Page 48 of The Thing About My Rival

Is it possible for your blood to run hot and cold at the same time? For your heart to thump with both dread and excitement? To have butterflies in your belly, but for half of them to be stomping around in lead boots rather than fluttering?

Hugo’s still wearing his game gear, jacket unzipped to reveal a white T-shirt that looks glued to his pecs. He pauses just inside the door for a second, till his gaze lands on the bar.

“Over here!” Joyce is on her feet before I can stop her, and she’s pointing directly down to the top of my head.

Almost every face in the bar turns toward her. Hugo’s included.

Fuck.

I do not want to socialize with Hugo. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be right. It’s far better, or perhaps safer, that there’s a dividing line between work and play—a line as clear as the one Hugo taped through the middle of our office.

When his eyes follow Joyce’s finger and find me, his chest rocks with a chuckle that morphs into a sarcastic grin.

“He won’t want to sit with us, Joyce.” I tug her sleeve until she retakes her seat. But she’s still beckoning him with her other hand.

“Oh, I think he does,” Mona says, sitting a little straighter and fluffing the back of her hair.

And she seems to be right. Unfortunately.

Taking long, leisurely steps, he approaches us across the half-empty bar. The ironic smile curving his lips complements the mischievous glint in his eye, and prompts the butterflies with lead boots to kick them off and join the flutter party in my belly.

Hugo stops right behind Mona, whose head is turned and tipped back so she can gaze up at him like an abandoned puppy that just got rescued.

“Wilcox.” He parts his lips and runs his tongue along the front of his shiny white upper teeth. “So this is where you hang out. And these are yourfriends?”

He can say “friends” as sarcastically as he likes, but I will stand by these three to the end.

“Yes. Let me introduce you. Hugo, this is Joyce.”

She jumps to her feet and stretches across the table to shake his hand, her eyelashes batting so fast they’re barely visible. “Quite excellent to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Hugo says with a tone so resembling a nineteenth-century lothario that I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s about to bow and kiss the back of her hand.

Joyce looks like her life has been made and she’ll never wash that hand again.

“And Mona.” I gesture toward the woman who, if she leaned back just a couple more inches, would be able to rest her head on his abs.

She continues to gaze up at him, her grin getting wider. She giggles girlishly, then wiggles her fingers at him in a tiny wave.

Hugo nods down at her. “Delighted to meet you.”

“And this is Winston.” I lift my palm toward the man on my right, who levers his arthritic hips into a standing position.

“We’ve heard a lot about you, young man.” Winston extends one hand and pushes his glasses up his nose with the other, like a scientist examining a particularly unpleasant specimen.

“All of it good, I hope,” Hugo says, shaking his hand.

“I wouldn’t sayall?—”

“Anyway.” I wrap my clammy hands around my beer glass in an attempt to cool them. “I guess you’re not staying.”

“Oh, but youmuststay.” Joyce points at the chair at the end, which squeaks away from the table with the assistance of her foot.

I give her my best silentwhat are you doing?glare, but it’s not me who has her attention.

“Well, if you insist, Joyce.” Hugo rounds the end of the table and takes the magically moving chair.

Jesus. First we have a four-nil home loss, and now I have to share my evening with Hugo freaking Powers. What’s next? A plague of frogs?

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