by Julia London
He smiled, seemed to wait for her to say more.
She was not going to say more, because she knew what it would be, something completely pathetic like, Why didn’t you call me? And as she had no desire to make an even bigger fool of herself, she smiled brightly, said, “Okay! Good to see you!” and stepped around him and tried to waddle off.
“Wait!” he said, before she could take a step, and of course she couldn’t help herself. Rachel turned around.
He was looking at her hair. “I beg your pardon, but I thought I saw glitter in your hair.”
She gripped the tray. “As a matter of fact,” she said, pasting the bright smile to her face, regretting ever having put it in her hair, “it’s stardust.”
“Stardust?”
“Yes, stardust. You can get it at this little shop . . .” Wait. Scratch that. No need to mention the witchcraft stuff again. “It’s to bring me good luck.” And what a lucky batch she’d managed to get her hands on!
“Oh.” He stood there, and Rachel could almost see the wheels turning, could almost hear him think, How in the bloody hell do I get my arse out of this one? “It’s really quite . . . fetching,” he said.
“I know,” Rachel responded, smarty-like, and turned around, marched away, hoping to high heaven Flynn at least had the good sense to look away from her butt.
She delivered the scotch and water, heard some elderly woman tell the man she was so sorry about his loss, and thought, judging by his expression, that the loss must have been a stock or something, and kept walking, right through the swinging door and into the kitchen where she put her tray down. “Anyone have a smoke?” she asked.
One of the girls nodded and fished it out of her skirt pocket. “Don’t let Queen Mary catch you, or she’ll can you on the spot,” she warned as she handed Rachel a lighter.
Rachel nodded, walked to the back of the kitchen, swiping up a few grilled shrimp as she went, and snuck out to the little area between the garage and the work quarters. She popped a shrimp into her mouth, leaned down to where Fraidy Cat was sitting at the end of her chain, and placed two shrimp in front of her. “Hurry up,” she said to the cat, and lit the cigarette, felt the nicotine rush through her limbs as she watched the cat sniff carefully around the shrimp.
She heard the crunch of feet on the drive before he spoke, and she closed her eyes, imagined what he’d say. I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot. I adore you, and it frightened me . . . Or the more likely, Uh, pardon, but could you move your car? You’re blocking me, and Blondie and I are going to go have a quick shag.
The feet stopped behind her. She took another drag off the cigarette, waited for him to say something that would crush her. But instead, he said, “Hey, is everything okay?”
All right, that was a decent beginning, better than she would have guessed, maybe a seven on a scale of ten. There was only one little problem. It wasn’t Flynn.
It was Mike, the bartender.
Chapter Seventeen
Mike was smiling, so she figured she hadn’t been fired for sneaking out for a smoke. “I’m fine,” she said, holding up the cigarette. “Just having a smoke.”
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, taking a pack out of his breast pocket and lighting one up, and therein answering the burning question of what, exactly, he was doing out here. And in fact, up on a small patio, there were several party guests huddled together, also having a smoke.
Mike laughed. “Help down by the garbage cans. Guests this way.” He looked around; saw the cat munching on shrimp. “What’s that around its neck?”
“A chain.”
“A chain? What’s that, their watch cat?” He laughed loudly at his own joke, but turned away from the poor cat and dragged on his smoke.
Rachel didn’t think it was particularly funny. She thought it was downright cruel.
“Anyone see you come out?” he asked, looking toward the service door.
“I don’t think so.”
“So, Rachel,” he said, exhaling smoke. “Rachel, Rachel.”
“That’s me,” she said in a singsong voice.
“Do you live in Providence?”
She nodded.
“Get out much?”
What did that mean? Was she acting weird, or something?
“Like out to clubs,” he helpfully clarified.
“Oh. Not a lot. I’m in school.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“You, too? Brown?”
He snorted. “Nah. Rhode Island Community College. Business Administration. You go to Brown? What are you studying?”
