The Thrill of It All (6 page)

Ashley looked over, a frown between her clear blue eyes. “Think of her? I don’t know. They only met this afternoon.”

“Ah.” Interesting that his pal Magee hadn’t said a word about the night before to the woman he lived with.

“Why?” Ashley asked. She slid her tray onto the bar so that she could lean closer. He could smell that wildflower perfume she wore—the scent of the desert in spring. “Do
you
think something about her, Peter?”

Dragging his attention from Ashley, he looked over her shoulder to see that Felicity had been drawn into
a game of darts. Maybe his talk of NDEs had unnerved her into tossing back too much wine, he thought, because she was laughing as one of the regulars tried to correct her technique by octopus-arming her from behind.

“I think she’s…intriguing,” he replied. Even more intriguing was the dark expression on Magee’s face as he watched the scene at the dartboard from the other side of the room.

“Well, you’re not her type,” Ashley said, setting the last beer on her tray with an emphatic clack.

That Ashley was warning him away from her cousin was the most intriguing of all. He felt the ground beneath his chair shift again.

He slanted her a glance, then tossed out a test question. “Because of my legs?”

“Your legs? What does that matter?”

“It matters a lot.” Peter grabbed a rag and started wiping. “To some women, anyway.”

The tray hit the bar. “You give me her name. Their names.” Ashley’s voice was as fierce as he’d ever heard it. “If anyone’s insulted you, I’ll—”

“What, Ash?” The foundation beneath him was moving again, and he gripped the counter below the bar to keep himself steady. “What will you do?”

“I…” Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, you know me. Nothing, I guess.”

He sighed out a long breath and forced his fingers to relax. “That’s all right, Ash.”

For a second, just a second, he’d thought…But he must be wrong. If Ashley was going to turn to anyone,
it would be Magee. When he’d moved her and Anna P. in with him, Peter had sat by like a stone because he’d thought Simon’s widow and daughter and Simon’s best friend needed to help each other heal. But later he’d wondered if he’d bungled once again.

As the evening wore on, he kept one eye on Ashley and one on her cousin. Felicity had found herself a group of dance partners and Magee didn’t look any happier about that than he did about the dart lessons. Ashley moved in and out of the tables with her usual grace, but the new, speculative glances she darted his way puzzled him.

Then he figured it out.
Well, hell!
As humiliating as it was to acknowledge, Ashley must not have regarded him as a sexual being since his accident. Okay, so he had to admit that until tonight he’d never said anything to her about women, romance, or sex, but she’d been married to someone else, and then was a new widow!

It hadn’t seemed…appropriate.

But maybe those shifting sands signaled a change after all. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reassert himself in Ashley’s eyes. So, the next time she came by with a load of dirty glasses, he put his hand on her arm.

She froze.

“Thought I’d ask your opinion, Ash, since we were speaking of me and women. What do you think about Elaine?” He tilted his chin in the direction of a thirtyish woman at the end of the bar.

Ashley blinked. “Well, I…I don’t know. Doesn’t she work at the library?”

“Uh-uh. As a matter of fact, before our first date, she did some research.”

“Research?”

“Yeah. When I called to ask her out, she asked
me
at what level my spinal cord was damaged. Then she told me she’d get back to me on the date.”

Ashley glanced down the bar at Elaine again. “That’s…odd.”

He shrugged. “Not so. She called me back the next night and said it was a go. Her research had paid off and I passed.”

Ashley made a face. “Something tells me I’m not going to like her at
all
after this.”

Peter stifled his smile. “She had a right to know what she was getting into. Who would want to be saddled with a dud of a date? Once she found out I could control all my…faculties, let’s say, then she agreed to, uh, exploring our mutual interests.”

Ashley was staring at him. “That’s cold-blooded and just, well, icky.”

He lifted a brow. “Is it? Is it so cold-blooded to want to be with someone who can meet your needs?”

She rushed away. From the disgusting idea of him and his useless legs having sex? But perhaps it was another answer altogether, because a few minutes later Elaine yelped and jumped to her feet. The back of her denim shirt was drenched.

Behind her, Ashley stood with an empty beer mug in her hand. Murmurs raced down the bar. Consensus was that while her apologies sounded insincere, the spill
must
have been unintentional.

No one could think of anything that would motivate gentle Ashley to attack a woman she barely knew.

Peter hid his grin. Progress! Now he was sure of it. But if there was one thing the long rehab process had taught him, it was patience. To proceed with little steps. Still, his mood was flying high when Magee stomped behind the bar to pour himself a cup of coffee.

