Tangled Up in Love (11 page)

“I don’t know. You know Ronnie. You’ve seen her at The Penalty Box. She’s always so well put together. Looks like she just stepped off the cover of some fashion magazine, with her designer clothes and shoes, never a hair out of place.”

“What? Was she a scraggly mess in rags from the Goodwill store when you dropped by?”

Dylan’s brows knit as he picked pieces of anchovy off his second slice of pizza and fed it to the dog, who had proven long ago that he would eat anything.

“Nah. Her hair was still damp from the shower, but she looked good enough.” Good enough to eat, if truth be known, but he didn’t say that.

“It was more the apartment that threw me. It was kind of . . . Spartan. I would have expected something that looked like Martha Stewart had decorated, but instead it was more thrift store mix-and-match. The couch, the TV, the coffee table . . . they had to be at least ten years old—and they looked every minute of it. She had a radio, not a stereo. Not even a CD player that I could see. And a VHS machine, but no DVD player, and hardly any tapes. None of her dishes matched, at least the ones I saw. The artwork on the walls was kind of old-fashioned and almost creepy, like the stuff you see at the dentist’s office. And she had recycle bins next to the kitchen.”

“Recycling is good,” Zack said. “I recycle. Everybody should.”

“Don’t you mean Magda recycles for you?” Gage asked, monotone.

“She’s my housekeeper, it’s her job. But I pay her to do it and make sure no one throws anything recyclable into the trash so she doesn’t have to dig it out.”

“You Prince Charming, you.”

This time, Gage was on the receiving end of a single-finger salute.

“I’m with you on that, and you’re more than welcome to my beer bottle when I’m finished with it, but in a million years would you ever have pictured Veronica Chasen living in anything other than fashion-forward comfort, maybe even near-luxury?”

“Maybe it’s all hand-me-downs from a dead grandmother with lousy taste or something,” Gage offered.

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe she’s trying to save a buck and doesn’t get much company, so it doesn’t matter,” Zack suggested.

“That’s just it. Who spends
beaucoup
bucks on their wardrobe but skimps at home?”

Zack shrugged. “A woman? Women do all kinds of crazy things for all kinds of crazy-ass reasons. Grace has this weekly face thing she does, and she won’t let me be anywhere near her when she does it. So once a week, she refuses to come over here and won’t let me go over there.” He spun a finger next to his ear to indicate his fiancée was Looney Tunes.

From his spot on the sofa, Gage cocked his head. “So what are you going to do once you’re married?”

“Beats me.” He took another big bite of pizza, chewing while he talked. “Hopefully she’ll wait until I’m on the road to go all
Night of the Living Dead
on me.”

Bringing the conversation back to Ronnie, Dylan said, “But wouldn’t you think that someone who wanted to pinch pennies or watch their budget would try to save money with
everything
she buys? How much sense does it make to buy a cheap television set, then spend six hundred dollars on a pair of designer shoes?”

“Not much,” Zack agreed. “Then again, how much sense does it make to kick your hot and horny boyfriend out of bed because you need to moisturize? Women are nuts half the time. But if you tell them that, they go even nuttier.”

“It’s better to just mind your own business and let them be,” Gage volunteered. “That’s why God created
Monday Night Football
and Saturday-night hockey games . . . to give us guys a break and a few hours of much-needed sanity.”

Dylan eyed his two friends, tapping a thumb against the side of his rapidly warming bottle of Michelob.
“You two ever fly this little theory past your significant others?”

They exchanged a glance, then broke out in wide, matching grins. “Hell, no,” they both replied at exactly the same time.

“Well, I can’t figure her out, that’s for sure. All this time, I’ve thought she was this steel-heeled bitch who could burn a man to ashes at fifty paces. Now I’m not so sure. Something about the way she lives doesn’t jibe with the woman you see in public.”

Zack raised a brow and washed down his last bite of pizza with his last swig of beer. “You’re the reporter,” he said, wiping his palms on his gray Champion shorts. “Why don’t you investigate her and see what’s up?”

