Chapter 9
NINE
T he rounds moved faster after that. Who could say a tongue twister three times in a row without making a mistake? Who could balance books on their head without dropping them as they walked across the room? What bird can fly backward?
“Hummingbird,” she blurted before anyone else could answer. Easy.
“Okay, Blaine and Xanthe are tied at six points each. This next question could wrap things up,” Mae announced half an hour later.
Xanthe couldn’t believe how fast it had gone by. Or how invested she was in winning.
Willow picked a card. “Describe your most awkward kiss.”
“Last night,” Tripp said without pause. “I dozed off on the couch with Willow and woke up to a big wet kiss on the lips. When I opened my eyes, Rufus was staring down at me instead of Willow.”
Xanthe and the others laughed. “Aww, he loves you.”
“Yeah. It was still gross though.”
“Mae, your turn,” Willow said.
“My most awkward kiss was the summer I turned fourteen. I was at summer camp, and my friend’s twelve-year-old brother kissed me in the pool right in front of everyone.” She cringed. “He followed me around like a lost puppy, and I got mocked for the rest of the week.”
Willow snickered. “Blaine?” She was more curious than she wanted to be.
“I was eighteen, at a friend’s birthday party. And it was my friend’s mom.”
Xanthe barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Of course it was.
“We were in the hot tub.”
“Why were you in the hot tub with your friend’s mom?” It was weird. And gross.
“She got in with me ,” he insisted, holding his hands up like he was totally innocent.
She didn’t buy it. “And you didn’t think to stop her?”
“Not at first. She was drunk and caught me off guard. I didn’t see it coming and sure as hell didn’t know what to do.”
“Mine tops that.” There was no way she was letting him win this last point.
“I was sixteen, and I’d met up with my best friend’s ex-boyfriend to talk because I thought he was heartbroken about their breakup.
As he was leaving, he pinned me up against his car, said he’d really wanted me all along, and jammed his tongue down my throat. ”
“My friend’s mom was naked,” Slater added.
“Whoa,” Tripp murmured, eyes widening, stretching the scar tissue around the right one.
Xanthe stared at Slater. This was her point. “My friend’s ex had braces, and it was so rough he cut my lips.”
“My friend turned on the patio lights as she was kissing me.”
“Well, my friend drove up just as he was kissing me .”
“When I looked up, her husband and son were standing there staring at us.”
More gasps. Xanthe ignored them, scowled. “I shoved him back and punched him in the mouth. Cut his lips and my knuckles. But it was worth it, and I’m glad my friend saw it happen.”
“My friend’s mom started crying, saying I’d come on to her. She got out of the hot tub and ran after him, naked in front of all our friends.”
That was something out of a movie, she would give him that. If he was telling the truth. But she was winning this game. “My friend rammed her car into his. Busted his headlights.”
“My friend told me it wasn’t the first time she’d been caught with one of us.”
She narrowed her eyes. Her story was way better, dammit. “The police came.”
“Four other guys at the party told me it had happened to them before, and that it was a lot more than kissing.”
Ew! “The ex had to get stitches in his lip. And he deserved every one of them.”
“The husband served her with divorce papers right in front of us.” He paused. “It was a bad party.”
Xanthe faltered a moment. She couldn’t top that without lying, so she looked at Willow. “Well?”
Willow opened her mouth. Closed it. “I…think I need to make this a committee decision,” she said. “Because that was…a lot.”
She and Slater looked at the others expectantly.
“Blaine,” Tripp said.
“Xanthe,” Mae said.
She and Slater looked back at Willow.
“Xanthe,” Willow finally said.
“Yes!” Xanthe jumped up from her chair and did a little dance. “Ha! Take that ,” she said to Slater. Damn, that felt good. Not as good as freeing Nootka, but still. Suck it, loser.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, watching her with a bemused expression while his muscles bunched beneath the fabric in a really distracting way.
She absolutely did not imagine what he looked like without a shirt.
“You’re a humble and gracious winner, I see.”
“Not even a little,” she answered with a grin.
“On that note,” Mae said dryly, “let’s all be friends again and enjoy dessert. I made two kinds of pie. Dutch apple with a crunchy oatmeal streusel topping, and sour cherry.”
Oh, no. Pie was her kryptonite. And homemade pie? That was a whole other level of temptation.
“Xanthe, will you get them? They’re cooling on the counter.”
“Sure.” She shot a smug smile at Slater on her way inside, but it faded when he smiled back. A slow, sensual smile that teetered right on the verge of cocky and made her pulse beat faster against her will.
She brought the pies to the table. The conversation flowed easily while Mae cut and served them generous slices of pie. Xanthe had a slice of each because she figured she’d earned them after helping save a whale and beating Slater.
As they finished, Willow groaned and pushed her plate away. “That was so good, Mae, but I feel like I’m gonna explode. Anyone want to walk Rufus with me and burn off some of this?”
“I’ll go,” Xanthe said eagerly, and carried her plate to the kitchen, aware of Slater’s gaze following her. And of her heightened awareness of him.
A walk was exactly what she needed to stop that BS. “Is Rufus in the truck?”
