“That doesn’t sound fun. What happened?”
I filled her in, she scribbled some notes on my chart. When I was done, she said, “That’s insane. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too,” I said with a laugh. Then, stealthily changing the subject, “What was all that about in the ER?”
Gigi, who apparently went by Gina now that she was a working woman needing to be taken seriously, which I totally understood, waved a dismissive hand. “Just this thing nobody can figure out. We’re not allowed to talk about it. Sorry.”
“No worries,” I said, smiling.
We sat in tense silence for about thirty seconds before she blurted, “Well, the doctor will be in shortly.” She practically leapt for the door.
Before she could escape, I answered the question she hadn’t asked. “He’s doing really well. Works for a software developer in San Francisco. No girlfriend last I heard, but we don’t talk much.”
She nodded at the floor and smiled. “The doctor will be in as soon as she can,” she reiterated, and then left me to my lonesome.
It took another half an hour before the doctor arrived. Half an hour of extreme willpower on my part to uphold the hospital’s “no cell phones” rule. She gave me a thorough examination and sent me home with prescriptions for an emergency inhaler I didn’t need and a heavy duty painkiller I wouldn’t be using. I felt fine, after all, minus the cough.
The second I got back in the car, I dialed my brother. He picked up on the second ring. “You never call so I assume this is important,” he said, not bothering with a greeting.
“I just ran into Gigi Melbourne at the hospital,” I said in a rush, too excited to be upset. “She looks great.”
“Is she okay?”
It took me a second to figure out why he sounded so worried. “Yeah, fine. She works there. She’s a nurse. Sexy, right?”
“Last I checked, she was married with a kid. So I don’t think it matters.” Bummer.
“She asked about you,” I said, unperturbed. “Sort of. I mean, she obviously wanted to ask, but made herself not ask. You know?”
Silence. And then, “Is that all, Tess? I’m really busy here. We have a new game coming out and we’re way behind.” I heard a bunch of papers rustle. “Oh, by the way, Mom said you needed a new computer. For your work. The photos and whats-it. I ordered you one and outfitted it with all the applications you might need. Maybe not all, but you can let me know if there’s one you’re missing. Should be there next week.”
Stomach Gremlin roared. “I don’t need you to buy me a computer, Danny. I’m an adult. I can make my own way in the world.”
“Don’t be like that. Mom said you needed it and a job, and I need a tester I can trust to nitpick bugs.”
Stomach Gremlin stamped its feet and kicked at my spleen. “So you thought you’d just swoop in and save me from myself, is that it? You’re such a—” I stopped myself before I said something I’d regret and took a breath. Old patterns, I reminded myself, didn’t need to be current patterns. “Besides, I have a job. It’s just temping, but the pay is okay.”
“Then you shouldn’t have a problem doing both. I’ll send you an NDA later in the week. As soon as you sign it, you can play the game.” I started to protest again, but he talked over me. “Do you really have anything else to do with your spare time, Tess? I know I wouldn’t want to hang out with Bob the Magnificent around, and there isn’t a whole lot to do in Trapperstown.”
“How would you know? You haven’t been back in six years.”
“Has it changed much?”
I made an irritated noise and said with a sigh, “No. They repainted part of Main Street. It’s a darker shade of brown now.”
“So…?”
I didn’t want to give in, to admit I needed more to take my mind off of things. I didn’t want my brother’s charity, or to set up a constant reminder of his smug ability to get a good job. But I was going a little crazy at home without a computer, and the opportunity to play a game before its release didn’t come along every day. His company always put out some killer games, so there was that, too. “Fine. But I expect you to pay well.”
“The better I pay, the faster I’ll get paid back, right?”
Jerk. To even our playing field, I asked, “So, were you the one who broke up with Gigi, or did she break up with you? I can’t remember…”
“G’bye, Tess,” he said.
“I’ll probably still be here come Christmas,” I mused, ignoring him. “You could come out, spend the holiday with me so it’s not just me and Mom and Bob, maybe grab a cup of coffee with Gigi. You drink coffee, right? Everybody in SanFran drinks coffee, don’t they?”
