A muffled but persistent knock on her front door brought her up with a splash and a toppling of at least one candle as the book went flying across the bathroom.
She sat for a moment, straining to hear. It couldn’t be Dagne—she’d walk on in. If it wasn’t Dagne, and it wasn’t Myron . . .
Flynn.
She heard the second round of raps on the door more clearly and managed to get out of the tub and throw the towel around her, but her hands were wet, and she wrestled with the doorknob for a moment before the thing finally came open. Flying across her bed, she panicked at the sound of another series of knocks, and vaulted down the stairs, skidded across the polished oak floor, almost slamming into the front door, which she managed to throw open at the same time she grabbed for her towel before it slipped from her body.
Chapter Fourteen
“What?” Dagne demanded on the other side of the screen door when Rachel groaned.
“Why didn’t you just come in?”
“I can’t find my key.” She adjusted the heavy stick thing she was holding.
“What is that?” Rachel asked, peering at it.
“It’s a coatrack. I got it off eBay,” Dagne said proudly, adjusting it again. “But it’s really heavy.”
Rachel pushed the screen door open and stepped aside, let Dagne struggle through with her big wooden coatrack, which she managed to get inside by taking only an inch of skin from one of Rachel’s shins. Rachel closed the screen door, grabbed the front door, and was shutting it when she saw a sporty blue car drive by that looked vaguely familiar. But not so familiar that she was willing to stand there and freeze to death and figure out whose it was, so she shut the door.
“Why don’t you have any clothes on?” Dagne asked, standing there with her ridiculous coatrack.
“Because, Dagne, I was taking a bath. Why did you bring a coatrack here?”
“It’s for you,” Dagne said, beaming. “I bought it for dirt cheap from eBay and figured you could use it. And I don’t have room for it in my apartment.” She put the coatrack next to the door, stood back to admire it.
“I’m going to ask a crazy question here . . . but why do you buy things you don’t need?” Rachel asked.
“Who says I don’t? I’d keep it, but it’s too big for my place.” She walked into the living room and tossed aside her coat. “It smells funny in here,” she said thoughtfully. “Has Myron been here?”
“Yeah—he brought my phone. Listen, I’m going to go get dressed.”
“Wait!” Dagne cried. “Did he call?”
With one foot on the stairs, Rachel glanced over her shoulder at Dagne. “No,” she said, feeling absurdly disappointed, like she’d just missed winning the lottery by one number. “Nothing. Not even a message.” Those words tasted bitterly familiar in her mouth, and without waiting for Dagne’s response, she ran up the stairs to dress.
She returned a few minutes later in a mock turtleneck and a pair of faded jeans. Dagne was sitting on the couch going through her spell book, having helped herself to a glass of wine, some crackers, and the last of the cheese. Rachel didn’t get paid for another week. She sure hoped she could make a box of mac and cheese and saltine crackers last that long.
“So listen,” Dagne said, flipping through the pages of the spell book as if they were a fashion magazine, “don’t be too upset that he didn’t call.”
“I’m not upset—who said I was upset? Whatever,” Rachel said. “I just saw him last night. If he calls, he calls. If he doesn’t, no skin off my nose. I can take him or leave him, really.” And that was such an enormous lie that Rachel couldn’t even look at Dagne.
Dagne kept flipping through the pages of her spell book. After a moment, she said, “I read in Cosmo that they did this study of who are the sexiest people, as in nations? And the Hungarians were the sexiest, can you believe it? I would have guessed Spaniards.”
“Spaniards?”
“Like Antonio Banderas,” Dagne said with a dreamy sigh. “Anyway, the Hungarians have sex like a million times a week. And then it was the Russians, and the Americans were up there, too. But guess where the British were?”
“I don’t know—where?”
“Almost at the bottom. Just above Iraq.”
Rachel laughed.
“I’m just saying, you might be better off if he never calls. He probably didn’t call because he doesn’t think like most guys.”
“Huh?” Rachel asked as she walked into the kitchen to get herself a wineglass.
“I mean, most guys think about sex all the time, something like once every seven seconds—”
“No way!”
“Yes, it’s true! They reported that in Men’s Health magazine. But Flynn is British, so he probably doesn’t think about it all that much, maybe something like once every seven days. Therefore, he doesn’t call.”