by Julia London
Flynn rolled his eyes and took a swig of beer as the next message beeped.
“Yo, dude. Got one if you want to ride along.” The deep male voice belonged to Joe, his American counterpart. “Give me a buzz if you’re up for it.”
Flynn instantly picked up the phone and dialed Joe’s mobile.
“Yo,” Joe said on the first ring.
“Flynn here.”
“Hey, buddy, wanna ride?”
“That would be brilliant, thanks.”
“Dude! You have got to stop saying that!” Joe chastised him “I’ll pick you up in ten.”
“Smashing,” Flynn said, and clicked off. Without bothering to hear the rest of his messages, he went to change to dungarees.
Chapter Six
Rachel drove in something of a fog the short distance to the Rhode Island School of Design—her mind could not quite wrap around the idea that a guy who looked as good as Flynn would be talking to her. Twice. To Rachel Ellen Lear, the dough ball, the ugly duckling of the Lear sisters, the one they used to call Miss Fortune in high school.
She was a long way from high school, but still.
She walked into her class, her head still encased in fog, beaming at the seven of ten students who were still in attendance after four weeks. That was a pretty good sign, seeing as how she usually lost four or five by this point, when students realized that large-scale weaving was not easy. That always left her with the eccentric ones who had the sort of lives that attracted them to weaving medieval tapestries.
Sandy, a middle-aged hypochondriac, was showing a pattern of what she was weaving on the loom. “Sandy, that’s beautiful,” Rachel said admiringly.
“Thanks!” Sandy said proudly. “I was hoping to get a little further along before this class, but I have a touch of IBS.”
“IBS?” Mr. Gregory asked. He was an ancient old flamer who had expressed a desire to weave rugs and was doggedly determined to do it.
“Irritable Bowel Syndrome,” Sandy said without an ounce of self-consciousness.
“Oh, dear,” Mr. Gregory said, wrinkling his nose with distaste.
“Yeah, it’s not pretty.” Sandy confirmed.
“But . . . didn’t you say last week they thought it was a pelvic inflammation thing?” Lucy, one-half of Dave and Lucy, the All-Natural Couple, whispered loudly.
“I have both,” Sandy said, nodding enthusiastically as she carefully folded the pattern. “That’s probably why I had another flare-up of IBS. My doctor doesn’t really know for sure.”
Actually, if everyone just hung on, Sandy would list all her maladies before the end of the class. She was talented, but because of her raging hypochondria, Rachel had begun to keep ibuprofen and antacids in her purse for Sandy’s major flare-ups.
“My sister had that,” Lucy said, to which Dave rolled his eyes.
“IBS or pelvic inflammation?” Sandy asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“IBS,” Lucy said.
“Do we have to talk about this?” Chantal demanded of Rachel as everyone began to find their seats. Chantal had signed up with her friend Tiffinnae, who owned a hair salon and wanted to make some cool stuff for the walls to complement her hair-weave designs. Chantal was along just for grins. She had not, as far as Rachel knew, actually touched the loom.
“We do have a lot of ground to cover tonight, so if everyone could take a seat?” Rachel suggested. “I’m going to talk about yarn,” she said, wincing a little as she lifted her bag to put it on the table.
“Are you all right?” Sandy immediately asked. “Was that your shoulder? Because I had tendonitis once, and I have this cream—”
“Ah, no,” Rachel said, quickly cutting her off. “I just overdid it at the gym today.”
“Gym?” Tiffinnae said, sizing her up, one chubby girl to another.
“I’m a little out of shape.”
“Oh, she ain’t out of no shape,” Chantal said, waving a hand as she strutted to the loom she shared with Tiffinnae. “She goin’ cuz she got herself a maaaan,” she said in a singsong way, and instantly gained the class’s undivided attention.
Rachel couldn’t have been more surprised if Chantal had done a pirouette. “No! I really—”
“Yes, you do. I saw you smiling at him down at Oakley’s Grocery,” Chantal insisted as she smoothed the back of her hair. “I walked right past you and said hi and you couldn’t even take your eyes off him to say nothing in return!”
