CHAPTER 14
“Fancy seeing you today . . . again,” he said with a strange smile.
“I guess we did make it a hat-trick,” I heard myself say in a flirty voice that I seemed to have barely any control over.
“I guess we did,” he said. His cheeks were slightly flushed, his hair ruffled and the casual T-shirt he was wearing was clinging to his broad chest and shoulders like a second skin. I don’t think the shirt was meant to be tight—it was loose everywhere else—I just think this man was so genetically blessed in his upper region that he would make any shirt look slightly dirty, and I don’t mean the kind of dirty that warrants a go in the washing machine. Oh no, Mike was a completely new kind of dirty. One I’d never set eyes on before.
“So, what are you doing here?” I asked, looking around to see if there was a someone—a female someone—with him.
He gestured behind him, to the corner. “Watching the game,” he said, with a smile. “With my friends,” he quickly added.
“Aaaah, the game,” I replied flatly.
“I take it you’re not into watching the game?” he asked, looking a little amused now.
I shook my head. “Not really my thing; although, at one stage in my life, I had to pretend it was. That’s probably why I really don’t like it now.”
He started to pull one of the bar stools out, and then stopped and looked at me. “Can I sit? Do you mind?”
“Sure! Yes!”Shit—I think I said that a little too enthusiastically.
He sat down and suddenly I was acutely aware of his presence. It was overwhelming. As if I’d turned around and then looked back to find that a wall had magically appeared right next to me.
“Why did you have to pretend you liked the game?” he asked, resting an elbow on the bar.
“Long story. Boring story. You probably don’t want to hear about it,” I said, looking away from him.
“I like your stories,” he said. I could hear an amused tone in his voice and I turned and looked at him.
“What stories?” I asked.
He shrugged playfully. “You know, detective novels and cousins who don’t exist.”
I blushed. “Oh, so you know I’m not related to any Sharon Letty, then?”
“There is no Sharon Letty.” He gave a small chuckle at this and my eyes widened.
“So you let me say all that, let me think I had gotten that right, let me make all that stuff up . . . ?” I shook my head at him and smiled.
“So, what were youreallydoing there?” he asked.
“Again, a long and probably boring story,” I said, looking down at my empty glass.
There was a silence between us for a while. It felt strangely comfortable, as if we knew each other. “What say you tell me your boring stories over another drink? What are you drinking?”
“Coke,” I replied. “And you?” I asked.
“I’ll have one of those too,” he said, waving the bartender down. The bartender was none other than Techno Tannie herself.
“Hi, Mike,” she said, when she’d reached us.
“Hi, Crystal.” His voice had an air of reticence. An air of expectancy. “Soooo?” he asked, looking at her and raising one of his brows, as if this conversation had happened a million times before.
“Well, it’s just the usual, really,” she said, leaning over the counter. “Nothing too hectic to report, other than those cat fanatics parking me in at the grocery store the other day. But, other than that, just a normal week in Willow Bay.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You wouldn’t be the one responsible for the red lipstick ‘graffiti’—” he gestured air quotes at her—“that was drawn on the hood of one of the cat people’s cars, would you?”
“What? Me?” She put her hand over her heart. “I would never! You know me!” She said it with the faintest smile dancing at the corner of her lips.
