Dream of You (24 page)

             
“Do you have plans Thursday?” he asked at last.

             
“No,” she said, thinking he should already know that since they’d been spending Thursday nights together.

             
He scraped his lower lip in through his teeth and spoke to the empty stretch of parking lot in front of them. “My sisters and brothers are having some kind of bowling night tomorrow.”

             
“Oh?” she said, voice somehow neutral even though her heart had lurched against her ribs.

             
Jordan’s head turned, his eyes full of something she didn’t recognize. “You wanna come with me?”

21

              “
I
can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Jordan grumbled into the phone and propped his shoulder against the sash of Ellie’s front stoop, a careful eye on Charlotte the spider in her web above him.

             
“I’m the one who can’t believe it,” Tam said from the other end of the line. “You must really like this one.”

             
Yeah, he did, but he wasn’t admitting to that. “I’m picking her up now,” he said and heard the sour note to his voice. “We’ll be there in a bit.” And hung up before Tam could get even cuter. The shithead was as bad as a teenage girl about this.

             
Almost as bad as me
, he thought with a sigh. He’d played it cool in front of Tam and Jo when they’d plied him about bringing Ellie.
“I don’t even know her name,”
Jo had said with her hands on her hips and head tilted to the side like maybe she thought she had a right to. She’d apparently joined her husband in his opinion that it was someone else’s turn to live the family scandal.

             
Jordan had pretended that he wasn’t gripped with anxiety and caved to their demands. He’d asked Ellie. And had second guessed that decision every moment since.

             
He was getting in too deep, and not just in a frat boy pun sort of way. Too many long, drowsy nights had he been lulled to sleep by the even brush of her breath against his throat, her luscious little body pressed to his. He smiled too much and she was smiling back. He’d felt the liquid crystal of her tears a week ago and had ignored it. He’d laced his fingers through hers Sunday afternoon outside an antique shop while she pointed to a chair through the glass, and in the window, their reflection had been that of a couple, and not just a teacher who was banging his student.

             
He wasn’t
just
banging her, and that scared him, because he’d never intended for it to get this far.

             
But then her shadow flitted past the sidelights and the door swept inward. Ellie stood in a puddle of warm light from the interior of the house dressed in skinny jeans, tall brown leather boots and a gauzy white top that flaunted cleavage and somehow managed to look innocent at the same time. Her rich hair was in big barrel curls, bangs framing her heart face.

             
“Hi.”

             
And suddenly all those reasons he was freaking out didn’t seem so important anymore.

**

              Ellie was freaking out. She’d tried to call it
nervous
,
anxious
,
apprehensive
and even
curious
, but she was about to meet God knew how many members of Jordan’s family and she thought she might be having a panic attack in the passenger seat of his Jeep. She was shaking so badly she couldn’t get her seatbelt undone and she knew her deep, not-doing-their-job calming breaths were loud inside the confines of the car.

             
Jordan had killed the engine and was now silent, his eyes heavy as they settled on her. “You alright?”

             
“Terrified.” She raked her hair back away from her face with quaking fingers. “But yeah, I’m alright.”

             
“What are you terrified about?” he asked with a chuckle, and she shot him a sideways glance.

             
“Are you playing dumb?”

             
“Yes.”

             
Ellie sighed. “I have sibling performance anxiety,” she admitted, and leaned sideways against the window, watching him from under her lashes.

             
Jordan made a face. “Well I don’t plan on you
performing
for any of them.”

             
“You know what I mean.” She studied her fingernails, the blue and red neon on the front of the bowling alley laying shiny stripes over the slick black polish. “I’m not exactly popular with my sister, so the thought of meeting both of yours - ”

             
“Hey.” He didn’t raise his voice, but it had a bite to it. In the dark of the car, the whites of his eyes were reflecting neon like her nails. “Do you honestly think I’d bring you if I thought they’d treat you badly?”

             
He sounded almost offended. He sounded more like an alpha male in charge than she’d ever heard him.

             
It pissed her off.

             
Ellie fought the surge of indignation as best she could, facing forward through the windshield. Jordan had never once played the domineering jock with her, had never been an exasperated playboy tolerating her insecurities. But that’s suddenly what it felt like.

             
It’s just me
, she told herself with a deep breath.
Calm down
.

             
“I don’t know,” she said because, truly, she didn’t. “I hope not.”

             
His sigh was exasperated. “Jesus,” was a fast, unhappy curse as it left his lips. Ellie had been afraid of this – afraid that as soon as they ventured beyond the bubble of
them
and invited witnesses to this handholding, too-good-to-be-true…
affair
…they had going on, he would turn on her. She’d been electrified by his initial invitation; but then she’d started to wonder, and then doubt, and now dread, and he wasn’t alleviating any of that.

             
“Ellie,” Jordan said with none of the sweetness he normally used. “Don’t be like this.”

             
“Come on, El, don’t be like this.”
Kyle’s voice reached out from the depths of her subconscious and raked its claws across her fragile self-esteem. She’d been paranoid back then, nervous and full of doubt. It had cost her a boyfriend…and a sister. And she was doing it again.

             
The backs of her eyes stung and a knot formed behind her sternum. But she took a shaky breath and said, “Fine,” in a robotic voice that didn’t sound like her own. When she dared, she flashed Jordan a level look and unfastened her seatbelt.

             
His eyes were still big and neon rimmed. Unfriendly. “You good?”

