“Well … there was this one place I used to go to hang out with friends back when I was in school. I don’t even know if it’s still there. A La Mode?”
“Yeah, it’s still there. Man, I haven’t been there in years. What made you think of that place?”
She shrugged, a little more cheer in her eyes than before. “Reliving my youth, I guess.”
“Exactly what kind of youthful experiences are we talking about here? I seem to remember A La Mode as being hookup central for teenagers.”
She laughed. “I’ll never tell.”
The pall over her seemed to have lifted. “You prefer to leave it up to my imagination?”
“Hmm. When you put it that way … ”
There was a devilish gleam in her eyes as she shot him a sidelong glance. He felt the same rush of heat that had hit him earlier that day when she had asked him to dinner. There was little point in lying to himself about his growing attraction to her. The trouble was that he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Although he had never considered himself a player, he had dated more than a few women before and had never had any problem figuring out what to do or say around them. Callie was different.
Could she tell? It was probably better if she couldn’t. She had made it very clear that she would not be sticking around. The thought occurred to him that maybe he could change her mind and make her want to stay, and he despised himself for thinking it. Manipulation had never appealed to him.
But what was one evening, after all? He could enjoy the nearness of her without crossing the line.
He hoped.
From the outside, A La Mode appeared to be unchanged. It was a replica of an old fifties diner with fitting images of icons like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean painted on its sides as murals.
“Do you think the jukebox is still here?” Callie asked as they stepped out of the truck.
“Only one way to find out.”
It was there, in all its lit-up glory, and the strains of Chuck Berry greeted them as they walked through the front door. Old movie posters and Hollywood-esque memorabilia decorated the walls, and the waitresses wore poodle skirts. It didn’t seem to be crawling with teenagers tonight, but there were a few there, making noise and trying to impress members of the opposite sex.
“Oh, wow,” Callie breathed. “This takes me back. Senior prom, homecoming … ” She smiled. “Jennifer and her long list of crushes. And Tony. Oh, yes, Tony.”
It was ridiculous to feel jealousy over the memory of one of her high school boyfriends, but it was there nonetheless. “I probably don’t want to dig into your sordid past and ask who Tony is, do I?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light.
She pretended to be offended. “Sordid? Tony was a perfect gentleman. Well, almost.”
“So we’re here to relive your past conquests then?”
“There was more angst than conquest.”
A grey-haired waitress dressed in a bright pink poodle skirt and wearing a nametag that said “Shirley” on it seated them at a back booth, away from some of the more boisterous teenagers.
“I don’t think she was here before, but everything else looks the same.” Callie was clearly delighted. “Isn’t it great? Tacky, but great.”
Danny was more distracted by Callie than by the décor in the diner. The dark clouds around her earlier had completely lifted, and her eyes sparkled like sunlight on water. “Yeah.”
“Where else could you go and find Elvis salt-and-pepper shakers?” She held them up for him to better appreciate them.
“Good point. I’m completely won over now.”
The truth was that he was having a few vivid memories of his own about this place. Fond ones. Girls, football celebrations, double dates with Elliot. The feeling of anticipation when the girl he liked smiled shyly back at him.
Sitting across from Callie now, he felt as if he were back in high school again. He thought his palms might even be sweaty.
They ordered cheeseburgers, the house specialty. The burgers were as large as he remembered, nearly too big to fit a person’s mouth around them, and they tasted as good as they used to, too.
“So what about you?” Callie asked, looking at him over her hamburger as she prepared to take a bite. “Any conquests to brag about?”
“Conquests? No. But there were good times.”
“Is this where you would take your dates?”
Danny shrugged and tried not to stare at her mouth. “Some of them.”
“Followed by a drive up to Cutter’s Lookout, no doubt,” she said knowingly.
He nearly choked on his burger. “And how do you know about Cutter’s Lookout?”
“You’re kidding, right? Everyone who was ever a teenager in this town knows about Cutter’s Lookout.”
“You went there,” he said, confirming more than asking. It was the make-out capital of the county. There was suddenly a sour taste in his mouth that had not come from his burger.
Callie put her burger down on her plate. “No,” she admitted, unaware of the relief that flooded him. “I was invited a couple of times, but not by anyone I cared to go with.” She looked at him speculatively, a small smile playing at her lips. Those lips were driving him to distraction. “Did you ever go?”
He raised his gaze from her lips to her eyes. “No,” he said finally. Was it his imagination or did she look a little pleased by his answer? “I guess there wasn’t anyone I cared enough to go with either.”
• • •
She should not be asking him these kinds of questions. They just seemed to spill naturally from her. And maybe she was crazy, but it seemed as though he was paying an awful lot of attention to her mouth. Each time his eyes lingered on her lips, she felt a little thrill of anticipation go down her spine.
She let her eyes drop briefly to his mouth. As a teenager, she had often fantasized about kissing it. She thought maybe one reason why she had let Tony kiss her — once, only once — was because he had looked a little like Danny.
