Manhunting

by Jennifer Crusie

  “I want,” Kate said. “I’m really looking forward to this. I love financial planning.”

  “I’d rather shoot myself in the foot,” Nancy said. “But each to his own, I guess.”

  “Well, right now my own is being a barmaid,” Kate said, checking her hat in the mirror. “I’m going to be great.”

  She felt great. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, her body round in the low-cut tank top, her face flushed from the heat and exercise. She would never have planned to look that way, but she found after her first embarrassment that being riotously feminine was intoxicating. She knew she looked good because of the way the men looked at her, a way she wasn’t used to. She was used to cool, approving looks that evaluated her like she was an expensive piece of porcelain. The men at Nancy’s looked at her like she was flesh and blood. It was disconcerting and fun. She felt powerful instead of possessed, appreciated instead of coveted. She tilted her hat back and smiled at everyone, practicing her own version of the friendly, mild flirting that Nancy used on every male she met; and the men were responsive to a flattering degree. The women, she found, were just plain friendly. She felt happy and curiously alive. The only plan she had in mind now was the one for Nancy’s bar.

  However, being a barmaid, Kate discovered, wasn’t all bounce and smile. The bonuses were the friendly people, the cheerful atmosphere, the tips, and working with Nancy. The downside was the constant walking and the hands.

  “Just move around them, honey,” Thelma, one of the barmaids advised her. “If they connect, spill a little beer on them.”

  Sally, the other barmaid, pointed out the worst offenders. “Give them their drinks from across the table. They’ll look down your bra, but they won’t be able to reach you.”

  Nancy showed her how to mix drinks, draw beer, and work the register. Kate concentrated like she hadn’t since college, learning not only the names of the drinks but the names of the customers and what they drank. When Jake’s Uncle Early, a potbellied man in a stained shirt, came to the bar and said, “Another one, please,” she said, “Gin,” and poured.

  Nancy was impressed. She was even more impressed when she realized that Kate could do it with anyone by their third drink.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  “Mnemonics,” Kate said. “It’s the way I got through college. You make up a sentence that links the two words. You know, it’s too Early for Gin.”

  Nancy shook her head. “Amazing.”

  “I think I’ve got the hang of it.” Kate felt absurdly proud.

  “I think so, too.” Nancy handed her two beers. “Jake and Ben. They’re due.”

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  Kate threaded her way back to the pool table.

  “Hey,” she said, and they stood back for her.

  Jake looked at her tank top as he took his beer, and then he looked away. “Nice outfit,” he said. “Injured anybody lately?”

  “Give it a rest,” Kate said. “Not everyone is as big a wimp as you.”

  “Oh, almost forgot,” Jake said and tipped her five bucks.

  “What’s this for?”

  He picked up his cue and chalked it. “Helping me settle a bet with Ben.”

  “What bet?”

  “Whether you were a real blonde or not.”

  The lake that morning. Kate blushed brick red and turned back to the bar. She stopped before she got there and walked back to him.

  “Who won?” she asked.

  Jake made his shot. “I did. Ben’s a cynic.”

  By ten the bar was almost empty, so everybody saw Sally swerve to avoid Brad’s hand, slip in some spilled beer, and sprain her ankle.

  Jake looked at Kate. “I warned you,” he said. “I pleaded with you not to maim any more of the population.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “This is my fault?”

  “Okay, you’re right.” He put down his cue. “This one isn’t your fault.” He left to help Ben get Sally into Thelma’s car.

  Nancy waved her over. “That job offer is really serious now. Can you fill in for Sally for a couple of nights?”

  “Sure,” Kate said.

  “Six to eleven, Wednesday and Thursday. If Sally’s not back by Friday, six to one.”

  “Sounds good,” Kate said and went to clear a table. My feet hurt, but I like it here, she thought. I owe Jessie big for this one.

  Chapter Eight

  By eleven, Kate’s feet were beyond hurting and into agony.

  She walked back to tell Jake their game was off for the night, that she simply couldn’t stand up another moment, but when she got back to him, he smiled, and she wasn’t tired anymore.

  “This is the cue ball.” He picked up the only white ball on the table. “Do not hit the cue ball into the pockets. That is bad.”

  Ben shook his head and moved away.

  “You might want to stay,” Jake said to him mildly. “Some of this stuff you haven’t mastered yet.”

  “Don’t play for money,” Ben warned her as he left “The guy’s a shark.”

  “Okay, no white ball in the pockets,” Kate said.

  Jake put all the colored balls inside a triangular frame. “This is a rack. You rack the balls to start.”

  He had nice hands. Long fingers. She watched him pull the rack away and put the cue ball a little way from the point of the racked balls.

  “To start the game, you have to break the racked balls.” He crooked his finger at her. “Come here.”

  He put a cue in her hand. “Make a bridge,” he said, showing her how. Then he moved the cue over her fingers. “The cue should slide over the bridge when you shoot.”

  “Got it.” Kate concentrated on her bridge, making it as close to Jake’s example as she could. “Now what?”

  “Line up the cue with the cue ball.”

