Gone With the Nerd

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  "We didn't know what or who was out here," Zoe said. "You scared us to death, Luanne."

  Flynn winced. "Speak for yourself. I was calmly investigating the situation."

  "And breathing like a freight train in the process," Zoe said.

  "Was not."

  "Was, too."

  Luanne's grin faded. "Whoops. My bad. I didn't mean to scare you guys, but I just had to find out who'd rented the cabin. It's a miracle that somebody wanted it. Normal people never come to Long Shaft."

  "We needed a break from the rat race," Zoe said evenly. "Right, Tony?"

  "Tony?" Flynn stared at her in confusion. "I'm not—"

  "I know, darling. You're not used to having me call you Tony. I apologize, and I won't do it again. I didn't mean anything by it. Don't worry, you're still my candy-coated snookums." Zoe stepped forward and held out her hand to Luanne. "My name's Vera Parsons, and this is Tony Bennetti."

  "Hi. Glad to meet you." Luanne shook Zoe's hand while glancing sideways at Flynn. "Um, you guys don't have the same last name?"

  Zoe winked at her. "Not yet."

  Flynn broke out in a cold sweat. Surely Kristen wouldn't find out about this conversation, but he didn't like the idea of masquerading as Zoe's candy-coated snookums, even in front of a kid.

  Word could get around. He hadn't pictured interacting with anybody in Long Shaft, so he hadn't visualized how they'd identify themselves if they happened to meet someone. He got it now. Zoe had given Luanne names from the script.

  "Where do you live?" Zoe asked.

  "Right over there." Luanne pointed to her left through the trees.

  Flynn couldn't see anything, not even a light. "There's a house over there?"

  "Oh yeah. You can't tell because the 'rents are watching TV with all the lights off and the curtains closed. They do that every night, retreating to their cave. It's very Neanderthal. I've tried pretending I'm Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear, but the TV doesn't look much like a fire. And Frankenstein is out on a date. Otherwise you'd hear his obnoxious sound system blaring at about a million decibels."

  Flynn blinked. "Frankenstein?"

  "Otherwise known as Jeff. He's tall and sort of clumsy, so I call him that, which makes him crazy, which is my goal. Anyway, if you walked in that direction, eventually you'd smash right into my house. In fact, I wish you would." She grinned. "I'll bet that would boost them out of their matching La-Z-Boys."

  "And do your parents know you're over here?" Flynn hoped not. If they did, the next neighborly move might be a knock at the door and a fresh-baked coffee cake. Then again, he was getting extremely hungry. A fresh-baked coffee cake would go good right now.

  Luanne avoided his gaze. "Sort of."

  "They don't know," Flynn guessed. "You sneaked out."

  "I'll be back before they know it. The screen in my bedroom comes out real easy. I would make an awesome cat burglar."

  Zoe exchanged a glance with Flynn. "I don't know if it's such a good idea, roaming around the woods at night by yourself."

  "My thoughts exactly," Flynn said.

  "I've been going out the window since I was nine." Luanne's chin lifted. "A girl has to make her own excitement around here. Long Shaft is terminally boring."

  Flynn couldn't stop himself. "Have you ever seen Bigfoot?"

  Luanne shrugged. "Sure. Big deal. I mean, what's the point? Some big hairy stinky thing. Ask me if I care." She looked at Zoe. "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Zoe Tarleton?"

  If Flynn expected Zoe to freak out, he was in for a surprise. She handled it like the consummate actor she was.

  "People mistake me for her all the time," she said. "I'm flattered."

  "I love Zoe Tarleton." Luanne raised her arms heavenward. "Oh, dear God, If I could meet her for one second, my life would be perfect." She let her arms flop back to her sides and studied Zoe again. "Are you absolutely positive you're not her? You really do look alike."

  Zoe laughed. "Thanks. I'm sure if she ever heard that, she'd be extremely insulted."

  "Maybe. No offense, but she wouldn't be caught dead in clothes like that."

  "I'm sure she wouldn't."

