by Gina LaManna
I sat between the two most opposite friends a girl could find. Annalise packed about eighty pounds of petite, lean muscle, her chestnut brown hair slicked into a bun so tight it stretched the skin of her forehead. She sat with one leg tucked under the other, her toes pointed and dainty.
Meanwhile, Babs—real name Bernadette—wore her curves like a badge of honor and her stilettos like a weapon. Her daily uniform consisted of tight jeans and low cut tops, and she went through boys like I went through sunglasses. Lately, she’d created a dating profile two counties over in order to refresh the pond of fishies.
Babs was smart, too—intimidatingly smart. I’d once read a study that said people who swear more often are smarter than average. If that study was true, Babs was a freaking genius. She was also a successful lawyer, which was why I’d brought pounds of Clark contracts to our urgent meeting.
“Tell me what you think of this.”
Babs let out a huff of breath as I dropped the stack of papers onto her lap. “I thought we were here to talk about penises. Not papers.”
Annalise turned bright red. At twenty-four, she was the youngest and most naive of the bunch. She had been too busy twisting and twirling through the air all of her life to ever really kiss a man. Though she might have an air of innocence around her, she also had the burning edge of intensity. A lifetime of gymnastics competitions had primed her for the big leagues.
In fact, she’d qualified to compete for the women’s Olympic gymnastics team during the most recent cycle, but had turned it down to join Sunshine Shore’s world famous circus. Alone, she drew weekly crowds in the thousands. With a schedule like that, it was no wonder she ran out of time for kissing.
“He offered me a hundred grand to find something for him,” I said, and then paused while the girls gaped at me. When they continued gaping, I used the moment of silence to dig for an especially tough nugget of cookie dough hiding in my cone. “Can you believe it?”
“Look for something?” Babs raised her eyebrows. “What, exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t possibly be thinking of accepting this job, or whatever you want to call it.” Annalise said. In another life, she could’ve been a nun with her severe bun, the scowl on her face, and her harsh sense of right and wrong. “Lola, that’s ridiculous. He could chop you up in pieces and drag you off to his castle. I forbid you to have anything to do with him.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t feel like a bad sort of guy.”
“You felt him?” Babs asked. “Do tell.”
“No!” I scowled. “I told you everything that happened. He walked in, explained that he needed my help, and left this paperwork behind. I’m just as confused as you are.”
“Was he handsome?”
A flash of those pale blue eyes shining from under the wavy depth of his hair flashed through my memory, and I shrugged. “He’s okay.”
“That’s it?” The ice cream from Babs’s cone dripped over the edge of the water tower. “There’s nothing you’re forgetting to tell us?”
I was too busy watching Babs’s ice cream plummet toward the top of Bernie Popper’s head to respond. It landed with a splat, and we all cringed.
“Whoops,” Babs said.
“Which one of you was it this time?” Bernie looked up, shielding the sun from his eyes. “I’m getting you all arrested; I swear on my mother’s life! How many times have I told you not to climb the water tower?”
“Sorry, Bernie, but we’re in the middle of discussing something!” Babs yelled down. “I warned you not to sit on that bench during our emergency meetings.”
“It’s my reading bench.” Bernie was a janitor who spent more time reading on the park bench than cleaning out the bathrooms he was responsible for on the boardwalk. “I can read when I want.”
“Get back to work,” Babs said. “We all saw you take your lunch break an hour ago. You’re procrastinating on the job.”
“What’s so important that y’all need to talk about it on top of the world, anyway?” He squinted, setting his book next to him on the bench. “Is it private?”
“Yes, it’s private. We’re talking about ding dongs,” Babs said. “I recommend you evacuate the premises if you don’t want to hear about male anatomy.”
Bernie’s ears turned red. He picked up the paperback, gave us a salute with his favorite finger, and shuffled away from his bench. As he did so, a huge glob of cookie dough worked its way free from my cone. I lunged for it just as an entire scoop slid off, sailing toward the ground with some real flair. It landed exactly one inch from Bernie’s toes.
