I've Got This Read online

  “Oh, you never said your name!” she calls, and I stretch my smile even wider. Times like this I wish I had a fake smile like Derek’s.

  “It’s Trav,” I tell her. “Bye!” I get into the car and resist the temptation to check that the doors have locked. That’s an overreaction, of course—Tracy’s probably a perfectly nice woman who was doing the neighborly thing by making sure Derek’s car hadn’t been stolen. Still, the lack of anonymity is unlike anything I’m used to.

  I pull back onto Main Street. Tracy is standing on the sidewalk, smiling and waving, so I wave halfheartedly back. People are nice, Trav. Be social.

  WHEN I walk into the lobby of the JU administrative building, Derek is already there. Mind you, so are about a hundred other people, so the fact that my eyes go directly to him is another indication that I have a serious infatuation.

  He’s standing by the coffee cart, chatting with the vendor as he makes coffee for one of the half-dozen people in line, but as I cross toward him, he looks up and spots me. The wide, natural smile that breaks out makes me smile back.

  “Hey,” he says as I reach him. “Great timing—Jack was just finishing my coffee. What do you want?”

  “Um….” I glance at the line. The woman at the front laughs.

  “Don’t worry, Derek already waited in line. He even let three people go first.”

  “Oh.” Awww. “Um, I’ll have a soy chai latte, please.”

  Jack winks as he gets to work. “No problem.”

  Supremely aware of our audience, I dig Derek’s garage door opener out of my pocket and offer it to him. “Thanks. And thanks again for the car. Uh, I’m sorry about driving it through town.” I can’t think of any other way to say “I’m sorry the townspeople here are so nosy and bothered you at work.”

  He takes the opener and pockets it, raising an eyebrow. “Isn’t the whole point of you borrowing it that you need to drive through town?” he teases. I wish I could be annoyed, but that actually gets a smirk out of me.

  “Yeah, I know,” I concede. “I just didn’t expect a welcoming committee—that wasn’t very welcoming at first.” It’s kind of funny, in retrospect. Okay, it would have been funny at the time if it hadn’t been happening to me.

  “It would have been even more unwelcoming if John had listened to Tracy and called the police before he called me.” Derek wiggles his brows. “I would have had to come and bust you out of jail.”

  Oh. My. God. I smother a shudder. “Well, we can be glad John doesn’t listen to Tracy,” I say weakly. Because being arrested would have been so much fun.

  “Here you go,” Jack says cheerfully, handing me my drink. I take it, suddenly desperate, even if it isn’t scotch.

  “How much do I—”

  “Derek took care of it,” he tells me, and turns to take the order of the nice woman who’s next.

  I smile at Derek. “Thanks,” I murmur. “The next one’s on me.”

  His face lights up. “I’m glad there’s going to be a next one.” He leads the way across the lobby to a seating area. “After John and Tracy, I was worried you were going to leave town as fast as you could.”

  That gets an actual laugh out of me as I sit beside him on a plush sofa. “I won’t say I didn’t think about it.” Because I did. “I even started to get directions to the airport from the GPS. But then I decided taking the car to the airport would probably just lead to a dozen more people calling you at work.” I deliver the last part with a completely straight face and am rewarded by the stunned look on his.

  “You… ohhhhhh.” He gets it at last and starts to chuckle. “Crap, Trav, you actually had me going there.”

  It’s nice to sit there with him, sipping my drink and chatting about nothing in particular. I’m amazed by how relaxed I am with him now, when as recently as last night I was still uncomfortable in his company. The shift in our relationship dynamic wasn’t dramatic, but getting things out in the open made a huge difference—and I love it.

  The minutes fly by, and before long Derek’s phone chimes. He groans as he pulls it out and looks at it. “It’s Dimi. I asked him to nudge me if I wasn’t back by now, because I have a meeting soon.”

  I glance at my watch and see that it’s ten forty. “I need to get going anyway,” I say reluctantly. “I have some stuff to get done before the matinee today.” I look him full in the eyes, mostly because they’re a really pretty blue and I like to look at them. “I’ll text you later with plans for lunch tomorrow, yeah?”

  He smiles, and little crinkles form around his eyes. Laugh lines, and they suit him. “Yeah. And don’t forget I’m going to call you tonight.”

  Cue romantic sigh, right? We had a date last night, spoke this morning, just met for coffee, have a date tomorrow, and he still wants to talk to me again tonight. No fairy-tale hero was ever so awesome.

  Chapter Nine

  Derek

  I CHANNEL surf idly through what looks like a bunch of mediocre TV shows as the clock ticks slowly—so slowly—closer to eleven. Truthfully, there are probably some good shows in there that would normally interest me, but right now nothing can hold my attention. All I want is to talk to Trav again.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way, this adolescent giddiness and desperate longing for contact with my crush—in fact, I don’t think I’ve reacted like this to a guy since college. All my relationships since then—not that there have been so many—have been much more adult and reasonable and… boring. No, that’s not true. Well, not entirely. But while they had attraction and lust and mutual liking and respect, they were all lacking that incendiary spark, that feeling that I must see/speak to/be with him as often as possible. To be honest, I always thought it was just that I’d grown up, that the volcano of feelings and hormones I experienced in my teens—and right now with Trav—was just a teenage thing, and that adult relationships were less emotional and volatile.

  Turns out, I was just dating the wrong people. Now I’m thirty-seven years old and I feel like a teenager again. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Trav all day. Even when I was focused on work, he was always at the back of my mind, ready to step forward and consume my thoughts if I gave him the chance.