“You walked past me?” Rachel exclaimed disbelievingly.
The class suddenly erupted into laughter.
“Oh, come on, it’s not what you think,” Rachel cried.
“And he was fiiiiine,” Chantal said, and exchanged another high five with Tiffinnae.
“Actually, Chantal, I didn’t know that man,” Rachel tried again, but could feel a hot blush returning, full throttle, to her cheeks. It was a full minute before she could get the class focused on the fascinating world of looms and weaving in medieval times.
At the end of the class, when Sandy said she had to get home because of a flare-up of acid reflux. Tiffinnae and Chantal took their own sweet time packing up their things as everyone else filtered out, calling good night to Rachel. “I know when a girl’s got her eye on a man,” Chantal said loudly to Tiffinnae.
“Mmm-hmm,” Tiffinnae responded.
“Miss Rachel’s got two eyes on that man, all moon-eyed and smiley-faced!” She and Tiffinnae fell out laughing at Rachel’s wide-eyed, puffed-cheek look, and waved a cheery good night as they pushed one another out the door.
There was only one person left in class, a kid named Jason, maybe nineteen, who preferred dressing in solid black and added eyeliner to his eyes to give him a really gothic look. “Ah, Miss Lear?” he said quietly, raising his hand in spite of there being no one else left in the classroom.
“Hey Jason, what’s up?” she asked as she picked up her giant bunker-buster tote bag.
He shoved his hands into his enormous pockets. “Listen, I’m going to have to drop out,” he said meekly.
“Drop out? Why? Is it Chantal? I can—”
“No, she’s okay,” he said, looking extremely chagrined. He cast his gaze to the floor. “I can’t afford it,” he said. “I borrowed the money from my mom to sign up, and she thought it was sort of stupid.” The kid blanched when he said it, and instantly shook his head. “I don’t mean your class is stupid, but she thought it was stupid for me to take it . . . Well, anyway, I really want to take this class. I didn’t realize we’d have to pay for the yarn and stuff.”
Even though it was clearly stated in the course materials, Rachel smiled. “Jason, don’t worry about that. I’ve got extra yarn.”
“Really?” he asked, sort of lifting his gaze to her waist. “I mean, are you sure?”
“Are you kidding?” She paused at the light switch. “I have tons,” she lied as Jason gave her a skeptical look and preceded her out of the classroom.
She walked with Jason out to the parking lot while he told her how cool he thought medieval art was, and how (interestingly) he had a suit of armor at home, and how he really hoped to get to England one day, and in fact, had a bunch of travel brochures that maybe he’d bring to the next class, if that was all right.
Rachel told him that was all right.
That night, after the remainder of her humongous brownie had been devoured and her tampons safely tucked away, Rachel picked up her romance novel and quickly lost herself in King Edward I’s court.
As she drifted off to sleep, the novel still in hand, Rachel could see the hero atop his white steed, his hair flowing, his scabbard bouncing at his side as he raced across the barren moors.
Funny, she thought sleepily, how much that guy looked like Flynn . . . except for the scabbard. And the horse.
Her dreamy sleep was rudely interrupted by the phone.
At the first ring, Rachel came out of bed with a start; the book went flying across the room, and every muscle in her body seized up
in pain.
“Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow . . .” she hissed as she threw the covers off of her. She glanced at the clock as she fumbled for the cordless. It was ten in the morning—how had she slept so long? She punched the Talk button. “Hello?” she said, and realized she could not straighten her neck.
“You cannot still be asleep!” Dagne exclaimed, surprised. “I thought you were going to the employment office today!”
“Ohmigod, Dagne, I can’t move,” Rachel said, grimacing as she tried to move her leg.
“You better move. Hurry up and go to the employment office and then call me back. I may want to do something later, I don’t know.”
Begging the question of why she was calling at ten, for Chrissakes, but nevertheless, Rachel rubbed her neck and said, “Guess what. I saw him again.”
