“Let me ask you something,” I said to the owner. Using my thumb, I gently traced the inside curve of her calf.
“Anything, sir, anything! Mango lassi? Beer? Perhaps some wine! Very cheap, very good!”
“Beer!” Stella said, and coughed like she hadn’t meant to bark it out quite so loud.
“Two beers,” I added. “But here’s the question. How do you know we’re husband and wife?” As I said those words, husband and wife, I gave her two pinches, and she inhaled to keep her laugh silent. Her hand shot down under the table too, to stop me from tickling her, maybe. I took the chance and knitted my hand into hers. And then both of us turned to him and waited for the answer.
He paused with his tissue almost touching his forehead. The corner of it fluttered in the air-conditioning from above. “Oh, sir.” He chuckled to himself. “There are many uncertain things. Business, life, the age-old question of why some people are afraid to order lamb at a fine dining establishment such as this one.” He dabbed again. “Whether or not you and this lovely young woman here are a couple”—he lifted his shoulders and smiled at the ceiling—“such things are a given. Now let me get your beers, and perhaps . . .” He cocked his head at Stella, while glancing at me. “Papadams to share?”
“Mmmmm!” Stella said. “Yes, please!”
The owner pressed his hands together and bowed, beaming. “Papadams, on the way.” As he shuffled off toward the kitchen, Stella smoothed her napkin and straightened out her silverware. “That’s twice in one day.” She rubbed her lips together, carefully aligning her fork and knife. “Funny, right? I’ve never been mistaken for a couple, and now it’s like a running gag.”
Funny was one word for it. Awesome was another. I eased back into the booth, and my lower back reminded me the oxygen compressor was still exacting its revenge. I wanted to focus on her, on that beautiful face and those sexy lips and that mischief in her eyes. The last thing I wanted to be thinking about was my goddamned back. And yeah, maybe she was the flame and I was the moth. But just because I flew around her for a while didn’t mean I had to get burned. I wasn’t getting down on one knee to propose. It was just a date, and it was a date I wanted to focus on completely. “What are the chances you’ve got a couple of Advil in your bag for your husband?”
She giggled as she reached for her purse. “What kind of wife would I be if I didn’t?”
I didn’t do small talk. I’d never in my entire life said something like, How about this heat? Or, How about those Broncos? Or, What do you do for fun? Or any of that shit. But before we’d even gotten our entrées I’d asked her where she was from, what she did for fun, and what she did for a living—in that order—and the answers were Colorado, making personalized rhinestone jewel cases that she sold online, and dog sitting. But I wasn’t buying that last one at all. Though I was curious as fuck about how she got into jewel theft, or what a nice girl like her was doing committing felonies at all, I decided to table that. For now.
But she was so easy to talk to, I found myself damn close to blurting out that I was fresh out of jail for moving stolen diamonds for an art dealer on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. The more we talked, the more she laughed, and the happier I felt, the more I wanted to spill it. All of it.
It was weird. And it was also really . . .
Nice?
Nice. Yeah. Really nice. Part of me wanted to ask her about the ring, sure. But a much bigger part of me . . . I watched her close her eyes with pleasure as she took a big bite of a steaming papadam . . . didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would’ve complicated everything. Too fucking much, and too fucking soon. Having a common interest in jewel theft wasn’t like sharing a passion for mountain biking or curry or some shit. If she ever told me, it’d take time. And trust.
“What do you do, besides zooming around on your motorcycle?” she asked. She had a little glop of one of the chutneys on her lip, and I pointed to the same spot on my mouth, trying not to be too obvious about it. She grabbed her napkin and wiped off the wrong side.
“Other left,” I said. All this smiling was making my goddamned cheeks burn.
Finally, she got it and straightened out her napkin on her lap. Her dark hair was in a long, gorgeous tangle over her shoulder. A thin line from a bikini top made a tantalizing stripe over her collarbone.
She cocked her head and smiled, and I remembered she’d asked me a question. What the hell was the question? Christ almighty. An evening with her and I couldn’t even think in straight lines.
“So . . . what do you do?” she said, as if she hadn’t pretty much said that same damn thing two seconds ago. She ended with a big smile and pinned her tongue between her teeth.