“Females!” He slammed the pot back on the burner. “What the
hell
are they good for?”

“I thought you’d figured that out a long time ago, Banger,” Peter replied.

Magee rounded on him. “
Don’t
call me that. Jesus, a guy sows some wild oats—”

“Some?”

“C’mon. I was in my twenties,” he protested. “It was part of the lifestyle. It’s not as if you were any better.”

“Compared to you? I was Saint Peter.”

“You are Saint Bullshit, my friend. We were all part of the 3-D Club, remember? What did Simon call it? Danger, Debauchery, and—”

“Demons,” Peter finished for him, then tilted his head. “Have you ever figured out what yours are?”

Magee swung away to refill his coffee cup. “You know I don’t navel-gaze.”

“Might do you some good.”

“Fine.” The contents of the second cup of coffee were tossed into the sink and Magee turned to survey the room moodily. “You want to get serious? Then you should be seriously thinking of buying me out of this place.”

“What? What’s this about?” Peter’s blood went
cold, then froze as Magee’s wandering gaze found Ashley and stayed on her.

“It’s time to do what’s right, Peter. It’s time I got a move on and wrapped things up.” Then Magee’s head jerked left. “Oh, damn.
Now
what’s she doing?”

Peter watched his friend stride off after a flouncing blue skirt. Despite that, he didn’t feel like smiling any longer, not even with Ashley heading toward him. He might have the patience, but there might not be the time. Not when he feared that one of the “things” Magee was threatening to wrap up was Peter’s first and only love.

How was he ever going to let her go? Magee thought in exasperation, following Felicity and her escort into the parking lot. He’d have to go through the rest of his life thinking he’d saved her cute little ass, only to lose her to some stupid decision like driving herself home or letting the animal she was with do it for her.

An animal who apparently didn’t remember that Magee had already confiscated his keys. “Joe,” he called out, approaching the couple from behind. They were standing together in the deep shadows, away from the lights illuminating the parking lot. “Gordon’s giving you a ride home tonight, remember? He’s your designated driver, dude.”

Joe slowly spun, almost losing his balance in the process. He clutched at Felicity to keep himself upright. “I ’member.”

Despite the shadows, the look Felicity sent Magee
was sharp as a tack. Maybe she hadn’t drunk as much as he thought. “You can go back inside, Dad,” she said, her voice like a shard of ice. “Joe asked me to come out here and wait for the cab with him.”

Oh, this was good. “Joe said he called a cab?”

“Yes.”

Joe himself shook his head. “No cabs in Half Palm,” he said mournfully. “I made that up.”

Her head whipped toward him. “What?”

Joe pawed at her hair with a clumsy hand. “Pretty Lissie. Such a pretty, pretty Lissie.”

She took a step away from him. “You said you had an idea of where Ben might be! That you’d seen him at the casino in Palm Springs and that if I came out here you’d tell me where you think he might be now!”

Joe shook his head, even more disconsolate. “I made that part up, too. Okay, pretty Lissie?” He reached a hand toward her hair again.

She smacked it away. “No, it’s not okay.”

The smack put Joe off balance for the second time and he lurched around in a large circle. It was at times like this that Magee remembered how often debauchery included making a fool of oneself. As Joe stumbled closer, Magee grabbed hold of his shoulders and steered him in the direction of the bar entrance. “Dude, straight ahead. Go inside and find Gordon.”

Joe tripped forward and finally made it through the bar door.

Magee looked back at Felicity. She raised an eyebrow. “You better go back inside, too. I saw you
cleaning tables and such. I’m sure your boss doesn’t want you loafing around out here.”

She thought he was the bar’s busboy.

He bared his teeth in a smile. “Oh, I don’t mind sacrificing minimum wage plus my share of the tip jar for you, dollface.”

“I didn’t ask for and I don’t need a keeper. Especially one like you.”

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Nothing about him was on that short list of hers. “Believe me, dollface, I didn’t follow you for your benefit. Until you’re at least fifty miles out of range, I think it’s in my own best interest to know exactly where you are at all times.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear your explanation for that.”

“I told you last night. The way I see it, you’re my spitwad of bad karma—payback for my wicked deeds—and I don’t plan on being blindsided again.”

It made sense to him. More than half the climbers he knew were Buddhists or at least claimed to be, and he’d been soaked in enough of their yammer to have absorbed the law of karma. Last night he’d postponed fulfilling his obligation and making that proposal of marriage, consequently he’d been struck by the dollface’s car—and then by this raging case of protective…horniness for the dollface herself.

“You’re bad karma,” he said again.