  "She's a goddess. I have all her movies on DVD, except this last one, which isn't out yet. Long Shaft doesn't have a movie theater, so I have to order them online and watch them on my parents' suckola TV." Luanne sighed dramatically. "That tells you how dead this place is. Nothing ever happens here."

  Flynn smelled something burning and decided that was as good an excuse as any to ditch this precocious pre-teen. "Luanne, we need to go. We left our dinner on the stove." Or what he hoped would be their dinner. He didn't have huge expectations.

  Zoe gasped. "Yikes. Luanne, we really do have to run. Besides, you should head home before you get in trouble with your parents."

  "They'll never know. My brother didn't get caught, either. He started climbing out his window when he was eight, and he's about as graceful as a spastic elephant. If he could get away with it, I'm golden." She gazed longingly at the cabin. "You guys got some cards? I know some really neat games."

  "Sorry." Zoe gave her a smile as if to soften the rejection. "No cards."

  "Okay. See you around, then." Luanne turned with obvious reluctance and started back through the woods.

  Zoe lowered her voice. "I feel terrible. Maybe we should invite her in."

  "Not on your life." Flynn took charge, grabbing Zoe's arm to steer her toward the back door. "She already thinks you're a Zoe Tarleton look-alike, and she's too smart for her own good. Give her a little more exposure to you and she's bound to figure out you're in disguise. And then all hell will break loose."

  "You're right." She sighed. "But can you imagine being her age and being stuck in a place like Long Shaft?"

  "Yes." Flynn thought of his own teenage years in a sorry little mining town a lot like this one. "It's a fantastic motivator."

  Fifteen minutes later, as they sat at the small table in the kitchen, Zoe was driven to brutal honesty. "This is the worst spaghetti I've had in my entire life."

  Flynn topped off her wineglass. "Alcohol helps."

  "Not enough. I accidentally bit into one of those pieces of garlic. Did you know I was supposed to peel and mince that stuff?"

  "I know nothing about the care and feeding of garlic."

  "Me, either, but I think I'll be tasting this for three days. I'll have to swish a whole bottle of mouthwash before we start working on the script."

  He looked wary. "About the script. I really know nothing about acting. I could foul you up instead of helping."

  "I need to hear the lines said out loud. Your delivery isn't critical right now." She pushed aside her plate. "I've eaten enough of this rubberized pasta to get me through until breakfast."

  "We could try some of the blueberry cobbler Margo raved about."

  "I'll have to pass on that cobbler, but you're welcome to have some. I don't have any place to work out this weekend and I've already had pasta, which wasn't any less fattening just because it tasted like Play-Doh. Adding dessert would require twenty minutes on the treadmill, and I didn't pack one."

  Flynn shook his head. "I don't get this weight thing. You look fine."

  "I look fine because I work out with a personal trainer five days a week. I inherited the fat gene from my mother's side of the family. If I didn't have a regular maintenance program, I'd look like Margo in no time."

  "Impossible."

  "Not. But have some cobbler if you want." "No, that's okay." Flynn pushed his plate aside. "I'm not really hungry for it, either."

  "I'm not surprised. That pasta could kill anybody's appetite."

  "It wasn't so bad."

  "You don't have to be nice. Next to this wreck, Chef Boyardee would be a gourmet treat. Come on, let's try a scene from the script."

  "I don't know about this, Zoe."

  She figured all he needed was a little push to get him over his stage fright. "Bring your wine. Just one itty-bitty scene." She
picked up her glass and stood. "Flynn, I really need you."

  He gave her a startled look.

  "To read the part of Tony," she clarified.

  "We should rinse the dishes."

  "Oh." She hadn't rinsed a dish in years. She'd finish eating, push her plate aside, and somebody else would deal with that.

  He must have picked up on her surprise, because he immediately qualified his statement. "I meant I would rinse the dishes."

  'That's silly. We'll each do our own." She picked up her plate and went over to the sink. But even with hot water, which was probably playing hell with her manicure, she had trouble getting off the pasta that was cemented on the plate. And then there was the spaghetti pot to worry about and the saucepan caked with that awful sauce. She'd forgotten how much she hated doing dishes.

  "Here, let me." Flynn reached in and took the plate.

