Aroused

by Clover Hart

  Yes! Barry’s been courting Franklin Funding for a month now, and he finally scored. Turns out that my partner’s actually good for something besides smart-ass remarks.

  As he gives me the details, I take my time driving to town. Now that Dirk isn’t hauling us around at warp speed by our short hairs, I have the chance to look at the fields where dusk is hovering. It’s a quiet sight, peaceful, and I rest my hand on the wheel again, feeling like I might be able to drive forever in a place like this.

  Except there’s someone waiting for me, and the longer this ride takes, the more my blood pounds in its hurry to get to her.

  As Barry continues chatting over the Bluetooth, I enter Preserve Avenue where the health food store stands silently on the corner. I round it onto Main Street, and some broken streetlights flicker over the frontier-vibe buildings. The parking looks bad — I keep hearing they need more of it — but fate is watching out for me.

  There’s a spot open in front of the illuminated Screaming Beans sign.

  Barry’s still going on about how stupendous he is because he bagged Franklin Funding, but I cut him off.

  “Good work, buddy. I’ll check in to see what kind of terms you hammer out with them. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking at more properties around here and getting more of a feel for the place.”

  “Hell, that should take about a day. And then what?”

  I pull up to Screaming Beans. “Aaronson, I’d love to listen to more of your gleeful barbs, but I’ve got to go.”

  Before he can give me more grief about tonight’s sushi dare, I hang up, my eyes on a bench under the soft lights.

  Mandy is sitting on it, leaning back against the building with a newspaper. One booted foot is crossed over her knee. She’s wearing her usual jeans and giddy-up ponytail, but she’s also got on a cropped green cable-knit sweater that gives me a tempting peek of skin at her waist.

  As if that innocent flash isn’t enough to get my belly twisting, there’s that newspaper. I don’t understand why, but there’s something powerfully sexy about seeing her with an old-school paper instead of being glued to her phone like the girls in the city. There were actually times when I’d catch her reading the paper in Screaming Beans between serving customers, too. It wasn’t that I was being stalky. It’s just that I’d look up from time to time to see her at the counter, as pretty as a vintage picture.

  Pretty. God, she looks so pretty now. And I also have to admit it’s refreshing that she’s not posing with the paper out here in some kind of ironic hipster statement. She’s totally and completely real, and as I sit and watch her with the car’s engine still running, I’m caught off guard once again, not knowing why I’m here.

  Or what I’m going to do with her.

  Chapter 10

  Mandy

  I’m reading a Cherry Valley Gazette article written by a guest contributor — my good friend and everyone else’s, Miss Abigail Peters. It’s the interview she conducted a few days ago with Zach and Barry in the coffee shop, and I have to marvel at Zach’s positive energy as he shines on about the benefits of having Full Circle Technologies locate their headquarters here.

  Barry stays fairly silent in print, except for a few financial comments that back up Zach’s sunny picture of the company’s future. That pretty much leaves Zach as the face of the company, and it’s a good face — handsome in a modest, all-American way, and not too intimidating.

  So why am I intimidated every time I think of him?

  At some point I realize there’s a car parked at the curb, and as the tinted window slowly rolls down, I see that this isn’t just any car — it’s a fancy-ass BMW.

  And who do I see through the window in the driver’s seat?

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmur.

  Zach grins at me and then pushes up his glasses. My heart gives a stupid-cupid leap. I want to strangle it, especially as Mr. and Mrs. Dudley walk by with their poodle, Hamlet. They look at the car and Zach as he gets out of it, then at me.

  Even the octogenarians of Cherry Valley recognize a techie outsider.

  I good-naturedly shrug as they pass me by, Hamlet’s doggy butt wiggling in the aftermath. I sigh, tuck my paper under my arm, and wait as Zach opens the passenger door.

  He sweeps his arm toward the creamy leather seat. “Your coach awaits.”

  Doesn’t he realize that next to every American-made, humble-pie car that rattles past us down the street, this one stands out like a sore thumb?