“Good bye, Tess,” he said again, stressing each syllable.
“Bye, brother,” I said, grinning.
But he didn’t hang up. After kind of a long pause for the end of a conversation, he muttered, “I’ll see about Christmas.” And then the call disconnected, leaving me with wildly mixed feelings. Not just about being steamrolled by my brother, who was in cahoots with my mom, but about everything. Work, my photography, his life versus my life. Whether it was suckier to marry the “right” person and find out they weren’t right at all, or to give up the one who meant the most and lose your shot at happiness. I didn’t believe in that magical “one true love” thing, but he did. I knew he did. If he didn’t, he would absolutely not be considering coming all the way to Colorado for Christmas.
So I may have almost died that morning, and maybe my life sucked only a little less today than it had a week ago, but I was also filled with a bubbly joy at the hesitation in my brother’s voice. That one, tiny silence resounded like fireworks in my brain. Why I was so enthused about getting my brother back together with the girl he’d loved and lost when his life was already so much better than mine, I didn’t know. A week ago, I would have hated him for being so presumptuous. Maybe it was almost dying, but in that moment and for all the drive home, I felt nothing but delight for my rival sibling.
I was kind of drunk on it, in fact, when I swanned into the house, my filled prescriptions hidden in my purse where they wouldn’t raise questions I didn’t want to answer. And there, not four steps inside, my elation flattened like soda pop left open too long.
Bob was feeding my mom chocolate cake with dripping, decadent fudge icing. With his fingers.
“My goodness, that’s good,” she said with a little moan.
“G’night!” I shouted, a little louder than necessary, as I darted for the basement door. She called for me to wait, to come back, but I dropped all my stuff in my room, grabbed a clean nightgown, and hopped in the shower before she could chase after me.
As the bathroom filled with steam and the scent of my apricot shampoo, I thought back to the accident that morning and the feel of Mueller’s strength and warmth against me. The fact that I had noticed while The Ogre was crashing down around us told me, in no uncertain terms, that I desperately needed a man. Not that man, obviously, but maybe a nice, handsome doctor with a playful dog and strong, Frisbee-throwing arm. One day closer to Saturday. I fantasized about making Nicky laugh as I washed the dust and grime and disaster of the day off of me. Laughing with him. Maybe a quick, sweet goodbye kiss that tasted of hazelnut coffee. I had no idea if Nicky liked hazelnut coffee, or even what hazelnut coffee actually tasted like - not being a coffee drinker, myself - but it sounded sweet and sexy.
And then I realized I had nothing to wear and no money to buy anything attractive, and all my good feelings went down the drain alongside the dirty water and suds.
Chapter 9
Most of the week passed uneventfully. I got up and went to work where nothing attempted to murder me. Mueller finished my safety training, although we both agreed I probably didn’t need it. I bought a pack of face masks to keep on hand and thankfully never felt the need to cough up a lung more than once. Routine made carving out a workable space from the chaos of the file room simple, if not exciting.
&
nbsp; After work on Thursday, my mom surprised me with a sudden shopping trip. “I know you don’t want to accept help,” she said. “You got your father’s pride. Be that as it may, I’m going to buy you a present to commemorate your job. I know it’s only temporary, but it’s a step in the right direction. You pick out a dress, and it’s yours. Then if you feel like wearing it to meet a certain old crush this weekend, everything works out happily, doesn’t it?” She knew me too well, heading off my arguments before I got there. I wanted to say no, to demand that I be allowed to handle my own problems. But the idea of showing up at the Peppy Poppy on Saturday in ratty jeans and a stained t-shirt kept my mouth shut.
Besides, I had that fluttery feeling in my stomach when I thought about seeing Nicky again, as if my gremlin had metamorphosed while I slept. Tummy butterflies accepted a cute new dress with a sensation that clearly said, “Wheee!”
