“Yo, Carly, you in there?”
She glanced up to see Zach standing right in front of her. He was grinning at her, like a dope, and nodding. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder at Sam, who had followed him into the bakery.
“Oh, yeah, she definitely had the pants-off dance-off last night, and it looks like it was a good one.”
“What?” Carly asked. “How do you know that? Wait, don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter as it’s none of your business.”
“You’re our friend,” Sam said as he joined them. “Of course it’s our business.” He studied her and then smiled. His Maine accent thickened when he spoke. “Ayuh, looks like someone was up late playing pelvic pinochle.”
“Guys! I expect better from you than that,” Jillian chastised them from behind the cash register. The shop was mercifully empty of customers, but still Carly was pleased that her friend had her back and was putting the boys in their place.
“What?” Zach cried. “I thought those metaphors were pretty good.”
He turned back to Carly and took the napkin dispenser she was strangling in her hands and put it back on the small café table.
“No, not even close, because from what I saw, she was most definitely testing the suspension,” Jillian said. Then she wiggled her eyebrows.
Zach hooted, Sam went wide-eyed, and Carly gave her dearest friend a blast of stink-eye that should have fried her hair like a bad perm.
Not one to miss the point, Zach crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Jillian with a smirk. “You saw? Do tell.”
“Don’t you dare,” Carly said.
Jillian ignored her. “Truthfully, it was this morning and they were fully clothed so maybe it was just a good-bye grope.”
“Wait!” Sam moved to lean on the glass display counter that housed Jillian’s whoopie pies. “Did you say ‘this morning’?”
She nodded and he exchanged a look with Zach, who stared at Carly in shock.
“Morning?” he asked. His voice was outraged as he continued, “You let him spend the night?”
“I lost track of the time and fell asleep,” Carly said. “NBD.”
“No big deal?” Zach cried. “You have just opened the door to a possible relationship. That is a very big deal.”
“Oh, my god, you are totally being a drama queen,” she said. “We didn’t exchange phone numbers, heck, I don’t even remember his last name.”
“Sinclair,” Sam said.
Carly looked at him in confusion.
“What? He told us last night at Marty’s Pub, and I happen to have an excellent memory. You didn’t think we were going to let you go off with a guy without memorizing his last name, did you?” He jerked a thumb in Zach’s direction. “This one even got the license plate off of his car and Brad ran a quick check on an Internet mugshot website to see if he’d been arrested. He hasn’t been.” He looked at Zach. “I think I’m offended.”
“You’re offended?” Carly cried.
The bells on the door jangled and Mrs. Finnick and Mrs. Tharp came in. They were two of Jillian’s regulars and swore by her version of the Snickerdoodle, a whoopie pie made with cinnamon cake and cream cheese filling.
Jillian gave the three of them a keep-it-down look as she stepped away from the counter and went to greet the ladies. Carly turned her back on the customers and zeroed in on Zach and Sam.
“If anyone should be offended, it’s me,” she said. “I can’t believe you don’t trust my judgment.”
“You’ve been having a rough patch,” Sam said. “We were concerned that you weren’t thinking clearly.”
“And if you let him spend the night . . .” Zach began but Carly interrupted.
“So what?” she asked.
“So letting a man sleep over is a game changer, right, Sam?”
Sam was watching Jillian smile at her customers, and it took Zach nudging him with an elbow to bring his attention back to the discussion.
“Right, Sam?”
“Huh?” he asked. He rubbed the spot on his side where Zach’s elbow had connected. “Sorry, I lost the thread there.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Carly said.
She raised her eyebrows at the lovesick-puppy look on Sam’s face while he watched Jillian. Suspicion that the poor boy was smitten—confirmed. Jillian might think they were just friends but Sam had a whole other agenda going on. He glanced away from Carly’s scrutiny and studied the chalkboard menu on the wall behind her. Zach caught on to none of this as he launched right back into his lecture.
“This guy is going to think there’s more going on than you do,” he said. “That’s what happens when you let a man sleep over.”
Carly rolled her eyes. “No, he won’t. Honestly, it wasn’t even that good.”
She crossed her fingers, feeling bad about fibbing but doing it anyway so that Zach would stop bugging her. It was then that Ike decided to chime in and expose her for a liar.
“James, oh, James!” he squawked from his cage in the corner. He bobbed his head, his whole body bouncing up and down as if he was acting out what he had heard last night. “James, oh, James!”
Zach and Sam whipped their heads in the direction of the bird. Slack jawed, they swiveled back to Carly, who closed her eyes and prayed for a comet to hit the bakery right then and there. No such luck.
Chapter 9
The big dumb man-boys burst into hearty guffaws and it took all Carly had not to kick them in the privates to quiet them down or take them out, whichever worked most effectively.
“Carly.” Jillian’s voice was full of warning and Carly knew she was afraid that Ike would freak out her customers with his display of parrot porn.
“I’m on it,” Carly said.
“Or, you were,” Zach quipped and he and Sam doubled up again.
“Hush,” Carly hissed at him.