  Fancy Jeans is so oblivious.

  Holding back a smile, I get into the car and sink into the buttery seat and, oh, it’s lovely, so luxurious that I can barely even hear the engine running with a low growl.

  The sound vibrates into me, shaking me up all over.

  As Zach shuts my door and goes around to his side, I steel myself. No good vibrations will get to me tonight. It’s all about sushi, and I’m going to show the city boy what us country girls are made of. Bam — done!

  The automatic seat belt closes over me, and I buckle in, scanning all the mellow blue lights on the dashboard. There’s one of those TV screens that shows the view in back of us, and it suddenly feels as if I’m in a sci-fi movie — the kind where a woman with a sexy British accent inevitably speaks over an intercom and leads the heroes to their dystopian doom.

  Hey there, Skynet.

  Zach gets in and gets buckled up, too. He’s wearing his field jacket and another pair of high-end jeans with sneakers, and tonight’s shirt features a faded image of Godzilla. His sandy hair is gelled to perfection once again, and I like the clean, pure smell of whatever he uses. Or maybe it’s the expensive soap on his skin. Anyway, he smells yummy, and I promise that I’ll stop enjoying it after one more whiff.

  Okay, just one more.

  I hate that I’m already liking this dare so much, and my irritation manifests itself with a comment. “Nice car.”

  My sarcasm karate chops through the air.

  He seems genuinely surprised that I’m going there. “You don’t like my car?”

  “It’s not about like. It’s about …” I gesture around. “Who really needs all this?”

  “It isn’t about need.”

  I know. Sometimes it’s about want.

  Swallowing, I pull down the hem of my sweater, which seems to keep riding up to play peek-a-boo with my stomach. I think Zach notices, too, because it seems he’s concentrating just a little too hard on staring straight ahead. Then he adjusts his glasses.

  Something’s different tonight — it’s in the heavy air. I feel like every word I might say is forced. But what’s so different now, compared to back in the coffee shop?

  He finally asks, “What do you drive?”

  “Just an old pickup.”

  “And what if money were no object?”

  “I’d get a nicer pickup.”

  Zach shakes his head, and I wonder if he’s just as nervous about tonight’s dare as I am. He still hasn’t driven us an inch.

  I smile sweetly at him. “Let’s get on the road and get this sushi thing over with, shall we?”

  “Sure, but be warned. I’ll have you home before you know it — as a converted sushi fan.”

  With that confident promise, he pulls onto the street, seamlessly merging with the light traffic. Everyone on the sidewalk watches us go by. I don’t think they can see me through the darkened window, but I still feel as if I’m under a small-town microscope.

  I tuck the newspaper under my leg, predicting tomorrow’s headline and subheading.

  Shame on Left-in-the-Lurch Mandy for Willingly Hanging with the Enemy!

  We knew that slut would fall into her bad out-of-towner habits again …

  The sexy British woman I’ve been dreading speaks from the map that’s appeared on the screen in the dashboard. “Turn right on Crisp Road.”

  “She sounds very sophisticated,” I say. “Does she help make you feel at home here, away from the city?”

  He laughs. “I guess she does s
ound like a restaurant hostess in San Francisco.”

  “I’ll bet wherever she actually comes from in Cyberland, she’s wearing a designer dress and those heels with red on the bottom.”

  “Louboutins?”

  “Whatever they’re called.”

  I risk a glance down at my harness boots and pull my feet back out of Zach’s line of sight. But he’s only casually steering the car as the annoyingly calm British dystopia woman directs him onto the road that’ll take us to Marloe straightaway.

  I feel him sneaking a look at me, and I shiver. It covers me all over, warming me up.

  “So.” I cross my arms. “Sushi. How did a boy from Montana get into that stuff?”

  “You could say I acquired the taste during my time in the city. I grew up in a small town, a geek working on computers and tech in my parents’ garage until I went to Stanford. That’s when I discovered the wonders of sushi.”