I was on it this time, and I ran through what I wanted to say. I couldn’t tell her everything, for Chrissake. I didn’t want to spook her. But I didn’t want to flat-out bullshit her, either. So I decided to cherry-pick the truth. Give her the highlights and leave the lowlights for some other day. Or maybe never.
“I used to be a mechanic,” at a chop shop in the South Valley, where I also learned to fence just about everything, from used stereos to weed to weapons, which I fucking hated. “I decided to go into business up in Santa Fe,” where I began specializing in fencing jewels, “until I made a bad investment,” and got caught red-handed by an undercover cop at an exchange just outside a town called—wait for it—Truth or Consequences. “Actually, I just moved back to Albuquerque,” after seven months in the can. And now I’m trying hard not to screw up again, and that’s why, “I’m bartending at a place downtown.”
And now how the fuck was I going to explain that career change? At least it’s legal. It keeps me out of trouble. And it’s 100 percent parole officer–approved.
Most eligible bachelor in Albuquerque right here.
But she spared me from my impending epic overshare, swooping in with, “Bartending is harrrrrrd. I was a waitress for exactly eleven days. I’ve never worked so hard in my life or been so bad at anything. I had to”—here she lifted her fingers in air quotes—“resign . . . before I got fired! Like Nixon! But bartenders!” She looked up at the ceiling. “There’s a special place in heaven for bartenders . . .”
She was sexy, had expert moves, helped out old guys in need, and hadn’t said some condescending BS when she heard the word bartending. There was no way she was actually this great.
“. . . where people remember how to calculate twenty percent and never ask what beers are on tap when they’re standing in front of the taps!”
Or maybe she was.
When the tikka masala came, she tore off a big triangle of naan from the piece in the basket between us, scooped up some chicken and sauce, and jammed it in her mouth. She was chatty without being awkward, interested without being nosy. She also always managed to end up talking with her mouth full, which was pretty fucking cute. She told me about her friends, who she worked with, and about Mr. Bozeman, who she looked after whenever she could. And for about one second, listening to her talk and watching her chase down a piece of chicken in her tikka masala—for the first second in ages—I felt like a normal dude, on a normal date. Didn’t matter what I’d seen before; this felt good. This felt right. And I didn’t want this to end. Not yet. Just as she scooped up some more tikka, I asked, “What are you doing after this?”
A little bit of the red sauce splatted down onto her plate, and she froze with her naan between her fingers. “I . . . Actually, I was . . .” she stammered.
Aww fuck. It was too much too soon. Probably for the best, anyway. The new me probably shouldn’t be spending the whole night with a woman who just stole $10K worth of diamonds, no matter how fucking bad I wanted to. “Nah, never mind. I’ve got shit to do myself.” Like drinking OJ straight from the carton while I sit around in my boxers. Getting straight was a lot of things, including boring as shit.
“No, no!” she said, reaching out and touching my forearm. “Actually, it’s pretty silly. I was going to go have a movie night in my
pajamas, if you really want to know,” she said, smiling so hard her nose wrinkled up. “Going out with you sounds much more exciting.”
Her eyes brought me back to that Mexican lagoon again. Diving from the cliffs there was risky as hell but too tempting to resist—exactly the same feeling I got from being near Stella. I shouldn’t, but I will. Being the new me could wait; for tonight, I was going to dive right the fuck in with her. So I watched her for a few beats, letting her feel my eyes on her. Letting her know that I wanted my hands on her so bad, but I was also going to be a gentleman about it. There was a time and a place for hot and heavy, and a booth at the Crown Prince of India wasn’t it. “There’s an outdoor theater down the street. Movie starts at sundown.”
“Ooh!” she said, with her mouth half-full. “I’ve always wanted to see a movie there!”
I slid my hand back under the table and put it on her knee, an inch farther up her leg than last time. It was the best slippery slope there was. When I tightened my grip, I could have sworn that goose bumps prickled up her arms. “Full disclosure: I don’t even know what they’re showing. I just want to spend some more time with you.”
Stella swallowed, and her eyes glimmered. “You do?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, cracking a lentil cracker in half. “I do.”
