by Julia London
She hadn’t even gotten off the flat part and into the hills before a woman in gym pants and cropped top that showed off her flat belly got on the bike beside her. She looked impossibly bored as she punched some control buttons on the panel and began to cycle at a ridiculous pace.
Rachel could not help noticing that when the woman leaned over, her stomach did not make little rolls. It was perfectly flat.
Gawd, she hated that woman.
Hated her so bad that in a fit of zealous bigotry, she punched “in-zone training plus” and began to pedal furiously, too. And in the space of maybe a minute, she was huffing like an old woman, sweat was trickling down between her breasts and over her roll and into the waistband of her spandex yoga pants, which now seemed ridiculously tight and unforgiving.
She glanced at the woman from the comer of her eye— who was on the same setting, but doing five million rpms faster than Rachel, and hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Rachel suddenly stopped pedaling. “Whew!” she said, to signal to anyone who might be watching that she had just finished her ride through the Rocky Mountains, and swung off the bike like she did it every day.
It was nothing short of a miracle that her legs actually held her up and she didn’t collapse into an enormous pile of sticky jelly goo. Rachel mopped her forehead and sauntered—well, lurched, anyway—to the weight machines.
A full two hours after she’d entered the gym, and after several hundred pounds of lifting and squatting in various humiliating forms and fashions, sweating profusely, and her hair going in five different directions in spite of the two tight coils she had wound it into, Rachel made her way out to the parking lot, Frankenstein style. Images of steaming baths and candles danced in her mind’s eye, alongside an army of brownies.
As she staggered to her car (she would have to have parked in the very last slot on the very last row), she noticed that the coffeehouse next to the gym had filled to capacity with people who had nothing better to do on such a wet and dreary day. The place was so full that as she neared the end of the parking lot, she saw that someone had parked behind her, blocking her in.
She groaned, debated what to do, and inadvertently caught sight of herself in the reflection of the back windshield. Her face was the exact shade of a fireplug. It wasn’t enough that she was soaked and probably reeking—she had to herald her terribly out-of-shape body to the world with a fireplug face. Even worse, small corkscrews of hair around her face stuck as if she’d stuck her finger into a light socket.
Time to call Dagne to come save her. Later, she could get Dagne or Myron to bring her back for her car. Rachel fished in her bag for her brand-new T-Mobile cell phone . . . but it wasn’t in her bag, and she remembered seeing it on the kitchen counter. Fabulous. A big fat splat of something landed on top of her head, and she glanced up, got hit in the eye by another fat raindrop. And another. And then dozens of them. Rachel looked around, saw the coffeehouse, and made a mad sort of half-hobbling, half-loping dash for it.
The place was jammed to the rafters with toned and beautiful bodies, dressed in hip fashions, and all drinking coffee and poring over books and laptops. In a sort of ironic contrast, she looked a little like a Holstein cow in her black yoga pants and white tank. And what was up with always putting phones and toilets in the back of establishments? Rachel sucked in her breath, and with her head down, she made her way through the crowd, hitting at least two people in the head and shoulders with her gym bag.
At the phone bank, she dug in her bag for change, and pulled out wads of money. Literally, wads of balled up bills—a ten, a fiver, three ones. But no change. Not a quarter, not a dime, not one lousy penny.
With a sigh of great irritation, Rachel glanced around. This was really just too much—where were all the fabulous things that were supposed to happen to her, according to Dagne? The prosperity and happiness and all that crap? And man, it was so warm in there—someone needed to crack a window. Well anyway, one thing was certain—when she got hold of Dagne, she was going to let her know that her stupid spells weren’t working for shit—
“I beg your pardon, but might I be of assistance?”
Rachel froze in the maniacal search of her bag, wondered if that question, posed in a sexy British accent, had been actually addressed to her, and slowly looked up . . . and up . . . at a very handsome man. He was smiling. His gorgeous blue-gray eyes sort of shimmered in a pool of dark lashes, and a strand of his thick chestnut hair actually fell over one eye. He was wearing a well-cut dark pinstripe suit and a long trench coat that looked very expensive, like he’d just walked off the set of a James Bond movie. A horrible swell of panic surged in Rachel—the guy was gorgeous and standing so close that he could probably smell her.