  Stanford. I’m impressed … and intimidated all over again. They don’t accept your average college kid looking to spend his parents’ money getting drunk. Zach has to be wicked smart to get in, and here I sit in Cherry Valley, going to my dinky community college and hoping to someday get in to my own big school — definitely not Stanford — to reach my dreams.

  I don’t want him to ask me about my lame life in comparison, so I say, “It sounds like you never returned to Montana.”

  “Just during the holidays to see my parents.”

  He says it with a smile, and the fact that he likes his family sends a nice flush through me. I uncross my arms and rest my hands on the soft seat.

  He says, “After college, I stayed in the Bay Area, working low-level tech jobs with Barry.”

  “How long ago did you two graduate?”

  “Seven years.”

  He’s not more than a few years older than I am, and I’m embarrassed to admit it. Look what he’s accomplished, and look what I …

  Haven’t.

  He adds, “All that time, Barry and I plotted the rise of Full Circle. And now, here we are.”

  Yeah, here you are.

  I can’t believe we’re having a decent conversation and not tossing verbal grenades at each other. It feels weird. Serious.

  Dear Lord, this is a date.

  And, crap, in my experience, dates never end all that well. My sister Penny would agree, based on the boyfriends she ends up with. My single foray into a true relationship ended up in Wreckville, and I’m not going there again, especially with someone who’s not staying.

  “Ah, yes,” I say, “here you and Barry are. You know, ever since your techie clone left, I almost miss him coming into the coffee shop to frown his way through the day … except that I don’t miss him.”

  Maybe Zach realizes that I’m trying to get us back on familiar ground, because he goes right along with me.

  “Techie clone?” he asks lightly.

  “It’s not the truth?”

  “Listen, under our tee-shirts, Barry and I couldn’t be more different. In case you couldn’t tell, he’s practically from off-world.”

  I give him a questioning glance.

  “New York.” He laughs. “He grew up in a Jewish middle-class family who expected him to get a regular ‘good’ job. His brothers and sisters are doctors and Wall Street types. When he told them that he was going out on a high-risk limb to create his own startup with me, they fritzed out. They don’t really understand technology or think mixed reality is necessary.”

  “How about your parents?” Oops. I’d meant to keep things neutral, not personal. But Zach doesn’t seem to mind.

  “My parents are behind me all the way. Yours?”

  “They and my sister are a little like Barry’s family when it comes to having me stick to a life that they think is ‘necessary,’ but instead of white-collar, we’re true blue.”

  And that’s all he’ll get, folks.

  As another distraction, I start to poke at what looks like it could be a radio on the dashboard, and with a blast of music, Carrie Underwood fills up the space I’ve left between Zach and me.

  For a moment, he only gives me an unreadable look, as if he wants to know more about me and he’d like to shut off the country queen who’s currently singing about the cheating bastard who did her wrong. But I only settle back in my seat, daring him to change the station.

  The booger does it, too, and I laugh.

  It’s so on.

  Just like that, we’re back to coffeehouse sniping, our comfort zone — the only way it can ever be between us.

  Chapter 11

  Zach

  From all the reviews of Dragon Ass on Yelp, I knew it’d be crowded.

  Just not as crowded as a Tokyo subway.

  As Mandy and I wade into the waiting area, I’ve got a height advantage over most of the clientele, which seems to be students from the nearby university. Mandy has no such luck, and before she’s forced to start eating everyone’s hair, I rest my hand on her shoulder and guide her in front of me.

  My fingertips make contact with her bare neck, burning. Shit, her skin is soft, and I wonder if she’s like that all over — neck, collarbone, shoulder, and down the slope of her back. I’m itching to feel all of her, but just as I’m heating up, we arrive at the hostess station.

  Mandy has her hands tucked into her front pockets, as if she’s retreated into a shell. Is it because I touched her? She’s not in full armor — not yet — and I back off in the hopes that she won’t go there.