Dylan hadn’t thought of himself as much of an investigative reporter lately. Not since he’d gotten stuck writing lackluster columns that mostly revolved around trying not to let a woman with a chip on her shoulder from a rival paper kick his ass.

But his friend had a point. There were bells going off in his head, telling him that all was not as it seemed with prissy Miss Veronica Chasen. And suddenly, he very much wanted to find out what made her tick.

He just hoped he didn’t discover that she was a time bomb, about to blow up in his face.

Ronnie bustled into The Penalty Box behind Jenna and Grace. It was just the three of them tonight; everyone else from their knitting group had opted to skip the trip for after-meeting drinks.

As soon as Ronnie saw Dylan sitting with Zack and Gage at a table in the center of the bar, she began to
wish she’d done the same. She just had no stomach for dealing with him tonight.

Not
anymore,
anyway. She’d already had to bite her tongue, curl her fingers, and count to a thousand when he’d shown up at The Yarn Barn for her previously Jackass-Free weekly knitting meeting.

Everywhere she turned lately, he seemed to be there. Her apartment for one-on-one tutoring . . . he’d dropped by again two days after The Kiss, and just as she’d flippantly demanded that night, he’d brought Chinese.

She hated him for that. Not only for showing up
again
—at her home and sanctuary—when she would have much preferred he disappear from her life altogether. But also because it appeared she’d finally met a man who actually listened and followed through, and wouldn’t you know it had to be him.

But it wasn’t just the visits to her apartment or the usurping of her personal girls-only . . .
it really should be girls-only!
. . . knitting group. He’d also begun e-mailing her at work. And to add insult to injury, each and every one began with some horrifying BDSM salutation.

Dear Domiknitrix . . .

Mistress Ronnie . . .

Dear Ronnie, O, exalted mistress of yarn and pain . . .

She really wanted to smack him.

It wasn’t just his knowledge and abuse of her personal screen name that made her blood pressure rise, though. Oh, no. It was the fact that he was practically cyberstalking her.

He e-mailed to ask if she was going to be home on a certain day, at a certain time. To which she’d responded
with an emphatic
No,
but was then proven a liar when he showed up, anyway.

He e-mailed to ask about this stitch or that stitch, even going so far as to attach a digital picture of where he’d gone horribly wrong trying to knit a few rows on his own. That, she had to admit, had given her a few moments of sadistic glee. Yes, she was supposed to be helping him learn to knit and knit well, but she wanted to win their bet more, and that required him
not
to do a good job.

Today he’d e-mailed her about coming over after knitting group, but Ronnie hadn’t responded. She didn’t want him coming over, and she
thought
she’d be able to avoid him simply by keeping the lights off and refusing to answer the door once she got home. She’d never expected him to show up at The Yarn Barn, and hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize that he might be at The Penalty Box when she showed up with the other girls.

It was enough to make a girl want to move . . . or at least drive her to drink.

Which was exactly what Ronnie intended to do tonight.

Following Grace and Jenna to a nearby booth, she slipped onto the bench across from them and plopped her carryall down beside her. She’d gotten hardly any decent knitting done tonight at group, too distracted and annoyed by Dylan’s presence to concentrate. And that only pissed her off all the more. At the rate she was going, she’d never finish this damn sweater, and with all the good-natured help Dylan was getting from Charlotte, he probably
would
finish his project.

She thought it might be the beginnings of a scarf,
but wasn’t sure. It hadn’t quite taken shape yet. Unless you considered
scary-ass blob
a shape.

The truth was, whatever he was working on really should have been unraveled and started over, but he’d done that so many times already, she suspected he just wanted to move forward and learn something beyond casting on before any more time passed.

The next time he showed up at her apartment uninvited, though, she might very well make him rip it all out. It would serve him right, and it would also get her that much closer to winning the challenge.

A waitress in navy-blue hot pants and a Playboy Bunny’s version of a hockey jersey—The Penalty Box’s idea of a uniform—appeared at the table to take their orders.

“I don’t know about you,” Grace said, “but I’m in the mood for something really sweet and different. How about a pitcher of Mudslides?”

