Mad, Bad and Blonde - Cathie Linz [48]
Before round three, she knocked his pencil to the floor, forcing him to lean under the table to get it.
“I’ll help you,” she said before diving under the table to join him. “You’re a geek, remember?” she whispered. “Stop being such a Marine.”
“I am a Marine.”
“A former Marine,” she corrected him. “In danger of blowing your geek cover.”
“You two okay under here?” Ed asked as he bent down to check out what was going on. “We have extra pencils on the table, you know.”
“It was his good luck pencil,” Faith said.
“It didn’t help him spell gnat correctly,” Ed pointed out.
Caine growled.
Faith elbowed him, reminding him that geeks don’t growl unless someone challenges their equations.
“Let’s resume the game.” Ed sat up.
Faith shot Caine a warning look and put her finger to her lips. She then sat up so fast, she got dizzy. Caine took his time.
Ed said, “You never did tell us what you do for a living, Marvin.”
Caine shot the guy a look that said, I eat pompous lizards like you for breakfast.
“He can’t talk about his work,” Faith said.
Ed raised a bushy eyebrow. “He told you that under the table?”
Faith nodded. Caine wasn’t the only one who could perfect a look of intimidation. As a librarian, Faith had that look down pat as well. And she directed it full force at Ed. “He’s doing top secret research.”
Ed made the mistake of laughing. “And you bought that?”
Faith grabbed Caine’s arm to stop him from leaping over the table and shoving Ed through the wall.
To her surprise, Caine seemed very calm.
She wasn’t sure that was a good thing, however. He then casually rattled off a chemical equation so complicated-sounding that she was stunned. Ed seemed equally flummoxed. Jane Austen may have seen people flummoxed, but that facial expression was pretty hard to come by these days,
Ed shut up, and they played round three without any further problems. Unexpectedly, Faith ended up with the most points and won the game. Her prize was a Librarian Action Figure. It seemed her former profession followed her wherever she went.
Caine also followed her. She had to ask, “What did you say to Ed?”
“Something my father taught me.”
“Whatever it was, it worked. I assume you’re here because you spoke to the same former coworker who told me about Weldon’s interest in this group,” she said in an undertone.
Caine nodded and slung his backpack on with renewed confidence. The slouch was gone. But Weldon’s unclaimed name tag remained on the table. He’d been a no-show yet again.
“What’s next?” Faith asked Caine.
“You go home and play with your Librarian Action Figure, and I solve this case.” He strode off, leaving her standing there shaking her head. The man was clearly clueless if he thought she was giving up that easily. She was a Mighty Question Mark in the world of punctuation superheroes. She had not yet begun to fight.
Okay, she was heading home now because she was clearly mixing her metaphors along with everything else. It had been a long day and an even longer evening. Time to regroup after overexplosure—er overexposure to Caine.
She’d only had a glass of Chardonnay, so she couldn’t blame her messed-up thoughts on her alcohol consumption. This was all Caine’s fault. That orgasm had scrambled her brains. He was the reason she had to hail a cab instead of taking public transportation home.
But the car that pulled up at the curb beside her wasn’t a taxi. It looked remarkably like Caine’s black Mustang.
The door opened as he shoved it from inside. “Get in,” he growled.
“I’d rather not.”
“Do not make me come get you,” he warned.
She was no fool. She got in the car. “Clearly you don’t want this night to end. Why is that?”
“Because I’m not going to leave you on some strange street corner to find your own way home in the middle of the night.”
“First, it’s ten p.m., not the middle of the night. Secondly, this is not a strange street corner. We’re on the edge of Wrigleyville. It’s a good