Page 55 of Grinch Girl

“Huh?” I looked up from where I was shelving bottles of Chardonnay, glassy-eyed, caught mid-memory of the moment last night when I’d given Nate a soft kiss goodbye. That little farewell peck had transitioned very swiftly to something else. I’d been easily persuaded to stay for another very hot hour. We’d somehow never made it to that mattress on the bedroom floor, but hopefully I’d blown to bits any fantasies Nate may have had about his shower stall.

Now, I blinked a few times to clear out the lust cobwebs. “What do you mean?”

Bella’s mouth twitched. “Well, I’ve been here for thirty minutes and you haven’t glared at me or rolled your eyes or asked me when I was leaving.” She wrinkled her brow. “You’re not even actively ignoring me. You’re just humming, lost in your own little world.”

I cleared my throat. “When are you leaving?” I asked, glaring at her now, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

“You know, it’s funny,” she mused.

“What’s funny?” I snapped.

Her bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “The first time I met Nate, he impressed me so much. He was so matter-of-fact and knowledgeable. Even though I’d intended to interview a lot of other people before hiring someone to manage my product launch, I hired him within ten minutes. He was just so capable.”

Although I was a little embarrassed that she’d leaped directly to the reason I was in a rosy little bubble this morning, I didn’t really understand her point. “I don’t get what’s funny.”

She widened her eyes emphatically. “I hired him because he reminded me ofyou.”

Disconcerted, I blinked a few times. Before I could deflect, her lips turned into a wicked grin. “Please tell me he’s a better kisser than Eric Dodson.”

Automatically, I made a loud gagging noise. Eric Dodson had been my first make-out session, and it had not been a pleasant experience. I’d run straight from his parents’ basement into Bella’s bedroom and recounted each minute of the ordeal in excruciating detail. We’d stayed up the entire rest of the night wondering if tentacle-tongue would be part of every kiss. Luckily, Bella kissed Michael for the first time a few months later and we were further enlightened.

“Do you ever see him around town?” Bella asked.

“Eric? Yeah.” He was one of the area’s most experienced electricians. He’d fixed something in Greta’s fuse box just last year.

Bella cocked her head. “When you see him, do you think of that awful kissing?”

I shouldn’t. It had been seventeen years ago. But it had been such a formative experience. I closed my eyes. “Every time,” I whispered.

Bella let out a huge honking laugh. It wasn’t her usual tinkling laugh that pealed sweetly like a harp. This was the belly laugh of hers that she only let loose when something really hit her funny bone. I hadn’t heard it in more than a decade, and I’d forgotten what a ridiculous sound it was.

Before I could stop myself, I was laughing too. The hard kind of laughter, where I doubled over wheezing with watery eyes.For a minute, the shop sounded like it was full of overexcited geese instead of two women.

The bell that hung over the front door of the shop pinged. I pulled myself together, wiping my eyes and focusing on the new arrival.

Nate stood in the doorway, wearing a tailored navy suit over a crisp white shirt. His hair was styled with gel, and he wore a pair of tortoiseshell glasses I hadn’t seen before.Hot, my brain sighed, fizzing and smoking at the circuits.

Grinning, I made to disengage myself from the dusty bottles. It was just so sweet of him to come say goodbye to me before leaving town. I’d left him in the middle of the night because I needed to tend to Bruce. “See you on the twentieth,” I’d whispered in his ear, and he’d smiled sleepily.

But he must have woken up and decided to come see me before heading back to Chicago.Awwww.Bella was going to tease me so badly after he left.

Except he didn’t look around the shop for me at all. His gaze alit on Bella’s face, and he held up his phone. “Bella, you’re not going to believe it! I have wonderful news.”

She climbed off the stool and squinted toward his phone screen. “What?”

“You’ve been invited to speak at the national Black Hat conference,” he exclaimed.

Bella practically fell backward, plopping down onto the stool with a large thump. “What?” she asked weakly.

He crowed, “It’s only the biggest conference in your field!” His smile was wide and white, almost fierce. “Mid-March in Las Vegas. It’ll line up perfectly with the release of TowerWizard. Bella, this is huge. You’ll gain instant credibility for your presentation. We couldn’t have bought this kind of publicity.”

“Holy cow,” she said. “I can’t believe it.” She sounded as if she really couldn’t.

Nate’s voice softened slightly. “I know it was a rough last six months for you, but all that nonsense is in the past. This is going to be an incredible success.” He spun on his heel toward the door. “I need to run. Gotta take a conference call in my car on my way home. I’ll email you all the details. We’ll need to start prepping for it immediately after the new year. Perhaps I’ll arrange office space back in the city. Congratulations!”

Then he was gone. He’d hadn’t even seen me. No, worse. He hadn’t evenlookedfor me in my own goddamn store. I felt sick—dizzy and disoriented, plummeting back to Earth. A horrible emotion swamped over me, thick like slime. A sticky mixture of humiliation and disappointment and foolishness.

What in the hell had I been thinking to get so excited and happy about last night? Why had I begun to believe that it had meant something? I knew better. It hadn’t been the start of anything. God, did I know better.

---