water fountain. Unlike the basic stainless steel variety he remembered, this one had a drinking spout and a platform to fill a bottle. She slurped at it, holding back her long spill of hair to expose her neck.
The neck he’d nibbled on the other night.
He so damn badly wanted to crowd up behind her and do it again.
Upright once more, she licked at the single drop clinging to her lips. “You’re right. You barely know me. There’s no personal bias on your part. And, if you piss me off, we’re about to walk into a classroom full of saws and welding torches.”
“Wow. I thought the modern woman wanted a man who could talk about feelings. Without being threatened with power tools.”
“We want men to talk about their own feelings. Never to try and interpret ours.” Sydney planted her hands on her hips and cocked one leg out. “Go ahead. Hit me with your wisdom.”
This conversation ought to come with that yellow caution tape they put up around open manholes. And he really wished that all the students in the cafeteria for lunch would start a food fight or a rumble to get someone, anyone to rush down the hall and interrupt him.
“Maybe a part of you, when you were little, was worried, deep down. That your mom left because of something you did. But the rest of your brain didn’t want to acknowledge that. So it tamped it down. Transferred all your bitterness over to blame the town.”
She didn’t even blink at him.
“Maybe as an adult, you stop blaming the town. Look at it with fresh eyes. Like I am. Open to seeing the good and the bad. Like the friendliness of the administrators. How excited Debbie and Dr. Calvert were to see you the other night.”
This time, she did blink.
Three times.
“Just because you presented a smart, reasonable argument doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed by you right now.”
“Duly noted.”
She yanked on the big handle of the double glass doors. The room smelled like freshly cut wood. A circular saw whined in the back corner under what looked like a steady-handed boy in goggles. Wooden box frames containing light switches ran in rows four deep on the high worktables. The whole room was immaculate.
A giant of a man—easily topping Alex’s six three by a few inches—with an equally gigantic bushy black beard made a hand signal for the boy to stop cutting. Then he pushed his own goggles up to his curly hair, revealing a black eye patch, and barreled forward.
“Syd! You came back!”
“Despite your concerted efforts at tormenting me,” she teased. “Not to mention your hideous taste in music. I don’t know why my brother chose you for his best friend.”
“Mostly because I’m a great wingman. Women get intimidated by all this—” he waved a hand up and down his red plaid flannel shirt “—and see Cam as the safer choice. Plus, he saved me from a bully once, so now I owe him a life debt. He’s never getting rid of me.”
Alex didn’t bother waiting for an introduction. He was too flabbergasted. “You needed saving from a bully? You’re as big as Kilimanjaro.”
“Thanks to puberty.” A shrug pulled his black suspenders taut. “But before that hit, I was a scrawny stick. My nickname was Minnow. Kids would put them down the back of my shirt. Cam stopped one, and stuffed it into the bully’s mouth. He was so surprised that he swallowed it. And then threw up his lunch all over the other kids in line for dodgeball.”
Man, Karma could be a beautiful goddess when she wanted to. Alex guffawed. “That is a fantastic story.”
“And the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he responded in an exceedingly bad Bogart impression.
Doubled over in laughter, Sydney waved an arm back and forth between them. “James, this is Alex. And vice versa.”
James pointed at the bag dangling from Alex’s hand. “Is that the promised bribe?”
“Double liverwurst, coleslaw, pickle and swiss. Times two.” Sydney grabbed it and laid it gingerly on the nearest worktable. And then gave a full body shudder. “You know, I remember you eating these a dozen years ago. I remember how bad they smelled. And now that I made these with my own two hands, I can attest that they’re every bit as disgusting as I remember.”
“Come on. You’re the world traveler. Cam told me you’ve eaten lots of weird things. Like blood soup.”
Really? Alex wanted to call a time-out on the conversation with James and do a sidebar with