What? Oh.” That showed where his mind was these days. The same place it always was. In the gutter. With Rae.
At least before when it had been in the gutter, Sam had believed he actually had a chance of getting in the gutter with her. He trudged back inside. Jeremy was seeming to be more trustworthy this week. But Sam left the blinds open anyway. This was a kid who had stolen an eight-hundred-dollar car. Who knew what he’d do with a nice black coupe in front of him?
Pulling a blue short-sleeve shirt out of his closet, Sam held it up in front of the mirror. It brought out the blue in his eyes. Which only made him disgusted with himself. Why should he wear anything to make her notice him? Clearly, there was no point. He shoved the shirt back at the closet as though it were all the shirt’s fault that his love life had gone south. South Pole south. Grabbing a green shirt, he pulled it on instead. He didn’t know whose eyes that matched and therefore declared it okay.
Rae had come in here and seen him at his worst and ordered him around like a child. He was still in knots over that. The twist that happened in his gut every time he thought about it couldn’t be ignored. The anger seethed just below the surface. More than anger, he was just upset, gnawed at by the feeling that he had lost something valuable that he couldn’t replace.
The expanse of the black comforter called to him. It was neat, spread out smooth, and entirely un-rumpled. She had sat there beside him with her arms curled around her knees and waited for him to wake up. It was hardly the image he had conjured for how he wanted the two of them in his bed together. His ideas involved a lot less clothing and a decided lack of thermometers and mothering. More like the morning they’d woken up together. But that had been fleeting. Had she run because it hit her what they were doing? Or had it really been about the clock? He’d never know now.
He tried watching TV for the remaining few minutes, flipping through all the channels at least three times before Jeremy announced he was finished with the car and could he go home?
Locking up and sending Jeremy on his way, Sam headed out to go bowling. Why hadn’t he suggested a movie? Then he wouldn’t have to watch her. He knew she would wiggle her butt and he wouldn’t be able to avoid looking. Neither would anyone else, for that matter. She was a terrible bowler but tried to steer the ball through some kind of wiggle-witchcraft. All it did was distract everyone from her awful score. He should concentrate on bowling. He could take his anger out on a thirteen-pound ball. That was enough weight to work out some nerves, right?
The drive over was lost to him. For all he knew he had been abducted by aliens and deposited in front of the fun center. All he could think of was the hour he’d spent at her apartment last week. He’d watched her work, all focus and talent. She was amazing, pure drive. She hadn’t even noticed him at all. It was just Rae and her camera looking through her two-way mirror and capturing human faces. He already knew how talented she was. How she could hold her camera up and snap a shot and get better pictures than he could when he lined up his shot carefully. She always seemed to know where the light was and what it was worth to her picture. She said she just “saw” it. To make things worse, his mother couldn’t stop talking about the show and what an amazing artist Rae was. There were already two new pieces that Rae had given her hanging in the house.
He couldn’t escape her. Some image of her always came forth. At his mother’s. In his condo. He could see her in the kitchen making him soup, or hear her come down the hall to check on him. She even haunted him away from his own home. Like in the car, when he remembered driving her away from dance lessons. Even without something specific, she haunted him in his mind.
She hadn’t asked him to attend swing dancing class with her again. Sam didn’t even know if she was still going, or if that big black-haired guy had finally asked her to dance now that Sam was no longer there to make rude faces over her shoulder.
The red and neon of the bowling alley sign was suddenly overhead, and he cut a sharp right at the last moment into the tiny lot. He was the first one here, as he should be. It was his night and he had to get the lane and wait.
A parking spot opened up before him, which was a good thing. In this state of mind, he might have driven in circles for a while. The last of the Santa Ana winds blew warm air at him as he hurried inside, but he was grateful. It brought him back around to the earthly plane. To what was going on here, and not in the world of his imagination. Which had grown very rich of late.
Inside, he looked around and grounded himself with the sounds of smashing pins and the low rumble of the ball return. The round man behind the counter handed him shoes and directed him to one of only two vacant lanes.
Taking up otherwise empty time, he staked out the wood surface, and ordered a few beers and chips, then entered a team name into the computer. Next, he went around to find a ball. He chose his own easily. The heaviest thing he could find. It would give him the best aggression workout. Then he set about gathering balls for the rest of the crew. No one was serious enough to have their own.
Jack and Alex? Having no clue what they used, he got an assortment of about four heavier balls and lined them up in the return loop. Sheree and Lisa were as much a mystery, and he grabbed a few of the lighter, girlier colored ones.
But Rae . . . they had all come here about four months ago. And he even remembered that she had a “lucky” ball. An eight-pound black and pink swirled thing that said “Sweetie” on it. Someone must have left it behind, she’d mused. Rae and “Sweetie” had gone on to her best score, crappy though it still was. She had reluctantly set the ball back in the corner when they had all left.
Sure enough, he spotted Sweetie in the middle rack behind a family and went to retrieve the stupid thing. How could he pass it up?
As he headed back, he spotted Jack, Lisa, and Alex at the chairs drinking the beer that had arrived without him. Feeling like a complete idiot, he grabbed another random ball off the shelf, and carried it with his fingers laced in the holes. He couldn’t even get his fingers into the ones the girls used. But he couldn’t very well show up with Rae’s prize piece and look like he knew it, could he?
