Page 5 of Call My Bluff
Noah stared after her for a moment before letting a wide smile creep across his face.
This girl was gonna be trouble.
“So, I camehome to find this guy”—Jake jerked his thumb toward Noah—“smashing holes in his bedroom wall with a hammer.”
“I washearingvoices!” Noah exclaimed from his seat on the floor. “I thought I was going crazy! You’d be tearing open the drywall, too.”
Olivia laughed from the love seat behind him, and Noah felt her socked foot nudge his ribs. “What was it?” she asked.
“A Bluetooth speaker. I found it near the baseboards.”
“But why was it there?” Lexie added, piping up from where she sat with Jake on the larger couch.
“Why not?” Jake answered. “The things Noah and Conner do to each other defy logic.”
Noah shrugged. It was true.
The small motion made the back of his arm rub against Olivia’s shin, and he tried to ignore the heat that radiated through his shirt. She could have moved her leg when he’d sat down. She could have moved it any time after.
But she hadn’t, and he was taking that as a good sign.
“I think he had help with this one,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Jake. “There is no reality in which I see Conner James doing the army crawl underneath a house.”
Jake held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Hey, man, it wasn’t me. I stay out of it,” he insisted.
“What else have you done?” Olivia asked, and Noah twisted to look up at where she sat cradling a large yellow bowl of fresh popcorn. The hot, buttery smell wasn’t quite enough to erase the fruity scent that seemed to cling to her skin. It was somehow both sharp and sweet—which made sense when he considered the girl wearing it.
He propped one arm up on the couch, his fingers only inches from the bare skin of her leg. He itched to touch her just to see what she’d do. If Jake and Lexie hadn’t been there, he might have.
“A little bit of everything, to be honest,” he said. “Once, I filled the showerhead with red Kool-Aid powder, and Conner reenacted that famous scene fromPsycho. Then he filled the air vents in my car with glitter, so I changed all the contacts in his phone to ‘Bob Dylan,’ and he accidentally sent a questionable text message to his mother. Then he left a life-size blow-up doll in my bed.”
“While you were sleeping,” Jake added, and Olivia laughed out loud.
“Yeah, I almost wet myself when I woke up,” Noah admitted with a sheepish grin. “But Melinda is a wonderful girl. You should come meet her sometime.”
“Melinda?” Olivia barked, a handful of popcorn frozen halfway to her mouth. “Don’t tell me you still have it?”
“Her,” Noah corrected, “and, absolutely, I do! I’m gonna prop her up by the altar at Conner’s wedding.”
Jake snickered. “You also duct-taped his bedroom door shut and then assaulted him with a paintball gun when he got out of the shower,” he added.
“Yeah, I did do that,” Noah replied, still keenly aware of the pressure of Olivia’s leg against his side.
“Okay, so explain the snake,” she cut in. “First of all, why?”
“Because my manager is a menace,” Noah said, as if this were the most obvious answer in the world. “Keeping him humble is my service to society.”
“And how do you still have a job?” Olivia asked.
“Because I didn’t just waltz into the store with a rattlesnake over my shoulder,” Noah explained. “There is no video evidenceof me ever having said snake in my possession on store property. He can’t prove I left it there, and he knows it. He’s been trying for nearly a month.”
Olivia nudged her foot against his ribs again. “Sounds like you’re the menace.”
“I prefer ‘vigilante,’” he replied. “Much more mysterious.” Then he gave in to temptation and brushed the tips of his fingers against the side of her knee, but Olivia didn’t blush or giggle.
She also didn’t move away.
Interesting, Noah thought.
