The buildings of downtown La Crosse slipped past us looking almost unchanged since the last time Jake and I had ridden like this together. Halfway through the third replay of ‘I Want it That Way’, Jake was ready to kill me. What choice did I have but to let it play a fourth time? When he reached for the power button on the radio, I slapped his hand away. “Driver picks the music.”
“I hate you.”
“You’re so pretty when you’re angry,” I said.
He glared at me. He really was pretty. No, elegant. Jake had grown up into a very elegant man. His beauty wasn’t flashy and obvious. It didn’t attract attention at first glance. But his golden-brown eyes were fringed with thick dark lashes. His bone structure was delicate and the way he moved was eye-catching. He’d always been a slinky kid, moving like a cat through the house. Come to think of it, he was cat-like in many ways. You couldn’t make him do anything. You had to wait for him to come to you. When he liked you, it made you feel special. And if you touched him just right, he purred.
“No, really,” I said. “You look really good. I love the sweater.”
“You also like the ripped jeans and dyed black hair. I have a feeling that you are not the best judge of either fashion or beauty.”
“You’d be wrong. I am an excellent judge.” I risked a look at him. “You’re all”—I waved my hand from his head to his lap—“put together. Neat, like a Siamese cat.”
He turned to me, raising one eyebrow but I could see a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth. “A Siamese cat?”
“You gotta admit, you’re very catlike. I mean, you do like to sleep all the time and you hiss at people.”
“I don’t hiss,” he said, “and I know very well what I look like. I’m average, at best.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
He shook his head. “Completely forgettable.”
“I can’t believe anyone would forget you.” God knew I hadn’t and I’d been trying.
He turned away, staring out the window at a view I knew wasn’t exciting at all. “Oh, many people have. Believe me. And I am very happy about it. It’s an asset in my line of work.”
Which would be what, exactly? His speech was studied and very unlike the Jake I knew. This must be his Carson Grieves voice. It fit the name. “Why do you talk like that?”
“Why does everyone make fun of the way I speak?” he asked.
“Because it’s stupid,” I said before I could stop myself.
“You’re stupid,” he shot back.
“Your face is stupid,” I said.
He gasped, lightly touching his chest with his fingers as if he were shocked. “Eric! I thought you thought I was pretty.”
I couldn’t help it; I snorted a laugh. “Prettiest princess at the ball. Maybe that’s why you sound like that. What kind of accent is that supposed to be anyway?”
He picked at the non-existent threads on his jeans. “It's not an accent, as such. It's more like a tone and word choices. You just pretend you're so very bored with everything and you find everything so droll.”
“You sound like you did when you were on the BBC kick that one year.”
He shrugged.
“So why do you do it?”
“My clients react much better to this kind of voice than one that screams I grew up in Wiscaaansin.” His mouth twisted with an exaggerated accent.
“What exactly do you do?” I asked.
“Oh, look, there’s a spot,” he said, pointing out the front window and changing the subject.
Luckily for him, there actually was a rare spot right in front of the restaurant. Putting my blinker on, I maneuvered the car into it. Parallel parking wasn’t my favorite thing and by the time I’d finished, the urge to press Jake for answers had subsided. The last thing I wanted was a fight. I just wanted a nice lunch.
We walked into the restaurant, giving our eyes a second to adjust to the sudden change from bright afternoon light to dim indoor lighting. The place smelled incredible, I was so busy sniffing the air like a hound dog that I almost walked into the back of a big guy standing at the hostess stand. “Excuse me,” I said as he reached out to steady me.
“Don’ worry about it,” he said with more than the hint of an accent from the Deep South. I’d had a teammate from somewhere in Alabama who had sounded like that.