But there had been no spark because he wasn’t Danny, and so the kiss was not repeated.
Their waitress, Shirley, appeared just then, startling Callie back to the present. The older woman placed a large chocolate shake and two straws on the table.
“Oh — we didn’t order this,” Callie said quickly.
“On the house, honey. A sweet treat for a sweet couple.” Shirley beamed at them both, clearly pleased with herself.
Warmth flooded her cheeks as she gave a Danny a quick glance. “We’re not — ”
“Thank you,” Danny said, interrupting her and smiling back at the waitress. “Very much.”
“My word, the way you two look at each other takes me back. My Henry wasn’t quite the looker that you are, young man,” she said with a wistful look into the distance and a motherly pat on Danny’s shoulder, “but he hung the moon as far as I was concerned. Married forty-three years now, too.”
“Congratulations.”
“Enjoy it, kids,” the woman said, winking before leaving.
Callie wondered if she meant the chocolate shake or the feelings she thought were between them. Or the way she thought they looked at each other. She felt herself blush again, and she raised her eyebrows at Danny. “You just capture the hearts of waitresses everywhere, don’t you?”
He raised his own eyebrows in return, the corners of his mouth twitching.
“You shouldn’t have let her leave that here,” she said with a nod toward the chocolate shake.
“No?”
“It was under false pretenses.”
He put one straw into the shake and held the other one out to her. “You really want to spoil her fun?”
After a moment, she took the straw from him and sank it deep into the milkshake, sending some of the whipped cream
topping over the edge of the frosted glass. Without thinking, she ran one finger up the side of the glass to catch the excess and bring it to her mouth. She glanced up to see Danny watching her.
“What?” she asked, suspecting she knew full well already but enjoying the hint of color that came to his cheeks. It was about time someone besides her did the blushing around here. She licked the whipped cream off of her finger very deliberately, feeling a little bit wicked as she did so. Until today, she hadn’t known Danny was capable of blushing.
“Nothing.” His voice held a faint note of strain, and he glanced away.
She put her straw to her lips and took a long pull on it. “Mmm. They don’t make milkshakes like this in New York. Aren’t you going to have some more?”
After a moment, Danny leaned in for a sip on his own straw, a move that brought their faces very close to each other. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint Shirley.”
It was fun, this teasing back and forth. Callie held his eyes with hers for as long as she could as they sipped, but this close to him, it was hard to do. She was the first one to look away this time. Her knee brushed against his under the table, and she shivered in reaction.
“Too much milkshake?” he asked, misinterpreting the shiver.
Callie rubbed her bare arms and played along, nodding. “Guess so.”
“Yeah. Don’t think I can handle much more, either.” He signaled their waitress for the check, leaving Callie to wonder if there was more than one layer of meaning in his words.
Shirley delivered the check and placed her hands on her ample hips. “Had enough? Looks like there’s still a little shake left in there. You want me to put it in a to-go cup for you?”
“No,” Danny said, handing her some money, “but thank you. Everything was as good as we remembered.”
“Ah. Locals, then? Or maybe used to be. Let me guess: you two used to come here in high school, right?”
“Guilty,” Callie agreed.
The woman pursed her lips and considered them with shrewd eyes through her horned-rim glasses. “High school sweethearts?”
Callie’s nervousness resurfaced. Funny how she kept floating between self-conscious and bold. “Oh, uh — no. I was a few years behind him in school.” She glanced at Danny and thought he looked like he was enjoying her discomfiture. There was mischief in his face.
“Really? So how did you meet?”
“Go ahead, honey. Tell her.” A slow grin curved Danny’s lips, and when Shirley favored him with a glance, Callie took the opportunity to shoot him a dirty look.
“I don’t think so — ” she demurred.
“Oh, but I love a good how-we-met story,” the waitress pleaded, clasping her hands together in anticipation. “Come on. Humor an old lady.”
Danny’s grin grew wider. “Yeah, sweetheart, come on.”
Fine. If he wanted to play, then Callie could play, too. “If you insist, darling.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Shirley sighed, her eyes turning dreamy. “Was it love at first sight?”
“Nah, not really. Well, for him it was. We passed each other on the street and he used some clichéd line about me looking familiar.” She shrugged and gave him a smile full of saccharine sweetness. “I wasn’t really all that interested, to tell you the truth, but the poor guy just kept following me around like a lost little puppy until I finally took pity on him and agreed to go out with him. I mean, I hate to see a man beg.”
Unseen by Shirley, Danny clutched one hand to his heart as if wounded.
“So we went out, and he was so nervous that he kept forgetting my name.”
Callie reached out to pat him on the hand. “Poor thing! You were just tripping all over yourself, weren’t you?”
He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Can you blame me?”
As his lips brushed the skin of her hand, Callie forgot what she had been about to say next. She was saved by Shirley.
“Aww. And he’s still just as lovestruck! So he won you over, huh?”
