.5 To Have and To Code (16 page)

She walked back into the temporary home of hacker central, carrying plates, drinks, and assorted snack foods.  He grinned—Nell Sullivan ate like a teenage baseball player.  Not that he was complaining.  She transformed meatball sandwiches and Doritos into some seriously mesmerizing curves.

He reached for a bag of chips, watching the color in her cheeks hit new heights.  Damn.  He kept forgetting she could pick up on his stray thoughts.  Given their current contents, that was a seriously awkward situation.

He hated awkward.  It was time to change the game.  “So, are we waiting until one of us goes up in flames, or are we going to do something about this heat between us?”

Two bags of Doritos hit the floor, unnoticed.  And Nell Sullivan took two steps backwards.

Daniel grinned.  Points to The Hacker.  “I didn’t mean right now.”

One more step backwards and she slid down into his spare desk chair, still staring. 

And then her eyes flared.

Oh, crap—The Wizard was awake.  And despite some of the more juvenile wanderings of his brain, that wasn’t the new game he was looking for.  He wheeled his chair over to hers and reached for one of her hands.

Warm.  Her fingers were always warm.  “Look, I know you hired me to do a job, and I plan to do it.  But there’s something else going on here, and the work stuff might be easier if we decided what we wanted to do about the sparks.”

Her eyes watched his thumb, tracing over her fingers. 

He was a guy who touched.  His friends, a ball, small children in tears.  “There
is
something here.”

“I know.”  Her eyes were wary—but she hadn’t pulled her hand away, not yet. 

He tried to decide how to play it.  “Could just be sparks.”

A smile played over her face.  “Could be.”

Oddly enough, after swimming through an ocean of sexual heat all morning, that wasn’t what he believed.  “Could be more.”

It took her longer to answer this time.  “Maybe.”

Layers again.  Caution, and something else.  He watched her, thumb still tracing over her fingers.  He’d always held the ball and tried to sense the pitch it wanted to be.  Feeling her warm hand in his, Daniel sank into the moment and tried to find the truth in the inside of the onion.

And ended up feeling stupid instead.  Nell Sullivan was no onion.

He opened his eyes—they’d just have to do this the old-fashioned way.  “Want to come to a baseball game?”

She blinked.  “You still play?”

“Yup.”  He grinned, pretty sure the Dustkickers weren’t what she would be expecting.  “Come see how far the mighty have fallen.”

Her silence was strange.  Contemplative.

He traced the lines of her hands one more time, wanting to understand the next layer.  “Would you tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Right now?”  She smiled, a softer Nell than he usually saw.  “That I keep trying to peg you as an arrogant weenie.”  She paused and then pulled her hand away.  “And you keep surprising me.”

For the first time since he’d crouched behind a bush, Daniel felt like he might be making progress.

-o0o-

Nell poured melted candle wax into a tall, delicate, purple fluted glass, trying to actually hit her target this time.  Flute number 467 and she still had crappy aim.  “This would be way easier if you’d just let me magic the candles.”

Sammy smiled and kept moving down the row of wedding favors, adding drops of some kind of oil to each fluted glass.

It smelled yummy, which was just making Nell hungry.  “What’s that?”

“Something Mom concocted.  A blend of essential oils for happiness and long life.”

It was one of the few times Sammy’s mother had come up in conversation lately without leaking hints of tension.  “That’s really sweet.”  And a throwback to the days when Mrs. Martin had been more chic hippie than country-club snob.

Sammy squinted down the long row of glasses.  “She says they used the same blend at their wedding.”

Definitely sweet.  Nell was glad something had come along to dial down the stress.  Three days until the wedding, and everyone was a bit of a mess.  Shane walked the streets of Berkeley in desperate search of cows, the latest wedding caterer had threatened multiple people with a cleaver, and Sammy had bungled a big batch of snickerdoodles and sobbed for an hour.

Nell had wiped her friend’s tears, fixed the cookies, disarmed the caterer with promises of fame and fortune, and sent her brothers in to distract Shane.  Things mostly back on track.

