Had I missed on purpose? I always gave basketball my all, but this time I suspected I’d tried, like, maybe ninety percent. Or eighty-five.
Possibly sixty.
“Dinner, Friday night. Because you have plans tomorrow night, right?” he asked after he’d finished his victory lap around half of the gym. I mopped some residual sweat off my forehead, out of my eyes. So much for worrying about his shirt. This jerk didn’t even have the decency to break a sweat.
And how did he remember my schedule like that? “I guess Friday is fine.”
“I need your address so I can pick you up. How’s seven o’clock?” To my hormones’ sadness, he walked over to put his shirt back on.
I did not want Evan Dawson knowing where I lived. “I will meet you at the restaurant. You didn’t negotiate picking me up as part of the bet.” Ha. At least I still had some dignity left and had won something, even if the victory was tiny.
He blinked slowly, a smile shadowing his lips. “You’re right. I didn’t. So I’ll need your number so I can text you the information.”
Why did it feel just as dangerous to give him my number as it did my address? But with no cards left to play, I rattled off my cell number.
And all of my feelings of having won something disappeared when I saw his smirk. He’d outsmarted me in the end.
Evan put his phone back in his pocket and picked up his jacket. I turned off the gym lights as he opened the door.
“Hey, Ashton, do you hear that?”
“What?” I asked, holding still, wondering if we’d set off an alarm somewhere.
He moved closer, again making my senses go nuts. “It’s the sound of this, happening.” He whistled as he went out into the hallway, leaving me standing in the door with my mouth hanging open.
How did that make me both want to laugh and hate him more at the same time?
CHAPTER SIX
I went into ISEN the next afternoon to tell Brenda about my progress. Rand gave me a hard time about being “the teacher’s pet,” but I ignored him as I headed into her office. I told her about the dinner date we had planned, along with the charity appointment with Tinsley. Her eyes lit up when I talked about the dinner. She wanted to know when and where, but I told her I didn’t know yet.
As if he somehow sensed he was being talked about, my phone dinged with a new message.
I handed her my phone to let her see his text.
She stared at my screen for a long time. It made me a bit uncomfortable. I wondered if she’d mention the basketball part since I hadn’t told her anything about it. I probably should have. It just didn’t feel like it was any of her business since it didn’t have anything to do with the story. Only the outcome had mattered—that we were going to dinner.
Speaking of, Rodrigo’s was a new restaurant that had opened downtown and was basically impossible to get into. Aubrey had been trying for months to get reservations for her and her husband.
Which of course wouldn’t be a problem for a guy like Evan Dawson.
“This is really promising, Ashton. Make sure he gets some wine in him, and you have your phone handy so you can record whatever he’s saying.”
She handed my phone back to me, and I put it in my purse. “For sure.” But the idea of getting him drunk in an attempt to make him confess everything felt . . . wrong. When I found out the truth, I didn’t want there to be any coercion or trickery involved.
“Even though you don’t have any official intel yet, it sounds like you’re making progress. Good job, Ashton. Keep it up. And keep me informed.”
I promised I would and then pitched in for a few hours to help out with the workload. The other interns all glared and muttered things about me just out of my hearing. It made sense that they’d resent me. I’d resent me, too. I was getting special treatment. But their behavior started giving me nervous flashbacks to high school, and I ended up leaving earlier than I had intended.
After I grabbed some dinner from the bistro where I usually ate lunch, I headed over to Aubrey’s house. She and my brother-in-law, Justin, lived in the same upper-middle-class suburb where we’d grown up, just two blocks over from my parents’ house.
I knocked on their door, and when Aubrey answered, I got bowled over by my four-year-old niece, Charlotte, and my two-year-old nephew, Joey. “Auntie Ashton!”
“Hey, guys!” I said with a laugh as they clung to my legs. I walked inside slowly, their weight slowing me down.
“Are you here to play with us?” Charlotte asked, her big hazel eyes imploring me to say yes, her red hair in two braids that made her look a little like Pippi Longstocking.
“Charlotte, for the thousandth time, Mommy told you to go upstairs and get dressed. You can’t run around in your underwear,” Aubrey said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Now my niece turned her big-eyed puppy gaze on my sister. “No, Mommy, why? I don’t wanna wear shirts or dresses or pants.”
“Upstairs, right now.”
With fake sobs Charlotte heaved herself up the stairs, stopping her crying only when she realized we weren’t listening to her. Then she stomped loudly all the way to her room and slammed the door once she got there.
“I am so looking forward to her becoming a teenager. You know, before I became a mom, I had no idea I could ruin someone’s day by asking them to wear pants,” Aubrey said as she pulled Joey off my leg. “Do you have to go potty?”
“No,” he said, scrambling to be put down and then running off to play with his cars.
“I don’t have to go potty, either. In case you were wondering.”
Aubrey shot me her patented Mom Look to let me know she wasn’t amused. Her phone beeped, and she glanced at the screen. “Sh—crap. Izzie’s mom just backed out of carpool on Saturday for Charlotte’s soccer game.”