Okey-doke, here they went. Rachel inhaled and felt nauseated. That was the thing about smoking. The idea was always better than the real thing. “History,” she said.
“Wow. Gonna be a professor, I guess.”
“I guess,” she said. At the rate things were going, she’d probably end up typing routine autopsy reports or something likewise fabulously successful and awe-inspiring.
“Let me ask you something,” Mike said, glancing at his wristwatch. “You ever take a break from those books long enough to go out for a drink?”
Get. Out! Was he asking her for a date? With a grin, she turned toward him “Sometimes. Why?”
“Why?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “Because I thought maybe you’d go have a drink with me. Is that possible? Or do you have ‘em lined up around the corner and can’t be bothered?”
Now she laughed. “I can be bothered,” she said, and tossed down her smoke, ground it out with the pointy heel of her boot, then smiled at Mike from the corner of her eye. “For the right guy.” Did she really just say that? Could she be flirting?
Mike grinned, let his gaze slide down her body and back. “Where do I put in my application for the right guy?”
Rachel smiled. “I think we can consider the application filed,” she said, and thought maybe there was something in the make-me-sexy-and-hurry spell. Okay, okay, it hadn’t worked on Flynn, but, still, Mike was no slouch. He was nice-looking enough, and he had a really nice smile, and nice pale blue eyes, and okay, maybe she could see herself dating this guy, and stepped, surprisingly—like way surprisingly—a little closer to him—
That was when she saw Flynn, standing on the patio with the other guests. Only he wasn’t smoking. With his hands in his pockets, and his head down, he was looking at her. Well, actually, to be perfectly clear . . . he was looking at her flirt with Mike. And he was not smiling his usual charming smile. In fact, he was looking a little grim up there.
“That’s great,” Mike said. “Look, I really gotta get back in there. But I’ll catch you before you leave and get your number, all right?”
“Sure. I’d really like that,” she said brightly. Too brightly. So brightly that it rang false. What was she saying? She didn’t know this guy. Wasn’t the usual protocol to at least have a conversation with a guy before you went out with him? That was a problem with these spells, she was discovering. She didn’t quite know how to act when they started working.
“Okay!” he said, and smiled. “So . . . I’d love to stand out here and freeze my ass off with you all night, but I really have to work,” he said, and reached out to touch her hand.
“I guess I should, too,” she said, and stole a glimpse at Flynn. Only Flynn wasn’t up there looking down at her anymore. He was looking at the blonde hanging off his shoulder.
“You coming?” Mike asked, and Rachel jerked her gaze to him, smiled brightly, and joined him to sneak back inside.
Okay, all right, Rachel told herself as she picked up her tray and some sushi-looking thing and went back into the party room; she shouldn’t have looked up there. She should have let well enough alone, and she damn sure should have looked at her horoscope before she came tonight.
Right. But here she was looking for Flynn again, whom she instantly spotted, with his blonde of course, yukking it up with the tall man whose pet had died and some other woman who was pencil-thin and beautiful. Nothing like a bunch of pencil
-thin beauties to bring a woman squeezed into a skirt two sizes too small crashing back to earth.
“Excuse me, miss!” some woman shouted at her before she could get too caught up in Flynn’s world. “Can we get some drinks please?”
Why, of course. Now that the woman had helpfully reduced her down to servant again, all was right with the world.
From across the room, standing with Marlene and Phil Wasserman and some woman whose name he did not catch, Flynn watched Rachel from the corner of his eye. He figured, being a veteran of females, which he could certainly claim to be, that he had made a rather bad mistake in not ringing her after that astonishing little kiss they had shared. Unfortunately, ringing her up was not something he’d really had time to do until right around the moment he saw her lovely face staring at him from across the room tonight.
Not that he had forgotten Rachel, God no. Nor that bloody amazing kiss.
He was intrigued by her. Not all girls went about with stardust in their hair, did they? And she looked, he had to admit, terribly curvaceous in that black sweater and short little skirt and high-heeled, knee-high boots.
