Talk Nerdy to Me (34 page)

"Someone
was in the house when we came home from my mother's bakery," Charlie said.

Denise's eyes widened.
"How do you know that?"

"We
heard them leave." Charlie decided there was no reason to give Denise the
lurid details.

"What do you
mean?"

"There
was a click, like the front door closing," Eve said. "We both heard
it."

Denise
shuddered. "That's creepy. Are you sure you didn't imagine it?"

"We
thought so at first," Charlie said. "But when we checked the front
door, it was unlocked. Eve's sure she locked it when we left for the
bakery."

"Well,
you can't trust that information, Charlie." Denise glanced at her sister
with a patronizing smile. "This one would forget her head if it weren't
attached. She's the original scatterbrain."

Charlie's
jaw tensed. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. She's managed to put together one
hell of a hovercraft, not to mention the fuel converter she designed herself. I
don't know too many engineers who could have done as well, and I know a
lot
of engineers."

"Thanks,
Charlie." Eve smiled at him.

God, she was something.
He'd been too engrossed in the awkwardness of the situation to register how
cute she looked standing there in his plaid flannel shirt. The sleeves covered
all but the tips of her fingers and the bottom hem reached to the middle of
her thighs. And those were damned sexy thighs, too. Her hair fanned out in luxurious
waves around her shoulders and her cheeks were pink from sleep and good sex.

Charlie wasn't up on
sibling rivalry. He'd never had a sibling, so he wasn't sure how the whole
dynamic worked. But watching the way Denise looked at Eve, he was getting a
pretty good education on the subject.

"I
drove here today exactly because of that hovercraft," Denise said.
"Eve doesn't have an engineering degree, and she tends to go off
half-cocked. If you had a few hours I could tell you stories of what she did
when we were kids."

"I learned a lot from
those experiments," Eve said.

Charlie
was glad to see her standing up for herself. "I'd like to hear about them
one of these days. Sounds like fun."

"The
point is," Denise continued, "Eve has no business constructing
something that will fly through the air. Someone is liable to get hurt."

Charlie
had some of those same concerns, but that didn't diminish his admiration for
what Eve had accomplished. "There's an element of danger in every experiment,"
he said.

"That's
the key." Denise faced him her chin jutting with determination. "An
element
of danger is one thing. When I take risks in the stock market
there's always an
element
of
danger that it won't work out. But those risks are carefully calculated. I'll
guarantee that Eve's project has at least a ninety percent chance of failing
spectacularly."

"I
don't agree with those odds," Charlie said quietly. "The concept is
brilliant and the execution is close to flawless."

"And you know this
because?"

"I'm
an electrical engineer with some background in mechanical engineering. And I'm
putting my knowledge at Eve's disposal, although she's already done most of the
heavy lifting. I'll only be helping her fine-tune things."

Denise looked him up and
down, as if taking his measure. "Are you currently unemployed,
then?"

"He
has a great job!" Eve said. "He's an electrical engineer for the
Middlesex Light and Power Company. And one day soon he's going to be taking a
position of great authority at Hoover Dam. Right, Charlie?"

Charlie met the challenge
in Denise's gaze. "I think your sister is wondering why a man with a
normal job is standing barefoot in your entry way at ten o'clock on a Thursday
morning."

"That
has crossed my mind," Denise said. She all but tapped her foot as she
waited for an answer.

"The
fact is, I should be at work right now. I probably have a call on my cell wondering
where I am. No doubt I've caused several people some concern, because I'm never
late for work. As I mentioned, this was an unexpected development."

Eve
gasped. "I hadn't thought of that. You'd better call in right away. I'm
sure people are wondering what happened to you. They might think you've been
in an accident or something."

"I'll call in a
minute." Charlie felt as if he and Denise were having a high-noon sort of
encounter. And he wasn't going to blink. "Maybe it's good for them to
realize I'm not perfect."

"I
feel the need to point out that this is what can happen," Denise said.
"Schedules thrown off today, dangerous accidents tomorrow. I should know.
I lived with her for almost fourteen years. No telling what she got away with
after I went off to college and wasn't there to keep an eye on her."

"That's
not fair, Denise." Eve combed her hair back from her face. "I'm not a
kid anymore. You can't judge what I'm doing now based on twenty-year-old
memories."

"Yeah,
you're older, and your projects have just become bigger and more
dangerous!"

"I'm taking
precautions."

"And I'm helping her
do that," Charlie said.

"I'm
sure you are, which is admirable. But look what's already happened. You're
missing work."

"The
world won't come to an end." But Charlie felt guilty about it. He should
have at least left a message on the company voice mail sometime during the
night.

"I'm
sure it won't come to an end. But you seem like a nice, steady guy. Don't let
yourself get sucked into this. Instead of aiding and abetting, you should be
helping me convince her to stop this nonsense. Then we'd all sleep better at
night."

"Thanks
for the advice." Charlie looked at Eve, who seemed to be trying hard to
maintain a brave front in the face of her big sister's assault. "And for
the record, I slept great last night. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go locate
my cell phone and call the office."

As
he walked back to Eve's bedroom, he tried to sort through the waves of concern
and envy that poured from Denise in equal amounts. After meeting Denise, who
had a key to the house and was a very smart woman, Charlie was no longer sure
that Eunice was the prime suspect.