“Wait just a minute,” Felicity said as she marched closer. “You’re saying
I’m
a problem for
you
?”

His gaze ran from her face, which was all dark-lashed eyes and pink, puffy mouth, down her slender curves in the tight-fitting dress, to those sex-and-the-
single-girl shoes. Jesus Christ, he thought, she was a problem for him, all right. He was a man who liked women in rough-terrain boots, but the whole tippy-toe thing acted like a direct power source to his penis. “Hell, yes.”

“No.” She shook her head. “The problem is your thrillbanger tri—”

“Give us both a break, dollface.” He wasn’t going to let her ignore the truth any longer. “This isn’t something I’m doing to you. It’s—look, it’s working both ways. Your yin is batting its bedroom eyes at my yang. My kayak is all packed and ready to explore your tunnel of love.”

Her jaw dropped. “Well, I never—”

“Then maybe it’s high time you did,” he said, gripping her shoulders and pulling her close. “Feel it, baby.” She grabbed his shirt, and the side of her fist pressed against his thumping heart, working triple-time to keep his erection stiff. “This is physical, nasty, steamy, forget-your-friggin’-list lust.”

And forgetting everything but that, he lowered his mouth.

W
ith Anna P. riding piggyback, Magee jogged up the front walk of the Charm house. No more private chats with Felicity, he warned himself. No private moments of
any
kind. No truth-baring and no skin-baring, either. Last night, trying to make a point about the chemistry between them had only proved what an idiot he was. The kiss had turned wild in a heartbeat. Her dress had been half-unzipped when they’d been caught in the headlight beams of Gwen’s car.

He’d been so hard and hurting that when Felicity had stuttered out some excuse to the younger woman about Magee helping her with a moth that had flown up her dress, he hadn’t had the breath to call bullshit on her. He figured Gwen had caught on, though, which was the good news.

But now it was time for bad news. Get in, give it to Felicity, get out. Though it was nearing midday, he guessed he’d find her inside.

In fact, it was she who opened the door. Staring down at her bare toes, her face went red, but then she
widened the screen so he could gallop the little girl into the living room. He slid her onto the couch to a litany of “good horsie” praise. In return, he mussed the bangs she’d insisted he straighten with a wet comb five minutes before they’d left.

“Magee!”

Her kid-pout made him laugh. “No, baby, it still looks fine. But a person shouldn’t be so hung up on appearances.”

“Not a baby.” She hopped off the couch, heading for the VCR and the box of the videotapes beneath the TV set.

Magee glanced over at Felicity, who’d trailed them into the room. “Vi watches her on Sunday afternoons.”

Felicity’s gaze was on the little girl now poking through the tapes. “I know. She’s expecting her.”

In her high school jeans and T-shirt again, Felicity looked younger than Gwen and a thousand times more harmless than Anna P. Magee shook his head. Who the hell was she, really? Lissie, with all her passion? Felicity, with her hormone-ruling head and short list of acceptable-man qualities? Or this barefoot young woman in a run-down living room who couldn’t keep her eyes off her cousin’s daughter?

Blowing out a breath, he shoved his hands in his pockets and decided to get business done. “Felicity—” She looked up, and the rest of his words froze.

Damn, damn, damn, whoever she was today, yesterday, any day didn’t seem to matter. One look into those blue eyes and he was once again drowning in that uncontrollable urge to drag her off, strip her
down, and do it dirty. Unlike Peter, he wouldn’t try to claim sainthood for even a second, but he’d never had a case of the jones that burned like this one.

He glared at her, but her gaze cut back to Anna P. “Does…does she remember her father?” she asked softly.

Well, hell, the only thing he wanted to think about less than sex was Simon. But ignoring it was out of the question because a telltale upward peek from the little girl made clear that Anna P. had heard Felicity, too.

“Sure, she remembers him.” He forced himself to sound casual, to act casual as he moved to a table under the window and scooped up a frame. He showed it to the little girl, even though he himself couldn’t look down at the grinning face in the photograph. “Tell Felicity who’s in the picture, sweetheart.”

Anna P. glanced at it, then went back to perusing the tapes. “That’s my daddy, mate,” she said, her accent going pure Aussie. “My daddy that used to sing my special song, ‘Anna P., Anna P., the only little girl for me.’”

Felicity laughed. “That sounds just like him.”

Magee forced himself to relax and ruffled Anna P.’s bangs again. “We have video,” he explained.

“Daddy died,” Anna P. added matter-of-factly. “Under lots of snow.”

Magee’s grip on the frame tightened as he walked it back to its place. The tragic words in that little voice tore at him.