“Shut your stupid cake hole,” Ike echoed her.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Finnick said. She put her hand to her throat as Ike went back to bobbing up and down and crying out for James.
Jillian looked wild-eyed at Carly. She nodded and stripped off her apron and grabbed her purse and jacket out from behind the counter.
“I’m just going to take him to see Gavin,” she said. “You know, an hour early—call me if you need me.”
Jillian waved good-bye as Carly hefted up Ike’s travel cage and made for the door.
“Has the bird been eating any of the whoopie pies?” Mrs. Tharp asked. “Because I would be very interested in that.”
“Me, too,” Mrs. Finnick said.
Carly let the door swing shut on Zach and Sam as they hooted with laughter. She could feel her face was hot and a small part of her thought about opening Ike’s cage door and letting him fly. She didn’t do it but she thought about it.
The cage was large enough that it was unwieldy and she had to carry it all the way across the town green and down a side street to Gavin’s veterinary office. Ike wasn’t terribly happy about it either as he took his bell in his mouth and clanged it against the side of his cage, like a prisoner running his tin cup across the bars in his jail cell.
Carly passed a couple who was window shopping in front of a bookstore and she had to step out and around them as they decided to smooch right in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Honestly, get a room, people,” she muttered. Then she looked at Ike in horror. “Do not repeat that, mister.”
He shimmed across his bar away from her as if her crazy might be catching.
“Carly, wait! Carly!”
She turned around to see Zach jogging toward her. Both his coat and his shaggy blonde hair were flapping in the breeze as he ran. Obviously, he hadn’t taken the time to get himself together before coming after her.
Carly paused to wait for him. When he stood beside her, red in t
he face and panting, she scowled.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Was there a joke at my expense that you forgot?”
“Aw, don’t be like that,” Zach said. He straightened up and gave her his most charming lopsided smile. “Who’s your buddy?”
She continued to scowl.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “Who’s your buddy?”
Carly pushed Ike’s cage at him, giving him no choice but to carry it for her.
“You are,” she said. She gave him her sweetest smile as he staggered with the awkwardness of the cage. Ike squawked and flapped his wings while Zach shifted the cage in his arms.
“Lead on, my queen,” Zach said. He bowed his head and Carly forgave him just a little.
They were halfway across the dry brown grass on the town square when Zach broke the silence.
“So judging by Ike’s input, last night was way better than ‘not even that good.’”
“No.”
“No, what? No, it wasn’t or no, it was?”
“No, just no, as in, no, I’m not talking about this with you,” she said.
She turned and gave him her frantic face. It was the one she formerly used to express her dismay when the purchases of big-girl panties she had made for her middle market department stores went missing or when there was no way she could manage to purchase what the stores required within the budget constraints they had set upon her.
“But we’re besties,” Zach whined in a falsetto that made Carly’s ears bleed. “I’m the man whore and you’re the—oh, maybe I’m looking for a different word there.”
“You think?” Carly asked. “And you’re not a man whore. You’re just not interested in a relationship and there’s nothing wrong with that so long as no one gets hurt.”
“As far as I know, I have never hurt a soul,” he said. Ike was giving him a death glare, which Zach gave right back to him. “I swear.”
The green parrot seemed unconvinced.
“Well, I haven’t either and I’m not going to now,” she said. “I mean, James didn’t ask for my phone number and I was very clear that it was a one-night thing.”
“Was your talk before or after Jillian walked in on your morning round of hide the salami?”
Carly huffed out a breath. She would have slapped him on the shoulder for that but he was carrying Ike.
“It was before, but I don’t think that makes a bit of difference,” she said.
“Carly, Carly, Carly.” Zach shook his head at her. “Don’t you know that we men are dumb creatures? We go by actions not words.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Meaning everything you said to him went in one ear and out the other, while he locked in on the fact that you were warm and willing in his arms after your parting speech,” he said.
They paused on the edge of the sidewalk. Carly checked both ways and then took Zach by the arm and led him across the street and around the corner to the building that housed Gavin’s office.
“Even if that was true, he doesn’t have my last name or my number,” she said. “He couldn’t get in touch with me if he wanted to, which I really don’t think he does.”
“Yeah, Bluff Point is not Brooklyn,” Zach said. “We’re a petite hamlet of people who spend a lot of time tripping over each other at Sunday bean socials, which is why I do most of my hooking up in Portland.”
Carly heaved a sigh. She knew he was right. The odds of not running into James were not in her favor. Still, if she kept to the shop and home and did her carousing out of town like Zach, surely, she could manage it. Then again, after last night she really couldn’t imagine carousing with anyone else.
Carly gasped. Where had that thought come from? She tripped on a patch of sidewalk and went careening forward, narrowly avoiding doing a spectacular face-plant.
“Whoa, you all right?” Zach called out. He couldn’t even offer her a hand as he was still holding Ike.
“Fine, I’m fine.” Carly had caught herself on the edge of Gavin’s office. She shook her head as if she could shake off the disturbing thoughts rioting through her head.
She was overtired. A night of not sleeping would do that to a girl. Obviously, she would want to hook up with someone again eventually. It was just that she was exhausted and not thinking clearly. Yeah, that was it.