“Hey!” Yeah, sure, that sounded casual. How about a nice “Where’s Rae? Do I stand any sort of chance with her? Never mind. I know I don’t.” Softly he set the two balls into the ball return loop and picked up his beer. Soon they would start playing, maybe then his mind would work. Yeah, Right.
His head turned even before he consciously recognized her laughter. He wanted to whack himself over the head with the beer bottle. Because that was clearly what it would take to get him to see things clearly.
But he did see things clearly. Clearly his own way. Whatever Sheree was wearing he couldn’t have said, but Rae was in her soft blue gingham shirt. Her hair in a ponytail, bouncing as she walked. With her white slim pants and socks she could have stepped right out of the fifties. He forced himself to turn away, and began inputting their names into the computer.
He wouldn’t put hers first.
When he looked up, the girls all had their shoes on and everyone was ready, and he had put Rae’s turn right before his.
CHAPTER 29
“No! Left, Sweetie, left!” Rae leaned in hopes of conveying her message to the bowling ball. They had done so much better last time. Well, there would be a second game. Sweetie guttered and Rae frowned. “You’re up.” She grumped to Sam.
At least in his black mood he didn’t seem to notice that she was just as foul.
As she swung back, her ponytail curled around the side of her face and receded. Revealing Sam’s tight, sculpted butt in a great pair of jeans. Rae watched as he focused down the lane and threw the ball hard enough to smash pins.
“Strike!” It was Jack, Alex, and Lisa all together. Rae didn’t get in on the cheering in time. She hadn’t watched the ball make its path down the lane. She’d been watching Sam’s backside. It was far more interesting. She clapped in what she hoped was a show of good nature before finding a chair and nudging Lisa up for her turn.
After three more rounds, Rae was ready to give up. Grabbing her wallet, she headed up to the concessions counter for a beer. Drinking more could only improve her game. She had hit fifteen pins total in six tries. It was a better average if she didn’t count the three gutter balls. At least no one so far had made comments about getting the kiddie bumpers out for her. Sam, of course, had stood up and made short work of her disaster by throwing his own ball so hard that she thought the pins would burst.
But instead they had flown out to the sides like spinning blades and mowed down everything in their paths, including all the other pins. That strike gave him a total of three, plus two spares and a split that had left him cursing. Lisa pointed out that maybe he shouldn’t have chosen bowling if he couldn’t have fun. He had grumbled that he was having plenty of fun, and they had all left it at that.
Rae took the beer from the concessions guy, thinking again that showing her ID was a waste. It was clear to both of them she’d passed twenty-one a while ago. By the time she got back to the lane she was surprised to discover a third of her beer was already gone. She drank while everyone else proceeded to get up and roll the ball and hit pins.
If only she could hit pins. Ah well. When it was her turn again, Rae tucked her fingers into the pink and black swirled ball and hefted it in her hands before starting down the aisle. She did three steps, swung her arm back then forward and let the ball fly. Sweetie, of course, spun leftward and guttered. For some unknown reason Rae decided to give actual bowling just one more try. This was how you were supposed to do it, though it clearly wasn’t working for her. If she didn’t score something worthwhile with this roll, she was going to revert to granny method and set the ball down and shove it. She did her three steps again and let the ball fly. This time, it stayed in the lane.
“Go Sweetie!” She yelled as the ball swirled its way down the course slowly but surely. Finally headed in the right direction, it looked as though it might not get there with enough force to actually knock over pins. But it did. Seven in all. A cheer went up behind her. An even bigger cheer than for Sam’s strikes. Seven pins.
As she whirled with her fists up in the air, she spotted her friend. “Liam!”
Rae ran several lanes over where he and a few people she didn’t know were getting set up and she jumped into his arms. She hadn’t seen him since they had worked those rotating twelve hour shifts just before Sam had gotten sick.
“Rae!” He swung her around and finally set her down facing him.
“What have you been doing? I haven’t—”
His voice was low, but he was clearly cutting her off. “What’s with the tall, brown-haired guy?”
“Huh?” Rae swung around and saw that he meant Sam. The word choice was never how she would have described him. “Oh, Sam. It’s nothing.”
Liam grinned that cockeyed charming smile of his. “Believe me, it’s not nothing.”
“Oh, believe me. It is.”
He laughed at her, clearly not agreeing. “You still got the five?” He was asking about the five-dollar bill they constantly tried to win off each other and that she had won back from him recently.
It was her turn to giggle. “In my purse.”
“I’ll get it back.”
“How?”
“Okay.” He tried to look like they were in casual conversation, but his voice was more conspiratorial. “You just go along with me, and I’ll prove to you that it’s not nothing.”
Sam? Not nothing? Well, sure, it wasn’t actually nothing but Rae already knew what it was. “He’s mad at me.”
“No, it’s not that.”
Her brows pulled together. “Really?”
He nodded. “Watch and learn.” Without warning, Liam swept her into his arms again. This time, kissing her full on the mouth and spinning them around a few times. Gently setting her back on her feet, he dipped her low and made the kiss look like a lot more than it was. When he let her up, she was still clinging to him, and he faced them so his back was to her friends and his chest blocking her view of their faces. “Now, look over my shoulder.”