Oh no, he’d had every intention of ringing her, and was looking quite forward to an evening with a woman who actually thought of things beyond what royal would be where on any given occasion. It was just that between the two rather involved situations he was currently engaged in, time had, unfortunately, gotten away from him. He’d meant to find a moment to explain it all to her, but then he’d seen her with that American bloke having a fag, and thought it was perhaps too late.
And really, he told himself, as he listened to Phil Wasserman speak reverently of his dead wife, that was perhaps just as well, for inevitably it would end—and end disastrously. Eventually, he’d have to tell her his true reason for being in America. That would not go well. Not at all. And then he’d actually have to return to England and leave things at sixes and sevens. He really fancied her far too much to create a complete mess of things.
Yes, eventually, anything he started would come to a crushing end, which was why Flynn forced himself to stop seeking Rachel out in that room. Nor did he look at Marlene, who was tragically lacking any curves at all, and instead focused his attention on Wasserman, his reason for being here.
But try as he might, he really couldn’t keep himself from stealing glimpses of Rachel as he sort of trailed along after Wasserman, because she was really a bit of all right. Quite dishy and very sexy with that gold in her hair, and frankly, he could count her bum among the best he’d ever had the good fortune to view. Round and bouncy, the sort a man could imagine really grabbing on to as he . . .
What in the bloody hell was the matter with him? He was working, for God’s sake! And he was not the sort of bloke who was easily confounded by a bird! Besides, Rachel seemed to be enjoying herself at the bar with her sodding bartender. Even if Flynn wanted to have a word with her, he couldn’t really, not with the ever-present Marlene, who was, it seemed, quite pissed after imbibing a lorry load of martinis. Quite pissed, as in plastered, and falling down, making-moon-eyes-and-suggesting-lewd-things-to-him drunk. He had absolutely no idea how to get rid of her.
When he at last convinced Marlene to have a seat at one of the little tables and tried to get her to have a bite, she refused, shaking her head in a slow-motioned drunken way, with her hair sort of flying dramatically across her eyes and whatnot. Flynn had every desire to leave her there, but frankly, he was far too much the gentleman to do it properly.
Shoving a hand through his hair, he looked desperately around for someone who might help. Naturally, his gaze fell on Rachel, who was, as luck would have it, only a few feet away.
“Rachel!” he called out to her as she delivered drinks to a very disorderly quartet of attorneys.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and he could swear her eyes went soft for a moment before cooling off to perfect cubes of ice. She cocked her tray high and walked to where he stood with a smile rather forcefully smashed onto her face. “Drink?” she drawled.
“Ah, no. I rather think not—there’s been quite enough served here as it is. I hate to be a bother, but would you mind terribly locating Mr. Feizel? I’m afraid his guest has had one too many.”
“I have not, Charlie!” Marlene insisted, stabbing her elbow onto the little table to steady herself and almost toppling the thing over.
Rachel looked at Marlene. “Charlie?”
“Long story,” Flynn quickly interjected.
“Go on,” Marlene said to Rachel, waving a loose wrist at her. “Be a sweetie and go get me a martini,” she said, before covering her face with both hands.
Rachel and Flynn exchanged a look.
“I’d really rather you not,” he said. “Do you think you might find Mr. Feizel?”
“I’ll get him right away.” Rachel walked away without another word.
She returned a moment later with Mr. Feizel, who gave Marlene one look and sighed. “Dammit, Marlene, you did this last year.”
“Did what?” she asked, smiling sloppily at him.
He sighed with exasperation and looked at Flynn. “Last year, we let her sleep it off upstairs and she stayed two days. I can’t let her do that again—my wife would kill me.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to stay here!” Marlene said defiantly and tried to fold her arms against her tiny little waist, but couldn’t keep her balance and slid into the table.
“Come on, Ollie, would you mind?” Mr. Feizel asked him, his dark eyes pleading.
“Me?” Flynn exclaimed, surprised. “I hardly know her, Mr. Feizel. I just thought that you might—”
“The thing about Marlene is she’s really a brilliant attorney.”