“Me too,” she said, pausing with a piece of chicken halfway to her mouth.
The relief was intense. It brought me back to the first time I’d ever asked a girl out—that high, that rush. Two seconds of utter invincibility. “I picked dinner,” I said, and gave her thigh a squeeze under the table. “You pick dessert.”
5
STELLA
We sat side by side on super nice folding lawn chairs that the outdoor theater provided for everybody. Between us was a six-pack of beer, so cold and frosty in the Indian-summer heat that the paper labels were already wrinkled. To top it all off, sitting in each of our laps, on waxy paper bags, were my last-meal-on-earth favorite treats: caramel apples.
The caramel on mine was crusted in a thick layer of teeny chocolate chips. He’d opted for pecans. To get them, we’d had to drive all the way to the mall, and he hadn’t minded one bit. What a sweetheart.
As the sun went down, a breeze kicked up, and I instinctively put my hands to my arms. Nick didn’t miss a beat and put his jacket over my shoulders. A hush fell over the crowd, and the movie started to roll. At first, it was that splotchy old-fashioned thing that happens at the beginning of old filmstrips. And then came the opening frame.
A huge, glorious diamond, as big as an egg, with gleaming facets that caught the light.
I froze with my apple stuck in my mouth. Uh-oh.
The camera zoomed in on the jewel. The screen went pink . . . and the Pink Panther appeared, wiggling his little tush in time with the good old Pink Panther theme. The title popped up on the screen. Double uh-oh. It wasn’t the first film. It was the second one.
The one with a female thief.
In my head, I heard Alanis Morissette singing a previously unreleased lyric to “Isn’t It Ironic?” or whatever it was called: “It’s a heist movie right before your biggest heist.”
Oh God. I bit off an enormous chunk of apple, so big I could barely chew. Next to me, Nick leaned forward and gave my leg a rub to get my attention. “This OK?”
I nodded about ten times in quick, panicked succession. I hiccupped, I coughed. I pressed my hand to my mouth. “Yes!” I squeaked around the apple. “Sure!” Chewing furiously, I watched the animated panther tap-dance along the screen, with a cane and a top hat. “Wonderful!”
Very, very rarely in my life had I ever thought, I can’t do this! I was a can-do kind of girl! Change my own oil? Can do! Make fake gems? Can do! Do my own taxes without alerting the government to my secret income? Can do! Whip up some homemade cannoli? Can do! Make fake IDs with functioning magnetic strips? Can do!
But just then, right there, thinking about watching a movie about a notorious female thief stealing a notorious jewel . . . Everybody had a limit. And apparently, this was mine. I felt like an astronaut trying to sit through Apollo 13 the night before a launch.
Houston! Abort mission! Cannot do! Repeat, cannot do!
But then Nick pulled my chair closer to his and put his arm around me. He was warm and alluring and so very masculine. He gave my side a little squeeze and turned his attention to the movie. He didn’t stop smiling, not once. And his grip got a little tighter.
I tried desperately to center myself and my swirling thoughts. I didn’t have to focus on the finer points of a massive, nonviolent, incredibly gutsy jewel heist. I could focus on him. On his pecs. On his woodsy cologne. On the way his forearms rippled when he gripped his apple stick.
Can do!
What felt to me like an eternity later, the lady thief was negotiating the laser security system that made a web around the Pink Panther. She bobbled the diamond in her metal pincers, and Nick said, “Stella.”
“Yes,” I gasped, without turning away from the screen. I’d been so swept up in the heist, I had forgotten to blink. My eyes felt like they were in dire need of some moisturizing drops—stuck open and stinging. Yet still, I couldn’t tear myself away from the movie. The crystal dome that was meant to protect the diamond swung perilously on the makeshift zip line system she’d rigged across the display area.
“I think you might be breaking the bones in my hand.”
I looked down at my fingers, enmeshed with his. His knuckles were white, and his fingers were slightly swollen. The spoon ring I wore on my thumb had put an indentation in the back of his hand that reminded me of a couch leg on carpeting.