  She was pretty sure he hadn't intended it to be a sexual thing, and yet having him move in like that and take the plate out of her hands, thereby relieving her of having to scrub off the last ickiness, was positively gallant. She wanted to melt into those strong arms and express her gratitude. Aqua Velva was suddenly her favorite scent in the world.

  "You go ahead and start looking over the script," he said. "I'll take care of this."

  So that's what living with Flynn would be like. He'd sweep away the nasty chores she didn't want to do. He might even be the kind of guy who would change a baby's diaper. She'd never thought in terms of babies, let alone dirty diapers, but Flynn was the sort of man who made a girl consider those options.

  "Okay," she said, feeling extremely cooperative toward whatever he had in mind. "Thank you."

  "No problem." He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves.

  Now that was appealing, watching a man roll up his sleeves in order to do housework. The fact that he still wore his tie made it even cuter. Zoe remembered seeing her dad doing dishes when she was growing up, but now her parents had a maid who took care of that.

  They'd protested the maid, but Zoe had talked them into it. Her mom still cooked, but at least she didn't have to clean anymore. Somehow Zoe also had convinced them to live in a nicer house, one she'd helped pay for, by telling them that success meant nothing to her if she couldn't have them close by to share it.

  "Do you have a housekeeper?" she asked Flynn curious now that she saw how efficiently he attacked the dishwashing job.

  He glanced up from the sink. "No. Why?"

  "Everybody I know has a housekeeper."

  "So you think I need one of those, in addition to a better car?"

  "I didn't say that. I just wondered if you did or not."

  He shrugged. '"Never saw the need for one. I'm neat and I don't have a huge place. I don't mind doing it myself." He gazed at her. "Are you going to stand there and watch me?"

  Well, she wanted to. It was a turn-on. But she couldn't let him know, especially when they hadn't discussed the condoms vis-a-vis Kristen Crackers. "Nope." She picked up her wine from the table. "I'll get my script and start looking it over. Meet you later in the living room. And don't forget to bring your script."

  "I'd rather do a hundred dishes than read that part, Zoe."

  "It'll be. fine. And a huge help to me."

  "All right." He sighed in resignation. "I'll bring my script."

  "Thank you. I really appreciate it." Giving him a smile, she left the kitchen and went to her bedroom to grab the script. In her bathroom she took the time to swish a little mouthwash, just in case. Then she picked up the script and her glass of wine, put on her wire-rimmed glasses, and headed for the living room.

  She put her wine on the end table beside her before sitting down on the sofa, the script in her lap. She had to keep sliding the glasses back up her nose, but she kept them on to remind her of the role as she paged through, searching for a good scene to read.

  Flipping through, she got interested in one where Vera was fighting off a potential kidnapper in a ski mask who had come through her bedroom window. But Tony wasn't in that scene. She paged to the next scene, in which Tony arrived in the bedroom and the kidnapper escaped by diving out the window into the padded bed of a pickup truck spattered with mud that covered the license plate.

  With no opportunity to chase down the kidnapper, Tony ended up alone with a disheveled, nightgown-clad Vera who was riding an adrenaline high. As Zoe scanned the scene, she heard Flynn leave the kitchen and go back to his bedroom to get the script. She glanced up as he returned carrying the script and his glass of wine.

  He didn't look happy. "In first grade I was cast as an eggplant in a skit about vegetables," he said. "I forgot my line and stood there frozen to the spot in my purple suit until someone came and led me away." He cleared his throat and sat on the sofa about three feet away from her. "Just so you know what you're getting into."

  She gazed at him and did her best not to laugh. "What kind of line would someone give an eggplant?"

  "Bake me, fry me, I'll be gone. I'm also great with Parmesan."

  She tried not to crack up. She really tried. But the image of a little Flynn in big glasses and dressed as an eggplant was too much.

  "I'll never forget that damned line as long as I live."

  "I'm sure you won't." She took off the glasses, which had seriously slipped down her nose, and wiped the tears from her eyes. Then after looking at Flynn again, she had to swallow a new burst of laughter. "Now that I've heard it, I'll never forget it, either. Too bad we didn't have an eggplant in the grocery bag. You would have known exactly what to do with it."

