Cinderella Steals Home (18 page)

But I don't want to talk about this anymore.
 

"Water slide?" I finally ask.
 

He looks at me for a second or two with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
 

"Okay," he says at last, his voice friendly and normal and happy once again. "Let's do it."
 

I get up off my chair and walk over to the steps hidden behind the giant cluster of rocks.
 

Doan follows. We get up to the top of the slide and I feel weird around him after what just happened but he smiles at me like nothing's the matter at all.
 

So maybe it isn't.

I stand at the top of the slide, my arms pressing down onto the sides as I rock back and forth to get some momentum.
 

    "What are you doing?" Doan says from behind me, and before I can turn to explain it to him, I feel two strong hands on my bare back and my feet shoot out from underneath me and I'm tumbling down the slide without even knowing what's happening.

    And then I'm flying off the edge of the slide and hit the water with a splash. I barely have time to plug my nose before my head goes under. I twist around for a second, orienting myself, before kicking my way to the surface and swimming over to the ledge.

    I wipe my eyes and blink twice.

    "What the heck was that?" I yell as Doan grins at me from the top of the slide.

    "Too slow!" he calls back before disappearing around a corner.

    Seconds later, he flies off the slide, then swims over to me.

    I whack his arm when he's within striking distance. "Not cool."

    He waves his hand dismissively. "Eh, it was funny."

    I slid off the edge and swim around in front of him. Before he can realize what's happening, I'm grabbing onto his legs and pulling him toward me. The weightlessness the water adds to his body makes it easy to yank him off the ledge and dunk him before he has a chance to react.

    I hold him down for just a few seconds before letting go and swimming toward the opposite end of the pool.

    By the time he splutters to the surface, I'm already far away.

    "Oh," he says in a low voice, shaking the water off his hair and letting his eyes linger on me. "It's on now."

   
He springs forward and swims toward me and I shriek and stand up on the ledge. When he reaches me, I quickly jump out of the pool where he can't touch me.

   
"Cheater!" he exclaims. "So lame."

   
"All's fair in love and war," I tell him, and he doesn't respond for a few seconds.
   

   
He just stares at me, and my heart's thumping inside my chest all funny and weird all of a sudden, and I'm sure I'm reading too much into it, but I can't help it.

    "You're right," he says at last. "Let's see what you got."

    I glance around and notice that Justin and several other people are watching us. My brother's got that twinkle in his eye, the one I'm so used to seeing from when we were kids and he was about to suggest we do something that'd eventually get us in trouble with Mom and Dad.

    "Water fight!" Justin shouts out before cannon-balling into the pool, soaking everyone he'd just been standing with.

    Some of the girls shriek but the others jump in and within a second, Justin and Dave and Allison and another girl are engaged in chicken fights.

    I realize with a start that I've taken my eyes off Doan for way too long. I scan the pool and don't see him anywhere.

    Damn.

    It's like he's the spider again.

    And right now, I feel like I've stumbled into his web.

    As I consider my next move, I realize that the answer is in the pool house and I hurry over to it, trying to sneak through the door unseen. There's no guarantee we'll have them but if I know my brother at all, they'll be here. I let it close quietly once I'm inside so I'll hear it if someone tries to get in behind me.

    I root around through several plastic storage boxes until I find exactly what I'd been looking for.

    I pick up the two mega-sized super-soaker water guns and smile. Doan'll be at my mercy in no time.

    As I head to the back of the pool house to fill them with water from the hose, I'm hit with memory after memory of summers in Arizona in our old house, with my old family, before all of this.

    We'd had a modest pool, definitely no pool house or rock-adorned water slide or mountain-side view, but it had been perfect for the four of us.

    And it probably still would be, if we still had those lives.

    They aren't the same water guns my dad had come home with that summer night one July almost 12 years ago, but they're close enough for me to remember it all.

    I can still see the excitement on Justin's face, can still feel the amused mock disapproval of my mom's stare, can still picture the unbeatable little-boy smile of my dad.

    We'd gone outside that night even though it was close to my bed time, filled those guns up and spent hours running through the yard, spraying each other. Mom and I had teamed up against Dad and Justin. Girls versus boys.

    We were a real family then.

    It's been so long since I could say that I almost forgot it was ever true at all.

    And for years, memories like that had done nothing but refuel my anger at my father. But now? Today? Holding these water guns in this new life I stumbled onto not by choice but out of necessity?

    I don't feel mad anymore.

    I don't even feel sad that it's no longer the way it used to be.

    No, for the first time, I just feel calm. At ease. There's nothing bad about these memories, and nothing bad about the way they make me feel.

    With the weight of this in my hands, I peek my head around the back door. There's no sign of anyone.

    I creep over to the hose, crank it on and quickly fill the water guns. When I'm done, I put one in each hand and slide over to the edge of the pool house, suddenly enjoying the feeling of being some kind of secret agent ready to take on the enemy.

    Ready to take on Doan.

    I stick my head around the corner and move forward. When I get to the edge of the pool house that faces the water, I try to casually walk away from the building even with the giant super soakers in my hands.

    I stand easily behind a lounge chair, using the back of it to hide the guns as best I can.

    
And that's when I see him.

    Doan's sitting on the opposite side of the pool with his legs dangling in the water, watching the two separate games of chicken going on in the shallow end in front of him.

    I don't think he's seen me yet.

    Perfect.

    I walk over the long way, trying to keep out of his line of sight as best as possible, and when I'm almost directly behind him, I get the soakers prepared in my hands for maximum impact.

    I walk up, practically on tiptoes, stop, aim and fire.