“Well, you know what?” Felicity replied. “My
daddy died, too. Along with my mommy when I wasn’t much older than you are now.”

Staring out the front window, Magee pretended he hadn’t heard that, because he had a thing about dead fathers. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling every sleepless hour of the past two nights. The first had been filled with rain and tequila and tarantulas and then last night he’d come awake in a sudden panic, a nightmare of being smothered in a landslide of pencils, printouts, and PCs still lying like a heavy weight on his chest.

He’d breathed deeply, that weight morphing into a memory of Felicity lying across him in the back of the Jeep. The hours until the alarm had been filled with cursing himself, her, and the hard-on stretching toward his navel.

The robotic hum of the VCR as Anna P. ejected the tape already in the machine must have masked Felicity’s movement, because the next thing he knew she was standing beside him.

“What was he thinking?” she whispered, picking up the photo. “How could he have risked his life after she was born?”

“It was his last climb,” he said. “He’d made plans to change his life, but then…but then bad luck caught up with him.” Or Magee hadn’t.

He swung around to check on Anna P. Her small fingers flattened as she pushed a new tape in the machine. She was settling in and he could be on his way.

Halfway across the room, he remembered the message he had for Felicity. “Hey…” The word trailed
off as he saw an image of her materialize on the television screen.

Anna P. caught his eye and smiled, her voice full of Aussie mischief. “Where you going, mate? Sit down with me and watch.”

She had him wrapped around her little finger, Magee had to admit that as he sank onto the sofa cushions. But he wasn’t the only one. When Anna P. ordered Felicity to sit down, too, she also obeyed.

Her face was flushed again, though, as she threw him a glance. “GetTV,” she said, gesturing toward the screen. “I send Aunt Vi production tapes every once in a while since she can’t get cable in Half Palm.”

He looked back at the screen. It was Felicity, all right, a city-Felicity, wearing a white shirt, a tight, bilious-green knee-length skirt, and a pair of chunky-heeled sandals. Despite the constricting outfit, she was curled up on an armchair and proceeded to smile at and chat with the camera as if they were best friends.

“Don’t you hate worrying about losing your cell phone? Have you ever mixed yours up with someone else’s?” She launched into a story about mistakenly trading cell phones with another woman on a Friday night and being plagued all weekend with calls from a personal trainer, a dog trainer, and a gravel-voiced man calling himself Sir John who’d promised to train her.

“But look! The must-have solution!” From a table beside her, she whipped out a piece of jewelry that she flashed for the camera with perfectly manicured fingers. “Cell phone charms! You can personalize your
phone to signal your mood, your current dating status, or even your beverage of choice.” The camera zoomed in on the charm, a tiny margarita glass.

As she waxed on about how to order—“try our keep-it-simple payment plan!”—Magee still couldn’t believe such items existed or that any sane person would bother with them.

Still…“Hey, does that set come with a shot glass?” he couldn’t resist asking.

She tried sneering, but there was something about her girl-next-door features that couldn’t make it stick. Instead, it slid into an embarrassed frown. Laughing to himself, he settled back on the couch, content to have her televised image yak him right out of his unwelcome yen for her.

And if the cell phone charms hadn’t proved they were from two different galaxies, the battery-operated ice cubes she featured next were evidence aplenty. Holding up a boxful of them in “Age of Aquarius” colors, she went about convincing the viewers they were a “must-have,” too, for the next “must-do” party. His jaw gaped when she mentioned that the last time they’d been featured on her
All That’s Cool Afternoon,
they’d sold twenty-six thousand units.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said aloud.

She shot him a glance, trying again to paste on that sneer. “GetTV reaches over eighty million American homes and is the fastest growing and most popular TV shopping network. It’s a retail phenomenon.”

“Phenomenon? You must mean felony. Because what you’re doing is highway robbery.”

“This from someone who last night sent over two young men who robbed me of my dignity
and
my cheese fries.”

He wanted to snicker, but didn’t. “Seriously, dollface, you’re selling some seriously trivial…stuff.” On the screen, she was presenting the next product, and this time he
had
to snicker. “‘Glammed-up’ rubber gloves? I rest my case.”

Household gloves, the thick rubber kind that his mother wore when polishing silver. But at the wrists of these pairs were bands of bright-striped fabrics that were then fringed with ruffly lace or pastel pom-poms. No longer utilitarian, they were just plain ludicrous. Not to mention that they cost thirty-five bucks, plus shipping and handling.

