Blow Me Down (39 page)

“ . . . and I said, no way, and Celie said, yes way, totally, and I said—oh, one sec, my mom wants something. What?” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone and narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not going to go all love-struck on me again, are you? ’Cause there is only so much I have to take; then it gets freaky.”

I pointed an admonishing finger at her. “Less attitude, please. I wanted to know if you have Corbin’s phone number.”

She grinned and uncovered the phone. “She’s gonna call him. No, not Celie, my mom. Yeah, the computer guy. I don’t know, I’ll ask. What are you going to say?”

The last was addressed to me. “None of your business. May I please have the number?”

Tara frowned and told her friend to hold on for a moment. She pulled her laptop onto the bed and clicked around on the screen. “His cell phone, you mean?”

“That or his home phone number.”

“Meh. I don’t know if I have it.” She loaded up her e-mail client and flipped through a couple of messages. “Nope. I’ve got the office number and addy, though, if you want those.”

I wrote them down on her notepad, asking as I did, “You don’t happen to have his home address?”

She shook her head and picked up her phone. “Nope. You still there? Yeah, I know, but she’s old. I mean, she doesn’t have a lot of choices, you know?”

I closed the door on Tara’s dissection of my love life and returned to my room, curling up in bed with the phone while I debated my choices. Unfortunately, about this Tara was right—I didn’t have too many options. A phone call to the offices of Buckling Swashes (which resulted in the expected voice mail—which I didn’t leave, chickening out at leaving a personal message that could well be listened to by a secretary or receptionist) and one abortive attempt to get Corbin’s unlisted phone number from directory assistance later, and I was defeated. I spent the night restless, held in the grip of one dream of frustration after the other.

“Right, that’s it,” I told my haggard face in the mirror a few hours later. “This is ridiculous. Time to be proactive, Amy.”

Tara was buried under the usual detritus of her bedroom—a miscellany of stuffed animals she refused to part with, pillows of all shapes and sizes, blankets, clothing, and a gypsy shawl she’d found in my closet and claimed as her own—but I pushed them aside to locate her head. Her eyes opened just enough to send me a squinty-eyed glare.

“Do you know if Corbin’s office is open on Saturday?”

“Nnnnrf,” she answered, closing her eyes firmly and burying her face into the mound of stuffed animals that clustered around her pillow.

“Thanks, you’re a big help. I want you up no later than noon, remember. You’re not going to spend the whole day sleeping.”

“When you marry Corbin and we’re rich, I’m
so
never getting up,” her voice answered from the mound.

My jaw tightened at her words. “Let’s just hope we get the opportunity to have that particular battle,” I said under my breath as I snatched up my purse and the paper with Corbin’s office address, and paused to have a quick look in the mirror next to the front door. The face that looked back at me looked the same as Amy the pirate—but would Corbin see it the same way?

“Proactive,” I told the mirror Amy. She nodded back, adding, “Take charge of every situation, and direct it to the result you want.”

“Now if only Corbin will see things the same way . . .” The drive to his office didn’t take too long, it being located in an industrial park that was on the fringes of the local mall. At the rear of the complex of low, two-story buildings a Jolly Roger flag flew in front of a door bedecked with a scowling pirate holding a sign that read, ’WARE, LANDLUBBERS! THIS BE THE OFFICE OF BUCKLING SWASHES!

Unfortunately, beyond the sign, the windows were dark. I tried the door nonetheless—it was locked.

“Well, hell. Now what?” I asked myself. Curiosity won out, and after a quick look around the deserted section of this part of the industrial park, I stepped over the couple of low shrubs and leaned up against the window, cupping my hands around my eyes so I could see into the darkness. Dimly visible were a couple of desks with the obligatory computers and desk paraphernalia, beyond which was a tall potted palm that seemed to be sporting a number of stuffed, garishly colored parrots. The walls were covered in artwork that I recognized from the game—pictures of ships, one of the inside of Corbin’s cabin on the
Squirrel,
and an overhead map of Turtle’s Back. To the back of the office was a door with a pair of crossed swords on it. I leaned in even farther, trying to make out the words on the sign that hung above them. . . .

