10
“ H ow do I look?” Olivia asked Tuesday night. She put her hands on her hips and turned on the spot for inspection.
“Like Secret Agent Barbie,” Lexie replied from her perch on the edge of the bathtub.
Olivia smirked at herself in the mirror and fluffed her high ponytail. It swung jauntily from side to side as she went on to brush unseen dust from her black sweater and jeggings. Most girls on a date wanted to stand out, but on this particular night, Olivia planned to disappear.
She pulled a tube of red lipstick from her makeup bag and smoothed a perfect coat onto her lips before popping them together.
“What Noah doesn’t know is that Danny, Michael and I practically lived at the laser tag arena near Mom and Dad’s house when I was in high school. I’m going to wipe the floor with him.”
Lexie snorted. “I thought this was a date. Aren’t you supposed to tone it down a little?”
Olivia grinned and reached for the bottle of her signature perfume.
“Just think about it, the whole reason for going is to make him regret starting this little game, right? No guy wants to date a girl who shows him up, and to do it in front of his friends ? Well, he won’t be coming back for seconds, that’s for sure.
” She put a spritz of perfume on the inside of one wrist before rubbing it against both sides of her neck.
“I feel like you’ve said that before,” Lexie remarked, and Olivia rolled her eyes at her friend’s reflection in the mirror.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” she admonished. “Just trust me; I have a plan.”
A knock on the door told her Noah had arrived, and she quickly double-checked her pockets for her ID and debit card before heading into the hall.
“I know you have a plan,” Lexie called after her. “It’s the plan that worries me!”
“I love you, too!” Olivia shouted back. She reached for the doorknob just as Noah knocked again, and she opened the door before he could finish.
“Hey, honey!” she gushed, catching him with his hand still in midair. Then she stepped outside and shut the door behind herself. “Ready to go? I can’t wait to meet everyone. Do you think they’ll like me?”
Noah grinned broadly. “Of course! What’s not to like about a beautiful woman?” he asked. Then he slung his arm across her shoulders before guiding her gently toward the stairwell.
Olivia took a long, slow breath and tried to ignore the little sparks of lightning that pricked through the fabric of her shirt. She couldn’t shrug him off if he was supposed to be her “boyfriend”; he had certain permissions now that went with the title, and she was going to have to give a little.
Well, that or admit she’d been lying through her teeth before... and that wasn’t going to happen .
“Now, there will be eight of us—you, me and six of the guys,” he explained as they descended to the parking lot. “The arena just opened last semester. Apparently, some rich alum took pity on us poor Cypress Valley kids with nothing to do around here.”
He spent the trip across town explaining every minute detail of the game as if the words “laser tag” weren’t mostly common sense, and Olivia did her best to act like she was listening intently and not like she was contemplating taping his mouth shut.
Finally, they pulled into the parking lot of a massive building just outside the city limits.
There were cars everywhere, even in places that shouldn’t technically have been parking spaces, and she started to wonder how they were even going to get in.
“You reserve a game time,” Noah explained, obviously seeing the question on her face. “Ours starts in fifteen minutes; the guys should already be here.” He got out of the car and came around to open her door, though she beat him to the punch purely by force of habit.
His hand warmed the small of her back as he guided her through the lobby doors and then toward a small group of college guys who stood clustered near the equipment counter.
“Pixie, meet Parker, Beckett, Randall, Don, Carson and Rock,” Noah said rapidly, pointing to each of his friends in turn.
“Rock?” she repeated.
A guy with red hair and freckles gave a sheepish wave. “It’s Rick, actually,” he explained.
“But he misspelled his own name on a biology final once, so he doesn’t deserve to keep it,” a blond interjected, stepping forward. “I’m Beckett. And you’re... Pixie?”
“Olivia,” she corrected as she shook the hand he offered. “Pixie is kind of an inside joke. ”
“Got it, got it,” Beckett replied. He bobbed his head as he spoke. “Well, it’s about time to suit up. Everybody ready?”
There was a general murmur of consent from the group, and they moved as one toward the counter to retrieve their vests and guns. Noah grabbed two vests from a pile and set the larger one on the ground before turning to drape the other over Olivia’s head.
“So, remember what I said in the car? We’re playing free-for-all first—every man for himself, unlimited hits. Then we’ll play capture the flag with our team at the end. Sound good?”
Olivia nodded, already feeling adrenaline surge through her veins. “Sounds great,” she replied.
Noah snapped a buckle on each side of her hips and then yanked on a strap to tighten the armor to her torso. The sudden change of momentum caused Olivia to stumble forward, and she caught herself with both hands against his chest.
She closed her grip around a fistful of his work shirt, tugging him impossibly closer, and he made a sound that seemed like approval.
Then he angled her head back with both hands, deepening the kiss even more, and she felt her knees turn to jelly.
Her hands took on lives of their own, going everywhere and nowhere all at once, and he made another noise when her palms found bare skin beneath his shirt.
She vaguely knew she was breaking one of her own rules, but she didn’t care.
She felt inexplicably greedy—like maybe she’d been starving all this time and hadn’t known it.
The only clear thought in her mind was that she didn’t want him to stop.
“Steady now,” he said, and Olivia blinked to find Noah’s full, present-day attention fixed on her. There was amusement in his eyes now, but if she focused hard enough, she could still imagine the heat that had been there on New Year’s Eve .
Except... she wasn’t imagining it. He raised one hand and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, and she felt something stutter traitorously inside her chest.
Stop it! she told herself. He’s playing a game, remember?
