Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (13 page)

His face was really, really, unbelievably close to hers as he pulled off her shoes and laid her down on the cushions. She could see the dark shadow on his chin, the tiny whiskers bursting out of his tanned skin. His pores looked so
huge
—but they were a
sexy
huge. His eyelashes were maybe half a mile long. His hazel eyes had these little black speckles in them if you looked extra close. Kind of like staring at two very small double-chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Mmm.

This whole drinking thing had a definite cool side. She could really
see
things that she would’ve missed before.

Her gaze traveled to his lips. They were moving, talking, asking her something. She motioned him even closer, so as to get a super-magnified view of that amazing mouth. And, while he was up there, her lips thought they should connect with his. It wasn’t her idea. Really. Her lips were working with their own irrepressible logic.

It was a warm, magical, delicious kiss. Like hot bread pudding with a dash of rum. She didn’t want to stop her lips from tasting more.

Only, Rob stopped her.

“What’re you doing?” he whispered, pulling away and breathing in this odd, almost winded manner.

“I don’t know.”

This was a pretty truthful answer because she
didn’t
know why her lips did the things they did tonight. She raised her head, her lips trying to touch his again. He leaned down and then, at the last second, snapped his head away. Huh.

“I can’t kiss you, Elizabeth…or do anything else with you tonight.”

His voice came out kind of strangled, she thought, but maybe her hearing had been affected by the margaritas right along with her eyesight.

“Why not?” This was a reasonable question, right?

But he sighed like it wasn’t reasonable. “Because you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

She struggled with this logic but, try as she might, she couldn’t see the connection. How did drinking a couple of…three or four margaritas have anything to do with kissing? No relation that she could figure.

“So?” she said.

“So, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He said this in that gentle voice parents used to try to get their boisterous darlings to go to bed when they should’ve really been in bed an hour before, but they just wouldn’t go and ended up being overtired and sort of hysterical. She always hated that voice when she was a kid.

She tried being indignant. It wasn’t difficult and she kind of liked it. “I do
too
know what I’m doing.”

He kissed her forehead. A feathery brush, but that was it. “Do not,” he countered. “Goodnight, Elizabeth. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. And you might want to take a couple of aspirins tonight with water, and drink lots and lots of coffee tomorrow morning. The strong, caffeinated kind. See you at five-thirty for dinner.”

Then he stepped back and regarded her with that very, very, exceptionally tense look again. His eyes squinty. His full, kissable lips pulled tight. A moment later, he turned and all but raced out the door.

Huh.

* * * * *

“OH. MY. GOD.”

Elizabeth cradled her head in both hands, but the migraine-like aching was impressive in its intensity. It would stop for no woman. No aspirins. No caffeinated beverages either.

The morning light shined unmercifully through her blinds, even when closed, and the sounds of the Father’s Day brunch bustle on the street clanged like enormous gongs, their voices like the rumble of deep bassoons in her ears.

“Oh, my God,” she said aloud again.

Her first hangover. So this was what one felt like. Not a repeater experience and, if she had any brain cells left, she’d try to remember that.

She vaguely recalled being bored last night. At loose ends and in need of some adventure. Going out to Hauser’s. Seeing Tara, the nasty witch. Seeing Maria-Louisa, the friendly angel. Meeting a bunch of really nice, really funny strangers who were wild about Garth Brooks and who danced whenever one of his songs played in the bar. Having a laugh or two with that cute waiter. And then Rob taking her home…

Did she really kiss Rob?

No, she couldn’t have. She must’ve imagined it.

Hard to keep straight what was merely a remnant of high-school fantasy and what was the current reality. She’d been slipping into daydreams about him again. Never a good sign.

The phone across the room rang like a school bell. She clapped her hands over her ears, but it wouldn’t stop.

“I know you’re there,” Gretchen’s obnoxiously cheery voice said on her answering machine. “Pick up, pick up.”

Elizabeth struggled to get over to the phone, strained to pick it up. Damn. What a Good Girl she was. Always doing what she was told. Well, she didn’t last night.

“Hi, Gretch.”