“The best! No one wins more cases than me!” Marlene shouted, jabbing her chest with her finger.
“But she and gin don’t mix. If you’ll just drive your car up, I’ll help you get her inside of it.”
“I don’t have a car,” Flynn objected, then noticed Rachel, standing behind Mr. Feizel, lift a curious brow at that.
“Come on, man!” Feizel pleaded, ignoring his protests. “Take her home.”
“Dear God,” Flynn said.
“Char-leee, I wanna go home now. I really wanna go home,” Marlene began to whine, working her way to her feet as Rachel stepped out of the way.
Quite a few people were turning around now and, from the look of it, were enjoying Marlene’s slide into oblivion. It was the last sort of notoriety that Flynn needed, and it seemed that the proverbial handwriting was on the sodding wall. “Bugger!” he muttered irritably.
Marlene laughed as she moved to slide her arm around his neck. “I love the way you talk, Charlie,” she said, then hiccupped.
He sighed, put his arm around her waist, and pulled her into his side, forcing her to stand up, but her limbs were like those of a rag doll.
“Thanks, Ollie. We owe you one,” Mr. Feizel said, and with a friendly pat on the arm, he wandered off, leaving Rachel there, holding her service tray.
There was nothing he could say that could possibly improve the situation now, but he looked at Rachel as Marlene waved happily at someone across the room. “I meant to ring,” he said.
“Did you, Charlie?”
Flynn winced slightly. “I’d rather like a chance to explain—”
“By all means. Explain away.”
To hell with it, then. She had her knickers in a wad, and he had a sot hanging off his bloody arm. “I would. I will. But now does not seem a very convenient time for it. Cheers, then,” he said irritably, and without another look at her, he dragged Marlene across the room and from the party altogether, rolling his eyes at some of the more colorful things the Americans shouted at him.
He dragged Marlene’s almost useless body onto the drive (although she was still lucid enough to laugh at how inoperable her feet were). “What’s the matter, Charlie?” she asked, looking up at him, her head balanced precariously on a roly-poly neck.
“I
f you must know, I’m a bit brassed off at Rachel.”
“Who?”
“After all, it’s only been two bloody days,” he said, making Marlene move. “There is not, as far as I am aware, some rule about the time frame in which one must ring a girl after a kiss, and I did not, to the best of my recollection, say, I’ll ring you in the morning, or I’ll ring you within forty-eight hours. I said I would ring, and I fully intended to ring, but I hadn’t gotten round to it quite yet, that’s all.”
“I’m freezing! Where’s my coat?” Marlene demanded, confused.
“Your coat?” Flynn asked absently as he pulled her down the walk.
“I want my coat!” she wailed.
With a sigh, Flynn stopped just at the end of the house, propped Marlene up against the wall, shrugged out of his coat, draped it round her bony shoulders, and hauled her back into his side. “You’re really quite a piece of work, Marlene.”
“I just love the way you talk,” Marlene giggled.
Flynn pushed on, and at the end of the drive, he saw Joe get out of the driver’s seat and stand behind the open door, staring in disbelief as Flynn dragged Marlene to the car.
“Hi!” Marlene said, laughing as she tried to wave. “Who are you?”
“He’s a mate who’s to give us a lift,” Flynn said, and opened the door to the backseat.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Joe said as Flynn pushed Marlene into the backseat head first.
“Frankly, I’d give all that I had to say that I was,” Flynn avowed earnestly as he made certain all of her body parts were inside. He shut the door, braced himself on the car, and looked at Joe. “But unfortunately, I cannot.”
Joe groaned. “So what are we going to tell her?”
“Just what I said—that you’re a mate who’s come to give us a lift.”
Joe planted his hands on his hips and thought about it, dipping once to see her, sprawled across the backseat. “Okay,” he said at last. “As long as she stays half conscious back there. We just can’t let her see any of the equipment in the front.” He looked at Flynn again. “So where are we taking your girl, here, dude?”