“Hoy, there, lass! Can I be helpin’ ye?”

The voice came from behind me, startling me so much I jumped a good foot in the air as I spun around, guilt and embarrassment battling with adrenaline as I stammered out an excuse. “Oh! I’m sorry! I was just looking . . . I was hoping . . . er . . .”

A man swung his leg over a bike, evidently having just ridden to the office, which explained why I hadn’t heard him approach. He was a little taller than me, wearing a pair of jeans and a South Park T-shirt, along with a neon pink and lime bike helmet, and impenetrable sunglasses. He paused in the act of pulling the helmet off.

“Amy?”

I stopped stammering, narrowing my eyes as he yanked the helmet from his head. “Yes, I’m Amy.”

He grinned and took off his sunglasses, holding out his arms as if he expected me to run into his embrace. I ran my gaze over his long face, took in the tousled black hair, and warm, engaging eyes, happiness filling me as I realized who he was. “Holder!” I shouted, flinging myself at him.

He laughed and hugged me just as hard as I hugged him. “One and the same. And, wow, look at you! Much better in person than in pixel. Corb’s one hell of a lucky guy.” He looked around me, toward the car, then back to the office. “Where is the boss man? Inside? Were you two playing some sort of voyeuristic game? Do I want to hear the details? Of course I do. Tell me everything.”

I stepped back, my happiness at seeing him fading. “I don’t know where Corbin is. I haven’t seen him since we . . . er . . . returned.”

“You haven’t? Well, it was probably late,” Holder said, slinging a backpack over his shoulder. “Did he say when he’d meet you here?”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said miserably as I followed Holder to the door. He secured his bike to a rack and pulled out a ring of keys. “I haven’t spoken to him, either.”

Holder turned around to stare at me. “You what?”

I did that horrible hand-wringing thing that I detest so much (but don’t seem to be able to stop myself from doing). “I haven’t talked to him. I don’t have his phone number.”

“You mean he didn’t call you?”

I shook my head, the misery inside me blossoming into something so awful, it made me feel cold and physically sick.

Holder shook his head as well. “I don’t believe it. Your phone line must have been down or something.”

“No, it was fine. I checked every couple of hours. I thought maybe he might not have my number, but I’m listed in the phone book.”

Holder’s brows pulled together in a frown as we stood there next to the building, the early morning sun starting to warm the air around us, fingers of sunlight snaking around the trees and buildings to touch my chilled body. “That doesn’t make sense. Even if he couldn’t get your number from the phone book, he’s got it on your daughter’s account information.”

“Well, he didn’t call. I’d know if he did. There was no voice mail.”

“Something must have come up to keep him from calling until he probably thought you were in bed,” Holder insisted, looking puzzled. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”

I bit my lip, not wanting to state the obvious, but Holder was Corbin’s best friend. If the worst happened, he’d find out. “I thought perhaps he might have decided not to carry our relationship over to the real world—”

Holder interrupted me before I could finish my horrible musings.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Corb’s madly in love with you, as if you don’t know,” he said, squinting against the sunlight to examine my face. “Whoa. You look like you’ve had a rough night. You haven’t been thinking what I think you’re thinking, have you? You have, haven’t you? Bleh, women.” He took my arms in his hands, then abruptly spun me around and gave me a little push toward my car. “No, I’m not even going to dignify such an outrageous idea with the obvious objections. We’ll go see the man himself, and I’ll let him explain to you why you’re way off base there.”

“We’re going to see Corbin?” I asked, hesitating before unlocking the car doors. Although that had been my goal all along, I was more and more worried about the reason Corbin hadn’t called me. Even Holder was surprised by that. “Maybe you could just give me his number instead and I could call.”

He got into the car next to me, gesturing for me to start it. “Stop being such a woman. Take a left out of the parking lot. I’ll give you directions as we go.”

“I can’t help it; I
am
a woman,” I snapped, tired of feeling so unsure, tired of the cold, sick feeling inside, and hating the fact that I could doubt someone I loved so deeply.