“Sorry!” I let go of his hand, realizing as I did that my palm had been sweating profusely the entire time. I was nothing if not elegant. I wiped my palm off on my jeans, trying to be as subtle as I could about it, and trying to disguise the wet smudges now appearing on my knee. “I’m so sorry. Are you OK? Need more Advil?”
He shook his hand in the air violently, like he’d pinched his finger in a doorjamb. “No worries. I’m left-handed. I hardly need this one at all.”
I grimaced. “Want me to find some ice? Go buy you a snow cone?”
“I’m good, beautiful. Promise.” He made a fist and then released it, and repeated that a few times, like he was trying to bring circulation back into his fingertips or wake them up from a dead sleep. He slid the six-pack over with his boot and grabbed two more beers. With expert precision, and even using his surely numb hand, he popped off the tops using the metal edge of the chair as a bottle opener.
“I shouldn’t,” I said as he handed me mine.
“Why’s that?” he asked, taking a swig of his. “What happens after three beers?”
A few rows over someone shushed us, but he just smiled into his bottle and waited for me to answer.
Normally, the answer would be, nothing much at all. It wasn’t like I had three beers, ripped off all my clothes, and began dancing on tables like some Zumba version of Coyote Ugly. But this felt different. Maybe it was the beers I’d had already, maybe it was the heist on screen, or maybe, just maybe, it was him. Whatever it was, I had a feeling I just . . . shouldn’t. This man was so alluring, I couldn’t be accountable for my actions. My heart was already pounding from him and the movie together. The warmish Indian beer at the Crown Prince plus two IPAs were only going to make me do something I’d regret. He ran his hand down his jawline, and his stubble made a gritty scratching noise.
Or maybe . . . not regret at all.
I didn’t say any of that. I just stared into his gorgeous eyes. The shadows were long, and the streetlamps had started to come on, bringing out new colors in the light-brown centers of his irises. He leaned into me, taking my cheek in one hand. The tips of his fingers pressed gently into my jaw. The closer he got, the more the noises around us faded away, like someone was slowly shutting a door, leaving us alone in a room together. The security doors that had been intended to protect the Pink Panther dropped, and
the Lady Phantom rolled out of the way in the nick of time. But that felt so very, very far away; all that I was aware of was his hand on my cheek and the pressure of his forehead as he tipped his head into mine. “I gotta kiss you, Stella.”
I slid down into my chair, and it creaked under me. “OK,” I whispered back.
“I just have to.”
The way he said it was like I was the most irresistible thing on the planet, like I was all the potato chips, and all the Nerds, and all the Laffy Taffy, and all the curry, and all the caramel apples rolled into one.
And then it happened. His lips met mine, and his tongue pushed mine aside. No open-mouth awkward nonsense, no hesitation. He inhaled deeply, like he was trying to learn my perfume or the scent of my shampoo. The kiss went from passionate to downright dirty in two seconds flat.
There was French-kissing, and then there was . . .
Oui.
Oui.
Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui.
The theft of the Pink Panther might as well have been happening on some other planet. His warm breath warmed my already-hot cheeks, and he growled into my mouth as he leaned into me. His hand was so big that his fingers cradled the back of my neck. Mercy. His hand moved up my body, the tips of his fingers trailing along my bare stomach, then leaving me briefly, before gripping something behind me. The back of my chair came forward slightly as he pulled on it, then the whole thing, the whole plastic and woven nylon lawn chair, began to recline. The leg rest swung out, lifting my legs with it, and he stood bent beside my chair. My body became horizontal, and he bent low over me. We went down, down, down together . . . and I wrapped my arms around him like we were slipping into a pool.
I snickered into the kiss, and I felt his mouth tighten as he smiled, but he wasn’t smiling for long. I hooked my legs around him, ankles locked. There were no words and no whispers—we were down to pants and groans and moans. It was growls and nods and everything inside me saying more, more, more. I ran my fingertip along the spot where his boxers met his body, that rippling elastic next to his solid muscles. He growled and inhaled hard. And then pulled away. I tried to follow him, but he had my head pinned back, one hand to my cheek, his thumb against my jaw. I was utterly at his mercy.
Shimmy Bang Sparkle Page 4