Page 50 of Bad Luck Club

Harry hitched up his glasses, still looking at them with a glimmer of speculation. “Better safe than sorry.”

Then he headed into the kitchen with the others.

Lee was staring at her—she felt his gaze burning into the side of her face, but at least it didn’t feel so hostile this time. “You thought she was sick again.”

“I still don’t totally know,” she answered, wringing her hands. Finally, she glanced back at him, seeing the depths of his hazel eyes, the colors dancing together. “That’s how it always is, Lee. I don’t know for sure, until it’s too late, and then there’s nothing I can do. I was late yesterday because I waited at her apartment for her all day. We were supposed to have lunch together, but she didn’t show. She had a good excuse, but—”

“What excuse could she have for that?” he grumbled. He was still mad, but it was like his anger was so big, so beyond his understanding or control that he could be both angry at her and for her. She had the urge to touch him again, which she quelled by wrapping her hands together in her lap.

“Her cat was really sick, and she’d forgotten her phone at the apartment when she took him to the vet.”

He was looking at her intently, and she saw Bear glancing at them as he raced by, tracking Ruby’s tail as she dashed off with the hat. Cal came back with the fishbowl and supplies, and in the background she could hear Augusta and Nicole bickering about something in the kitchen. But her attention was on Lee—and his was on hers.

“She could have left a note. Or left her cat at the vet,” he said, his tone still blunt.

“She could have,” she relented, “but she wasn’t thinking about me.”

He looked at her for a long time again. He didn’t say anything else, though, and when Ruby raced past them a second time, hat clutched in her jaws, Lee reached out suddenly and grabbed her by the collar. The hold must have been jarring, because Ruby whined a little, releasing the hat.

A flash of something, possibly guilt, passed through Lee’s eyes, and he released her collar. Ruby gave him a lick, and for the life of her, Blue couldn’t tell whether it moved him or made him worry about his button-down shirt.

“Ah, we have a dog wrangler in our midst,” Bear said happily. But something told her that Lee didn’t know much about dogs. His father wasn’t the type who would have gotten one for the family. No, he would have told Lee they were servile creatures, and it was a weakness to love something or someone who could do nothing for you.

Weakness.

She shouldn’t have told him about the challenge. Now he thought she saw him as someone who was weak. Someone who needed a helping hand.

Bear beamed as he retrieved the ruined hat and gave Ruby’s ears a rub. “Right as rain for the next time someone joins us.”

“You’re going to do the cult thing again?” Lee asked.

“Why waste a perfectly good hat?” His eyes danced with humor, though, and she knew he was joking. Lee, based on his scowl, did not.

Cal started handing out the papers and Sharpies, and Blue and Lee accepted theirs. Everyone else had gathered around, and the others bent to their papers.

Lee tapped his pen on the paper in a way that suggested he had writer’s block, so she said in an undertone, “It’s like we were talking about. The kind of theme you’d pick for an English paper, not a theme party.”

“But, hey,” Bear said, hearing her, “if you want to pick a Hawaiian theme, I’m sure we’d all welcome a luau. Make it easier to get through the harsh weather. But I’m going to go ahead and suggest none of you pick a Valentine’s Day theme. It may be coming up in a couple of weeks, but all those hearts and flowers are hard on some of us.”

“Preach,” Nicole muttered. “You give me a valentine, be prepared to get it stuffed right back up your—”

“Nicole,” Bear said pointedly as he folded his slip and tossed it into the fishbowl.

She rolled her eyes and sat back down in her nook.

Augusta’s slip went in next, with a little smirk accompanying it that promised more bad luck to the person who chose it. Then Dee’s, Harry’s, Cal’s, and Nicole’s.

Blue thought for a minute, then scrawled,Leaving our comfort zone.

It surprised her a little when Lee’s slip went in before hers did.

Cal mixed them up and held the fishbowl out to Lee. “You do the honors, fresh meat.”

From the look in Lee’s eyes, she could tell he didn’t appreciate the quip. That he was stuck in the red zone. But Cal was only joking. It was his sense of humor, as much as Bear’s, that had generated the whole cult scene.

Lee glanced at her, then reached a hand in and drew out a slip of paper. “‘Leaving our comfort zone.’”

“Oh, that’s mine,” she said, feeling a rush of pleasure. Of synchronicity.

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