“Rory could take her. If she remembers. Or maybe I could do it. I do have this thing on that day, though.” Hopefully the game would conflict with my Tinsley meeting, and I could back out of my offer. Because I did not want to do carpool for Charlotte and her friends. I’d discovered that transporting a bunch of four-year-olds was like moving multiple serial killers in between prisons.
“You can’t take her,” she scoffed. “They banned you from all of her games because of how you screamed at that referee. He will personally throw you out again if he sees you there.”
“But how would he recognize me, given that he’s completely blind?”
Aubrey sighed. “They’re four-year-olds. They’re not playing for the World Cup. Let me just send out a couple of texts and see if someone else can drive.”
So I tended to get a tad bit excited when it came to sports. Especially sports that my family members were participating in.
“Okay, Elia’s mom said she would do it. Come into the kitchen. I’ve got you all set up in there.”
By “all set up” she apparently meant she’d raided a stationery store Viking-style and arranged the entire inventory on the table. “What’s all this?” I asked.
“It’s what we need for the reunion. Here’s everything that needs to get done.” She handed me a list, and it was seriously longer than the Bible.
“Classmate search, website, mailings, invitations, T-shirts, venue, decorations, theme, awards, slideshows, videographer, photographer, DJ . . .” And there was more. It kept going. “I repeat, what is all this?”
“The stuff I’m taking care of for the reunion.” She was in her fridge, taking out juice boxes and putting them in a diaper bag on the counter.
“You said you were on the planning committee. Not that you were the entire planning committee. Don’t you have minions to do your bidding?”
“Yes. I have you.”
So not what I had signed up for.
Once she added some fruit snacks and organic animal crackers to the bag, she came over to grab the list from me. “Don’t try to eat the elephant all at once. Just take one bite at a time. I want you to start with the classmate search. We need to find mailing a
ddresses for all the members of my class. Everything here on the table is color-coded and organized for the different stages of the reunion. The search pile is in the red folder.”
She handed it to me, and it had a list of names and potential phone numbers to try.
“You do realize they medicate people with this level of organization, right?” I asked. “And why mailing addresses? Have you heard of this thing called evites? Or computers?”
“I’m not doing anything as tacky as an electronic invitation. These will be real embossed invitations on a heavy ecru-colored cardstock. Because this is going to be the best ten-year reunion Westlake has ever seen, and it all starts with the invite.”
I sat down in the chair, already feeling defeated. There were hundreds of names on this list. “Why do you care what people who haven’t seen you in ten years think of you or this reunion?”
She was rearranging the contents of the bag. My guess was she was color-coding and organizing it, too. “I don’t care what they think. It’s just important to me.”
“That’s the definition of caring.”
“Whatever, Reunion Monkey. Start making phone calls.”
It occurred to me that the only reason my sister would be packing a bag was if she was going somewhere. “You’re leaving me with all this? Where are you going?”
“Justin and I are going to have dinner in the city tonight. Where we will drink grown-up drinks and eat grown-up food and pretend we’re still interesting adults who know how to make actual conversation with each other.”
Justin and Aubrey had met in law school, married immediately after graduation, both joined my father’s law firm, and gotten pregnant with Charlotte right away. Then they’d bought this home to be near our parents. It was all either a sweet ode to family bonding or a warning for a relationship that was bordering on codependency.
“What about the kids? Who’s going to watch them?” I hoped the answer wasn’t me. Much as I loved my niece and nephew, they were like mini emotional terrorists ready to take out themselves and everyone around them in order to get their way.
“Mom and Dad are going to take them for the evening. I’m just going to drop them by their house, and then I’ll be on my way. And I wouldn’t leave you alone with all this. I got a volunteer who wants to help out.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang.
“And there he is now,” she said.
“He? You’re going to leave me alone in your house with a strange man?”
“Oh,” Aubrey said with a wicked gleam in her eye that suddenly made me very, very afraid, “he’s no stranger.”
She opened the door, and sure enough I heard Evan Dawson’s voice for the third time in as many days.
They said their hellos and how are yous, and Joey came over to hold on to his mom’s leg while staring up at Evan. His little jaw hung slightly open, and he finally uttered the word football.
Evan crouched down to be eye level with my nephew. “I do play football. Do you like football?”
Joey nodded enthusiastically but didn’t say anything else.
“I love football, too. But probably not as much as your aunt Ashton does.” Evan caught me watching him, and that overgrown idiot winked at me.
It was not charming. It was not. At all.
He stood up, and Aubrey led him into the kitchen, giving him the same introductory spiel she’d just given me. She took out the list of students and split it in half, handing him his part.
“If you’ll excuse me for a minute, my daughter has been upstairs and completely quiet for too long. I’ll be right back.”
The ends of his hair were slightly damp, as if he’d recently showered. He put his jacket over the back of his chair and sat down, the cotton fabric of his dark-green shirt tightening around his muscles.
Why did I notice little details like that about him? What was wrong with me? “You do know that in some states this basically constitutes stalking, right?” I hissed at him. I’d already agreed to hear him out at dinner. What more did he want from me?
“I’m not stalking you. I’m just . . . around you a lot recently. And is this a bad time, or are you just randomly pissed off?”