    Water spurts out the ends of both of them, soaking his hair, his back, his shorts.

    He turns around in surprise but that only ends with him getting a faceful of water and me getting the giggles.

    "What the -- ?" he gurgles, wiping frantically at his face.

    I'm smiling as I pull down on the trigger, launching another stream of water at him.

    I stand here grinning, watching him struggle, until I realize both the guns are out of water, and he's suddenly no longer being bombarded.

    He seems to realize it at the same time I do.

    I shriek and take off running and don't stick around long enough to see if he scrambles to his feet and comes after me.

    But when he grabs my ankles and tackles me into the grass a few seconds later, I have my answer.

    The water guns fly out of my hands with impact and I expect him to take off after them and use my own weapons against me, but instead he's almost sitting on my stomach and starts tickling me relentlessly.

    "Stop!" I shriek through my laughter. "Stop!"

    "Oh, you want
me
to stop?" he says. "After that? I don't think so."

    I'm struggling to find the air to talk. "You'll -- regret -- it," I manage to choke out between laughs. "Stop!"

    "Nope!" He gleefully continues to tickle me, so I do what any girl in my situation would -- I lift my leg and kick him.

    Not hard, of course, but enough to startle him and get him to just stop tickling already!

    And when he does, I wiggle out from under him, manage to get my hands on one of the water guns and take off running back to the hose to fill it again, cursing myself for leaving the second for him.

    It's quiet -- too quiet -- once I've re-filled mine, and I find myself creeping over to the edge of the pool house once again.

    I stick my head around the side of the building and BAM!

    That's when I get a face full of water.

    "Gotcha," Doan whispers.

    I cough, and before I can retaliate, he pulls the second gun out of my hands.

    "Truce?" he asks.

    I blink the water out of my eyes and glare at him. "Truce."

    He grins. "Not bad," he says. "For a rookie."

    "This isn't over," I tell him. "Not by a long shot. You know the whole thing about winning the battle but not the war. That's this."

    "I hope it isn't," he says. "Come on, let's put these back for now."

    I follow him into the dark pool house and over to the storage bins where I found the water guns.

    "You fight dirty," he tells me, putting them inside.

    "It's like I told you before -- "

    "All's fair in love and war," he cuts in. "I know. I like the way you think."

    I smile at him, and he takes a step toward me, and it's only then that I realize how close we already are, how much closer each movement he makes brings him to me.

    And how every inch makes it just a little bit harder to breathe.

    My heart slams against my chest as Doan looks right at me, and it's hard to see him because of the darkness but he's still somehow clear to me.

    And then I feel his hands on my bare shoulders, hot and blistering. There's nothing gentle about his touch this time.

    The only thing that feels the same as it did when he put his hands on me at the lake is that I can't think about anything other than his skin on mine.

    He lowers his head and then his lips find me, hungry and searching, and I'm almost stunned at how much he seems to want me.

   
And how there's nothing sweet about his kiss.
 

   
His hands roam down my back and I wind my arms around his neck, using my hands to comb through his hair and pull him down closer to me, wanting to feel his lips pressed harder against mine.

   
I feel his mouth wander off my lips as he presses light kisses against my cheek before tilting my chin back and trailing a string of kisses down my neck, exploring more of me.

   
And I'm shocked at how badly I want him to keep going.

   
I'm so caught up in Doan that I almost don't hear the door to the pool house creak open, but the stream of light suddenly blazing inside sends me scampering away from him.

   
We both look up, startled and maybe feeling a little bit guilty.

   
"There you are," Justin says, looking from Doan to me and back to Doan. His voice is normal, his facial expression the same. He doesn't seem to realize what he's just interrupted. "Come back outside, we need a new team for chicken fights."

   
 
Doan and I look at one another, and I try to imagine calmly sitting on his shoulders in the pool after what just happened, and I can't do it.

    But Doan just smiles. "Sure, we're in."

    And he walks right out of the pool house without a glance in my direction.

    Justin smiles at me and holds the door open as I pass by him.

    "I told you," he says when I'm about a foot in front of him.

    I turn around. "Told me what?"

    He raises an eyebrow. "That you'd eventually learn to like Doan."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

   
This weekend is the team's annual trip to California for a round-robin series with a league near Los Angeles that's just like ours in Phoenix.

    Things are still good with me and Doan; we'd never gotten another moment alone to continue what we started in the pool house, but he'd stolen kisses from me here and there during practice and our only game during the week.

    I pull into the parking lot of one of the local high schools where Dad's arranged for us all to leave our cars over the weekend while we're in California. A yellow school bus -- the kind I haven't set foot on since eighth grade -- waits along the curb.

   
Doan's black pick-up truck is already in the parking lot, and I can't help but think about how weird it is that the sight of it makes me smile now instead of making me mad.

    I never expected Doan and I to end up where we are today, and I have no idea where we're going, but every day makes me a little bit more excited to get there.

    There's something about him.

   And, okay, maybe there always has been. I can't pretend I didn't feel some kind of pull toward him the very first time I saw him.

    It's like my mom would always tell me before she married the count and moved to Italy: Plans are a nice idea, a guideline that you hope will get you where you want to go, but they hardly matter. You're going where the universe wants to take you, whether you like it or not, whether you see it or not.

    That's how she ended up living in an Italian castle in Sicily, anyway.

    And it's why I'm about to hop on a rickety old school bus with my dad and a bunch of baseball players.

    Dad and most of the team are already on the bus when I climb on board. Doan stands up from a seat near the back and waves to me. I make my way back toward him.