The Boyfriend List (10 page)

“Yeah.
Thanks. I’m fine.” She finally stammered, and took the hand he offered her.
There was no magic in that initial touch, no spark of karmic electricity as
she’d imagined. But she’d give herself a break considering the circumstances.
And if she’d sounded somewhat annoyed, it was merely due to the fact that when
she met Brett for the first time – well, the first time officially
– she’d wanted it to be a moment of magic, when she was at her best and
hopeful for the best outcome. Not when she had an egg growing on her forehead
and she’d been knocked to the ground.

“You
new here? I haven’t seen you before.”

It
occurred to her that her hand was lingering inside of his for longer than was
necessary to get to her feet, and that she was beginning to sweat from
excitement and nerves. Snatching her hand quickly away again, she rubbed her
palm against her shorts, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

 
“Um, yeah?” She tried, hoping it sounded
more convincing than her story about being a journalist. Clearly he hadn’t
gotten a good look at her on the field. For that, at least, she could be
thankful.

 
“Cool, welcome.” He nodded
enthusiastically. “We usually try not to injure the new people until they’ve
been around a while, but in your case…”

Reagan
couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped.

“Well,
hey, since you’re sure you’re okay, let me show you to the girls locker room.”

“Oh,
yeah, that might be good.”

She
let him point her in the right direction, and slipped quickly inside. Then,
after waiting a few minutes to give Brett enough time to leave again, then
slipped right back out, not stopping this time until she was cleared from the
building and standing on the sidewalk.

Now
the question on the table was, where did she go from here? The initial meeting
was already over. He hadn’t asked for her number or left it open for future
discussions, so it was hard to tell the kind of impression that she left. But
she
had
discovered he was
considerate, and even a little witty. At least, he’d tried to be, which was
kind of adorable.

Immediately,
Reagan picked up her phone to call Ian and fill him in on the details.

When
Ian got the call from Reagan, he’d been rummaging around the little antique
bookstore for at least a half an hour. His mother was a difficult woman to
impress, he mused to himself, but a first edition by one of her favorite
obscure authors usually did the trick on her birthday. Picking up a fragile
binding, he flipped gently through pages ripe with historical significance.

Having
instinctively switched his phone to silent when he walked in the store, he
could feel it vibrating in his back pocket as Reagan’s call came through.

Carefully
replacing the volume back onto the shelf in its given slot, he withdrew his
phone and smiled at the name on the id.

“Sexy!”

Reagan
tried to stop her lips from turning up at his greeting, but they weren’t
cooperating very well. “Busy?” She inquired, almost forgetting why she’d called
in the first place.

 
“Tryin’ to be,” he admitted, “but
beautiful women keep calling and interrupting me. How’s it all going?”

Suddenly
Reagan’s lips felt like cooperating after all, and immediately drooped into a
frown.
Women,
in the plural form, was
not
what she wanted to hear. Though
she couldn’t figure out why it’d surprised her, or why at the very sound of the
phrase she felt a tingling of irritation run up her spine when he’d said it
teasingly at least a hundred times before. It was an expression, she reminded
herself firmly, and Ian was a single man. He was perfectly entitled to have
every beautiful woman in the world call him if he wanted them to. But that
thought was irking her even more, and it didn’t seem to want to go away.

She
must’ve been dwelling in her dark thoughts longer than she’d realized –
Ian’s voice abruptly brought her back to the present moment.

“Rae?
You there?”

Reagan
shuddered, and returned her focus to the call. Now she
was
having a hard time remembering why she’d called him to begin
with. “Sorry. How’s what going?”

“You’re
private investigation.” He was laughing to himself as he spoke, she realized,
and she wondered if it was because of her suddenly scatterbrained focus, or the
idea of her investigation. Or both...Probably both, she shrugged.

“How’d
you know what I was doing?”

“I
have my sources.”

“Petra
tattled again, didn’t she?”

“Yep.”
She could practically hear him smirking through the phone.

“Well,
you and Petra might be surprised to hear that it went very well.” She couldn’t
help but to sound pleased with herself. And she hoped it pissed him the hell
off, just to get back at him for his snarky
women
comment.

From
the sound of his tone, it appeared her tactic had worked. The surprised disappointment
couldn’t be masked. “Really?”

“Yes
really.” It was then that she realized she was enjoying this moment far too
much.

“Let’s
hear it then.”

Deciding
to omit the full, somewhat humiliating details, Reagan launched into her brief
summary instead. “His last name is Hanson. He’s a star on the soccer team.
About six feet it looks like. Polite I think. Smart enough to earn a
scholarship.” She paused while calculating her information. “And that’s about
all I got.” Laid out and simplified like that, she realized it didn’t sound
like she’d made as much progress as she’d initially thought. Suddenly, she
wasn’t so enthusiastic about her finding that day.

“Yeah,
sounds like you learned a lot there.” Was that the sound of relief behind his
sarcasm?

“Guess
not.” She was forced to admit out loud. “But that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“Yes,
you.” She reiterated firmly. “You know everyone on campus. Can’t you ask around
for me? Find out something I’m missing. Something substantial that has more to
do about his character than just his looks and hobbies.”

But
there was a lengthy pause in the conversation that Reagan hadn’t anticipated,
and it was giving her stomach the jitters again for reasons she couldn’t hope
to explain.

“Reagan,
what’s your deal with this guy? Why can’t you just ask him to go for a drink
and see where it leads? Go for a coffee. Help you study. Something. Anything.
This thing you two have concocted is just crazy.”