I clenched my fists. He did not get to make judgments on what my mood should or shouldn’t be where he was concerned. “You have ten seconds to get out of . . . Wait, stay right there.”
“Indecisive. I like it.”
Instead of responding to him, I ran for the stairs, grabbing Joey on the way. I’d been on the verge of forcing Evan to leave when it occurred to me how this had all happened.
Aubrey.
He’d said he’d talked to her.
My sister was not going to interfere like this. I wouldn’t let her. I dropped off Joey to play in his room. I found Aubrey in the master bathroom scrubbing lipstick off Charlotte’s face and arms. Charlotte again looked at me with her puppy dog eyes, silently begging for assistance.
That kid was on her own. I had something else I needed to deal with first. “Are you serious with this? You’re going to leave me here with him?”
“I’m not too worried. It’s not like he’s going to try to S-L-E-E-P with you.”
“You can spell that again,” I told her. Definitely not happening. No matter how happy it would make Brenda. Or certain dumb, irrational parts of mine. “You need to toss him out of this house.”
She added more cleanser to the washrag she was using on Charlotte’s face. “You need to act like an adult. You promised you’d do whatever I asked, without question. He volunteered to help me out, and I’m not in a position right now to turn down that kind of help.”
“Yes, I’m sure the superfamous star of the NFL has loads of free time to help plan your reunion. That sounds so in character for him. He is such a devious piece of . . .” I glanced at my niece. “Work.”
“I need you to go downstairs and just be nice. Don’t swear at him or anything.”
“What good would that do me? I can’t tell him to go to, er, Hades because I’m pretty sure the devil still has a restraining order out against him.” I sighed loudly. “You do know he’s forcing me to go to dinner with him at Rodrigo’s, right?”
Aubrey stopped scrubbing her daughter’s now bright-pink face. “That jerk. Want me to beat him up for you?” The sarcasm was strong in our DNA.
“I would think as an officer of the court you’d be a little more concerned about someone blackmailing me into a date.”
“And I think you could have fun with Evan if you’d just let yourself. You don’t know. You might actually like him. There could even be sparks.”
“Only if I burn down the restaurant in my failed attempt at escape,” I muttered.
She rinsed the washrag in the sink. “You could have fun under the right circumstances.”
“In these circumstances, am I sedated?”
Aubrey just gave me another Mom Look in the mirror.
My stupid sister. Wanting everybody else paired off. Like she’d been called to be the current incarnation of Noah. “My life is not a one-and-a-half-star movie. Evan and I are not going to fall in love with each other, no matter how much you push us together.”
“Like Dad always says, nothing truly great came from a comfort zone.”
I folded my arms so I wouldn’t be tempted to choke her. “This isn’t about comfort zones, Aubrey!”
“Or, a positive attitude will take you far.”
“I don’t need your sports philosophizing. And I’ve found that a negative attitude can take me much further.” I leaned against the counter, arms still folded. “What is your endgame here? Do you think I’m going to marry Satan? What would our color scheme be? Devil red and brimstone?”
“Who’s Satan?” Charlotte piped up, causing us to both turn and look at her.
“The guy downstairs in the kitchen,” I told her.
Aubrey rolled her eyes at me. “Are you really telling my daughter that Evan Dawson is the actual devil?”
I shrugged one should
er. “If the pointy black horns fit. Besides, my job as her godmother is to make sure she’s properly instructed on all religious matters.”
“Hello? Is anyone home?” someone called from downstairs.
“Why is Rory here?” I asked Aubrey, who suspiciously did not meet my gaze.
“I might have mentioned you two were coming over.”
Was this some kind of Bailey family conspiracy? Were they all in on this “let’s make Evan and Ashton spend time together” situation? “Promise me this is it. From now on, you’ll stay out of my love life.”
“Okay, fine, I promise,” Aubrey said in an exasperated tone. Like I was another one of her toddlers.
I went downstairs to find Rory before she started hitting on Evan and climbed into his lap. Because I did not need that visual image permanently seared into my brain.
How many meddling family members was I going to have to put up with tonight?
CHAPTER SEVEN
To my surprise I didn’t find my younger sister draped across Evan Dawson’s lap. Instead, she was standing in the family room, watching him make phone calls to the former students on his list.
Not at all creepy.
She had a big dreamy grin plastered on her face. My little sister was the opposite of Aubrey—flighty, superoptimistic, idealistic, and so full of life.
I had no patience for any of it. Especially right then.
“I just love athletes,” she said with a sigh. “They’re so . . . athletic.”
“Profound observation. What are you doing here?”
“Admiring the view. Man, if being sexy was a crime, he’d get a life sentence.”
I shut my eyes and counted slowly to ten. When I opened them, I said, “It’s not just about his appearance. Don’t you remember the stories I told you about him?”
“Yes, I remember.” She shifted her body, almost like she was posing against the wall in case he glanced up at us. “I also remember he tried to apologize to you back then, and according to Aubrey, he’s trying to apologize now.”
#Awestruck (A #Lovestruck Novel) Page 6