“Sorry,” I said. “Lost control.”
Bernie glared up at us while Babs gave a disappointed shake of her head. “Waste of a good scoop, Lo.”
I stared with disappointment at the huge crater in my cone. “He didn’t even try to catch it.”
“Don’t think we forgot what you were saying before this whole fiasco,” Babs said, waving toward Bernie Popper as he stomped toward the boardwalk. “What happened with Clark?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“Except…”
I shivered. “He just brushed his arm against me. That’s it.”
“You got the tingles.”
“What?”
“The tingles.” Babs gave a shudder, wiggling her body from head to toe. “The tingles when you touch, that means there’s chemistry between you.”
“Believe me, there’s no chemistry. He has no social skills at all. Do you know what he told me?” I gave an outraged huff. “He told me I was his absolute, bottom of the barrel last resort for help.”
“Well…” Babs shrugged. “So what? He’s hot. I’d be fine with him asking me out as a last resort. Or asking me to work for him. I mean, did you see him on the magazine cover of Tech last month?”
“Yes, with another girl.” Annalise shot us a scathing glare. “He’s a playboy. A gigolo, Lola. Stay away from him.”
“A gigolo?” Babs snorted. “He just dates around. The rich and famous do that; it doesn’t mean anything.”
I held my cone under Babs’s ice cream and stole a scoop from her. “He doesn’t seem like a playboy to me,” I said, licking the edges. “And anyway, I don’t understand how he could possibly hold onto a girlfriend—he doesn’t know the first thing about manners, let alone romance.”
“Um… first of all, he’s hot.” Babs ticked on her fingers. “Second of all, he’s rich. Third, if he wasn’t such a recluse, he’d be really famous. He’s already famous, and he hardly leaves his house. Those are three very good reasons a woman might stay with him.”
“You didn’t say a thing about love,” I said. “Maybe he could hang onto a gold digger, but only because of his bank account balance. What’s the point of that?”
She cocked an eyebrow in my direction. “He managed to give you the tingles, didn’t he?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “It was just an awkward moment. I’m emotional with everything that’s happened lately.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Annalise said. “At least let Babs take a look at the contract before you go signing your life away to a psychopath.”
“I’ll look tonight.” Babs patted the stack of documents. “But at first glance, everything seems in order. All the standard legalese crap.”
The reason Babs made such a good lawyer was that she could take a hundred page document of legalese crap and boil it down into everyday crap. She took the fancy big words and the shiny little acronyms and made them into regular English sentences that even I could understand.
The only thing I didn’t mention was the fact that I’d left the actual page requiring my signature at home. Just in case. The money was quite appealing; whatever the terms of the contract…I was resilient. I could survive a lot for that sum of money. It would allow me to build the cute beachy hut I wanted. A place to sip coffee and try on sunglasses while enjoying the relaxed vibe of the Sunshine Sho
re.
“Thanks, Babs,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“Well, I’ve got to get back to the office.” Babs stuck her cone upside down on mine, making a crooked teepee. “Consider my ice cream as a donation to your sensitive emotional state. Also, I heard Luke stopped by? He’s the one you’re hiring to do the contract work, right?”
“He gave me a quote.”
“I like his ass,” she said, and then began her descent from the water tower. “Bye, girls.”
“She is so crass.” Annalise shoved her child-sized cone into my other hand, leaving me with three cones in two hands. “I wish she’d clean up her language.”
“Mrs. Fredericks, how are those cookies coming along?” Babs’s voice filtered up from the ground. “I’d pay top dollar for one of your famous milk and cookie platters right now. I haven’t eaten enough today, and I don’t want to get too skinny.”
“Exercise is good for you!” Like a monkey, Annalise slithered down the water tower, her limber little body dropping to the ground from two stories up. “I keep asking you to run with me.”
“I don’t exercise for a reason,” Babs said, a cookie already in hand, and a smiling Mrs. Fredericks standing behind her. “It shrinks my boobs.”
