you!’ Claire Bishop called out to him as Nicholas pretended to check the air pressure on the back tire of his ten-speed. Apparently impressed by her boldness, her stoner friends giggled as one.
Nicholas acted as though he didn’t hear her at first, of course. Had to play things cool with the women, after all. Show them you weren’t all that interested. If you played things that way, it only made them want you that much more. At least, that’s what he’d read recently in Playboy – not that he was the sort of boy who looked at the steamy publication simply to read its sterling articles. Any guy who said they did was just lying.
‘Hey you!’ Claire Bishop repeated, louder this time. Nicholas continued to ignore her and pressed down on the back tire of his ten-speed again, testing its firmness with his thumb. Even at her young age, though, it was obvious that Claire Bishop wasn’t the kind of girl used to having to say things twice, especially to boys. Or to men, for that matter. And where in the hell was the great big surprise in that? After all, when you had the figure of a twenty-five-year-old swimsuit model at the tender age of twelve you learned quickly how to use it to your greatest advantage. Sex was the one commodity Claire Bishop had to sell in this world, and from the look of things she had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about trading in on it whenever she could. ‘You with the yellow shirt!’ she continued, as though she could possibly be talking to somebody else.
Nicholas looked down at his shirt and lifted up his eyebrows thoughtfully on his forehead. Oops, busted. His shirt was yellow, all right – complete with a little man on horseback who was swinging a mallet and positioned tastefully just above his left breast pocket. How very observant of her. Nicholas guessed what he’d heard about dogs wasn’t true, after all. Turns out some of them weren’t colourblind. And now it was time to give the mutt its treat for performing such a remarkable feat of intelligence. ‘Yeah?’ he asked, finally turning in the girl’s direction.
Claire Bishop narrowed her big blue eyes at him. ‘Come over here,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you real quick.’
Nicholas crinkled up his face. Play it cool, he thought. Stick to the game plan here. Don’t show her how badly you want her. How badly you want to be her. ‘Talk to me about what?’ he asked.
Claire Bishop pouted her pretty lips and made a petulant face. DSLs, Nicholas had heard the guys at the gas station call those kinds of lips. Plump, juicy – ripe for the taking. ‘Just come over here, would ya?’ the girl said, practically whining now. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Nicholas blew out a slow breath and tried his best to keep the sharp knife-edge of irritation out of his voice. Even though the girl’s tone grated on his last nerve, he knew that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. ‘What makes you think I want to talk to you?’ he asked.
Claire Bishop turned to her girlfriends and whispered something, and they all giggled again. ‘Because I also want to give you something,’ she said, sticking out her chest in an unsubtle suburban mating call and winking at him.
Nicholas smiled at the flirtatious gesture despite the overwhelming annoyance he felt. He just couldn’t help himself. Because whenever a girl winked at you and stuck out her chest like that it meant just one thing…
Somebody was getting lucky.
And – in this particular case and on this particular day – it also meant someone would be getting extremely unlucky.
To his everlasting credit, Nicholas somehow resisted the urge to rush over and take the dick-teasing whore right then and there on the baking pavement in direct view of her drug-addict friends. Still, this was good. Exactly what he wanted, so he started in their direction anyway. Slowly, of course; casually. Still playing the game. He’d let Claire Bishop think she was in charge for the time being but he’d be damned if he’d go running over there at her beck and call like some sort of lost puppy dog. That just wouldn’t be cool. Wouldn’t be something a real man did.
By the time he joined the girls behind the dumpster, the gaggle had huddled up again, doing that maddening group thing all girls did. Nothing more than pack animals, Nicholas