Page 69 of Clara Knows Best

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just wondering why you think you shouldn’t say that I look great or whatever.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

She was on a sudden mission to make him say it out loud. A suicide mission? Possibly. “Not to me. Why don’t you explain it?”

“I just don’t want you to think I really notice the way you look.”

“Iwantyou to notice,” she informed him, and held her breath for his reaction.

Her meaning soared right over his head. “I know. You like people to notice your clothes and makeup. That’s why you get so dressed up every day.”

At times he seemed so normal, she reflected wistfully. And at other times he had the emotional IQ of a cinder block.

“Look, there’s your boyfriend.”

She turned in surprise, and understood when she saw DeWitt Petty across the crowd. “Oh, great.”

“Do you like that guy or what? You better just tell me.”

“No, I don’t like him! I went on one date with him three months ago,” she confessed, feeling quite embarrassed about that fact now. “We had dinner. You can admit he’s kind of hot, right? I didn’t know he was like, nuts. It freaked me out. He asked for a second date and I said no.”

“Nuts how?” he asked briefly, his eyes tracking DeWitt.

“I don’t know, just really creepy vibes. I can’t describe it. He was super polite but his eyes were kind of…off. I started thinking maybe I was on a date with a serial killer. I texted Yoli from the bathroom and acted surprised when she showed up to get me out of there.”

“Jeez, Clara.”

“I’m not a paranoid, nervous kind of person,” she insisted.

“I know,” he said, taking the wind from her sails. “And your dad taught you to listen to your instincts. I had the same training.”

“Right, yes. I just don’t know what to do now. I thought maybe it’d be better not to make him mad.”

“Nah, I think we should make him mad,” Jesse said, and Clara turned again to see that DeWitt was about ten yards away, and coming right toward them.

“No,” she disagreed quickly. “Don’t cause a scene. This isn’t the place—”

“The more witnesses, the better,” Jesse interrupted, and pulled her into his arms.

She gasped, grabbing him for balance. “What are you—”

But his kiss cut her off.

23

A hug, Jesse realized much later, would have been equally effective and far less complicated.

The kiss was supposed to be simple, nothing more than a prop in a very straightforward ruse designed to infuriate any run-of-the-mill, irrationally possessive stalker. But, for a reason he could not fathom, Clara had thrown herself much too hard into her role, and in doing so had distracted him badly. Grievously, in fact. And it was only afterseveral secondsof complete, heart-stopping, mindless idiocy that he had managed to rip his mouth away from hers. He recalled staring down at the beautiful, sweetly passionate woman in his arms, probably with his mouth hanging open, and trying without success to reconcile her with little Clara Wilder—little, highly annoying Pretty Princess Clara Wilder.

And that was when DeWitt Petty had slammed into him with the momentum of a freight train.

“Find my tooth,” he had later commissioned his fuming Valentine, while medical professionals bent over him. “I need it—it’s a molar.”

What did she have to be so mad about, anyway?

“You’re not gonna believe this, but you’re not the first concussion we’ve seen tonight who also fell into the creek,” the paramedic had said.

Now they were at Yoli’s.

---