“Maybe that’s my problem.” The century-old Mrs. Fredericks poked her head over Babs’s shoulder, then glanced down at her own chest. “Maybe I’ve been doing too much mall-walking with my new boyfriend.”
I watched the scene from my place on top of the water tower, slowly making my way through the leftover cones. As I watched and slurped, watched and slurped, I couldn’t get the feeling of Dane Clark’s accidental arm brush out of my head. A shiver ran down my spine, and I focused on another one of my problems: Dotty’s latest prophecy.
The wind will blow good fortune your way. Be open to it.
Where had the other prophecy gone? It couldn’t have disappeared. I wasn’t crazy. Probably.
One thing of which I was certain, however, was Dotty’s accuracy. She had not been wrong since I’d known her. Which left me wondering if Dane Clark’s offer was the piece of good fortune she’d predicted, or if accepting his job would lead me nowhere but into trouble?
If the tingles Babs went on about were a sign, however, I was already in over my head where Mr. Dane Clark was concerned. Accepting the contract might be the best way to get rid of him, once and for all.
Luke arrived at ten in the morning, just like he’d promised, with a smile on his face and tools in hand, ready to fix the leaky faucet.
“I really appreciate you coming back. Are you sure I can’t pay you?”
“Of course not. It will only take all of two seconds to fix. Let me run upstairs to make sure things look good there, first.”
My face must have frozen in dismay.
“No charge, I promise.” He flashed a smile, exposing two cheery dimples on his cheeks. “Just checking to be sure.”
“I’ll cook you a pie! I’ll…give you free coffee for life,” I called as he began the trek across the room. “Or sunglasses! Do you need sunglasses?”
“You wear them much better than I do,” he said, nodding toward the tortoise shell sunglasses pushed onto my head. “Instead, what if you have dinner with me?”
I blinked, lost my train of thought, and struggled to recover before he took my silence as a no. “Like a date?”
“I thought that was implied.” His dimple made the teasing extra cute. “But to be clear, yes. A date.”
“Oh, wow.” I hesitated for a second longer. “Um—”
“No pressure.” Luke waved his wrench, a sheepish smile on his face. “I’m going to go upstairs and take a look at your pipes. Think about it and let me know.”
I managed a nod. As he climbed up the rickety old staircase, the wooden floorboards creaking under his feet, I couldn’t help but wonder if his talk about pipes had a second meaning. I didn’t have time to ask, however, because my thoughts were interrupted.
“Are you aware of his intentions?” Dane Clark stepped through my open front door, catching me off guard. “Your handyman, I mean.”
“What the hell?” I clapped a hand over my heart. “You almost put me in the hospital, Mr. Clark. Announce yourself before you waltz in here.”
He frowned, but didn’t stop moving. Dane Clark stopped walking only when he’d crossed the room and planted himself just a little too close to my body for comfort. If he were anyone else, I’d think he was trying to intimidate me. Or possibly flirt. But not him—no; Dane Clark probably just didn’t fully grasp the meaning of personal space bubbles.
“What about Luke’s intentions?” I asked, once my adrenaline had cooled. “He’s just fixing my pipes.”
Dane looked puzzled. “No, he’s not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s trying to get you to begin a courtship,” he said. “And eventually, he’d like for you to reproduce with him.”
My cheeks warmed. “He just asked me out on a date.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point of a date, if not to eventually find a mate?”
I crossed my arms. Maybe, somewhere deep down, he had a point. But not one I wanted to deal with at the moment, and especially not with him standing so close to me. I did what I do best, and changed the subject.
“Let me give you a tip,” I said. “If you walk into a room, announce yourself. When you creep through the door like that, it can startle a person.”
To my surprise, he digested the tidbit of advice, mulled it over for a minute, and finally nodded. “Understood.”
“Secondly, let’s talk about this.” I gestured to mere inches between us. “Do you see how close we’re standing? It is too close, and it’s impolite. You need to give a woman her space.”