Jenna nodded as Ronnie imagined the bartender’s reaction to that request. Before Grace had started hanging out here and dragging her female friends along with her, she suspected Turk had never even heard of half the fruity, girlie drinks they ordered on a regular basis. To him, a mudslide had likely been something he only heard about on the news, followed by the words “still searching for survivors.”

Up until a few months ago, she doubted the Box had even owned a blender. Now—on Wednesday nights, at least—it could be heard whirring away in the background on a regular basis.

“That’ll do for starters, but I’m telling you right now, I’m going to need something stronger before the night is over.”

“Oooh, bad day?” Grace asked as the waitress wandered off toward the bar, scribbling on her notepad.

Grace didn’t know the half of it. Normally, Ronnie would have shared her frustrations with her friends while they were at their knitting group. Frustrations, successes, a few dirty jokes . . .

But thanks to Dylan’s intrusion, she hadn’t been able to talk to them about anything tonight. She felt like an overblown balloon about to explode.

She hadn’t realized until very recently just how much she relied on the Knit Wits to keep herself sane. They were more than just casual acquaintances brought together by a love of yarn and needles. They were friends and confidantes, and maybe even amateur therapists.

Thank goodness. Otherwise, Ronnie was afraid she’d have to go into debt just trying to keep her mental health in order.

“Bad lifetime,” Ronnie muttered in response to Grace’s question.

“Awww.” Jenna reached across the table to pat the back of Ronnie’s hand. “You look positively miserable. What’s wrong?”

Pressing her fingers into her eye sockets until she saw stars, Ronnie said, “He’s driving me insane.”

There was no need to specify who. There was only one man in her life—
in the known universe
—who could induce a migraine of this size and magnitude, and her friends knew exactly who it was.

“He’s calling me now, at home and at work. And e-mailing me almost daily. If I had known this knitting challenge was going to become such a nightmare, I’d have made him turn tricks on Lorain Avenue or something instead. Dear God!”

The waitress arrived then with their order, and they took a moment to pour three tall glasses of frothy brown Kahlúa-laced drinks.

“This is amazing,” Jenna said after a few strong sucks on her straw.

“Turk deserves an award for his skills behind that bar,” Grace added. Then she turned a pointed glance in Ronnie’s direction. “Maybe you should hang around until after closing and thank him with a little naked slap and tickle.”

Mudslide went down the wrong way and Ronnie choked. “Dear God,” she coughed, covering her mouth with a napkin as she struggled for breath. “That’s disgusting. What is wrong with you?”

“I think she’s been spending too much time with Zack. He’s starting to warp her brain,” Jenna said with a giggle.

Grace rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Turk is one fine male specimen.” She wiggled her left ring finger in front of her. “If I weren’t spoken for, I might take a bite out of that luscious ass myself.”

At that, it was Jenna’s turn to go red in the face and nearly choke on her drink.

“Are you sure this is your first drink of the evening?” Ronnie said with a smile.

Grace made a noise that sounded an awful lot like
pshaw
. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. He’s a gorgeous hunk of man.”

Ronnie’s gaze slid across the room and over the unwitting subject of their bawdy conversation. And the alcohol in her Mudslide must have started to kick in,
because her mind was suddenly right down there in the gutter with Grace’s.

“He is attractive. But he’s roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler, for God’s sake. I’m not sure I could handle that much man; he’s likely to split me in half.”

“Ronnie!” Jenna gasped.

“Well, one of you should do something with
someone,
” Grace told them. “I hate to break it to you, but you both need it.
Bad.
”

Jenna might have been horrified by Grace’s suggestion, but Ronnie certainly wasn’t. She’d be the first to admit it had been too darn long since anyone besides BOB (her battery-operated boyfriend) had made her scream, shudder, or anything else.

Well, except for Dylan. She may not have screamed aloud, but he’d certainly made her shudder.

And the memory of him kissing her made her shudder all over again. Her stomach clenched and she had to shift in her seat to stifle the itch building between her legs.

Shit, shit, shit. She really was in trouble if the thought of having sex with Dylan turned her on more than the thought of having sex with the incredibly hot and masculine bartender.