  Just a dare, not a date, I repeat. And it looks like she wouldn’t want a date even if I’d officially asked her out on one.

  My own defenses go up as well, and I tell the host we have reservations. I have to speak over the Japanese music coming from the huge screens playing colorful videos with pigtailed girls from Harajuku dancing in short skirts, the background all electric popping and jamming. As we cut through the tempura-laced air, the host leads us to one of the horseshoe-shaped bars where computer screens and glass-domed conveyor belts await.

  I pull out Mandy’s chair, and she sits down with more finesse than a lot of my dates in the city have ever exhibited. Once again, my imagination goes mixed reality as I picture her in a sleek dress and black thigh-high suede boots with her hair twisted up, exposing that long neck of hers. Then my vision melts back to the Mandy before me in her ponytail, cute sweater, jeans, and boots.

  Actually, I’m liking those boots more every day that I see them.

  After I sit, she takes a good look around at the massive video screens and the students drinking sake and shoving down sushi rolls. She makes a face and turns back to me.

  “Is this the kind of place you take your dares to in your city?”

  “It’s all relative. The restaurants I usually go to are …”

  “Fancier?”

  “I was going to say more upscale, but ‘fancy’ works just as well.”

  “Tomato, tomahto. In Cherry Valley, both taste the same.”

  Could the same be said for dare and date?

  As she watches me with those bright brown eyes, her smile says en garde, but there’s a sweetness to it that makes it hard for me to look away.

  Welcome to my own personal full circle.

  “Basically,” I say, as a server brings us some water, “this place is a little more fun and hip than my norm. It’s a chain restaurant.” I look around some more. “Huh. There’re a lot of people here. I wonder why.”

  I smile smugly, and she narrows her gaze at my sarcasm.

  “Don’t you dare say they’re more open-minded about food than I am.” Mandy pushes up her sleeves. “You’re going to eat your smug words when I show you what Cherry Valley girls are made of.”

  “Okay. But you’ll really have to represent. Are you ready?”

  “Born ready, Hamilton.”

  Is she fucking distancing me by using my last name?

  It’s definitely the latest trick in her arsenal, and as I access the computer menu screen, I smile to myself. When I
picked up Mandy in front of Screaming Beans, I thought this night was going to suck. There was just something different about the way we were acting with each other, almost like I’d randomly met some chick and we’d been programmed to talk around each other like robots with their wires crossed.

  Things are improving.

  Mandy takes over the online menu, scrolling from screen to screen. While she studies the pages, she gets the look of someone who’s becoming increasingly overwhelmed by something she’s not familiar with.

  “Here,” I say, reaching over and scrolling back to a page of sushi basics. “We can start off with baby steps — a California roll, which has cucumber, crab meat, and avocado along with the rice and seaweed wrap.” I reach for an analogy and settle on something she’d told me earlier. “It’s the pickup truck of sushi rolls — nothing fancy but very dependable.”

  “Okay. I always like a comfortable ride.”

  If she meant to be sassy, she sure hit the target. My gut tightens at the mere thought of Mandy flushed, her eyes shining with heat as she pushes me down to a bed and climbs on top of me for a good ride …

  I clear my throat and get really quiet as she accesses the descriptions for Philadelphia rolls and spicy tuna rolls. I’m secretly hoping she has another double entendre ready to bat my way. If the first one wasn’t an accident.

  When she turns her gaze on me, I can see that she’s going further down the overwhelmed hole, and I want the playful Mandy back.

  I take it from there. “How about I do the ordering?”

  “Please, yes,” she says with what almost sounds like a sigh of relief. “By all means, take the reins.”

  My gut gives another great tug at the mental picture of virtual Mandy in her armor, whipping her enemies into submission with a pair of reins. But maybe she’s only talking like country girls naturally do. Rides. Reins.

  Maybe I’ve just got lust on the brain.

  As I start to use the computer pad, she stops me.