Checking the traffic in his rearview mirror, Eric couldn’t help but grin. “Simmers, huh? Takes one to know one, maybe?”
“I do not simmer.” Chloe pulled herself up straight in the seat. “I boil.”
“Right over the top.” Eric made a diving motion with his hand.
“Exactly.”
She seemed so proud of her fiery nature, he hated to bring up the obvious. “So, you don’t think your tendency toward, oh, I don’t know, aggressive behavior has anything to do with your dating problems?”
“Why would it? It’s not like I’m running them down with my car or—” she smiled to herself “—drop-kicking them over the goalpost.”
“Whoa. Be still my heart.” He pressed his palm to his chest and beat his fingers in a thumping tattoo.
“Don’t get too excited. I don’t plan to make a habit of it. Even for you.”
“You enjoy being a tease?”
“I am not a tease.”
He wanted to tell her to prove it. Instead, he said, “If you give the guys you date what they want to hear, then a lot of them are going to think you’ll give them anything they want.”
“All because I’m making the effort to be polite? To show interest, even if it’s bogus?”
“Oh, so now you’re a tease and a fake. A guy won’t know if he’s coming or going.”
“Sure he will.” Chloe paused, then added, “If he’s going, it’s yellow. If he’s coming, it’s white.”
Eric choked on a snort of laughter. “That is the sort of gutter mouth comment that’s going to get your ass fired.”
“Because I’m female. But if we were two guys talking, I could get away with referring to any bodily function I wanted to. And I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my job.”
“First of all, no guy I know is going to tell that joke.”
“Maybe not that one, but ones equally offensive.”
Eric continued to shake his head. “Not on the job, if he doesn’t want to find himself facing a sexual harassment suit.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have more class than to tell that joke at work. I usually have more class than to tell it at all.” Her tone was a cross between apologetic and defensive.
More than a little aggravated himself, Eric muttered, “Glad to know hanging out with me doesn’t require any class.”
She banged her head back against the seat. “Hanging out with you means I can relax. I don’t have to censor everything I say. But I do have an understanding of what is and is not acceptable in the workplace.”
“Just not what’s acceptable on a date.”
“No, actually. I think I am well versed in dating etiquette.”
“That’s right. This isn’t a date. You and me, here and now.”
“Duh. No. It’s blackmail.”
Eric took a deep breath and focused on the road ahead. He was so close to saying something he knew he’d regret. He had no business letting her get to him. She was right. This wasn’t a date. It was a deal. And getting mad wouldn’t do anyone any good, anyway.
“So, tomorrow? Is that going to be a date?” he asked, jumping from the frying pan into the fire. “I mean, I want to be sure I don’t get out of line. That I treat you like a date, if that’s what it is. Or that I treat you like one of the guys and swap smut jokes if it’s not.”
For several moments Chloe seemed more interested in the road flying by beneath the Mustang’s wheels than anything Eric had to say. A part of him wanted to take it back. A more perverse part was glad for every word he’d said, even though her hands remained locked around the strap of her knapsack and her feet pressed primly together on the passenger-side floorboard. Her posture was straight and her voice was soft when she spoke.
“I know what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t. You’re trying to make me behave the way you think I should behave. I get so sick of conventions. Who decided girls had to wear the ruffles and sit on the sidelines? I tell you,” she added, this time her voice barely above a whisper, “I’m sick to death of sitting on the sidelines.”
Eric didn’t know if she was speaking literally or making another sports analogy. He wanted to find out, to explore where Chloe came from, because he was curious to find out how she balanced her bad-girl body and her baby-doll face with her mouth that belonged in the gutter.
“Well, this should be right up your alley, then. No one does any sideline sitting when Haydon’s Half Time Hammers meet Big Boy’s Bad Boys for the city’s unofficial coed sports bar volleyball championship.”
“YOU WANT ME TO PLAY volleyball? In a pit filled with dirt?”
“It’s a court, not a pit. It’s sand, not dirt. And it’s clean.”
Having plopped down on the grass outside a court squared off with a permanent barrier of hard black rubber, Eric unlaced his high-tops. “C’mon, Chloe. Get rid of your shoes and socks. It’s too hard to maneuver with all that bulk.”
Oh, she knew what it took to maneuver. She knew exactly. And she couldn’t believe that of all things athletic Eric might choose for his wish, he’d conned her into playing volleyball. Volleyball! Screw her career. She should’ve stayed in bed.
She’d left her knapsack in the Mustang, realizing Eric’s little wish for a sporting adventure did not include a locker room or a shower. But taking off her shoes and socks and exposing the pedicure she’d had refreshed first thing this morning to the abuse of gritty sand? She did not recall this being any part of any deal.
Volleyball. She could only shake her head.
Still, she couldn’t deny that, on the drive from Haydon’s, Eric had given her a lot to think about. She wasn’t ready to cut him loose as a source of good conversation—or as the escort she needed. Besides, she was not completely unfamiliar with the concept of payback being hell.
As other players began to arrive and teams checked in with the league officials stationed across the court beneath a striped awning, Chloe crossed her ankles and sank to the ground. “I’ve been meaning to ask you if you own a tux.”
His fingers fumbled with the lace he was loosening and he came close to ending up with a big messy knot. “I hope you’re not expecting me to come up with a tux by tomorrow. You’ll be escorting yourself if that’s the case.”
Chloe wiggled the toes of her first bare foot, reached for shoe number two. “Oh, no, sugar. The tux is for the Wild Winter Woman fashion show.”
His hands stilled halfway through pulling off his second shoe. He finally looked up with one eye narrowed. “The one with the supermodels?”
Men. Eyes rolling, Chloe nodded.
“Would that be your function number two or three?” Eric asked, his narrowed gaze roaming down to Chloe’s naked foot and smooth bare calf.
She finished stripping off her second shoe, then set about tucking both socks inside, flexing her toes, her feet, stretching the muscles of both inner and outer thighs and her calves, realizing halfway through her warmup that Eric appeared to have been struck dumb.
She moved on to working the kinks from her torso, not totally for her own benefit, either. “Number three. Two is our first gIRL-gEAR gIRL awards ceremony and should merely require a nice suit. I’m just giving you fair warning here. Sort of like you did me when you ordered me to show up at Haydon’s this morning.”
Eric had the good grace to glance