Fortunately, a buzzer sounded somewhere overhead, and a deep, electronic voice announced a two-minute warning before the next game.
Noah ducked down and grabbed his vest from the floor before strapping it on, seemingly unaffected by whatever moment they’d just had. He snatched her hand in his. “Come on,” he urged. “This will be fun.”
A doorway with red lights around the frame revealed the arena beyond, and Olivia remembered why she was there as their group followed about a dozen other players inside.
The guys ahead of them quickly dispersed, and she did a cursory scan of her surroundings as her eyes adjusted.
The arena was set up like an old warehouse, with barrels and barriers of all types outlined in eerie fluorescent piping.
The balcony of an upper level glowed orange above her head, but she didn’t see any obvious way to access it.
Finding one would be objective number two.
Objective number one was still holding her hand.
“This way,” he whispered, and he took her with him toward what turned out to be an alcove, partially concealed by a stack of wooden crates.
“One minute!” the computerized voice warned.
Noah pulled her into a crouch behind their barricade. “You nervous, Pix?” he asked.
Olivia merely hummed in response, which he obviously took as confirmation.
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you,” he assured her with a cocky smile .
She exhaled slowly, and her index finger tensed near the trigger of her gun. She was here for one reason and one reason only—and it wasn’t to play damsel in distress. “What happened to ‘every man for himself’?” she asked.
Noah shrugged—a motion she could only see because the dimly-lit sensors on his shoulders moved up and down. “I know, but I can make an exception.”
“Aww! Thanks, honey bug,” she cooed.
There was no indication he even knew she had tilted her gun up from her hip. The lights in the arena flashed once, twice...
“Get ready,” he told her, and the starting buzzer echoed in her ears.
The next sound was the firing of her weapon, and the sensors on his vest lit up like the Fourth of July.
“Don’t worry. I am,” she replied.
“What the—?”
But Olivia didn’t stick around to answer. She was already running through the dark.
“All hail the warrior princess!” Parker shouted as he burst through the arena’s exterior doors and out into the chilly evening air. The rest of the guys echoed his words, and Noah bit the inside of his cheek to keep from joining in.
He’d made a mistake. Several, actually.
First, he’d underestimated his opponent. He’d honestly expected Olivia to turn his invitation down flat the way she’d done before, but she was clearly more dedicated to the cause than he’d realized. Second, he’d given her an audience—one that was now eating out of her hand.
“Aww, come on, Campbell,” Beckett said, knocking his shoulder against Noah’s as they walked. “Why the long face? It’s not like she held you to your lowest score in memorable history. Or hunted you like an animal. Or made you her personal whipping boy. Oh, wait, she did!”
Laughter burst from the group as its members made their way down the sidewalk toward a burger joint nearby.
Noah glanced toward Olivia where she walked beside him.
He was sure if he looked up the word “smug” in the dictionary, he’d find her current expression sketched in the margins.
She’d obviously abandoned the doe-eyed damsel routine, for which he was grateful, but she’d made a few mistakes, too—the biggest of which was assuming her total domination would be a turnoff when in fact it was strangely the opposite.
He clenched his jaw and made a conscious effort not to dwell on the fact that Olivia in laser tag gear bore a striking resemblance to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider .
“Liv, are you coming?” Carson shouted from up ahead, and Olivia’s pace increased.
She turned around and walked backwards several yards ahead of Noah. “Come on, Campbell! Try to keep up with the big boys!” she taunted, and her ponytail bounced with every step.
Noah narrowed his eyes and refused to let her goad him. She may have won this battle, but the war wasn’t over.
He just needed to raise the stakes.
The next afternoon, Noah loitered near a water fountain across the hall from the Department of Social Work while he waited for a good opening.
Some professor with a pair of yellow pencils stuck into her bird’s nest bun was on her cell phone right in front of the desk where a cute blonde student assistant was pretending to write something down.
He knew she was pretending because she’d actually been watching him for the last five minutes. She glanced up again, and he gave her a practiced smile, one he knew made girls blush and fidget. After all, what was the point of being pretty if you couldn’t use it to your advantage from time to time?
Finally, the professor finished her call and wandered away, leaving the coast clear. Noah pushed off the wall and quickly approached the office door—a man on a mission. “Hi,” he said, stepping up to the desk. “I’m Noah.”
The young woman—obviously another student worker—chewed on her lower lip. “Hi, Noah. I’m Bethany. What can I do for you?”
“Well,” he started, leaning his hands against the top of her desk. “I’m hoping you can help me with something. You see, I need information, and I’m pretty sure you have it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m looking for someone—a senior social work student, a friend of mine—and I need to know where he might be on, say, a Thursday.”
A coy smile stretched across Bethany’s face. “You can’t just ask him?” she asked.
Noah smiled back. “If I did that, I wouldn’t have a reason to talk to you, now would I? ”
A bright pink blush rose in her cheeks. “Well, senior students work their internships Monday through Thursday, so your friend won’t have a campus class until Friday afternoon,” she replied. “Then they’re all in capstone at two thirty.”
“See there? You did have what I needed,” Noah answered. “Where is that class?”
Bethany nodded toward the hall. “You were standing in front of it.”
“Oh, so right where I saw you? That’ll be easy to remember.” He winked, and she beamed up at him from her seat as he straightened. “Thanks, Bethany. Maybe I’ll be back around sometime.”
“I’ll be here,” she replied as he took a few backward steps toward the door. He gave her another smile before turning and making his way down the hall. Friday was only two days away.
Good thing he had a few favors to cash in.