“No, I left him over at my grandma’s place. I mean, my place. He’s probably still patrolling the backyard for raccoons.”
“Mae, can I borrow a jacket? Mine’s still wet.”
“Of course, dear.”
Xanthe took one from the hall stand by the front door and zipped it up as they stepped outside. The night air was cool and crisp, a slight breeze making the remaining leaves shiver on the trees and the tall tops of the evergreens sway.
Willow walked beside her through the gate and up Mae’s driveway. “Never knew you were so competitive.”
“No? I can be.”
“Apparently.”
“I know it’s petty, but I really wanted to beat him.”
“Yeah, we saw.”
“Have you met the person he’s seeing?”
“No. He’s really private, and Tripp doesn’t get in other people’s business, so he’s never mentioned anything like that to me.”
Xanthe shook her head. “Why do guys never talk about important things?”
Willow laughed. “I don’t know.”
Was it serious? Xanthe had trouble imagining someone like Slater in a serious relationship. Men with that kind of money and power seemed to think women were disposable.
Silvery moonlight lit the darkened street as they walked toward Willow’s sweet cottage that her grandmother had left her. A dog started barking out back.
“There’s my boy. Hey, Rufus, wanna go walkies?” Willow called out.
The barking intensified as they neared the driveway. Motion lights flicked on out front, illuminating the fence, and Willow laughed when the barking stopped. Xanthe saw three small round holes cut into it, and a curious nose sticking out of the bottom one. “Oh my God, that’s adorable.”
“I know, right? He was being a lunatic running around the inside perimeter when I first brought him home, so I hired Tripp to cut spyholes for him.” She grabbed the leash where it was draped over the top of the gate panel set into the fence.
“He’s still a bit of a nut at first with people he doesn’t know, so just ignore him at first, and he’ll calm down. ”
“Got it.” Xanthe wasn’t the only one with a big heart when it came to animals. She adored that Willow had taken on this senior rescue that had never really been treated as a true pet before.
“All right, here we go,” Willow said as she came out of the gate with a chocolate-brown shepherd-ish mix with a graying muzzle. One of his ears flopped over at the tip. “Rufus, this is Xanthe. She’s coming with us.”
The dog sniffed at her and settled into a walk on Willow’s left. She and Xanthe chatted on the way back down the street. Willow took them on a path that cut down the hill through to the bottom of the neighborhood, then down and across the main road that led toward town.
“You still thinking of renting out your place?” Xanthe asked, thinking about the future.
“Yes. Why, you interested?”
“I might be. The place I’m renting is close to the research station. If this development passes, they’ll both be torn down within a matter of weeks or months.”
“Where will you go if it does?” Rufus stopped to sniff at the ground, so they paused at the far side of the road.
“ When it gets torn down.” It was only a matter of when. She sighed. “Even if the development doesn’t pass, they still own the land and everything on it.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said. “I know it must be hard for you, and I hate that this involves Blaine, because he’s a good guy.
No, seriously, he is,” she added when Xanthe shot her a look.
“Tripp loves him. I don’t know what happened to them in Syria—well, beyond the day my brother was killed—but Tripp said Blaine’s the reason he made it home alive. ”
Okay, now she was curious. That was definitely a story she wanted to hear. And it was nice to hear that Slater had that in his character.
It seemed he had many layers to him, good and bad. But for her, the good didn’t offset the bad. She could never forgive him for what he’d already done.
The end of the research station would mean the end of her and her team’s years of dedication to their research. It might even mean the end of her time here on Skeleton Island.
Rufus sniffed around in the grass at the edge of the road. It was wet. Stuck to his snoot. He sneezed. Shook his head until his soundflaps flopped around.
Nice Lady and her tall fren kept talking. Rufus stopped. Dug his paws in when Nice Lady tried to start walking again.
She stopped. Looked at him. “Come on, Rufus.”
Rufus ignored her. Busy looking for something. Someone.
He stood still and put his snoot up in the air. Better sniffing that way.
He smelled the road. The wind. Trees. Ooh, and an angry garbage monkey with a black eye mask had been here recently.
It distracted Rufus. He started sniffing the ground again, following the scent…
No. Bad, Rufus.
He stopped. Lifted his snoot and sniffed more, looking up and down the road for the person. Dark out.
Nice Lady tugged on the leash. “Rufus, come on, buddy, let’s go.”
Rufus put his snoot down. Relaxed. Bad Man hadn’t been here today. Rufus didn’t smell him at all. Hadn’t smelled him in a long time.
Nice Lady turned around and walked toward him. Rufus sniffed again. Pulled in a deep breath as something tickled his brain.
Another smell. Rufus knew this one.
The smell of the person who had hit Bad Man in the head and knocked him down.
Bad Man deserved it. Bad Man was mean.
Nice Lady crouched down in front of him. “What’s going on, buddy?”
Rufus wagged his tail and slurped Nice Lady on the face. Bad Man gone, and Nice Lady take Rufus walkies.
She made a funny sound and ruffled his soundflaps. “You silly goof, I love you too. Now let’s go.”
Rufus trotted beside her, heading toward her tall fren. Rufus happy. No need to watch out for Bad Man. Just angry garbage monkey.
Angry garbage monkeys evil.