Then came Friday. The day started normally. I made the drive to work without mishap, arrived on time and looked fairly decent. My car behaved, my clothes behaved, and I had no reason to be embarrassed for the first two hours. At ten, Mueller informed me of a small fire near the loading dock that he needed my help with. Because he kept his walkie hooked to his belt all day, I didn’t think anything of it. I showed up at a run, ready to head off flames and save his life again if need be.
Instead, I found him smoking at the edge of the dock, the doors open to the warm summer morning. I glared at him. “By small fire, did you mean your cigarette?”
He chuckled in that self-amusing way he had. “Gotcha down here, didn’t it?”
“Because simply asking me was too mundane?”
He shrugged. “Then I don’t feel special and pretty. Like I mean something.”
I sighed. I did that a lot around Mueller, and we’d barely known each other for five days. “Like you’re on fire and need to be hit with a strong blast of chemicals to put you out?”
“I’m always on fire. I didn’t even need a match to light this.” He blew a long exhale of smoke out the door.
“Shut up.” I smacked his arm. “Did you want me here…uh, call me here for a reason, or just to see that you are, in fact, the coolest rebel in school?” I had also learned that certain words and word combinations were automatic setups for his amusement. Words like ‘want’ and ‘hard’ and ‘come here’ all tended to get me in trouble, especially when used innocuously.
“First shipment of Miss Maysie’s Sparkling Spells is going out this morning. Thought you might like to try a bottle before everyone else.” He tamped out his cigarette and chucked it off the dock before grabbing two bottles sitting off to the side. They clinked together delicately and made a soft pop-fizz when he removed the caps. “Happily Ever After or Fame in a Bottle?”
“Oh, Happily Ever After, hands down. Fame has bitten me in the ass one too many times lately.” I took the pink soda pop from him and took a sip. Happily ever after tasted of strawberries and vanilla.
“Oh, me too. I’ve got fans beating down my door to get a piece of me. Such a pain.” He downed half his drink in one long pull.
“You say that like you don’t know,” I said off-handedly, pretending to enjoy the way the pink drink fizzed when held up to a light instead of peering at him through it, which is what I was really doing.
“Know what?”
“About my ex-husband.”
He squinted out the open loading bay, as if he could see the truck on the clear horizon. “You know my policy on exes? Don’t know, don’t care. That goes for girlfriends and friends who are girls. And coworkers.” He took another swig. “Unless it’s a really crazy story.”
Oh, it was a crazy story, all right. But I wasn’t about to share it. Especially if he was the last person within one hundred miles who didn’t already know the media’s version of it. “Let’s just say the spotlight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Sounds like a pretty good story already.” But he didn’t press. Instead, he glanced at his watch and swore. “Damn truck is late.”
The Happily Ever After made my tummy glow with sweet, sweet carbonation. “Why are we shipping any yet, when the rest of the staff haven’t started again? We can’t have a full shipment.”
“Bigwigs visiting today.” He belched. For a second, I could swear his breathe hung yellow and glittering in the air. “Gotta look like we’re keeping to schedule no matter what. Which won’t happen if this driver won’t set his ass in a higher gear.”
I sat on an empty crate and kicked my feet out in front of me. “Just out of curiosity, what constitutes a ‘really crazy’ story?”
He grinned that grin of his, the one I had already come to recognize as Mueller’s shoulder devil winning. A cherubic kind of devil, with a pointy tail, tiny wings that shouldn’t be able to support it, and a grin that took up half its face whenever it dreamed up mischief. Which seemed to be most of the time… “So, there was this girl--”
“If it’s dirty, I don’t want to hear it,” I objected, cutting him off.
He deflated. “Fine. So, there was this road trip. I was helping my buddy Joe move to Idaho. Joe’s a cool guy. You’d like him. Anyway, we were in separate cars and speeding down the highway in BFE, Idaho. It was back before cell phones, so we made up this system of light signals. Three brake taps meant ‘watch out for the cop.’ Two long presses, ‘stop ahead, I have to take a leak.’ Four flashes of the headlights, ‘take a look at the hottie coming up behind us.’ That one came in handy more than you might expect in Idaho.”