But something happened as he watched Felicity go through her shtick. She shared a laugh at how far a woman might go to make housework fun. There was an offhand comparison to Cinderella’s slippers. Then she giggled as she slid them on and then again as she made the tassels dance while pretending to dust the chair. Without even the smallest warning prick, her enthusiasm infected him.

So when her televised self asked, “Wouldn’t your mother or other woman in your life get a kick out of these?” he couldn’t help but picture his own mom and her delight in something so whimsical.

Thirty-five bucks wasn’t bad for a pair of Cinderella gloves that she’d use
and
smile over every time she did.

That’s when it hit him. He turned his head to stare
at Felicity. “You’re a witch. I almost pulled out my wallet.
For rubber gloves
.”

She smiled, full of smug cheer. “Dressed-up rubber gloves. That’s what shopping is all about, you see—identity. More specifically, about transforming it. New lipstick, a special outfit, it’s a way of becoming a newer, improved version of ourselves.”

“Yeah, but that’s just surface—”

“Grammy!” Anna P. suddenly yelled out. “It’s the part about Grammy and Uncle Billy.”

The—guilty?—expression flashing over Felicity’s face refocused Magee’s attention to the television. On the screen, she was hawking those flaky light cubes again. In that engaging, between-you-and-me manner of hers, she told the audience that her Aunt Vi had livened up a recent gathering she’d hosted by using them to ice down the drinks—of the members of the George Bernard Shaw Society.

Magee turned his head to look at Felicity, his gaze sweeping past the tall stacks of
People
and
National Enquirer
sitting in a corner, each topped by a tortoise-shell cat. “George Bernard Shaw?”

“A playwright,” Felicity answered shortly. “In the first half of the twentieth century.”

He was glad he accepted the insult silently, because then he didn’t miss hearing that her Uncle Billy had used the lighted cubes in his highball glass to illuminate his way up the wine cellar steps when the cellar’s light had burned out.

Magee knew for a fact that the only vintages that interested Billy were the fresh ones from Amstel,
Budweiser, and Busch. What he didn’t know was why the hell Felicity had fictionalized her family. But the answer was just minutes away. Though her
Cool Afternoon
ended, the tape kept rolling as she popped out an earpiece and unclipped her microphone.

People crossed back and forth, removing merchandise, wheeling cameras through. Felicity struggled with the earpiece wire caught on the collar of her shirt. Then a man carrying a clipboard strode up to her, the lights gleaming against his blond hair and glinting off his slick-leathered loafers. Richie Rich all grown up.

Oh, now it was clear who Felicity’s bogus background was meant to impress.

With the microphone off, Magee had to read the relationship through body language. Richie leaned in, Felicity stilled. The tangle untangled, they stayed close. Richie smiled, Felicity licked her lips. Richie touched her hair, she ducked her head.

Magee wanted to puke.

It was why he hurried out of the house, pausing only to pass on the piece of news he’d brought with him. “By the way, dollface, you’d better give your good friend Richie Rich a call and tell him to postpone your next TV show. You can say your Uncle Billy spent too much time cataloguing his wine collection last night so your car won’t be ready this afternoon like he promised.”

Felicity returned to the Bivy that night. What else did she have to do with herself? That she was on the lookout for Ben made Aunt Vi feel better, and
that
would
appease Felicity’s conscience when she returned to L.A. the following day.

And if she took Magee out of the picture—and she’d X’d him out completely!—she had to admit she got a kick out of the anonymity the place afforded her. Without her GetTV image to worry over, she was free to dabble in the hedonistic play of the climbing crowd.

So, knowing that this was her last chance, she played darts and she played pool. When a man with a long sideburns and a loopy grin asked her to dance, she didn’t consider refusing.

To the beat of Pink’s “Get the Party Started,” he unbuttoned his shirt so that the tattooed snake on his chest undulated with his movements. Laughing out loud, she pulled the tails of her own man-tailored shirt from her tight high school jeans. Then, knotting the shirt beneath her breasts, she rotated her hips like a belly dancer.

Her partner fell over, overcome by admiration—or perhaps too much beer—and stayed flat on the dance floor until one of his buddies dragged him off by the shoulders. They exchanged disappointed finger waves.

In need of fortification, she twirled herself toward her table on the edge of the small dancing area. Her glass of water sat where she’d left it, but her plate of nachos and her glass of wine—both barely touched—were gone.

The climbers were unabashed moochers.

Shaking her head, she scooped up her purse and headed toward the bar. Though she’d yet to see
Magee, now she came face-to-face with the bartender, Peter. But even remembering how he’d creeped her out the night before with his near-death talk didn’t stop her from smiling at him.