He took one step back. “Better?”
“Fine,” I agreed. “And the last thing. Don’t ever use the word ‘reproduce’ in conversation like that again. It’s weird.”
“It’s accurate.”
“It’s creepy. Ask your butler.”
“Do you know my butler?” The smallest of smiles crept over Dane’s lips. “Or was that a joke?”
“It was a half joke, but I’m serious about the other parts. You can’t walk in here and comment on my relationships, or lack of them. You don’t even know me, and anyway, it’s just your theory.”
“Oh, it’s not a theory.” Mr. Clark brushed past me before I could argue, striding straight to the sink in the corner. “Let me explain. Look here, Miss Pink. Do you see the water around the base here?”
“Yeah,” I said, as another droplet hit the floor. Above us, floorboards creaked with Luke’s weight as he shifted around the upstairs bathroom. “It’s broken. That’s what Luke’s fixing.”
“If it’d been a problem for any amount of time,” Dane said, “there would be significant damage.”
Dane got down on his hands and knees, a sight I’d never expected to see from a man dressed in a ten thousand dollar suit. The price tag was a guestimate, but probably not too far from the truth. It was definitely custom tailored, judging by the way that it hugged his legs, his torso, those sculpted arms…I blinked and forced myself to look away. Annalise had been right. He might be a psychopath for all I knew, and here I was staring at his muscles.
Dane, oblivious to my ogling, grabbed a washcloth and wiped up the small puddle. “See? There’s nothing—no damage at all. It’s fresh.”
“So what? Luke caught it early. That’s a good thing.”
“That wasn’t broken before yesterday—there’d be more dampness here.”
“Maybe it started to—” I began to reply, but he barreled on.
“There are scratches here that will match his wrench. He loosened this piece earlier on purpose.” Mr. Clark’s face twisted with effort as he yanked on one of the fittings, ignoring my question entirely. “There. All fixed and cleaned up. You can tell him to come back downstairs.”
I poked my head under the sink and, as promi
sed, the dripping had stopped. Not only was the puddle gone, but he was right—there was no evidence it’d ever been there.
“I don’t understand why he’d go through all the effort of breaking your plumbing in a courting gesture,” Mr. Clark said, brushing his hands together as he stood. “But then again, I don’t understand dating as a general rule.”
“I wonder why,” I drawled.
“He’s not a bad specimen, you know.”
“No,” I said with an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know. You sound like my biology professor, and I flunked my first time through that class.”
“Flunked? First time?” He frowned, as if that were an unacceptable thing to admit in public. “Luke, as a specimen for a potential a mate, is not a bad choice. He’s tall, relatively strong, his face is symmetrical, and he exhibits signs of wanting to protect you by fixing your plumbing—even when it’s not broken. All good qualities in a potential partner.”
“I have an urge to say some unpleasant words to you right now,” I said, my temper heating. “You can’t waltz in here and talk about me like you know—”
“Lo, what’s going on?” Luke’s voice broke the silence. “Is he bothering you?”
Unfortunately, I was still under the sink, crouched with only my rear end facing out as I looked back and spied the familiar pair of work boots across the room. I pulled myself out from under the sink, ignored the flaming heat of my face, and smiled. “Hi, Luke. It’s all fixed! Great job, thank you.”
“Is everything okay?” Luke asked again. He eyed Dane with a slightly predatory look. “Is he bothering you, Lo?”
“No, he’s just—”
“Fixing the pipes you’d broken.” Dane looked to Luke. “I explained what was really happening here.”
“What’s really happening?” A brief flash of confusion crossed Luke’s face. “What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Clark—”
The billionaire ignored me, however, and continued his explanation. “I’m explaining to Miss Pink the real reason for your visit today.”
“The real reason…” Instead of confusion, a hint of embarrassment now flashed through Luke’s eyes. To my surprise, he didn’t attempt to deny anything. “Lo, I’m sorry. I didn’t break your pipes; I just made up an excuse to see you again.”
