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16
She was beautiful and off-limits.
“I totally hate you right now,” Birdie said, popping off the top of her dauber and smelling it.
Lucas smacked her hand. “Jesus, Bird, stop sniffing the markers.”
She hissed back, “I was just checking to see if they were scented. How do you play this stupid game anyway?”
He shot her a skeptical look. Surely, she’d played bingo once in her life. “You’re telling me you’ve never played bingo?”
“No, Grandpa. Unlike you and the people in this room, I’m not in danger of suffering a fractured hip if I dared to thrust, therefore relegated to playing board games.”
Lucas rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, trying to clear his head of the vision of a thrusting Birdie.
“Just follow my lead, and if you get confused, I have the Georgia statutes for a sanctioned bingo game and the rules for conduct.
One side of her lip raised in sync with a theatrical eye roll. “Of course you do.”
She was wearing on his last nerve, complaining since they had arrived. Someone needed to take her in hand and—Oh God—he wanted to spank her. Hard.
Mid-thrust.
Instead, he maintained a cool facade and said with an even tone, “Someone has to know the rules and be able to referee disputes. These women are brutal. They’ll cheat without blinking an eye.”
“They’re harmless old ladies.”
“You don’t even believe that.”
Evidenced in how she continued to fidget, her eyes flitting across the room as if bracing for an attack.
He knew asking her to join an innocent night of bingo at the Wayward Community Center would be akin to a nightmare for her.
To be honest, his motives were a tad mean-spirited. He wanted her to be uncomfortable. Vulnerable even. As memory served, it was easier to manage an off-kilter Birdie than one who was in complete control of her surroundings and wielding the upper hand.
The caller yelled out G-46, and Lucas couldn’t help but feel a tangible sense of pleasure as Birdie squealed with delight after getting her first match and placing a dot on her card. “Tell me again why we’re meeting here instead of… I don’t know… a normal place where people meet to converse? Like a bar?”
Lucas was about to say he didn’t trust her with so much alcohol at her fingertips but thought better of the ill-conceived jest. Not wanting to cast shadows on tonight’s conversation with mistakes she’d made in the past.
“I asked you to meet me here because you said we had to talk right away, and I had already promised to attend bingo night to help celebrate Cora Leigh’s birthday.”
He did a head nod toward the elderly woman who was sitting in the corner wearing a tiara made of cardboard and a hot pink sash that said, “Bitch is Eighty” in gold glitter across her concave chest.
“Where do you think they found that sash?” Birdie asked, turning her body to view the table where the birthday girl sat. She leaned toward him, making him clear his throat from the scent of whatever floral shampoo she must have used earlier.
Just wonderful. He now wanted to spank her, hard, while sniffing her hair in mid-thrust.
“No telling,” he replied, scanning the room. “The more mature ladies of Wayward have been acting up lately.”
An understatement.
“What do you mean acting up? Like, taking their false teeth out and scaring small children?”
“No, more like, crocheting dirty sayings on throw pillows and taking photos of the menfolk when they’re…” Now it was his turn to learn toward her. “…sans clothing.”
“Dick pics?” Birdie said, a little too loud for Lucas’s comfort.
“Ssshhh. No. Not those kinds of pictures. Pictures where the men are shirtless. Keep your voice down. This is bingo night, not a fucking frat party.”