“Yeah? That doesn’t mean you have to act like a wimp. What happened to the fierce, frightening Captain Amy who scared the crap out of everyone whenever she got mad?”

“That Amy doesn’t really exist—” I started to say.

“Bullshit!” I opened my mouth to protest, but Holder gave me a look that left me speechless. “Just what do you think you were doing in the game, Amy? Pretending to be someone you aren’t? Buckling Swashes doesn’t work that way. People who play someone totally against their character drop out after a day or two. It’s just too much work to be someone you’re really not. The game taps into your inner dreams and desires; it doesn’t manifest ones at odds with who you really are. So don’t give me any more of that crap about the pirate Amy not being the real you, because I know better. Now, are you going to continue to whine and snivel, or are you going to find out what is keeping Corbin from lavishing his attention on you?”

A thousand protests came to my lips, a thousand objections to what Holder was saying, and a couple of pithy (and obscene) suggestions about what he could do with his advice, but all that evaporated as I thought over what he said.

Dammit, he was right. There was nothing I had done as a pirate that I wouldn’t do in real life . . . with the exception of running a couple of men through with a sword. Metaphysically speaking, though, all I had been doing was protecting the one I loved, and that I would do in a heartbeat. But it all boiled down to one thing—I was the same person no matter if I was in a virtual environment or a real one. And if I was the same, then Corbin . . .

“Call him,” I said as I gunned the engine. “Tell him we’re on the way over to see him, and he’d bloody well better have a damned good excuse for making me spend the night worrying!”

Holder grinned as he pulled out his cell phone. “God help him if he doesn’t. Glad to see the real you back, Amy.”

Determination and reckless abandon filled me as I yanked the steering wheel, slamming my foot on the gas petal. Holder laughed as I said grimly, “He’s going to need all the divine intervention he can get if I find out he’s been yanking my chain!”

“I don’t doubt that he’ll live in mortal fear of your can of whoop ass, but I’m equally sure it won’t be necessary. He’s got it bad for you. Nothing short of global meltdown would keep him from you.”

I just wished I was as confident as Holder. I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was seriously, horribly wrong.

—Ibid, Act II

“I want a new stomach,” I said twenty minutes later as we stood outside the warm cream-colored brick house that sat on a bluff overlooking the turbulent, rocky northern California shore.

“It looks okay to me,” Holder said, giving my stomach a quick glance as he banged for a third time on the door. “You women are always obsessed with your weight. My wife has a few extra pounds, and I love it. Wouldn’t have her any other way. A man likes to have a woman with something to her, not one of those walking skeletons you see modeling clothes on the E! channel.”

“Boy, we need to bottle that attitude and sell it to every man in America,” I said, still worried but able to give Holder a little friendly punch in the arm to show him I appreciated the comment. “I was referring to the fact that my stomach is apparently psychic. Is the door locked?”

“Yeah, but”—Holder pulled out his big key ring again, poked through the keys until he found one he liked, then held it up with a triumphant grin—“I have a set of his keys. And don’t let your stomach dictate to you. He may not have answered the phone because he was in the shower, or taking a crap, or any number of other perfectly legitimate, non-stomach-worrying reasons.”

I let that go as I looked around the foyer of Corbin’s house. I don’t know what I had expected—computer-game machines at every table?—but the bright, modern, minimalist furniture, vaulted ceiling, and floor-to-ceiling windows along the ocean side of the house didn’t at all fit my idea of the house of a computer-game guru.

Until I turned around and saw the wall behind me covered in a variety of mounted swords. “Now, that’s Corbin.”

“Nice to see you smiling again,” Holder said before marching to the foot of a curved oak staircase. “Corb? You awake? I’ve got Amy here, and if you’re not down in exactly ten seconds to molest her as is her due, I get to keep her.”

I whapped him on the arm but held my breath, listening for any sounds of someone in the house. Despite his protests, I had seen a faint line of worry on Holder’s face when Corbin didn’t answer either his home phone or his cell phone on the drive to his house. Now here we were on the spot, and all I could hear was a whole lot of nothing.