  "No, I wouldn't. I've avoided eggplant entirely ever since. On the rare occasions I go into a grocery store, I see those big purple things and start to shake."

  "Poor Flynn." She had the urge to touch him, but she controlled it. She still didn't know where they stood.

  "Traumatized by a vegetable. Have you gone in for eggplant therapy?"

  "No, but I'll bet there is such a thing somewhere in LA."

  "I'll bet you're right. All my friends think I'm weird because I don't have a personal shrink."

  Flynn smiled. "Now that is weird. Don't tell me you're well-adjusted."

  "I think I am. But then, what do I know?" She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

  That got a laugh out of him, which gratified her immensely. She was an entertainer at heart, had been ever since playing the part of a turkey in her preschool Thanksgiving skit. Had she been the one in the eggplant costume, she would have given the crowd a song and dance to go along with the dopey line.

  She vividly remembered the moment when she'd figured out that people got paid to act. Sitting on Santa's lap at the age of seven, she'd accidentally pulled off his beard. Discovering he wasn't Santa really sucked, but learning that he got money for pretending to be Santa had been a turning point in her life.

  From that moment on, all she'd ever wanted to do was act. She'd started with the soaps, moved to a sitcom, and finally earned her stripes on the big screen. She secretly longed to do Broadway, but she was afraid no one would take that plan seriously. Landing this role would open doors, though.

  Flynn reached in his pocket and pulled out a small plastic case. "I can fix your glasses now, if you want."

  "You know what? I won't need them for the scene I found." She laid the glasses on the coffee table. "So we can deal with them later."

  "What scene is that?"

  "Right here." She showed Flynn the page and quickly described the setup.

  He glanced over the script. "It's in her bedroom?"

  "Yes. Knowing how she'd behave in her chemistry lab is easy. But I need pointers on how she'd react when she's been through a scare like this, when her defenses are down."

  Flynn swallowed. "I don't think I'm up to this."

  "Oh, sure you are. Just use your imagination. Tony's been roused from a deep sleep, so he's sort of rumpled, and lots of adrenaline is flowing for both of them. You can do it."

  "I'm not so sure."


  "Okay, maybe you need a little help to get in character." He glanced up. "Like what?"

  She studied him for a few seconds, trying to picture him as more Tony-like. "For starters, you could take off your tie."

  Chapter Eight

  I thought you said it didn't matter if I'm in character?" Flynn didn't want to be in character. Tony was high-octane, the kind of guy who would jump at any chance to take a woman to bed, especially a woman like Zoe.

  As long as Flynn kept his tie on, he wouldn't turn into Tony. Besides, most sexual encounters began when a guy loosened his tie. A loose tie led to everything becoming loose. Flynn wanted to stay tight.

  "You admitted you're not very good at this," Zoe said. "I'm trying to help. In fact, I should do the same thing." She reached for the twist ties holding her hair into a ponytail.

  Flynn began to panic. That was another sexual signal, when a woman took her hair down. He reached for the eyeglass repair kit. "Let's fix those glasses and get it out of the way. Then we know for sure it's been done."

  "I don't want to take the time right now." She tossed the twist ties on the coffee table and shook her hair free. Glossy red strands reflected the glow from the table lamp. "Ah, that feels good. I wonder if I should put on a nightgown?"

  "No! I mean, that will only take more time. Let's read." Flynn decided if he let Zoe get any further into character she'd want to rehearse the scene in her bedroom.

  "Then you'll take off your tie?"

  "Yeah. Sure." Still worried that she might reconsider the nightgown, he unknotted his tie and stripped it from under his shirt collar in record time.

  "The first couple of buttons, too."

  His heart pumped faster than the Civic's four-cylinder on an uphill climb. "Okay." This was insanity. What next, his belt?

  "That's good." Zoe picked up the script. "You have the first line."

  Grateful not to be going deeper into Tony-land, Flynn grabbed the script and recited his line. "Damn it all, he's gone."

  "More feeling."

  He didn't bother to remind her that his delivery wasn't supposed to matter. "Damn it all! He's gone!"