“You look as if you could use a hand,” he said, grinning lopsidedly as he fished in his pocket.
She was gaping at him like she’d never seen a man before, and unthinkingly jerked backward, away from him, and almost killed herself, thank you, by impaling herself on the little box around the pay phone. But forget that, because she suddenly remembered the little wisps of hair sticking up all over her head and thought she might actually die of embarrassment. Just expire cold, right there.
“No, ah, no . . .” she managed to get out, smiling sheepishly. “No, thank you, but I’ve definitely got it,” she said, and whirled around, her hand still shoved in her bag, frantically searching for a coin, any coin, dammit!
“I’ve got a bit of change if you’d like,” he continued, and Rachel, her back to him, shook her head, felt one of the tight coils of her hair start to come undone. “Thanks! I’ve got it!” she said to the wall.
He made a noise that sounded a little like a chuckle. Which meant, of course, that now the movie-star guy was laughing at her. How dare he laugh at her? She shot him a glance over her shoulder, but . . . he wasn’t really laughing at all. He was just smiling, and really very warmly, showing some very white teeth.
“I don’t think you’ve got it at all, really. I’ve some coins here,” he said, opening the palm of his hand and studying the coins there. “Ah, here we are.” He held up two quarters.
Rachel looked at the quarters and wondered, madly, if her face was still fireplug red, or please, God, had it calmed down a little, to maybe just cherry red?
He mistook her silence as refusal and said congenially, “The thing is, you obviously haven’t got the proper change and I’m really quite happy to help.”
Okay, okay, now she got it—if a man who looked like him, all buff and handsome and wearing a suit, was talking to her, it was probably one of those reality TV things—
He cocked his head and dipped it a little bit to see her better, and Rachel instantly swiped the back of her arm across her forehead. “Right. Well, then, if you’d be so kind as to take the quarters and perhaps ring whomever you mean to ring so the rest of us might have a go?” he asked, gesturing toward the phone.
“Oh!” she said, and began frantically searching her bag again. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hold you up, but I can’t take your quarters because I have quarters, if I could just get to the bottom of my bag,” she said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “Why don’t you go ahead?”
He looked at her bag. “You’ve quite a large bag there.”
“Yes, it’s very big, because I have lots of . . .” Well, junk, really. She had junk. “Important stuff. Lots of it,” she muttered.
Bonny Prince Charlie just stood there, smiling down at her, until it became apparent to even her that she was not going to magically produce two quarters, and she sighed.
“I rather thought you’d see it my way,” he said happily, and leaned forward, his arm extended, coming right at her . . . then around her! To the phone, to be precise, which put him in dangerously close proximity to her sweaty self.
Rachel gasped with humiliation—there was no way he couldn’t smell her now. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” she cried, and tried to move, but managed to impale herself once more on the phon
e box. “Ow,” she whimpered. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“Mind the box,” James Bond said, and blithely continued reaching around her, to the phone itself. “Before you go all barmy on me,” he said, his voice pleasantly soft as his gaze flicked from her face to her appallingly red bosom, “I promise you may have the quarters. I won’t demand interest or the like,” he said, his nose as yet unwrinkled, as he deposited one quarter. “But I wouldn’t mind a bit if you feel so indebted to me that you might buy me a cup of tea with the five you dropped on the floor.” He deposited the second quarter.
Rachel blinked, stole a glimpse at the floor without actually moving. There it was, a crumpled five-dollar bill at her feet. “Thanks,” she said, and slid down to her haunches to pick it up, then stood so quickly that she banged the top of her head into his arm, which was now holding the receiver out to her. Sorry,” she said, wincing again.
“Quite all right. So then, I’ve only just arrived and it’s rather dreary out, isn’t it? I could use a coffee, how about you? Here you are . . . your call?”