             
“Yep.” And she slid out of the Jeep and headed toward the bowling alley without waiting for him.

             
He caught up with her as she reached the door and the hand he settled at the small of her back was stiff. Detached.

             
She was ruining it. She ruined everything. Boring, un-fun, sexless and hesitant Ellie was sabotaging her own evening, and she couldn’t seem to stop it. She wanted to cry. She wanted to hitchhike her way back home and sulk about it with Paige over a slice of Chocolate Explosion cake.

             
Instead, she let the guy working the ropes in the lobby put an under-twenty-one stamp on the back of her hand – so everyone present would know not to give the big baby any alcohol – and walked like an automaton beside Jordan toward the lanes.

**

              “Uh-oh,” Jo said as she returned Delta’s quick, delicate hug. “You look like I felt the last time we did this.”

             
The brunette could have made Ebola look good, but she was decidedly under the weather. Her normally flawless complexion was pale, dark smudges under her eyes not entirely hidden by makeup. She’d tamed her dark locks with a cream headband that matched her cardigan, but wore no jewelry save her wedding and engagement rings. And at the ends of her long, denim-clad legs, her feet were shod in flats instead of her usual pumps.

             
“I’m okay,” she said, and did nothing to prove it as she eased down into a plastic chair and started to remove her shoes. “Just a little lethargic.”

             
“A little?” Jess asked as she laced up her two-tone bowling kicks. She and Delta were the brunette and blonde bombshells of the family, Jess proving it tonight in pencil thin jeans and a clinging red wraparound top. “Jo couldn’t eat for two weeks.”

             
“Oh.” Delta’s sideway smile looked like a serious effort. “I’m just bowling. Who said anything about eating?”

             
But Jo felt guilty. She’d been a complete invalid who needed carrying to bed; as usual, Delta was making women everywhere look bad. “We could have waited until you were better.”

             
Delta lifted a manicured hand to wave away the offer. “I get sick in the mornings, so I’m fine now. The distraction will help.”

             
Jess nodded as if in agreement. “Good. Because you couldn’t drag me out of here tonight before I’ve met Jordie’s new girl.”

             
“Ooh, that’s right,” Delta said. Jo watched green and brown pairs of eyes swing in her direction. “What do you know about her?”

             
For the first time possibly ever, Jo was in the dark about her “twin.” She shrugged. “She’s a student.”

             
Jess and Delta went goggle-eyed.

             
“Let’s just hope she’s not jail bait.”

             
“Who’s jail bait?” Tam asked as he dropped into the chair next to her.

             
“Jordie’s girlfriend. She’s not, is she?”

             
Tam’s face went carefully blank. “Well…”

             
“Oh my God, he’s going to jail,” Jess said, shaking her head. “Why can the boy not date appropriately?”

             
“We don’t know anything,” Tam said with an upraised hand to stave off protest. “She’s
probably
legal.”

             
“Do you know her?” Delta asked, eyes narrowing. “Did you set them up?”

             
“She sits in front of me in HPS. But no, homeboy hooked that up all on his own.”

             
“Wait.” Jess’s frown became almost severe. “She’s
his
student?”

             
“Couldn’t he get fired for that?” Delta asked, aghast.

             
Tam got to his feet. “You ask a simple question, and suddenly you’re in front of the Spanish Inquisition.”

             
“I’m not done asking questions,” Jess said as he departed for the neighboring lane where the other guys were setting up.

             
“I’m done answering, though,” he said over his shoulder.

             
Jo reached for her second bowling shoe and caught Delta scrutinizing her. “What?”

             
“You Walkers love your drama, don’t you?”

             
Said the girl with the castle wedding. It was too ridiculous not to laugh…but then again, that depended upon the definition of “drama,” didn’t it? Jo had helped ruin that castle wedding because she was in love with her brother’s best friend. Mike had brought home a pampered heiress who was a pearl lodged among the gravel of the rest of them and he’d continued to stir their aggravation over the fact. Walt, as it turned out, was more heartless than she could have ever imagined. And they awaited Jordan and his student.

             
“At least Jess is normal,” Jo offered.

             
Her sister nodded as if to say
that’s right
. “I’m allergic to bullshit, actually.”

             
“We’re so happy for you,” Delta said, and Jo felt another of those unexpected surges of affection for the girl she’d thought she would never call her friend.

             
“There he is.” Mike’s voice was a big, loud, dead-on impression of their father, and it had Jo’s head snapping up. She knew there was only one possible “he” Michael meant, and sure enough, there was Jordan, his arm around the waist of a very pretty, very young brunette.

             
Jo took a nanosecond to assess the physical: the girl was a head shorter than Jordan, even in her heeled boots, and was just the kind of curvy he’d always liked. Big boobs, flared hips, itsy bitsy waist. Her hair was the color of dark chocolate and arranged in big, loose curls down past her shoulders, bangs framing large eyes that looked like mirrors in the dim interior of the bowling alley. Her delicately boned face was not as blank as Jo figured she wished it were, because the girl was petrified, and it showed in a painfully obvious way.

             
Jo had been braced to meet another dyed, dried-out, silicone-enhanced bimbo from the Jordan Walker Mistakes Collection, and was not at all prepared for the fresh-faced, all natural girl standing in front of her who looked nervous to the point of tears. Either Jordan was stooping to a whole new level of predation, or he, as Tam had suggested, really did like this one. Either way, the six of them staring at the poor thing wasn’t helping.