Except for the big, gaping hole threatening to crack her own heart.

In three days, she wouldn’t have a best friend anymore.

Watching melted wax splash into yet another ribbon of purple, Nell wished with all her heart that the wedding didn’t feel like a terminal disease.  Sammy would write and call and mail cookies from her new home on the range.  But it wouldn’t be the same.

She hid her sniffles from the sister she’d always yearned for.  And sent a silent incantation down into the purple glass.

I call on fire, magic mine.

Live within this candle fine.

Dance for joy and dream of love,

Hold tight to earth and light above.

Gift this spark, sent from me,

As I will, so mote it be.

Very small magic.  The candles would simply burn a little longer, a little more brightly, and send a small beam of love to Sammy’s heart every time they were lit.  Mrs. Martin was well meaning—but she wasn’t a witch.

And Sammy deserved all the magic in the world.

A tear dripped onto melted candle wax, sizzling in the way of things that don’t like fire.  A hand reached out, vanilla-scented fingers wiping the next tear from her cheek.  “We’re nearly done.  Come sit down and tell me about him.”

Nell blinked back the rest of her tears.  “You think I’m crying over some guy?”

“Nope.”  Sammy led them over to two chairs tucked behind an ugly pink trellis.  “But I can’t change my wedding, and I can’t change your pesky brothers, so let’s talk about the tall, dark, and handsome guy who’s got you riled.”

“I’m not riled.”  Nell protested, mostly for form.  It sucked to admit that someone with a Y chromosome had gotten under her skin—she had a lifetime of practice keeping them out.

“Sure you are, and it’s about time.”  Cookies appeared from the miraculous depths of Sammy’s handbag.  “You still mad at him for hacking Realm?”

Oddly enough, she wasn’t.  “Daniel’s a lot like my brothers, I think.  Walks the planet looking for trouble, but he has lines and doesn’t cross them.”

“Oh,
really.
” 

Nell squirmed.  Maybe pesky best friends relocating to Texas wasn’t completely awful.  “I like him, okay?  He’s interesting.”

Sammy’s grin grew another notch.  “Good.  You’d eat a nice, uncomplicated guy for breakfast.”

“I would not.” 

“Would too.”  Sammy brushed cookie crumbs off her lap.  “You need a guy tough enough to get past that fierce exterior of yours and understand the big heart and need for solitude and love of family that lies underneath.  I figure a man with his own murky depths might have a hope in hell of figuring out yours.”

Nell gaped, her best friend’s stream of words drumming into her brain.  “I’m not that complicated.”

“Right.”  Sammy traced the petals of a hideous plastic flower.  “You moved into that hole-in-the-wall apartment of yours to find your own space, but you handle a train wreck of a wedding for four hundred people like you were born to it.  You talk like your kid brothers are the bane of your existence, but you voluntarily babysit two math geeks who can’t find their own socks.”

Someone had to do it.  It wasn’t safe to leave weddings, math geeks, or baby brothers unsupervised.  “I just do what needs to get done.  That’s pretty simple.”

“You’re amazing, Nell.”  Sammy’s mind radiated love, belief, and the kind of straight talk that had made them fast friends for a decade.  “But most guys you either steamroll or adopt.”

She’d tried her damnedest to steamroll Daniel Walker.  “I hit him with my best Realm lightning spells.  Pretty sure he doesn’t squish easily.” 

“Gonna add him to the list of guys you babysit, then?”

Nell snorted.  Govin and TJ were a full-time job, and Daniel Walker needed babysitting about as much as your average minor demon.  “Pretty sure he wouldn’t go for that, either.”

“Exactly.”  The bride-to-be’s smile was one of victory.  “He’s strong enough to stand
with
you.”

Not a job description she was looking to fill.  “My life is plenty full of men.”  Even the unsquishable, nonadoptable kind.

“Not enough who are strong, competent, and make your hormones spin.”  Sammy’s voice held the defiant tone she used on misbehaving cookies, traffic lights, and recalcitrant friends.  “Heck, name one in the last ten years.”