She was mortified to the tips of her toes—why was he asking her to have coffee? And what in the hell was he doing in Providence, anyway? He should be in London, stepping off the tube with some dish, walking to some posh and trendy pub.
Rachel snatched the phone from his hand, punched Dagne’s numbers into the phone, and silently begged her to pick up the damn phone. On the fourth ring, Rachel had had decided that God was indeed smiting her and was not going to help her in the least because she had played around with witchcraft, Dagne picked up. “Hello?” she said sleepily.
“Dagne!” Rachel hissed, whirling around so that her back was to Prince Charming. “Come and get me!”
“Why? Where are you?” she asked through a yawn.
“At the gym—”
“Hey! You didn’t waste any time—”
“Come and get me!” Rachel said frantically. “If you’re not here in five minutes—”
“Why? Where’s your car? Wait a minute—does Myron have it? Because if Myron took your car—”
“No, no, it’s here! But I’m blocked in and I really, really need to go.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“Dagne!” Rachel hissed.
“All right,” Dagne said, obviously irritated. “I’ll be there in a few. But this better be good!” She hung up.
Rachel put the receiver in the cradle, turned slowly toward the Brit, and pulled her gym bag around in front of her stomach. She flashed a self-conscious smile. “Thanks,” she said. “That was really decent of you. I appreciate the help.”
“You’re quite welcome. And now that you’ve successfully completed your ringing operation, what do you say to that coffee?”
If Dagne had put some sort of spell on her that made her attract handsome men, Rachel was going to kill her. “I’m sorry, I really can’t,” she said, stepping around him. “I’ve got a . . . a really important appointment I’ve got to get to. Shower, you know,” she said, gesturing to her head. “After the gym.”
He smiled.
“But, ah . . . thanks. Thanks so much.” She flashed him another quick smile, clutched her bag closely to her body, and mowed her way out of the coffeehouse.
She got one last look at the to-die-for Brit as she pushed through the glass doors. He was standing at the phone, staring after her, a sort of bemused look on his face.
Seriously, she was going to kill Dagne.
Chapter Four
Dagne was, predictably, very excited about Rachel’s brush with royalty in a trench coat. “See? Witchcraft does work.”
“Did you put some sort of spell on me?” Rachel demanded as she emerged from Dagne’s shower, wrapped in a towel.
“No! And why didn’t you have coffee with him?” Dagne cried, punching Rachel in the arm.
“Are you nuts?” Rachel rubbed her arm where Dagne had punched her. “Did you see me? I was sweaty and red-faced and I must have stunk to high heaven!”
“Yeah . . . I see what you mean,” Dagne said, wrinkling her nose.
“Oh thanks,” Rachel muttered miserably. “Don’t you have a spell for that? Here’s a drink so you won’t stink, something along those lines?”
“That’s not nice,” Dagne said, which prompted another argument about witchcraft that continued until Trading Spaces came on, at which point it was abruptly halted, as both couples hated their new rooms.
Afterward, when Rachel’s hair had dried, Dagne dropped her at her car with one last lecture about seizing opportunity when it presented itself. Sure, Dagne could say that. She was tall and willowy and strawberry blond. Bitch. As Dagne drove off, Rachel glanced at the coffeehouse and wondered if he was still in there. Maybe having coffee with some other unsuspecting cow. Whatever. She’d had her brush with gorgeous and shrugged it off, got in her car, and drove to the organic grocery store.
She returned to her house under the cloak of dusk so the Valicielos couldn’t see her. As she turned into her drive, she saw Myron’s faded red Geo Metro parked next to the house.
Great.
As she struggled through the kitchen door with two huge grocery bags, Myron waved at her from his seat at the breakfast bar, where he was having a sandwich. He was the kind of guy who did his food shopping in his friends’ refrigerators.
“Hey,” he said as Rachel fumbled the grocery bags onto the countertop.