Her hand was still in his, and he didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to give it back. “Yes. Yes, he did,” Callie finished lamely.
“And the rest is history. I don’t see a ring on that finger, though.” Shirley picked up their half-empty mug. “Best not to dawdle in that department, young man.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, you kids have fun tonight. The night is young, and so are you. Have a good one.” She nodded cheerfully as she left, humming the tune to an old love song that Callie couldn’t quite place.
“Lost little puppy, huh?”
“Yep. You should have seen yourself. Totally besotted.”
“Besotted? Spoken like a true writer. Thanks for not giving me a facial tic or a unibrow, by the way.”
“I was working up to that part of the story.”
“Ah,” he said sympathetically. “Too bad it got cut short. Lucky for my poor, battered ego, though.” Standing up from the table, he offered her his arm, still in character. “You heard the lady. The night is young. I don’t have a curfew. Do you?”
Aware that Shirley could still see them, Callie took his arm with a coy smile.
“Not last time I checked. What did you have in mind?”
He grinned. “Soothing my wounded pride.”
Chapter Seven
“So the first one to get all of their balls in the holes wins, right?”
Callie was looking up at him with a look of intense concentration, as if she was taking mental notes. She held a cue stick in one hand as if she wasn’t sure which end of it was supposed to point up.
“Pretty much. But they’re called pockets, not holes, and you can’t touch the balls directly with your cue stick.”
She frowned. “How am I supposed to get them to go anywhere then?”
Danny held up the white cue ball. “You hit this with your cue stick, and then it hits the ball of your choice. Ideally, at least.” He demonstrated for her, placing the ball on the table and striking it smoothly to send it careening toward a striped one. The striped ball sank into the corner pocket.
“Okay. Let me try.” Callie bent over the table and tried to mimic Danny’s motion. The cue ball went sailing off the table. “Son of a — ”
Danny caught it before it got very far.
“Sorry,” she said, frowning.
“Hey, it happens to everybody when they’re first learning,” he said generously, but he was grinning as he said it.
“Uh huh. How’s that wounded pride doing?”
“Better now, thank you.”
The pool hall was dimly lit, but there was enough light for him to clearly see the beginning of a smile on her lips. She turned to lean back against the pool table, and the light silhouetted the feminine lines and curves of her body, the length of her legs beneath her short skirt. The faint strains of blues music drifted through the faintly smoky air, and she drummed the fingers of one hand on the wooden rail of the table in time to the music’s beat. She made an inviting picture, and he couldn’t resist drawing closer.
“I could give you a few pointers,” he said, moving around the table to stand directly in front of her. He reached for the cue stick in her hands. “If you’re interested.”
“You’re going to turn me into a master player?”
“I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
She gave a burst of indignant laughter and threatened to hit him with her free hand. He put one arm up in front of his face in mock defense. “Fine, maestro. Bestow some of your grand expertise upon me.”
“All right.” Danny gestured behind her. “Turn around.”
She looked startled. “What?”
“Turn around. Close to the table, feet apart.” After giving him a wary l
ook, she followed his direction. “Then lean in.” He wrapped his arms around her to place one of her hands down on the surface of the table and the other around the butt of the cue stick. Her back was against his chest, and her ear close to his mouth. A tendril of dark hair that had worked its way loose from the knot she had wound it up in brushed against his cheek like a caress, and he felt heat growing inside him again.
“Is pool by any chance an excuse men use to get their hands on a woman?” she asked over her shoulder.
“It’s the reason most of us play, actually.”
“Ah.” Her tone was light, but it seemed to him as if she was holding her breath. “What do I do next?”
He guided her hand into placing the narrow end of the stick in the crease between the thumb and index finger of her other hand. “Now you aim for the center of the cue ball.”
“That’s the white one, right?”
“Right.” Her hand moved beneath his, sliding the stick back and forth, and then striking the ball. It rolled cleanly forward before hitting another ball and sending it in the general direction of the far pocket.
She turned her head slightly, her mouth inches from his. “Better?”
He tried not to stare at her lips. “Much.”
Dear God above, her skin smelled incredible.
“So … now what?” she asked softly, her eyes dropping to his mouth.
Was he imagining things, or was she giving him the green light? His body was suddenly full of new tension. He could almost feel her lips against his then, and his ability to think clearly abandoned him.
Her lips parted slightly as he focused his attention on them, and he wondered if she knew what he was imagining.
A shout of victory from another pool table broke the trance Danny seemed to be in, and he looked away. He was thinking crazy thoughts. Foolish thoughts. It had been a bad idea to put his arms around Callie like he had. Had he really thought he would be immune? He straightened and took a step back from her.
“Now,” he managed finally, his pulse erratic, “we rack ’em.”
He put the balls in the rack at one end of the table and then put the cue ball in its place at the other end. Callie remained silent. Glancing up at her, he couldn’t read her face well enough to be sure what she was feeling, but he thought a shadow flickered across it. Disappointment? Or was that wishful thinking on his part?
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