The thought that I could possibly have one of my very own heated my cheeks. Taking him home for a not- repeat of last night’s performance suddenly sounded pretty entertaining. For the first time I could remember, the idea made me smile, and I wasn’t embarrassed at all to let my English geek get out of hand. “Doesn’t it make you just want to stop and fix the signs, or go in and yell at people until they understand that using quotes like that implies sarcasm? That they’re saying exactly the opposite of what they mean? ’“Rock-bottom prices”’!” Now I did air quotes, too, which was probably good, as it released Mark’s hand from my enthusiastic prison. “Or apostrophes. Don’t get me started on apostrophes. How hard is it to remember that i-t-apostrophe-s means ’it is,’ or ’it has’?”
“True confession time.” Mark leaned forward, too, dropping his voice to admit, “I can never remember that one. I always have to think about it.”
“But I bet you get it right when you think about it!”
“Well.” He sat back with a disparaging wave of his hand that made us both laugh. “Yes.” He lifted his menu with a challenging arch of an eyebrow. “First one who finds a typo in the menu wins dessert.”
“Oh, you’re on.” I picked up my menu and started flipping through it, grinning broadly. The waiter appeared at my elbow to ask politely if we wanted wine or appetizers, and Mark and I caught each other giving the other guarded looks. I pursed my lips and glanced sideways at the waiter. “No, thanks,” I said.
Mark nodded. “A few more minutes, please.”
The waiter slipped discreetly out of view again. “I’m not much of a wine drinker, anyway,” I mumbled. Mark gave me a disarming smile.
“More of the sort to go right for the hard stuff, huh?”
I made a laugh that was mostly in my nose and the top of my mouth, and therefore came out an unattractive wet snort. How delightful. Mark’s smile broadened, though, so maybe it wasn’t as gross as I thought it’d been. “I’m good with beer. I don’t usually drink liquor.”
“Does it mess up your—” Mark broke off, caught between winsome curiosity and apology. “Tell me to screw off if it’s none of my business, but I’m really curious about what Gary mentioned this morning. Shamanism? You’re really into that? Does drinking mess it up?”
For one brief moment I seriously considered killing Gary for opening his big mouth. My inexplicable powers did not strike me as good first-date discussion material. Bitching about the slaughtering of the language, yes; magic powers, no. I sat there looking at Mark for what felt like a very long time indeed, considering whether or not I wanted to answer his questions, and how far I wanted to get into the answers if I did. “No,” I said finally. “Drinking just impairs my judgment like it does anybody else’s. Um.”
“You don’t want to talk about it.” Mark’s smile went all apologetic. “Sorry. It’s just…talk about things to get geeked about. Magic. Shamanism. It sounds interesting.”
“Does it?” I scratched the back of my neck, looking at my menu. “There’s just no real way to talk about it without sounding insane.” I glanced up with a shrug. “I mean, honestly, if I went into it, explained what it was all about and said I had magic powers and could affect the weather,” which I managed to say without wincing, although it was a trial, “or could heal people, and you said,
The apology left his expression, curiosity and interest replacing it in a lip-parted half smile. Mark had a very expressive mouth. I thought I could get used to watching it. “Can you?”
“Can I wh—oh.” I breathed a laugh and shifted my shoulders, discomfort creeping up and down my spine. “See, I can’t answer that. Anything I say, one of us has to be crazy to believe it.”
“So.” Mark picked up his water glass, swirling ice around, and put it down without sipping. “So you’re telling me you’re into this thing that you don’t expect other people to believe in, and you’d reject them based on their belief?”
I rolled my eyes up, considering that, then shrugged my eyebrows. “Yeah, pretty much. The only reason I believe it is I can’t get away from it. I don’t expect rational people to buy into the concept of magic going on around them. It’s the kind of topic you smile and humor people on, and later go ’Woo, she was a kook, huh?’ about.”
He tilted his head. “Is that what you do to yourself?”
Maybe I didn’t want to get used to watching him after all. I was not accustomed to feeling this much conflict over a guy. I told myself that, and very firmly did not let myself start thinking about my boss. Instead I stared at Mark, then exhaled heavily. “Yeah, basically.”
“Huh.” Mark quirked an eyebrow. “It must be a difficult dichotomy to be you.”
“Sometimes.” I shrugged one shoulder. “On the other hand, once in a great while it lands me dates with guys who use
“Careful,” he said with a quick grin. “I’ve been known to throw even bigger words around without warning. They misspelled
“How’d you—I haven’t even gotten to the dessert menu yet! No fair!” I went back to perusing the menu, fully aware that Mark had changed the subject deliberately and gracefully to let me off the hook, and grateful for the reprieve.
CHAPTER 9
A lot of good food and several hours later, it proved that Phoebe was right. No one seemed to care that I was more of a twitchy, spasmodic marionette than a dancer. Impossibly loud music crashing into my bones made me stop caring, too, and consequently there were a couple of times when the woman in the mirror looked like she might know what she was doing out there on the dance floor.
Mark, on the other hand, really did know what he was doing, enough so that I accused him of being gay, which was wildly un-PC of me. He compounded the lack of political correctness by spending the next twenty minutes swishing around the dance floor, until Phoebe and I were leaning on each other and snorting with undignified laughter. I was actually having a fantastically good time when Barbara Bragg showed up.
For one horrible moment I was afraid she’d have Morrison in tow. There were things my constitution could stand, and things it couldn’t. My boss at a dance club was one of the latter. In fact, my own presence at a club was almost more than it could take, so compounding it with Morrison’s arrival would’ve just laid me out flat, shattered like so much windshield glass. Mark, blissfully unaware of my mental gymnastics, waved his sister down through a series of complicated hand gestures—which is to say, he pointed at us, then himself—suggested he was with Phoebe and me.
Barbara looked us both up and down, then turned to Mark with a grin. I could hear her over the music, which lent me respect for her lung power, if nothing else, as she bellowed, “You don’t get
I figured she had to be talking about someone else. I was too tall to be cute, and while Phoebe had great bone structure, I thought the near-unibrow might preclude cuteness. Regardless, Barbara slid an arm around Phoebe’s waist, fitting next to her like the proverbial peas in a pod, and grinned broadly at me as she pulled her farther away.
Phoebe looked about a thousand times more relaxed dancing with another woman than I could imagine being with anyone. My reflection was still having fun, but I felt a little thrill of envy spark through me. Barbara Bragg was physically adorable, with a pert, turned-up nose and pixiecut hair, her big blue eyes full of laughter. I was pretty sure her hair grew out of her head that particular shade of red, too, which I found totally unfair, and I’d never even wanted to be a redhead. It was the principle of the thing. And maybe the way she filled out the frilly sundress she wore, with curves in all the right places. She also had a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder, matching Mark’s in size, color and newness. I didn’t know her, but it seemed to suit her: full of life and vibrancy,
