Page 12 of Flirting in Traffic

“Tell Rachel to stop avoiding me.”

“Well, good morning to you too. What are you so grouchy about?”

“I’m not grouchy. Just tell Rachel to stop avoiding me. Is she on your other line right this second?”

Esa could tell by Carla’s prolonged pause that she’d guessed accurately.

“You already told her about Finn, didn’t you?” Esa snarled even more than she’d intended when a silver Porsche cut her off. What was it about driving a sports car that brought out the competitive idiot in everyone? She jerked Rachel’s convertible into the outside lane and sped past the Porsche.

“Why, is there something juicy to tell?” Carla asked brightly.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

“Uh-huh,” Carla replied skeptically. “I hope you’re not p.o.’d at me for not correcting Finn when he called you Kitten last night before he asked you to dance. He got the idea from the license plates. I just thought it was sorta funny considering how you hate Rachel’s nickname.”

Esa’s eyelids narrowed in the bright sunlight bouncing off Lake Michigan. Finn had made a lot of mistaken assumptions about her thanks to Rachel’s sophomoric vanity plates. “Why does everyone insist on calling Rachel that stupid name? She’s twenty-seven years old for God’s sake, not a gum-smacking Mouseketeer.”

“It’s sexy—fits her image. She’s had it legally changed, you know,” Carla stated matter-of-factly.

Esa rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in the mood to talk about Rachel’s sexy image. “Carla, listen to me. Listen very carefully. I forbid—do you hear me?—forbid you to say a word about me to Jess or Finn Madigan. Pretend like we hardly know each other.”

“Why?” Carla asked, clearly shocked. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to avoid Finn. Esa, he’s the most delectable, yummy—”

“He’s a man, Carla, not a midnight snack.”

Esa almost groaned out loud when she registered her own words. Apparently she’d been of a different mind last night when she’d kissed and licked Finn’s beautiful bronzed torso before she’d dropped to her knees and—

Heat flooded her cheeks.

“He’s the best kind of snack,” Carla continued suggestively. “The decadent kind that makes you burn calories instead of pack on the pounds. So what are you in a tizzy about? Obviously Finn wasn’t as entertaining as his little brother. I say little only in regard to their ages, mind you, because Jess is far from being little in any other sense of the word.”

“Thanks for that completely unsolicited piece of information,” Esa grated out. “Now, two things—one, tell Rachel I’m going to catch up with her so she better stop avoiding me. And two, if you say a word to Jess Madigan about who I am or what I do for a living, you can start looking for a new job come Monday.”

“Jeez, don’t hold back, Esa. You’ll get an ulcer if you keep in all that acid instead of spewing it out all over your friends. Do I even get to ask you how things went with Finn?”

Esa shot a dirty look at a blonde woman who shot past her in a dark blue Lamborghini. She punched the accelerator and zoomed past her challenger. Driving a fast car did strange things to people’s personality, no doubt about it.

“How did things go with Finn? They went awful. Terrible. Now you know, so the answer to your question is no. Don’t ask me any more about Finn Madigan. Not if you value our friendship.”

Esa understood why her parents hadn’t answered the phone earlier this morning when she found that their handsome, lovingly restored Victorian home was empty except for Felix and Sylvester, their two fat cats. She eventually discovered her mom and dad on their hands and knees in their beloved garden.

“Morning, sweetie.” Lexie Ormond waved a handful of dried-out cattail stalks in the air. She grinned when Esa dropped a kiss on her proffered cheek and straightened her floppy straw hat in the process. “Having dinner at Marisa Cartland’s tonight. Don’t want to be sunburned. She’s thinking about selling her house—too large now that her kids are in college.”

“Think she’ll let you sell it?” Esa asked, referring to her mother’s profession as a residential real estate agent.

“You know your mother. She’ll have the listing by the time hors d’oeuvres are served,” her father said. Esa smiled when she saw that he’d just smeared some black soil on his nose as he adjusted his glasses. David Ormond was a professor of physics at Loyola University. His perpetual vague, distracted expression and rumpled clothing coincided with his brilliant yet spacey academic persona perfectly.

He grinned sheepishly when Esa wiped the dirt off his nose.

“Gorgeous weather for October. Kitten said it was ten degrees cooler in Indianapolis,” he said.

“Rachel called this morning?” Now she possessed solid proof that her sister was avoiding her!

Esa’s anger had simmered just below the boiling point the entire time she helped her father plant a maple sapling in the backyard. It didn’t diminish when, despite her mother’s protests, Esa manically raked all the fallen leaves in the large backyard into a great pile.

“The neighborhood kids will have them scattered all over the place by evening,” Lexie said thoughtfully as she inspected her daughter’s efforts.

“Give the little monsters hell if they even look like they’re going to jump in my leaves.”

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