  “Right.” Kate bent over the table, absentmindedly feeling her short tight skirt ride up on her thighs. She sighted down the cue so that the point was in the middle of the white ball.

  “Now what?” she asked. He didn’t say anything, and she looked around and found him looking at the back of her skirt and shaking his head.

  “Jake?”

  “Don’t wear that skirt to play pool. Now I know how those other guys went. I almost had a heart attack myself.”

  “Very funny.” She yanked her skirt down over her rear end and felt it part company with her tank top.

  “Okay,” he said. “Hit the cue ball and scatter the other balls on the table.”

  She bent over the table again, and took her shot, but the cue bit the table and bounced into the cue ball. “Sorry,” she said.

  “My fault.” Jake racked the balls again. “I wasn’t paying attention. Okay, hold the cue again.”

  She lined up the cue with the ball and he came up behind her. “Your cue’s up too high. Flatten it out so it’s parallel to the table.”

  She overcompensated.

  “No. Bring the tip down a little lower.”

  She dipped it again.

  “No,” he said.

  “Show me,” she said, frustrated. “I don’t see what you mean.”

  He bent over her, putting his hands on top of hers. “Like this.”

  Kate concentrated on getting the angle right, and then noticed that he’d frozen over her. “Jake?” she asked and then realized what he had realized—that he was wrapped around her, the warm length of him touching her back all the way down, his hands curled over hers. She froze, too.

  He stood slowly. “Just hit the ball.”

  Jake taught her the rest of the basics standing far away across the table from her. The problem with this noble plan was that he could see down her tank top every time she bent to take a shot, and it clearly distracted him. Kate enjoyed it, just as she’d enjoyed the admiration of the other men in the bar. There was something intoxicating about seeing Jake flustered. She lifted her chin a little so he could see down her cleavage a little more clearly.

  Jake sighed and moved
to the side of the table.

  “Great game,” she said, when they quit an hour later.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, heading for the bar. “I need a drink.”

  Kate went into the back room and came out with a sloppy stack of mismatched folders.

  “What are you doing?” Jake asked.

  “Saving the plantation from the Yankees who hold the mortgage,” Kate said.

  “Hey,” Jake said, rescuing a folder as it slipped from the stack. “Watch your mouth, woman.”

  “All I know is, the bad guy always has a mustache,” Kate said. “I haven’t seen you twirl yours yet, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. Night, Nancy, Ben. Thanks for the pool lesson, Jake.”

  “You can’t twirl this kind of mustache,” Jake said, but she was already gone.

  He turned to find Nancy grinning at him.

  “That woman annoys me,” he said, and followed Kate out the door, forgetting his beer, only to see her car pull out before he could stop her and defend his mustache.

  Kate and Penny arrived back at the cabin at the same time, Penny arm in arm with Mark this time.

  “I meant to tell you, that was a great golf game the other day,” Mark told Kate, “although you probably shouldn’t have killed him.”

  “I didn’t kill him.” Kate tried to look innocent. “The doctor said he could come back tomorrow.”

  “If you play him again, I’ll caddie for free.”

  “Oh, no. I’m giving up golf. It’s too dangerous.” She waved good-night to them as she went inside.

  She could hear their voices as they sat on the steps, laughing and talking together. For the first time, Kate envied Penny. Mark was attractive, smart, and funny.

  She didn’t want Mark. But she sure wanted someone. Stop it, she told herself. Think about something you’re good at, like saving Nancy’s bar.

  Kate worked on the books until two and then shoved them and her legal pads full of notes to one side of the bed before sinking down under the covers. The bar could be made comfortably profitable with a few easy changes, but it could be a gold mine only with massive infusions of capital and major changes.

  Major changes that Nancy wouldn’t want to deal with.

  But I would, she thought. Give me that bar and I could...

  But she couldn’t. First of all, the bar was Nancy’s and she loved it and, Kate knew without a doubt, it was Nancy that made the bar work.

  And besides, even if Nancy would sell, the bar wouldn’t help her plan. Very few businessmen would want to join her in rejuvenating a bar in a backwater town, no matter how profitable she could make it. Not even Jake, and he loved the backwater town.

  Not that she was thinking of Jake as a possibility for her plan. Jake, she knew, would never go back to business unless it involved spending all his mornings on a lake and left him a lot of free time to just stare at the sky. Jake had no ambition and wasn’t going to have any. He was a nice man, but he was absolutely impossible.

  But later when she dreamed, it was Jake who filled her fantasies, and by the time she woke up the next morning, she was feeling definitely uneasy about another morning on the lake. She was spending too much time with him. That’s why she was dreaming about him. He was the only man she ever saw.

  She called Rick and moved their hike up to nine, and then left a message with Will for Jake that said she wouldn’t be going out with him that morning; she had a date.

  Jake told himself that he wasn’t annoyed that Kate had canceled. Three mornings on a lake did not make a tradition or a commitment or anything else. The reason he was annoyed, he told himself, was that she’d left the message with Will. Will had looked at him and said, “You and Kate Svenson?” and grinned, and Jake had said, “No,” and stalked off. Of course not him and Kate Svenson. Extremely bad idea. Good thing she was only staying another week. Then she’d be out of his hair and things would get back to normal.

