Trust Me on This - Jennifer Crusie [14]
“I prefer to pay for my own drink, thank you.”
“Ah, you’re independent.” He shook his head at her apologetically. “Well, then …” He leaned closer, and she could see the deep blue of his eyes. He was probably doing that because he thought women loved deep blue eyes. He should have tried it on another woman. Dennie could spot colored contacts a mile away. He smiled at her. “How about letting me pay for dinner?”
Someone tapped on Bondman’s shoulder, and Dennie turned to see her date for the evening. John-Boy meets Opie, she thought. Get me out of here.
“That’s not a bad line, but I used it earlier,” Alec told him. “Sorry.”
Bondman stopped smiling for an instant, and Dennie thought there might be a fight. Clash of the Nerds. She opened her mouth to head them off, but then Alec smiled at Bondman like a half-wit, and Bondman smiled back, much the same smile, and said, “No problem. Maybe my timing will get better later.”
“Oh, it’s bound to get better,” Alec said, clapping Bondman on the back. “No hard feelings, right?” He looked past Bondman and smiled at Dennie. “You look super,” he told her. “Let’s go have dinner so I can show you off.”
Dennie looked at them both. It was a good time to be giving up men if this was what the planet had to offer. If it wasn’t for needing Alec’s aunt to convince Janice Meredith—
Alec looked her up and down. “Great dress,” he said. “Gosh.”
It was going to be a long evening. She held out her hand. “Lead on, Macduff.”
“Actually, that’s ‘lay on.’ ” Alec took her hand and helped her off the bar stool. “It’s what Macbeth said right before he lost his head.”
“Well, don’t count on it happening again.” Dennie pulled him toward the door and away from Brian Bondman. “I’m hungry, but I’m not about to lose my head.”
* * *
Bond watched them go. The guy in the suit had to be one of those college professors. Talking like a hayseed and quoting Macbeth. Fine. He’d take him for every cent he had. And then he’d take the woman away from him too. He turned back to the bar and brooded on his plans for revenge and profit while he drank Dennie’s daiquiri.
“So where did you learn Macbeth?” Dennie asked Alec when they’d been seated in the restaurant on gilt chairs, separated from each other by three quarters of a yard of virgin linen and an ornate brass candleholder covered with brass ivy. “Classic comics?”
“My aunt Vic is a British lit professor.” Alec moved the candleholder to one side. He absent-mindedly turned it upside down to look at the bottom of the holder, and as Dennie said, “No!” the candle fell out and rolled to the edge of the table, still burning. He lunged to get it and knocked over his water glass as Dennie caught the candle. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.
Dennie took the holder from him and replaced the candle before she set it to one side. She narrowed her eyes at him, suddenly suspicious. That whole move had seemed, well, false somehow. “Your aunt,” she prompted him as she mopped up the water with her napkin.
“Uh, right. My aunt.” Alec furrowed his brow as he concentrated. “She made my brother and me each pick a play from Shakespeare one summer in exchange for hauling us to a cottage on Lake Michigan. My brother, the history nut, grabbed Henry V. I asked her if there was anything with a lot of killing and—”
“She gave you Macbeth.”
“Actually she gave me a choice between Hamlet and Macbeth.”
Dennie held up her hand. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You counted the pages.”
“Yep.” Alec grinned. “My aunt didn’t raise no dummies.”
Dennie began to revise her opinion of him. He was good-looking if you liked dumb grins and boyish enthusiasm. And there was something else there, something about that flash she’d seen in his eyes in the bar. And the whole bit with the candle wasn’t right. He moved