“Who?”
“Him. The British guy.”
Dagne gasped. “Where? When?”
Rachel told her about the scene at the corner grocery, complete with brownie and tampons. At the end of it, Dagne said nothing. “Hello?” Rachel said into the phone.
“Why didn’t you get his number?” Dagne shouted. “God, what is the matter with you, Rachel?”
“And what would I do with his number? Call him up and say hey, I have about ten bucks in the bank, but let’s grab that coffee? I don’t think so. And besides, it wasn’t anything—he was being nice,” she said, really hoping Dagne would disagree.
Dagne obliged her by demanding, “Then why did he ask you for a drink?”
“I don’t know. You know how polite the British are—he probably thought he had to.”
“You are so stupid,” Dagne said disgustedly. “A good-looking guy—”
“And hot.”
“—hot guy asks you for a drink, and you think he is following some international protocol of manners for foreigners? How can you possibly be a candidate for a Ph.D. if you are that stupid?”
“Please. A Ph.D. doesn’t necessarily mean a person is smart,” Rachel said. “Look, I gotta get moving.”
“You blew it, Rach. If you ever see him again—”
“Which I won’t—”
“You might! And if you do, you better get his number or I’ll . . . I’ll put a hex on you!”
Rachel laughed. “I gotta go. I’ll speak to you later. Cheerio,” she added in the fake British accent she had tried to perfect while in England the last time, and clicked off.
She struggled to her feet, determined the job hunt would have to come later. First things first—a hot shower so that she could move, a trip to the gym to work the kinks out, and then a job.
The hot shower helped, but still, she could barely get her gym clothes on and was still walking funny, holding her head at an odd angle, which is why she didn’t see Mr. Valicielo standing at the foot of her fallen elm tree until it was too late. At the precise moment she was inching her way into her car (first one leg, then the careful lowering of the body, then the white-knuckled grip of the steering wheel as she dragged the other leg inside), she heard him shout her name.
“Great,” she muttered, and quickly fired up her VW and recklessly backed out of the drive, seeing as how she could not turn her head.
“Rachel!”
“Damndamndamndamndamn,” she muttered as the back of her car bottomed out when she reached the street. She turned the steering wheel as fast as she could, whimpering in pain, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Valicielo running on short, stocky legs down the drive. At the end of it, he threw his rake at the back of her car, but could only heave it about three feet.
Rachel shot down Slater toward Laurel, and as she hurtled onto Laurel, she struggled to turn around to see where Mr. Valicielo was. But her reflexes were off, as the slightest movement of her head sent a shooting pain down her side, and she was, therefore, a little slow straightening around again.
She saw the jogger at the very last second and swerved to the right to avoid hitting him. With every muscle screaming at that unpredicted movement, she flew around the jogger and away from Mr. Valicielo.
And as she drove down Laurel, her muscles momentarily under control, she thought she was really going to have to have her head checked, because she barely had a glimpse of the jogger and still thought that he looked just like Flynn.
Man, this guy was turning up everywhere.
At the gym, Lori at the desk was rubbing lotion onto her overly developed Popeye biceps when Rachel struggled to the desk to sign in. She nodded knowingly as Rachel winced when she picked up the pen. “Overdid it, huh?”
Rachel nodded slowly and painfully.
“Better warm up this time,” Lori chided her. “You can’t just jump in with both feet after a whole year, and remember, it’s not like you were in such great shape even then.”
“Thanks. Thanks for your help,” Rachel said, and tried to give her a look, but Lori had already gone back to her can of spinach, so she just hobbled on.
Her first stop was the stationary bike. She did a slow, easy, fiat-line ride, and as her body began to loosen up, she pondered what in the hell she was going to do about that damn tree . . . until she realized she’d been thinking about the tree and Mr. Valicielo for almost forty-five minutes.
But hey, her legs actually felt a little stronger! She walked around in a circle for a moment to make sure they weren’t going to buckle or anything, and convinced they weren’t, she headed for the weight bench.
