Wow. Another first. I never thought, of the two of us, that I’d end up being the one envying Bergman.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
As Miles and I finished the prep work for our show, the tent flap opened and in walked the Chinese woman Cole and I had befriended, carrying Smiling Baby on her hip.
“Well, hi there,” I said as I hopped down from the stage.
She bowed a couple of times, smiling widely as she said, “Hello. Hello.”
“You know, I don’t think we ever exchanged names. I’m Lucille Robinson,” I said, pointing to myself because I still wasn’t sure how much English she understood. Then I bowed.
“My name Xia Ge,” she said sweetly. She pointed to the baby. “This Xia Lai.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Is Cole there?”
I looked over my shoulder. Oh, she meant—
“Did someone call for me?” asked Cole as he strutted through the tent’s back opening and grinned at Ge and her little boy. He’d showered and changed into his costume—tight black dress pants, matching shirt, and a glittering red vest with enormous black buttons. Lai immediately reached for him, so Cole obliged, grabbing him firmly under the arms and swinging him in circles until he giggled and squealed.
“You are perform tonight?” Xia Ge asked him shyly. I could tell she approved of the outfit.
“Yeah. Are you still coming? If I have time, maybe I can fit Lai, here, into my juggling act.”
She nodded happily. “Yes, we will be there.” She touched his hand briefly as she added, “Then you come see acrobats show end of week. Yes? You still have tickets?”
Cole nodded. “Yeah. You know, unless something prevents us, we’ll definitely be there.” He handed Baby Lai back to his mom, she bowed some more, and they left.
Cole stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down bashfully at the toes of his high-tops. “Pretty much.”
“You’re a regular flirting fiend, you know that?”
“I don’t flirt with married women,” he said with an absolutely straight face.
I considered his expressions, his body language, not much different than usual. But then he was usually flirting. “Maybe.”
He was in my face in moments, grinning like a lunatic. “Then I haven’t been flirting with you enough lately.” He grabbed my arm, kissed down the length of it as he made French lover noises. “Hwah, hwah, hwah, my ravissant mademoiselle.”
“Oh my God, you are such a dork!” It kind of tickled so, despite my best intentions, I was laughing by the time he got to my hand, where he stopped with genuine horror.
“What the hell?” So much for funsies. My giggles dried up like a desert stream.
“Ambushed by a reaver,” I said shortly.
“I hope he looks worse than you do.”
“Um, probably not. He ran before I could do any real damage.”
“Woman, you need a keeper.”
“It’s probably my fault. He was pissed about the reaver I killed last night,” I said. “You know what they say, look before you shoot.”
“They say that?”
“Yes. And it pertains to making friends while on the job too. Did you realize you’ve arranged for your new pals to possibly be sitting in the same audience with Chien-Lung?”
“Actually, yeah, I have. The way I figure it, the dad’s one of his acrobats, so they’ve been under his thumb for a while. Which also means they might know something that would help us.”
“You don’t seem to have much confidence in Bergman’s inventions.”
“Just planning for just in case.”
I considered him, a twenty-six-year-old stud who loved women and children but wasn’t married, who’d lost his business but had found a way to progress, who popped bubbles like a sixth grader but made sensible, thoughtful, professional decisions. “No wonder you fit right in. You’re just as warped as the rest of us!”
He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “It took you long enough to figure that one out. Speaking of which, it’s almost dark, beautiful lady. Aren’t you supposed to be getting into something a lot less difficult to see through?”
The costume. My dive into belly-dancing denial had gone so deep I hadn’t even seen it yet. Oh man, if I was going to make any sort of adjustments to what promised to be a too-sexy outfit, I’d better get busy. I ran out of the tent, half wishing my newly found awkwardness would allow me to break an ankle before I reached the closet and, as I saw it, my impending doom.
When I got back to the RV, Vayl had already risen. Grumpy. His first words to me as I entered the kitchen were “I want to talk to you. Outside.”
I felt like punching something because, despite my hurt feelings, I still responded warmly (okay, hotly) to his