She pushed off the wall and strode forward, stepping on the mat to trigger the automatic doors. She gestured for Zach to lead and she followed, the doors sliding shut behind her.
Jessie Connelly, Gavin’s front desk person, was seated at the counter. She glanced up at them over the top of her rectangular-framed black glasses. When she saw who it was she frowned.
Carly and Jessie did not like each other. That was putting it mildly. Seven years ago Jessie had absconded with Mac’s fiancé, Seth Connelly, literally driving off with him right in the middle of Mac’s wedding ceremony.
As it turned out, Jessie had done Mac a huge favor as Seth was a bully, a letch, and a drunk, but Carly had grudge-holding hardwired into her DNA so while Mac had forgiven Jessie and had even gotten her a job working for Gavin, Carly was not quite so forgiving.
“Oh, it’s you,” Jessie said. She glanced at her computer monitor with a frown. “You’re early, way early.”
“Yeah, well, it’s an emergency,” Carly said.
Jessie hopped to her feet. “Is the bird sick? Should I call Gavin? What are his symptoms?”
“What would you say his symptoms are?” Zach asked Carly as he placed the cage on the counter. “Aural retentiveness? Verbal audaciousness?”
“Silence,” Carly said. She turned back to Jessie, who was looking at Ike with concern. “Just call the doc—please.”
“Gavin is with another patient right now,” Jessie said, her tone matching Carly’s overly polite one. “But I can put you in exam room three, if you’d like to wait for him.”
She ran a hand through her bangs, which had an unintentional ombre thing going on with her ends being several shades lighter than her roots, and adjusted her glasses.
Jessie had always been one of the pretty girls when they were in high school, but now, wearing scrubs and a cardigan with sensible shoes and a clip that kept most of her hair out of her face, she looked every bit a woman in her thirties just trying to get by. She also looked vulnerable, which made Carly’s grudge lessen a bit, but only a bit.
“That’ll do,” Carly said.
Zach was watching the two women as if the crackling tension between them might be the prelude to a mud wrestling match. Carly would have cuffed him upside the head but she wanted him to stick around and carry the cage back for her, yes, because she could be selfish like that.
“If you’ll follow me,” Jessie said.
Zach hefted the cage while Carly fell in behind Jessie. She noted the slump in Jessie’s shoulders but reminded herself she didn’t care. If Jessie wanted people to like her maybe she shouldn’t make off with people’s fiancés. The best she could manage was to be polite to the woman and that was mostly because Mac had asked her to be.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” Zach said as Jessie opened the door for him.
She visibly bristled. “Don’t call me ‘sweetheart.’”
“I’m sorry?” Zach said it as if it was a question.
“You should be,” she said. “Women are not ‘sweethearts’ or ‘honeys’ or ‘babes.’ We’re human beings and we deserve to be acknowledged as such.”
Carly looked wide-eyed from Zach to Jessie and back. Zach looked stunned while Jessie looked indignant.
“I’m sorry. Do we know each other?” Zach asked. “Because I am quite positive I would remember you if I . . . if we . . . you know.”
Jessie pulled her cardigan tightly around herself as if afraid he was going to violate her with his eyeballs.
“No, we do not,” she snappe
d. “Because I am not your type. I’ve seen your type and I know exactly how you operate, buster.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. He stuck his jaw out as if he was looking to take a punch and knew he could handle it. “And what’s my type?”
“Young and horny,” Jessie said. “At least judging by the parade of slores that seem to trip up and down your walkway at all hours of the night.”
Zach put the cage down on the counter in the small room and propped his hands on his hips. He looked outraged.
“What do you know about my walkway?”
“Nothing except it runs parallel to mine so I have a front-row seat to the booty parade every night,” she said.
“Wait.” Zach held up his hands in a stop motion. “You’re my neighbor?”
Jessie glared at him. If looks could kill, Zach would be buried six feet under and, judging by the look on Jessie’s face, he’d be cradling his privates and crying.
“I’m not surprised you haven’t noticed,” she said. “What with all the twenty-something hoochie mamas traipsing through your life. Ugh!”
“Hey, don’t be mad. You’re a little older than I normally go for, but I could probably fit you into the rotation,” Zach said.
He looked at her as if he knew he was needling her and was doing it anyway. Carly was surprised Jessie didn’t rip his head off with her bare hands. In all fairness, after that last crack, Carly would not have blamed her a bit.
“Oh, please, I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were a verified sex god and could make me orgasm just by looking at me!” Jessie declared, emphasizing it with a toss of her head.
“Well, some have hinted that I might be godlike, but the looking thing, that would be new, but I’m willing to try,” Zach said with a wicked wink. Clearly, the man had no sense of self-preservation.
Carly eased her way in between the two of them. She was afraid Jessie was a little bit too close to striking range and she really didn’t want Zach incapacitated before he carried Ike back to the shop for her.
“You. Are. Repulsive!” Jessie cried. She spun on her heel and slammed the door so hard it rattled.
Barking Up the Wrong Tree Page 9