She was beginning to feel her cheerful self again, and was even achieving some weird endorphin high that caused her to actually contemplate an aerobics class. That might jump-start the ol’ metabolism, maybe burn off that huge honking brownie she’d eaten last night.
She headed up front to check out the class schedules, mopping her face and neck with a towel, still trying to catch her breath after doing four sets of power squats. She rounded the corner, squinted at the front desk. Lori was leaning all the way across, smiling like a goon at some guy, flexing her biceps—
Wait. Wait just a damn minute—that could not be him! What the hell was going on? What sort of freaky cosmic disturbance was rearranging her reality? She hadn’t had time to check her horoscope this morning, but she was pretty sure it didn’t say some British guy would keep popping up like a jack-in-the-box everywhere she went.
But it was him, all right, having a lovely little chat with Lori. And then he turned slightly to pick up his gym bag and saw Rachel at the exact moment she realized she was staring at him. He opened his mouth; she turned abruptly—
“Rachel?”
Crap. This was really just too much. It was all Dagne’s doing, she was certain. She’d probably screwed up the spell so this guy was only going to see her when she was in some humiliating circumstance, like sweating. Or stuffing brownies into her face.
“Rachel!” he said, smiling.
She tried not to look at the clingy gym pants he was wearing, but he was the kind of man who was hard to ignore in that regard. “Oh. Hi, Flynn.”
“You’re popping up all over, aren’t you,” he said, in spite of the fact that he was doing all the popping.
Man, he was built—she could make out a broad chest beneath his T-shirt. He was trim, but muscular. “I’m a member,” she said, and folded her arms, wincing a little as she silently thanked herself for choosing to wear these ridiculously shorty shorts that showcased her blubbery legs. And to add insult to injury, he was looking at them.
“This is smashing—we could have a run, if you’re up for it.”
“Oh, sorry. I just finished my work out and I was just leaving.” She self-consciously poked some wild hair behind her ears.
“Ah.” He seemed, remarkably, disappointed as he lifted his gaze from her chunky legs to her face.
“And I don’t really run.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, it’s too . . . complicated.” Complicated? Oh Jesus.
“What, the treadmill? I’ll show you if you like.”
“No, not that,” she
said, as if that was a perfectly ridiculous suggestion. “I mean the, ah, workout schedules.”
He looked confused.
So was she. “You know . . . I have to watch my ketones, that sort of thing,” she said, and wished she could crawl into a hole, for she had no idea what she was saying.
“Oh. Right you are. Ketones,” he said, nodding. He knew she had no idea what she was talking about.
“Okay, so have a good workout!” she said brightly, and punched him collegially on the shoulder as she took a step toward the ladies’ room. But he put his hand on her sweaty arm, and she instantly swiped at his hand with her towel.
“Beg your pardon.”
“No, not at all, it’s just that . . . were you going to say something?”
“Actually,” he said with a lopsided smile, “I was going to say that you have some crackin’ legs, if you don’t mind.”
She had what? What?
“What I mean by that—they’re fantastic,” he clarified with another knee-rattling grin.
Fantastic? Had he actually said her legs were fantastic? “Oh. Well.” She wondered if there was something she was supposed to say to that. “Okay! Really gotta go. Nice seeing you,” she said, and made a long jump into the ladies’ locker room before he could stop her.
Her heart was racing a million miles a minute.
She stood just inside, trying to catch her breath. She could feel every inch of her skin his gaze had touched, like little bee stings. One thing was certain. She was definitely doing more squats tomorrow.
Rachel showered and dressed in black slacks and a black sweater over a white collared shirt, and braided her hair. In her bag, she found an old tube of Maybelline mascara and a little blush, and counted herself successful when she smudged the mascara on only one eye. Convinced she looked presentable, she slung her gym bag over one shoulder with only a little ouch, and her tote on the other, and opened the ladies’ locker room door a crack. From there, she looked furtively about, saw no Brits anywhere, and made a beeline for the parking lot and her car.