  But maybe it wouldn’t make any difference when she was going home. Maybe she’d be spending the rest of her time with Rick Roberts. Jake scowled across the lake into the woods where somewhere Kate was walking even now with Roberts. Jake had met him a few evenings before and liked him a lot; an easygoing, down-to-earth kind of guy, dedicated to his business because he was dedicated to saving the environment. He was, Jake had to admit, perfect for her plan. They could hug trees together and Kate would see that they made a fortune doing it.

  Well, good, Jake thought. That takes care of that annoyance. Sure is good to have the boat to myself for a change. He slumped back down onto the cushions, slapped his hat over his face, and tried to go to sleep.

  Rick was perfect for her plan, and Kate tried to feel happy about it Rick had adjusted his stride to hers so she could keep up. He did not take her arm to help her over nonexistent obstacles, breathe heavily in her ear, or try to intimidate her with his knowledge, wit, or physical prowess. He was polite, funny, kind, interesting, and gallant. When she asked him about his business, he talked about the environment instead, telling her what could be done through consulting to ease the burden on the land, water, and air.

  “I’m boring you,” he said at one point, and Kate said, “No, you’re not I’m envious. I wish my work was that satisfying.”

  “We can always use help,” Rick said. “Especially somebody with a mind as sharp as yours.” He smiled down at her without guile. “If you ever want to join the firm, say the word.”

  He was the one, she told herself. This was it. She wasn’t ever going to find anyone as great as him again.

  So when he stopped at the edge of a trail deep in the woods and put his hands on her shoulders, lowering his mouth to hers, she kissed him back. It was a pretty good kiss.

  When they broke apart, he smiled at her, stepped back to give her room, and promptly disappeared.

  “Rick?”

  He’d lost his footing and fallen over the side of the trail and rolled down a steep incline. Kate picked her way through the weeds and saplings down to where he’d landed, dazed, at the bottom.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Only my pride is wounded,” he said, and she helped him up and kissed him again for being so sweet. It was still pretty good.

  “I can face anything now,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Good.” Kate was relieved. For a moment, it had looked like Jake’s prophecy of disaster was coming true, but Rick was all right. He was going to make it through the whole date.

  Kate started back up the hill. “I think we can get back up there if we use the saplings to pull us up.”

  Rick took one step and collapsed, his ankle turning under him.

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” he said, gasping. “I must have sprained it after all.”

  Don’t panic, she told herself. You are not cursed, Jake is an idiot, and Rick will be all right. “Lean on me. There’s bound to be a trail down here that we can take.”

  As they moved off through the underbrush, she looked back to where he had fallen. The vines grew thickly there, and they all had three leaves. She thought of Jake. If he laughed, she would kill him in the boat and push his body into the lake.

  They found a gradual incline, and Kate coaxed Rick up to a clearing in the trees. He was scratching every now and then.

  Please let me get him back to the hotel before I do something else to him, she prayed silently.

  When they reached the clearing, they found a deserted road, but it wasn’t familiar and Kate had no idea which way to turn. Wonderful. Not only did Rick have a sprained ankle and terminal poison ivy, now she’d gotten him lost. He’d starve to death in the woods. They both would. But Jake would be wrong about one thing: If they starved together, this would be one man who had kept her until the end of the date.

  “Sit here,” she said. “I’m going for help.”

  He scratched his ankle. “I should come with you. It might not be safe.”

  “You’re probably safer by yourself than with me anyway,” she told him. “I’ll be ba
ck.”

  Kate automatically turned toward the lake while she reviewed everything that had happened to her since she’d left the city. This was not working, and she really didn’t know why. She’d had a perfectly good plan, and look at it now. The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that she and her plan were doomed. There were some forces in the universe that were too big for humans to comprehend. It was time to give up and go home.

  She followed the shoreline until she saw Jake in his boat, floating under the willow.

  “Hey,” she called out to him and waved.

  She saw him sit up, so startled that he rocked the boat. Then he saw her and put his head in his hands, and she knew he was laughing. She sat down on the shore and waited for him to row across to her.

  When he got there, he pulled the boat up and walked over to her.

  “Where’s Rick?”

  “Accident.”

  Jake started to laugh again. “You’re like the Bermuda Triangle,” he said, looking down at her. “They go out with you, but they don’t come back.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  He reached his hand down to her, and when she grasped it, he pulled her to her feet. “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “How bad?”

  “Sprained ankle and poison ivy.”

  Jake shook his head and let go of her hand. “I’ll go get the car.”

  They picked up Rick, Jake helping him carefully into the front seat, and drove him to the hotel.

  “You’re showing remarkable restraint,” Kate said to Jake from the back seat as he drove. “Wouldn’t you like to make a comment here?”

  “I’m speechless. Maybe this is God’s way of telling you not to date.”

  Kate sighed. “I’ve come to that conclusion, too. I didn’t push him or anything, you know.”

  Rick turned to look at her over the seat. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Kate said. “Me and Lord Byron.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Rick said. “Let’s have dinner tonight.”