A pause greeted her on the line. Then, “Do you have the flu or something?”

“No.” Elizabeth explained her hangover in as few syllables as humanly possible.

“You
got drunk last night?” Gretchen roared.

She moved the phone away from her ear and curled into a ball on the floor, but Gretchen kept talking and exclaiming.

“You, the woman who considers drinking New Year’s Eve punch and eating English trifle with sherry on the same night ‘over-imbibing’?”

Elizabeth groaned. “What’s your point in calling me on a day when you should be annoying your immediate family members instead? You have a father in good health. Go jabber at him.”

“Already did that,” Gretchen said. “I’m an early riser. What are you doing tonight?”

“Hmm—”

“Nothing, right? So let’s have a Treat Swap. Jacques and I were talking about it yesterday. He said Nick was up for it after his closing shift. We could ask Rob if he wants to join us. I mean, if you want him to join us.”

She groaned again and clutched her stomach. Rob… She’d talked with him about this not so long ago. About him tagging along for one. Snippets of that conversation were still in her long-term memory.

“I guess he could come,” she said.

“Okay. I switched shifts with Jacques for today, so I’ll be at Tutti-Frutti in an hour. I’ll tell Rob. Maybe we can put up the ‘Closed’ sign, shut all the blinds, light some candles and have our little party right there in the shop.”

“Fine.” Oh, God, she was going to throw up.

“Hey, can’t wait.” Gretchen’s delighted voice was too much for her to take. “I’ve been dying for an excuse to try these amazing little jam tartlets I saw in
Feasting
magazine—”

Oh, cripes. Don’t talk about food. Please.

“—and maybe some chocolate-covered Brazil nut clusters or strawberry-flavored truffles drizzled with a creamy—”

NOT strawberries!

“Bye, Gretchen.”

She hung up and raced to the bathroom.

* * * * *

FIVE-THIRTY AND Rob’s nerves jangled like ice cubes in one of The Playbook’s crystal goblets. Five-thirty and the rain just transitioned from a light sprinkle to a downpour. Five-thirty and she wasn’t here yet.

Damn.

Five-thirty-
five
and Elizabeth’s stocky little Toyota pulled up in front of the shop.

“Sorry. R-Running late,” she said, sprinting up to the sidewalk, her hair more frizzly than usual, cascading down her shoulders like rainwater off the awnings.

Other than looking a bit paler than normal, though, she acted completely, frighteningly as if nothing had happened last night. As if she hadn’t gotten drunk, told him to his face (and without even stuttering) that she’d pick up
Ivan
another time but that he had a hot body. So she lured him into her apartment (well, okay, that part’s an exaggeration—he went in willingly) and then kissed the air out of him until he was forced, for honor’s sake, to put a halt to it.

“Ready to go t-to your mom’s house?” she asked, holding out a fruit salad to take along and smiling at him pleasantly but with her typical aura of competent detachment.

Oh, hell. Now he understood. She didn’t remember.

“Sure,” he said.

Man, had she been
that
drunk that she couldn’t recall the charge zipping through their bodies when their lips met? Or, maybe, hers didn’t feel that charge. Maybe this was a one-sided thing. Maybe…

He needed to be more careful. Something was happening here. With him. She was beginning to get to him. And he didn’t like it.

Dinner started. Dinner ended. Rob sat through it with the jarring disbelief he’d felt the first time he watched a movie through 3-D glasses. Everything was too overwhelming to see, to concentrate on, so he blanked out into a kind of hazy non-awareness.

Mama talked nonstop about the Summerfest concert. Conversation from him was not required, even though Tony, Maria-Louisa and the kids weren’t there. (She was fixing him a special Father’s Day dinner at home.) How his five-foot-two, 110-pound sister-in-law could even stand straight today was the big mystery, but she’d been bright-eyed and cheery when he’d last seen her this morning.

Women.

He glanced at Elizabeth, hugging his mother goodbye. Strange, incomprehensible creatures. Who knew how their minds worked?

His kissed Mama his thanks, too, and they hopped into his car.

“Can we drop by m-my apartment for a minute?” she said.

