Page 47 of The Fall Back Plan
“Right, well.” I slide my hands in my pockets and feel a small knot of thread in one. I roll it around in my fingers, relieved for somewhere to focus my nervous energy. “Glad you understand. Thanks for being cool about it. I’m going to go ahead to the library. So.” We stand there looking at each other, the mother of all awkward pauses stretching between us, until I say, “Okay, bye.”
“Jolie,” Lucas says as I shift to step past him. “Did you just reject me for a date I didn’t ask you on?”
I stop. “Yeah, Mary Louise told me that’s why you stopped by yesterday. I figured it was better than letting you get it all out when I knew I would say no.”
He scratches his chin, and it makes me want to know how soft his beard is for myself. I didn’t think I was into beards, but I guess I hadn’t seen the right guy in one. Not that he’s the right guy for me. He’s just the right guy to make a beard look good, that’s all.
“Mary Louise said I stopped by to ask you out?”
I’d dreaded this whole conversation because I knew it would be awkward, but something in his tone tips me off that this is about to get much, much worse. “Yes?” I fight not to turn it into a question and lose.
“Why would she think that?”
Oh. No.
I definitely look like a clown now. The kind that trips over her own feet and falls flat on her face. I try to pull myself together, to channel the cool Jolie McGraw, top-performing portfolio manager at Blue Slate, telling our new guys they better straighten up and fly right if they want to stay in my division. “You didn’t come in yesterday to ask me out?”
“I did not.” Something like amusement lurks in his eyes. He’s laughing at my expense, and I can’t blame him.
“Ah. Well, then I guess we didn’t need to have a chat after all.” I pull my hands from my pockets and then in a move I can’t stop—a move that feels like I’m watching it from out of body, a slow-motion scene in a disaster film so no one can miss a single excruciating detail—I hold out my hand for a shake.
A freaking handshake.
Lucas accepts it, his expression confused again.
I give him my best business grip. “Thanks again.”Whaaat?“Bye.”
“Jolie,” he says, not letting my hand go, which results in me jerking to a halt because of my “getting the crud out of here” momentum. “I did come by to talk to you yesterday. I still need to.”
I slide my hand from his and tuck my hair behind my ear, like that’s somehow smooth. “Sure. About what?”
“We should talk about this in my office.”
This has to be about Shane. Whatever this is, I’d prefer to hear it in the crisp air of late September and not inside his office. “It’s fine,” I say. “It might be nice to have some bad news to make me forget my total embarrassment.” I expect him to smile.
He hesitates, no smile.
I give him a nod that is meant to say “Out with it,” and it must say that, because out it comes.
“You’ve been named as the Doll Bandit.”
I hear the words. I do not understand the words. I run them through my mind again. And then I turn on my heel, march up the stairs, and go looking for his office.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lucas
Notoncehasthiswoman done anything I’ve expected.
I follow Jolie up the stairs, nodding at Becky to buzz us through as we enter the lobby. “Through the door, hang a left, and go all the way down to the office that has my name on it.”
Jolie doesn’t acknowledge she’s heard me, but she turns left and follows my directions, stopping at my office door. She stands to the side, waiting for me to open it and escort her in.
She heads straight to the chair in front of my desk and sinks down. “Who said what now?” She has the question out before I’m all the way seated.
“Someone came in here yesterday afternoon to report that one of the dolls was left for her daughter, and she thinks there’s a correlation between your return to town and the dolls cropping up.”
Her eyes narrow. “Who was it?”