Chapter
Twenty

He's
cute." Denise gazed after Charlie as he ducked into Eve's bedroom.

"He's temporary,"
Eve said.

Denise
glanced sharply at Eve. "What do you mean by that? Isn't he good enough
for you?"

Eve
sighed. She didn't know why she and Denise couldn't have conversations like
normal sisters, the loving sisters that inspired all those gooey e-mails that
circulated on the Internet. "He's perfect for me," she said.
"But he's not staying in Middlesex. And I am."

"Which
is something I'll never understand, you in this backward little town."

Eve decided not to respond
to that. Denise had put her finger precisely on the problem. She would never
understand Eve. Eve was beginning to wonder if Denise had ever tried.
"Listen, do you want some coffee? I could go for some." She started
toward the kitchen, stepping around beads to make sure she didn't end up on her
fanny like Denise.

At
first she'd been horrified, but Denise was in one
piece, so now Eve could see the funny side of it. She would love a video of
Denise barreling through the door ready to organize the troops and falling flat
on her ass.

"Don't
you think we should pick these beads up before we think about coffee?"
Denise asked.

"You
know, I think we should have coffee first." Eve continued on into the
kitchen. For one thing, she wasn't wearing anything under this shirt of
Charlie's, and bending down to pick up beads would have interesting
consequences.

"Then I'll do
it."

Eve
paused in her retreat. With her back toward Denise, she was free to mouth a
pithy swear word. "Just leave them, okay?" she said brightly.
"You're a guest. I'll do it later."

"It'll
only take a minute. Someone could come along and trip on them like I did. You
could get sued. I'll bet you don't have an umbrella policy in force, either.
Accidents like that can wipe you out if you're not careful."

Eve
closed her eyes and bit back her response, mostly because she
didn't
have an umbrella policy. She didn't think it would cover
accidents connected to the hovercraft, anyway. Much as she hated to admit it,
the hovercraft did have the potential to be dangerous. That was part of the
excitement. Besides, she was the only one who would climb into the cockpit
until the hovercraft had been thoroughly tested.

"I'll
bet you bought these because you thought you'd get into the beading craze,
didn't you?" Denise didn't waif for an answer. "They're pretty,
though. I'm sure you'll want to save them. Somebody might be able to use them
someday. Do you have something to put them in?"

"Denise."
Eve turned back, ready to take a stand on the stupid beads, which could stay on
the floor until hell froze over, as far as she was concerned. This was her
house, and if she wanted beads
on
the
floor-—or trained monkeys swinging from the light fixtures, for that
matter—she-had that right.

"What?" Crouched
on the floor, Denise looked up. She'd laid her leather jacket neatly over the
handle of her rolling suitcase and she'd already picked up a handful of beads.
"Anything will work. A bowl or a pan. Anything. Look, I've already picked
up about thirty percent of them. I can get the rest is no time."

The
fight went out of Eve. What was the point? Denise was never going to change,
and the sootier Eve stopped letting it get to her, the better. Knowing Charlie
believed in her and her project helped. It helped a whole hell of a lot. No
matter what happened between them in the future, she would always be grateful
that he'd given her feat confidence.

"I
know exactly where to find a pan," she said. "Be right back" She
walked into the kitchen and grabbed one of the pans from the floor where she
and Charlie had arranged them before going into her room to have great sex. And
it had been great—providing the kind of full-scale orgasms that a girl could
become dependent on.

He
knew his way around the oral sex routine, too. Maybe it wasn't fair to judge a
guy on whether he was good at that, but she did, anyway. Lyle had never been
very enthusiastic about such activities. Until this moment she hadn't admitted
to herself that had been another reason she'd run screaming from a commitment
to him.

But
Charlie ... now there was a man who had all the moves she could ever want, even
when he was a little disoriented by the round bed. Thinking about those slow,
deliberate thrusts he'd used in their last encounter got her very hot and
bothered. She wondered how Charlie felt about morning lovemaking. Morning had never
been a prime time for her, but that was before Charlie. She could easily
imagine—

"Eve,
I
thought you said you were getting a
pan?" Denise called from the entryway.

Eve
blinked and stared at the pan she'd been holding for at least a minute.
"Coming!" she called out. Then she had a fit of giggles, because the
potent memory of Charlie between her thighs had nearly made her do exactly
that. She pinched herself to make herself stop laughing, but she was still
grinning as she walked out of the kitchen, pan at the ready.

And
there was Charlie, on his hands and knees next to Denise, helping her pick up
beads. As he moved, his hair fell down over his forehead and his glasses
slipped down his nose, which made him look boyish. But the rest of him was all
man.

Crawling
around on the floor made his biceps stand out and the muscles in his back flex.
Then there was that sexy little gap in the waistband of his jeans where the
small of his back curved in and the denim didn't. A wave of heat hit her. If
Denise hadn't been there, Eve would have dragged him off to the bedroom to have
her way with him.

He
glanced up. She decided that she liked the rakish look of a beard starting to
grow. He was the kind of guy who would wear a beard well, and it might make for
a fun tickle factor on her face and ... elsewhere. Maybe she'd suggest that he
not shave it off.