A good gamer knew when to run like hell.  Nell got to her feet.  “I think the candle wax has solidified.  Let’s go do layer two.”  Even rainbow candles had to be better than listing the character flaws of all the men who had traipsed through her life in the last decade.

Sammy caught her arm.  “Keep you mind open, okay?  For me?”  Her voice softened.  “Maybe this is the guy you’ll let take care of
you
sometimes.”

The person who’d held down that job for the last ten years was leaving for cattle country in four days.  Nell blinked back tears and wondered how she’d live without a sister.  

But for the next four days, she still had one—and they had work to do.  She headed for the tables full of purple glasses—and tried to ignore the fifteen-year-old mental echo of the young girl cornered in Maze Wars.  The one who had taken a last ditch stand and then attacked, cheering, as the cavalry rode in.

Nell shook her head.  She was a grown woman who could ride to her own damned rescue.

And she had wedding floof to make.

Chapter 11

Pedro handed Daniel a burger flipper and an apron.  “Suit up.  I made Becky promise she’d leave you alone while you were grilling.”

Which meant he was chaining himself to the grill for the duration of the Chong weekly pre-baseball ritual and hoping someone occasionally brought him a beverage.  However, the food was good enough to risk Becky’s laser eyes—nobody did a summer picnic like the Chongs.  Burgers, sushi, and tamales—pick your poison.

Normally he was a tamales guy, but with Becky manning that table, he was going classic American in his food choices that afternoon.  Daniel saw the twins go by and scooped them up.  “Hey, my best girls.”

Maddie looked at him suspiciously.  Clearly, at three, she already knew not to trust guys trying to butter her up.  “What do you want?”

He kissed her cheek and hoped the brown stuff on her face was chocolate ice cream.  “I’m working really hard cooking burgers over here.  Do you think you could go ask Auntie Chloe nicely for a beer?”  It was a risk—putting Pedro’s police dispatcher fiancée in charge of the beverages had probably been Becky’s idea.

“Nuh, uh.”  Carlie shook her head, all tiny-girl seriousness.  “We’re too little for beer, but we can have as much grape Kool-Aid as we like.  You want some of that?”

Maddie giggled.  “It might turn you purple.”

He was pretty sure that wasn’t true—several college escapades had involved tubs of the stuff.  It was hell on white baseball uniforms, though.  “Well, I’m old enough for beer, so how about you go see what Auntie Chloe has to say, hmm?” 

Pedro snorted as the girls ran off, intent on their beer-fetching mission.  “I can’t figure out if I’m laughing because they see right through you, or jealous because they do your bidding anyhow.”

Daniel clamped an arm around his second baseman’s shoulders.  “Such is the psychological crap you use to tie your brain in knots, my friend.  Let’s grill some burgers.”

“Cook and talk.”  Pedro turned up a couple of dials on Edith, the cranky old contraption that made the best flame-broiled meat in all of California.  “I haven’t seen you for nearly a week, you’re staring off into space for no apparent reason, and Becky’s decided to give you a pass for the night.  What gives?”

The collective intuition of the Chongs was a frightening thing.  “New job.  I’ve been busy.”

Flames spewed out of the top of the grill as Pedro did whatever man-fu was necessary to get Edith’s engines down to a manageable level.  Then he looked up, eyebrows wiggling suggestively.  “I bet.”

Crap.  “Not like that.”  Yet.  Exactly.

“What, she’s not hot?”

Daniel tried mightily not to picture Nell’s particular brand of curves in his weak and feeble brain.  “I’m keeping my distance.  Letting things simmer a bit.”  Trying to decide if he was ready to dance with a volcano. 

“You always did have some strange ideas about timing.”  Pedro started dropping meat patties onto Edith’s charred and battered surface.  “Always worked for you, though.”

As a pitcher, timing was often the difference between a home run sailing over your head and a frustrated batter watching strike three go past his nose.  He’d been very good at finding the right timing.

With a baseball.  Women were an entirely different matter.  Daniel started moving patties around—he might as well try to look useful.  “She’s complicated.  Not sure I’m up for that.”