An icy fear ran through his fingers as he remembered the feel of her beneath him on the sofa last night. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Why?”

“I n-need to pick up my dessert for the Treat Swap. You can wait in the car. I’ll be quick.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He’d been excited about this thing when Gretchen mentioned it this morning. He had his sweets stashed and ready to share at the shop already. Now his gut was churning a little, though, making him wish he hadn’t eaten that second helping of fettuccini primavera at Mama’s.

When they walked into Tutti-Frutti, Gretchen and Nick were filling orders for nine teenagers, a family of five and an older couple. They looked swamped, so he grabbed an apron and an ice cream scoop and dug in.

“Thanks, Rob,” Gretchen said. “But I’ve got another five minutes left on the clock.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I want to help.” Well, he wanted to have something productive to do with his hands or he might grab Elizabeth and pin her against the wall.

He stole a long glance at her as she swung open the refrigerator to store whatever dessert she’d brought over. She caught him looking at her legs and sent him a mystified but kind of distracted smile.

He still couldn’t believe it. Not a single meaningful reaction in over two freaking hours. She remembered nothing.
Nothing!

He attacked the Mocha Madness, giving the five-year-old kid a scoop so large the little guy’s eyes crossed. A couple of teens saw this, left Nick’s line and crossed over into his.

Jacques walked in carrying an aluminum-foil-covered tray.

“Hello, everyone,” the Frenchman said. “Looks like the party’s starting early.”

And, to Rob’s amazement, this appeared to be true. Jacques came early, Gretchen didn’t run out when the clock struck eight and Elizabeth didn’t hightail it home to write. They all just hung around with him and Nick during their shift, pitching in with orders, chatting in a lighthearted, neutral way when the customers were there and in a baser, more personal manner when they weren’t. Nick, especially, had a mouth on him, talking and digging up stuff like a Roto Rooter.

At about ten minutes before closing, when things were winding down, Nick said to the group, “I gotta tell you all, when this guy first came back to town—” He gestured at Rob. “I thought for sure he’d be some arrogant, hotshot ex-Wilmington Bay dude, a quarterback legend and all, but too far into his own super-cool world that he wouldn’t stick around to see this gig through for the month. But—”

“What?”
Rob said, having already been good-naturedly attacked six times in the past hour about his choice of pricey casual wear, his taste in gourmet coffee and haute cuisine, his quick departure from the rarified environment of southeastern Wisconsin when he was eighteen and whatever else Nick wanted to rib him about.

Nick held up his palm. “Wait, wait.
But
, I was just going to say, that you surprised me, man. I think you surprised all of us. Hanging out here for the past few weeks, working so hard, getting into town life. You done us proud.”

“Well, uh, thanks,” he said. What else could he say?
Nice of you to mention my sense of duty, but no way am I hanging around here for twenty-four hours longer than I have to.
Yep. That’d go over well.

Nick pointed at Elizabeth and laughed. “And
she
was so
nervous
about you coming here. Now aren’t you glad it all worked out this way?” he said to her.

Elizabeth, who until a minute before had been sharing a laugh with Gretchen at the counter, opened her mouth. No sounds immediately came out.

Then, finally, “I-I—well, um…” She paused, stared at him in an intense way that made his toes squirm and then tried again. “Rob’s done a g-great job with the s-shop.”

“But, I mean, aren’t you glad you’ve gotten to know him again so personally?” Nick said. “Now that you’re both all grown up and out of high school? That’s gotta be such a trip. I mean, he was this amazing football star and you were this total academic. You guys probably had, like,
nothing
in common, and now you’re here together handling your uncles’ business and being friends and all.” He nodded at them and grinned. “That’s so cool, isn’t it?”

A look of something—man, it seemed like fright—flashed like a lightning bolt across her face. And it occurred to him that, no matter how many how many family dinners she went to, it was no easy task getting her to feel comfortable with their “relationship.” That the supposedly
real
one—their friendship—was probably just as much a sham as the dating game they’d been playing for Mama’s benefit.

But, then again, it was a friendship that wasn’t quite so pure anymore. There’d been that one kiss, after all. Even if she didn’t remember it yet.