“Hey,” she said, and, getting the bags down, pushed the hair from her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Eating a sandwich,” he said, holding up a disgustingly stuffed triple-decker salami (salami she had bought expressly because Myron said he loved it and wished she had some). “Where you been?”
“The gym.”
“The gym?” He laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “So hey, Pete Lancaster is doing a poetry reading tonight,” he continued once he was through laughing. “You wanna go?”
“I can’t. I have my weaving class tonight.” She moved to put the milk away and noticed the brownie pan. An empty brownie pan, in which there previously had been four good-sized brownies left. “Dammit, Myron, you ate my brownies!”
Myron paused in his chewing and looked at the empty pan, surprised, then shrugged. “You didn’t leave a note or anything,” he said, flipped the long tail of his hair over his shoulder, and took another enormous bite of salami sandwich. “So what’d you get at the store?” he asked shamelessly.
“Food.” She peevishly shoved her hand into the paper bag and began to withdraw the contents and put them away.
“Got any sodas?”
“In there,” she said, gesturing toward the pantry, the same place she had kept the sodas for the two years she’d known Myron. She watched him get up off the stool, hitch up baggy corduroy slacks over his bony butt, and recalled Dad shouting at her about worthless Myron. Well, the joke was on Dad, hardy har har, because her love life was on the shelf.
Rachel’s family believed Myron Tidwell was her boyfriend. But Myron was not her boyfriend and he hadn’t been in a very long time. Rachel had just never had the guts to tell her parents that it was over with Myron because there’d be a whole big thing about her never having boyfriends and all that.
She and Myron had been an item for two whole semesters, a personal best for her. He taught early colonial history. Rachel had taken his class and at the time, she’d thought he was so cool—he had long, thick hair he wore in a ponytail, and crewneck sweaters, and was casually laid back when he talked.
One afternoon, Myron asked her to stay after class to talk about her test results, and that had been the beginning of a teacher-student relationship that had evolved into a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. But the whole thing had sort of died on the vine when it became clear that their interests in life and relationships were not the same.
As in, he was not that interested.
Unfortunately, that happened after Rachel had waited the requisite amount of time to make sure she actually ha
d a boyfriend and then had proclaimed it proudly to her family. And as they clearly had never expected her to have a boyfriend (in fact, they’d been just a little too surprised by it) . . . Well, long story short, she and Myron had remained friends and she just never mentioned otherwise, preferring to go with the old what they don’t know won’t hurt them theory. It was easy to do—she was in Rhode Island and they were way down there in Texas—
“So your dad called while you were out,” Myron said, bent over deep into the pantry, looking for a cream soda.
That startled Rachel out of her thoughts fast enough. “Did you talk to him?”
“Hell no, just let the answering machine take it. He asked about your dissertation. Sounded like he had an attitude. Is he still giving you grief about it?”
“Among other things.”
“Rachel, don’t let him get to you. Here’s the thing,” Myron said, emerging at last with the cream soda, “your dad has only a high school education. He doesn’t understand the concept of higher learning and how difficult or important a dissertation can be.” He walked to the cabinet and fished out a glass, then reached for the fridge door for ice. “I mean, it’s like my situation.”
Everything wound its way around to being like Myron’s situation if he talked long enough.
“If I don’t get published in the right journals on the right topic in the right time frame, I’m never going to get tenure. And if I don’t get tenure, my ass is out on the street, you know what I’m saying? But it’s just not that easy—these academic things don’t make sense to people like your dad, but they’re really very important.”
“My dissertation and your tenure aren’t really the same thing, do you think?” Rachel suggested as he helped himself to a glass and a few cubes of ice (leaving one cube sliding helplessly around the tiled countertop until Rachel caught it and tossed it in the sink).
“You know what Dean Holcroft told me?” Myron continued, ignoring her question. “He said they’ll be looking for something next fall. What he’s saying is, if I don’t have an article written and published by next fall—that’s a little less than a year—then they’re going to deny me tenure. Can you believe that?” he demanded indignantly before pouring the cream soda.