I sighed. “That’s your idea of crazy?”
“Lemme finish.” He chucked his empty bottle in a box by the loading door. “How’s the pink one?”
“Sweet and rich. Pretty good.”
He popped the top on another Happily Ever After and sipped almost delicately. “Not bad. So, there we were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and practically the only two cars on the road. Sun’s going down, so it’s partially in my eyes. I reach down to find my sunglasses, glance away from the road for two seconds, and when I look back, Joe’s laying on the brakes in one long, uninterrupted signal.”
“What’s one long brake?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
“The universal signal for ‘oh, shit.’ He was just braking really damn hard.”
I slumped in defeat. “Walked into that one.”
He grinned, really damn pleased with himself.
“So that’s it? Your crazy story is just a setup for making me feel like a moron?”
“That’s just a lucky byproduct.” He took another swig. “About five seconds later, I get up to where he started braking and I see it. There’s a fricking house in the middle of the road. Just sitting there, like it fell out of the damn sky. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
My eyes widened on their own. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Joe and I, we get out of our cars to find out. We walk up to the house, knock on the door, and guess who answered?” The devil grin was back.
I let out a long, slow sigh. “A scarecrow, a tinman, and a cowardly lion?”
“Construction driver. House had fallen off its transport carrier.”
I chucked my empty bottle at him. Not hard. Enough to leave a little bruise on his chest, but no more. He doubled over with laughter, prompting me to get off the crate, storm up to him, and give him a heavy shove. He tripped on the bottle, which he’d failed to catch, and stumbled back into the pallet of soda pop before I could catch him. The pallet shook, rattled, and we both held our breath, waiting for a telltale crash-fizz of breaking bottles.
Thankfully, it never happened. Instead, someone cleared his throat from across the loading area.
I looked up, my hands still clutching the front of Mueller’s flannel overshirt and revealing the Who ya gonna call? Ghost f- shirt underneath. We had just enough luck between the two of us that only the first letter of the last word was visible.
Six men and women in tailored suits - all in various shades of bo
ring - stood staring down their noses at us. The man in front was clad in dove grey, from the old-fashioned fedora on his head to the wingtips on his feet. His tie and pocket square were ice-blue silk, which only enhanced the subtle pink of his skin and the deep, disapproving blue of his eyes. The suit did little to hide the breadth of his chest and lean strength of his arms. Or maybe my imagination filled in. The hand gripping the sleek, black briefcase did so with a firmness that made my abdomen warm. His features were just as sleek as the suit, with a sharp nose and a mouth set in a firm line of irritation.
Maybe it was the Happily Ever After still bubbling in my stomach, but my whole being felt suddenly light and fizzy. My face flushed, my breath caught, and heat rushed to all the places that made a woman feel like purring contentedly. When I met the man’s eyes, those narrowed blues that glinted with intelligence and cunning, electricity sizzled through me like my stomach gremlin had become a lightning rod.
A little louder than necessary, Mueller leaned in and whispered, “Dude, I can hear your ovaries squealing from here.”
The delicate warmth of my face became a raging inferno. I elbowed him, hard.
The suit waited for us to finish, then said, “Maysie Browning Fife’s office.” It should have been a question, but he inflected it as a statement. I almost didn’t notice. That light yet sharp baritone with its uppercrust English accent sent a delicious shiver down my neck and shoulders, like fingers caressing my spine.
“Upstairs, on the left,” Mueller answered. When the suits didn’t budge, he added, “Why don’t I show you?” He righted us both, pressed down on my arms as if rooting me to the ground so I wouldn’t float away, and then left me there.
As he escorted the group away, a black-haired woman with skin as pale as snow called over in a sprightly Irish accent, “Try not to manhandle any more merchandise, would you? We don’t invest in sloppy enterprises.”
Mortified, I stood there like a mute statue until they had gone. The factory around me seemed to glow with a soft pink light, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. The heartbeat I could feel in all sorts of places. Places one should not be feeling one’s heartbeat while at work.
One Good Wand Page 9
