Another voice. “?La necesitamos!”
“?Ya Voy!” I snapped. They needed me, but I couldn’t move. Dash Wallace had asked me something. What was it? I tried to remember as he rolled the ball in his perfect, strong hands. I tried not to think about how they’d feel on my body or anything at all except for making a sentence.
“It’s for my dad. He’s the most loyal living Dodger fan.”
He found a spot and signed while he spoke. “You brought all these kids out here to get this signed for your dad?”
He handed the ball back without blowing on it. I’d wanted to see that. I’d wanted the little second of delay it would cause and the warmth of his breath on something I was going to touch.
But even in the time it took for him to hand me a ball with wet Sharpie ink, I absorbed what he’d said. Was he accusing me of arranging a field trip for my own ends? It wasn’t that simple. Jim had the budget for a PE field trip, and I was a fan, so I’d agreed to chaperone, but who the hell was he to assume I’d dragged forty kids ten blocks in a broken-down school bus to get his damn signature?
I didn’t say any of that. Somewhere, I had a really snappy joke about something, and he’d smile with those teeth—which were perfect except for the left front overlapping the right just a tiny bit—but the joke got swallowed before I could process it.
“Thank you. If it was too much trouble to sign without an insult, you shouldn’t have bothered. My dad probably wouldn’t notice it was missing.” I turned my back on him before I could be more of an idiot.
I pocketed my ball and ran to get the kids their lunch. When I looked around, he was gone. Good thing. There was nothing more offensive than a man blessed with looks where he should have been given courtesy.
two
Vivian
My drive home from work was ridiculous. Friday traffic going west from East Hollywood was a running joke.
“Can you make it by six thirty?” Francine’s voice came though my speakerphone as I stopped at a green to avoid blocking the box at Doheny.
“Not to Silver Lake, I can’t.”
“I want you to meet him. You have to meet him. That’s it, I’m laying down the law, and he’s going to enforce it.”
I made it across before the light changed. It was the little victories that made life worth living. “If I date him, are you going to make cop jokes?”
“Hot cop jokes. Hot cop. Hot. With ink.”
Francine had a listening problem. When I’d told her I wanted a nice guy, she confused that with good-looking, tattooed, and law-abiding.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll try to hold him for you. But I can’t speak for all the other girls there.”
“If he’s so desperate to get in someone’s pants—”
“Vivian Foster. Don’t even. Just get there and put a little mascara on, okay? And try not to start finding reasons to hate him before you even get there. Just go with an open mind. Have fun. You don’t have to marry the guy.”
“All right. I won’t marry him.”
I got stuck behind an SUV at a light. Couldn’t see anything down the block, which I found the most frustrating thing in the world.
She blew me a loud kiss. “Love you, blondie.”
“Love you too, brunettey.”
We hung up. I wasn’t the demonstrative type. I didn’t say I love you all the time, and I wasn’t girlish or giggly. I hated shopping in pairs and preferred staying home with a good romance novel to a girls’ night out. But I figured sometimes you have to meet someone halfway. So if Francine needed me to escort her to the bathroom when we were out or say I loved her at the end of a phone call, I’d do it for her.
When Carl and I broke up six months earlier, she had been there for me. She took me out and let me cry on her new blouse. She got me drunk and made sure I didn’t go home with anyone but her. But as the months wore on and I still wasn’t interested in dating, she got more and more worried. Which meant she had to fix it.
I didn’t want to be late for the setup with the hot cop, but when I pulled into my driveway, I was too tired to even think about wearing mascara.
My dumpy little Nissan with sun-damaged paint and a missing hubcap looked ridiculous on my block. I lived in Beverly Hills. It was almost embarrassing. Almost. Because having regular trash pickup and flat sidewalks wasn’t a joke. Neither was feeling safe when I got home late. And the library was gorgeous. The school district was one of the best, which would matter when I had kids, and the restaurants were great when I could afford them. Which was never.
The front door was ajar. If I lived where I worked, I would have panicked. But this was Beverly Hills, and an open door meant I didn’t have to worry about intruders as much as I had to worry about my stepfather.
“Dad?” I called from the porch. “Dad?” I said again, dropping my bag by the door.