“Why?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “Because I thought maybe you’d go have a drink with me. Is that possible? Or do you have ‘em lined up around the corner and can’t be bothered?”
Now she laughed. “I can be bothered,” she said, and tossed down her smoke, ground it out with the pointy heel of her boot, then smiled at Mike from the corner of her eye. “For the right guy.” Did she really just say that? Could she be flirting?
Mike grinned, let his gaze slide down her body and back. “Where do I put in my application for the right guy?”
Rachel smiled. “I think we can consider the application filed,” she said, and thought maybe there was something in the make-me-sexy-and-hurry spell. Okay, okay, it hadn’t worked on Flynn, but, still, Mike was no slouch. He was nice-looking enough, and he had a really nice smile, and nice pale blue eyes, and okay, maybe she could see herself dating this guy, and stepped, surprisingly—like way surprisingly—a little closer to him—
That was when she saw Flynn, standing on the patio with the other guests. Only he wasn’t smoking. With his hands in his pockets, and his head down, he was looking at her. Well, actually, to be perfectly clear . . . he was looking at her flirt with Mike. And he was not smiling his usual charming smile. In fact, he was looking a little grim up there.
“That’s great,” Mike said. “Look, I really gotta get back in there. But I’ll catch you before you leave and get your number, all right?”
“Sure. I’d really like that,” she said brightly. Too brightly. So brightly that it rang false. What was she saying? She didn’t know this guy. Wasn’t the usual protocol to at least have a conversation with a guy before you went out with him? That was a problem with these spells, she was discovering. She didn’t quite know how to act when they started working.
“Okay!” he said, and smiled. “So . . . I’d love to stand out here and freeze my ass off with you all night, but I really have to work,” he said, and reached out to touch her hand.
“I guess I should, too,” she said, and stole a glimpse at Flynn. Only Flynn wasn’t up there looking down at her anymore. He was looking at the blonde hanging off his shoulder.
“You coming?” Mike asked, and Rachel jerked her gaze to him, smiled brightly, and joined him to sneak back inside.
Okay, all right, Rachel told herself as she picked up her tray and some sushi-looking thing and went back into the party room; she shouldn’t have looked up there. She should have let well enough alone, and she damn sure should have looked at her horoscope before she came tonight.
Right. But here she was looking for Flynn again, whom she instantly spotted, with his blonde of course, yukking it up with the tall man whose pet had died and some other woman who was pencil-thin and beautiful. Nothing like a bunch of pencil-thin beauties to bring a woman squeezed into a skirt two sizes too small crashing back to earth.
“Excuse me, miss!” some woman shouted at her before she could get too caught up in Flynn’s world. “Can we get some drinks please?”
Why, of course. Now that the woman had helpfully reduced her down to servant again, all was right with the world.
From across the room, standing with Marlene and Phil Wasserman and some woman whose name he did not catch, Flynn watched Rachel from the corner of his eye. He figured, being a veteran of females, which he could certainly claim to be, that he had made a rather bad mistake in not ringing her after that astonishing little kiss they had shared. Unfortunately, ringing her up was not something he’d really had time to do until right around the moment he saw her lovely face staring at him from across the room tonight.
Not that he had forgotten Rachel, God no. Nor that bloody amazing kiss.
He was intrigued by her. Not all girls went about with stardust in their hair, did they? And she looked, he had to admit, terribly curvaceous in that black sweater and short little skirt and high-heeled, knee-high boots.
Oh no, he’d had every intention of ringing her, and was looking quite forward to an evening with a woman who actually thought of things beyond what royal would be where on any given occasion. It was just that between the two rather involved situations he was currently engaged in, time had, unfortunately, gotten away from him. He’d meant to find a moment to explain it all to her, but then he’d seen her with that American bloke having a fag, and thought it was perhaps too late.