  And I love it.

  I love feeling this strongly. I love that every time he pops into my head, I grin. I love that Dimi and Gina have already started chuckling at me when I get that stupid, besotted grin on my face.

  Okay, that last bit probably confuses you. It started when Trav texted me the details for our date tomorrow. Dimi, Gina, and I were having a lunch meeting—which basically means eating sandwiches in my office while we review whatever it is that needs it—when my phone went off with the tone I assigned for Trav’s texts. Yes, I assigned him a special tone. That’s what you do when you’re being all adolescent. Most importantly, it means that no matter what I’m doing or who I’m talking to, I know the text is from him. So I stopped talking pretty much midsentence, put down my sandwich, and pulled out my phone.

  And of course, I was already grinning like an idiot before I even opened the text.

  Lunch tomorrow, 1.00pm, the Gator Gate Café. Want me to come and pick you up?

  Before I could type a reply, another message popped up.

  Oh, you should know there’s going to be gossip about us. When I booked, I told them I was eating with you but they were NOT to apply your discount.

  My grin got wider, which in retrospect I’m surprised was possible. I texted back quickly.

  There’s already gossip about us. Lots of it. You’ve just fueled the fire. Pick me up, I want to feel pampered ;-)

  I looked up from my phone. Dimi and Gina are staring at me with mouths agape. “What?” I asked.

  Gina pointed accusingly at my phone. “Who is it? Who’s the person who makes you look like a drooling idiot?”

  Seriously, she said that. She called me a drooling idiot. I admit I spent a second rethinking my plan to promote her.

  “It’s Trav, isn’
t it?” Dimi interrupted. “The rumors are true?”

  “What have you heard?” I knew people were talking about us, what with our date last night and the coffee break this morning, but I wasn’t sure how far it went. My phone buzzed in my hand with a new message, and I couldn’t resist looking down at it.

  Really? People are already gossiping about us? We haven’t even been dating 24 hours!

  “There it is again!” Gina exclaimed. I raised my head in time to see her turn to Dimi appealingly. “You see it, right? He looks like he belongs in a lunatic asylum!”

  Ahhh, the love my subordinates feel for me. Heartwarming, isn’t it?

  “I think it’s sweet,” Dimi defended me, but his lips were twitching. “So, is it Trav? Because I haven’t gotten in on the betting pool yet, but if it’s true I’m going to.”

  That’s right, folks. The loving and supportive Joy Universe family is betting on my love life.

  “What’s the pool?” I asked, partly because I was actually curious and partly because it would make a great story to tell Trav. And then I texted him.

  We closed down a restaurant last night, had coffee this morning, I lent you a car, you booked another date. That’s enough for them to have us married with three kids and a condo at the beach. They’ve even set up a betting pool.

  “Bets are on whether you and Trav are dating or just friendly. Then there’s a bet that you knew each other in New York, and the reason he was hostile on Monday was because of your bad breakup. There’s also a side bet on whether one of you cheated, and who it was. And then there’s a ton of bets about what happens next. So… you’re dating Trav, then?”

  “Someone bet that I cheated on my hypothetical ex-boyfriend? Charming.” I made up my mind as my phone buzzed again. I didn’t mind some gossip, but this sounded like it was getting out of control. “Hold on.”

  OMG! They’re BETTING on us? Suddenly a lot of things make sense. I think the pool has already spread to the performers at the village, because people here are being super weird.

  I cast my mind over the events of the morning. Some of the people I’d spoken to had acted a little oddly. I did think it was because they’d heard the gossip about me dating Trav, but I was a bit creeped out they might think I cheated on my boyfriend… who never existed.

  Same. Listen, I’ve gotta go, but I’ll talk to you tonight. If anyone asks if I cheated on you before I moved here, ignore them.

  I set my phone aside just as a return text appeared.

  ???????!!!!!!!

  It made me grin, but I ignored it for the time being and looked squarely at Dimi and Gina. “I don’t care if you guys want to bet, but I don’t like that it’s casting aspersions on my and Trav’s characters. So here’s the deal: I will give you some information to take back to everyone and close down some of those bets, and then you can bet however you like on anything relating to the future. How’s that sound?”

  “Like a plan,” Dimi affirmed. “Spill.”

  Gina leaned forward, her phone in her hand. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she started taking notes or live-texting everything I said.

  “Trav and I met for the first time on Monday. I reminded him of someone he dislikes, and that’s why he was terse at first.” Nobody needed to know more than that. “We had a date last night, and we have another tomorrow. This morning we had coffee when he brought back my garage opener—which I gave him so he could borrow my car, Dimi. So far things are going well, but obviously it’s very early days. And that’s it.” I made my tone firm because I know what the gossip mill is like at JU, and if I gave them an opening, they’d ask all kinds of personal questions.

  In fact, Gina looked like she had a list of them ready to go, but after a glance at my face, she closed her mouth and just nodded.

  “Thanks, boss,” Dimi said jauntily. “Don’t worry, we’ll spread the word.”

  Huh. Fancy that. I was supposed to be pleased that people were spreading gossip about me.

  My phone chimed with Trav’s tone, and I glanced at it, the smile already forming in what was quickly becoming a Pavlovian reaction.

  Can’t wait to talk to you later.

  Dimi and Gina started to laugh.

  “What?” I looked up.

  Gina’s chuckles were too strong for her to answer, so Dimi did. “Every time you look at a text from him, you get that besotted expression. We can tell who’s texting you just from your face.”

  I was torn between mild embarrassment and not caring because I felt so good. “Did you really just use ