Texting With the Enemy (Digital Dating #1) - Marika Ray Page 0,69

honestly. “I spend a lot of time hauling cases of wine around, though.”

“Oooh,” she sighed, as if this was the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her.

“So, uh, I can’t paint when you’re holding my right arm like that.”

“So dedicated to his art,” she sighed, releasing my arm but leaning her head on my shoulder instead.

“Usually, the other person would sit across the table,” I suggested. “You know, so I can, uh, see your beautiful face.” It almost hurt to get that word out, but Jessica lit up like a Christmas tree and flounced around the table, taking a seat across from me and dropping her chin onto her hands. She widened her eyes and batted her thick, clumpy lashes at me.

I glanced over at the girl up front, feeling desperate to escape, but she was busy moving things around on shelves below the counter. I could see her dark head popping up now and then. I fought back a wild urge to join her, to get out of the laser-vision stare of my current date.

“So, uh, how did you know my mom again?” I asked the woman who’d dropped one hand across the table to trace lines across my frog-holding fingers with a long talon.

“Oh, I just met her,” she said, the sharp blood-red dagger still on my hand.

A little blossom of fear opened up inside me and I tried very hard not to think about that Glenn Close movie I’d seen as a kid, the one where the slighted woman ended up boiling a bunny. I didn’t have a bunny, though I’d been contemplating a kitten, actually. Now I thought better of it.

“Where was that?” I asked, desperate to stop my mother from ever setting me up like this again.

“At the grocery store,” she said, her voice taking on a dreamy quality, which was even harder to bear than the high-pitched squeak it had contained before. “She saw me crying over the artichokes, and she was just so sweet and asked me what was wrong, bless her heart.”

I knew I shouldn’t, but the words just skittered out of my mouth. “And what was wrong?”

Her nail dug painfully into the top of my hand as she answered. “Rex. My ex. He dumped me, and he wasn’t even kind about it. He said the most horrible things to me, Lincoln. Things I know you’d never say. He didn’t like my hair!” This last part was shrieked, and the sudden outburst made me pull my hand away from her violently, overturning the tiny tub of blue paint.

“Um, I’d better go get some more paint.” I stood, the wild animalistic need to escape a predator pounding through me. I spun and practically sprinted to the counter where the kind dark-haired girl who worked there practically shone like a beacon of safety.

“How’s it going?” she asked brightly, but I could see in her face that she knew it was going in the most terrifying manner possible.

I looked around the countertop frantically, spotting a pen and a little pile of scratch paper notes and grabbing for one. As I scrawled across the paper, I forced myself to try to act normal. “Yeah,” I said, writing at the same time. “Going super well. This frog, well, this one is really going to be a good one. But I need more blue paint.”

I babbled on, my hand scribbling my cell phone number and the words:

“plz txt me with fake emergency. Will die if I don’t get away.”

When she pushed the little pot of paint across the counter to me, her kind eyes fell to the note I was shoving her way. Her face morphed from worried to amused, and she lifted her eyes to mine again, her expression full of humor, and her wide, pretty mouth upturned.

“You got it. Sure thing. Enjoy that paint.” She practically shouted these words, and her voice had gone oddly stiff. She might be good at selling ceramic frogs and paint, but she was a terrible actress.

“Thanks,” I said, and before I turned back to Jessica, I saw the girl pull a phone out of her back pocket and head to the back. Salvation was near.

“I missed you,” Jessica warbled, and as I put down the paint, she captured both my hands in hers, practically pulling me across the table. My life flashed before my eyes. “Lincoln, honey,” she went on. “I have an instinct for things, and I really feel like you and me? Like this is something real.