“Because...”
Rejection was still prominent in her voice as she mumbled her answer. “I’m not
ready yet. And guys lie about themselves all the time.”

“Got
it.” Ian sighed. It wasn’t how he would do things. But this was Reagan, he reminded
himself, and she did everything just a little bit differently. “Okay, let me
make some calls and see what I can find.”

“Really?”
Excited hopefulness filled her voice again.

“Yes
really. But only for you because I lo...” Ian caught himself just in time
before the word spilled out. Grimacing at his mistake, he bit his lip and hoped
she hadn’t caught it. “I’ll call you back.” He finished quickly.

But
Reagan
had
caught it. At least, she
thought she’d caught something that she was pretty sure had sounded a lot like
the word
love,
had he not stopped
himself first. It surprised her more than anything. Ian had never used that
word, not in reference to her or anyone else that she could remember. It just
wasn’t a word that was fluent in his vocabulary. She opened her mouth to
question him about it, tease him a little, but something about the moment made
her decide against it. Closing her mouth again, she smiled wide instead,
enjoying the moment a little more than she felt she had a reason to. Ian Scott
had just
almost
confessed to loving
her. Whichever version of love it might be, she’d take it. At least she’d have
one up over the plethora of perfect girls that came and went from his life in
that regard.

After
thanking him again, she gave her phone a satisfied tap to end the call. Still
rolling Ian’s almost comment around in her head, that irritated tingling she’d
felt only moments before was slowly starting to slip away.

Now
what to do while she waited was a question that needed sorting out.

The
easiest thing to do would be to go home, be productive and wait for fate to
figure out the rest. After all, if it were mean to be, she’d get the answer she
was looking for eventually. But after a quick scan of the tidy row of shops
around her, she quickly changed her mind. Something had caught her eye that she
wanted to get a little closer to.

No,
not just something, she corrected herself. It was an elaborately woven, red
beaded dress hanging from the mannequin in all its Gatsby-era glory. And it was
screaming her name, demanding that she instantly come and take a closer look.
It would be the perfect fit for Petra’s black-tie birthday party, which was looming
only a few days away, and Reagan had nothing – absolutely
nothing
– in her closet worthy of
the occasion. She needed something special. Something that would make her feel
both sexy
and
sophisticated.
Something that no one else would be wearing.

Something
exactly
like this...

Never
one to disappoint a screaming dress, Reagan obliged and quickly made her way to
the window. Stepping close to the glass that separated her from the display,
she peered lustfully over the gauzy confection, imagining what it would look
like draped over her frame. “How perfect are
you
?” She decided, and found her feet were already leading her
inside.

All
she wanted was a closer look, she lied to herself as she pushed through the
door. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to look at some matching shoes either...

“Do
you need help?” An unenthusiastic shop girl laden with tattoos and piercings
never even looked up from the black covered book she was reading as she greeted
her. But Reagan barely noticed, she was much too focused on finding that dress.

“No
thanks. I think I know what I want.”

The
girl shrugged while Reagan searched the cramped store. Spotting it toward the
back, she quickly flipped through hangers to find her size, then held it up in
front of her to examine the fit. Admiring the layers of gauze and shimmer, she
flicked a fingernail over one of the beads as she envisioned herself walking
into the party, wearing this dress. The image made her straighten her shoulders
a little more, tip her chin up a little higher.

 
“Do you have a fitting room?” She called
out to the shop girl, knowing the full danger she’d be in if in fact the dress
fit as perfectly as she thought it would. But she just had to see...

“Around
the corner, in the back.” The girl pointed vaguely in some direction behind the
counter.

Winding
her way around toward the back, Reagan eventually found the door marked
Dressing Room
and slipped quickly
inside, dress in hand. And as she pulled up the zipper on the side, she
couldn’t help the squeal of excitement at the discovery that it perfectly
hugged her curves in all the right places. As though it’d been made just for
her. She felt beautiful in it, almost stunning. Daring to step out, she paraded
herself in front of the full-length mirror in the hallway, spinning and
shimmying to see how the dress moved.

Until,
that is, she felt the analyzing eyes of another clerk moving over her body.
Suddenly filled with doubt, she stood still as the tall, lanky man walked to
one side of her, then the other, arms crossed over his chest with a perplexed
expression alighting his face. Reagan stood still, watching his facial
expressions closely for any sign of criticism. Since it appeared from his own
ensemble that he took much more care with his appearance than she did in her
day-to-day life, she couldn’t help but to be a bit uneasy as she waited for his
final approval.

Shaking
his head, the man clicked his tongue. “Oh honey.” Putting both hands on his
hips, which he cocked to the side, he stood back to look at her. Reagan’s eyes
widened expectantly, still unsure if the expression was good or bad. But finally,
the man clapped his hands together and exclaimed excitedly, “You look
fabulous!”

A
relieved gust of breath whooshed from her lungs as she watched the guy
practically jumping up and down with enthusiasm. “Really?” Reagan smiled in his
direction, but couldn’t take her eyes off her own reflection in the mirror. “It’s
beautiful isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”
He agreed. “And you’ve got the body for it girl. Work it.” He snapped his
fingers for emphasis, then promptly sat down on a nearby stool, crossing his
legs and resting his hands delicately over his knees. “Where are we going?” He
asked, ready to dish out the girl talk.

“My
best friend’s black tie birthday party.” Confidence was slowly returning to her
voice.

“Perfect.
Perfect.” He gave a couple of nods of approval on her selection for the event.
“But you can’t go just like that. You need to accessorize a little, Love. Come
with me.”