Jan Pennington, looking like a stinging insect in her bright yellow cardigan, was bearing down on them.
Gabe was off like a shot, perfidious man, to confer with a member of his staff, and Annelise was already skipping her way over to her mom and reflexively Eden reached out to scoop her into her body for a hug. “Good game, sweetie.”
“Since you missed the decorating committee meetings,” Jan said, with faint reproach, “I was hoping you could sign up the volunteers to man or woman our game and dunking booth.”
Jan thrust what appeared to be about ten sign-up sheets into Eden’s hands. Eden really didn’t have the right to say no to either: she knew it was all part of doing her share. All parents did, sick, well, busy, no matter what.
“Of course, Jan.”
But Jan was already zipping off again.
And Gabe had disappeared.
Chapter 10
Four nights later...
“...and then, if you can believe, they raised my flood insurance rates!”
“WHAT?” Gabe shouted.
“FLOOD INSURANCE!” Dion Gomez from the music store bellowed at him. Beaming.
Gabe just nodded sympathetically. He’d missed the entire first part of that sentence and had only caught a word here and there of the entire conversation, but he’d had about five shouted, tipsy conversations since he’d arrived at the Misty Cat for the Chamber of Commerce mixer an hour and a half ago, and his mood was rapidly abrading. Blue Room’s greatest hits were for some reason being played on an endless loop, and sometimes Gabe was in the mood for Jasper Townes’s uber-soulful rasp punctuated by the otherworldly howls. Other times he yearned for the days of LPs so he could take and smash it over one knee. Or hurl it like a discus.
He was three beers in because he couldn’t bring himself to drink the wine, and he’d started to feel them, which made him feel his age. And he was missing another softball game for this. Right about now he would love to take a hard swing at something, hear that SMACKing sound, and watch it soar to unfettered freedom.
No sign of Eden.
See, if she was here, no amount of shouted conversations or howling Jasper Townes would have made a difference.
She wasn’t here. And yet, after that soccer game moment, he’d been so sure they were reaching a sort of tipping point. After all, tonight was their cut-to-the-chase-aversary.
Greta from the New Age Store maneuvered through the crowd, then stopped and stared at him wide-eyed.
“What?” he said, this time a little churlishly.
“Gabe, your aura is really... well, you ought to have brought a fire extinguisher with you this evening, that’s all I can say, becausethatthing is...” Greta fanned herself with a hand and rolled her eyes in an ay-yi-yi fashion.
He scowled at her.
Greta just batted her eyes knowingly, smirked, amused, and took herself off to unnerve somebody else sufficiently enough to persuade them to buy a tarot reading in the back of her store.
Gabe took another few ill-advised steps toward the bar. Glenn was doing a booming business. He really liked all of Eden’s relatives, the ones he’d met anyway. He saw Glenn when he had lunch at the Misty Cat or drank after a game, at shows, at Annelise’s soccer games... if only Eden was as ubiquitous in his life as her dad was.
And there wasstillno sign of her.
Had she chickened out?
He was beginning to feel like he’d rearranged his schedule on ahope.Like a lovesick teenager. Not like a man who was patiently following a plan through to its conclusion.
What on earth was he doing? What weretheydoing? He’d been playing the long game, but the long game had begun to feel like a rubber band drawn way, way, way back, and everyone knew that hurt like a bitch when it finally snapped. Was her very elusiveness the attraction? Yet how was it that she didn’t feel elusive—she always seemed to reverberate through him even when she was nowhere near. But every little hit he took of her made him yearn for the next. He wanted her with a ferocity that made the sheets of his bed feel woven of burrs and thistles. That’s how much he tossed and turned at night lately. And he knew she wanted him, too. He’d never experienced anything like their chemistry. But, you know, life. It was what it was. Just because it felt meant to be didn’t mean it would, in fact, be. It seemed, however, inconceivable.
And then after all of that, when he turned around, there she was.
She was wearing a black dress. He’d never seen her in a dress. It hugged her slim curves and her knees were exposed, and a sweep of pale collarbone glowed and her hair was up and her neck was long and slim and pale.
It was hardly the uniform of a siren.