Page 77 of Fierce

Dirty Tricks

It was Saturday, following two days at work during which I hadn’t answered Nathan’s questions, had asked him not to gossip about me, and wasn’t at all sure that he’d respected my wishes. It was an awfully good tidbit, and asking a lot of Nathan not to share it. I wasn’t seeing heads turning or hearing voices dropping as I passed, though, so maybe I wasn’t giving him enough credit.

I forgot all about it, though, on Saturday night, when the buzzer sounded and I went to the door to punch the button on the intercom. Because it wasn’t Charles’s voice I heard down there. It was Hemi’s.

“Ready?” was all he said, and suddenly, I was as nervous as a...well, as a butterfly.

“Bye,” I told Karen. “Call me if you need me, right?”

“Yeah, right,” she said.

I paused with one hand on the doorknob. “Do I look OK?”

She sighed. “You’re so lame. Ask Hemi. And Hope—”

I turned around again to look at her. “Yeah?”

“If he makes you cry again, call me, and I’ll yell at him or something. I don’t care what he says, I’m way fiercer than you.”

“Oh, sweetie.” I went over and gave her a hug. “Thank you. But I’m better than you think at yelling at him. You might be surprised. I know he is, every single time.”

When I finally got downstairs, Hemi was leaning against the car.

“I’ve got this,” he told Charles when the driver reached for the door. So Charles got back inside, Hemi held the door himself, then slid in after me, and I liked it.

“Sorry I made you wait,” I said.

He smiled a little. “Shows what you know. If you’d been somebody else, you’d have made me wait longer, and not apologized.”

“Oh.” I tried to smooth my skirt over my knees, but it didn’t reach. “I’m not that good at games.”

“Noticed that, didn’t I. But you play along with them so well all the same.” And just like that, I was watching the window between the driver and passenger areas rolling up, and my heart had started that rock ‘n’ roll beat.

“And...why?” I asked. “We going to have a special talk?”

“Oh, now, Hope,” he said softly. “You’re a very bright girl. You know better than that. And you’re not wearing the blue dress tonight.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Good? Bad? You’ve seen that blue dress twice, and I don’t have another one, but I know this isn’t fancy enough. And kiss me, please, because I’m babbling.”

This wasn’t the man who’d sat beside me on my couch and kissed my sister on the cheek. This was that other Hemi, the one who made my heart flutter like a hummingbird’s.

“Oh? And here I was thinking that you knew I’d never had the chance to unbutton you.” His eyes weren’t even pretending to stay on my face this time. Instead, they were fixed on the soft white mohair-blend button-front sweater and slim black skirt I was wearing with his heels. “And I’m thinking you’re going to show me those special things I bought for you, too. Which ones are you wearing? My favorites, or yours? Hoping they’re mine. Hoping you wanted to please me tonight.”

“I don’t remember,” I managed to say. “Maybe you can find out. And maybe not.”

“You are playing games, eh. But girls who play games with me get into trouble.”

“Can Charles...” I swallowed hard, and I knew Hemi saw me doing it. “Can he hear up there?”

“A bit. If it’s loud enough. Does that idea bother you?”

“You know it does.”

“Then I’d better keep you quiet, hadn’t I?”

“Uh...how?”

He reached across me, and I sucked in a breath. But all he did was unfasten my seatbelt.

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