Page 9 of Call My Bluff
The slam of a car door interrupted his daydream, and Noah looked up to see his thoughts turn into reality. Olivia was stalking across the parking lot as if she intended to set the world on fire. Noah stopped walking and watched cautiously. In his experience, women were like Roman candles—relatively harmless until the fuse was lit. But even then, as long as you could think on your feet and keep the business end pointed away from you, it was possible to come out in one piece.
Unfortunately, it looked like Olivia was already smoking at both ends.
A smarter man might have turned around, but Noah liked totest the limits of human intelligence whenever he could. Besides, he’d only live once. He jogged up close enough to be heard, but not so close that she could turn around and slap him; he’d learned that lesson the hard way. “Hey, Pixie!” he called.
Olivia whirled around and met his gaze with more anger in her eyes than he’d thought such a tiny body could hold. “What!?” she spat, and he almost flinched.
“Nothing. I just wanted to see if you’re alright,” he answered.
She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “Do Ilooklike I’m alright?” she demanded.
“You look like you want to kill somebody,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm as if he were dealing with a wild animal. Which, in a way, he was. “Do you maybe want to talk about it first? I’d hate to see a girl like you go to prison.”
Olivia scoffed, shoving her hand through her hair like it had wronged her in some way. Sunlight caught the strands as they slipped through her fingers, and Noah decided the color made him think of Cherry Coke—somehow shifting from brown to red as she moved. “What I want is to hurt something,” she snarled.
Her words sparked an idea in Noah’s mind. “We can do that,” he said, thinking on the fly.
Olivia looked at him like he’d grown an extra head. “I was going to eat my feelings at the dessert bar,” she replied. “I don’tactuallywant to go to prison.”
Noah smiled slightly. “Not prison, the arcade,” he amended.
“The arcade,” she echoed. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. Come with me,” Noah said. Taking a risk, he reached for her hand and closed his fingers around hers before she could protest. Then he pulled her in the direction he’d been going anyway.
“If we end up in your basement, I will remove your eyeballs with a spoon,” Olivia warned as she hurried to keep up with his longer strides.
Noah slowed his pace, though he couldn’t help but laugh. “Noted,” he said.
“And my older brothers are both marines. They can take your arms off your body and beat you with them,” she added, though she hadn’t let go of his hand.
“Just trust me, Pixie. No spoons required,” he said, and he felt his smile stretch tighter.
Forget Roman candles—this girl was a full-size mortar shell!
Good thing they were the best kind.
“You actually meantthe arcade,” Olivia said skeptically, staring up at the neon letters over the building’s front entrance.
“I told you! It’s cheaper than therapy and more fun than prison,” Noah explained. “Plus, you can win stuff when you’re done.” He opened the glass door with an exaggerated flourish before following her inside. “Pick your poison: Skee-Ball, air hockey, Whack-A-Mole, or the pièce de résistance—batting cages, five pitches for a dollar.”
He watched her look around the dimly lit room, her face painted by the colored lights of two dozen flashing game consoles. A bored-looking teenager slumped behind a long prize counter where glass shelves showcased everything from plastic party poppers to small appliances. Over the boy’s head was a full-size kayak and a glittering sign declaring it could be taken home foronlytwelve thousand tickets.
“I want to hit something with a bat,” she said firmly, and Noah chuckled.
“Alright. If the lady wants a bat, she gets a bat,” he said. He went ahead to the counter, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and put a couple of bills on the smudged glass. “Give me two, Garrett.”
The boy surveyed Olivia with obvious surprise before taking the bills and exchanging them for two gold-colored tokens. “Sure thing, man. ’Bout time you brought a chick in with you.”
Noah gave a vague sort of grunt, as if that were somehow an answer, and took the tokens from where they lay on the countertop before turning around. “After you, Pix,” he said, holding his arm out toward another door on their right.
Olivia went in the direction he pointed. “You come here a lot, I take it?” she asked.
He shrugged as they left the main building and wandered into the outdoor area beyond. To the left was the entrance to an eighteen-hole mini-golf course, and straight ahead was a curvy go-cart track complete with a tunnel. But Noah went to the right, toward a towering wall of chain-link fencing.
“Like I said, it’s cheaper than therapy and more fun than prison,” he repeated. They passed a rack of helmets, and he grabbed a small black one from the top row. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “You’ll want number four. It’s got the smoothest pitcher.”
Noah went ahead and loaded one of his tokens into the console at cage four. A round “start” button flashed green, and he waited while Olivia chose a bat from the rack and joined him by the fence. She dropped her purse on the ground and then gathered her hair into a low ponytail before securing it with an elastic from around her wrist.
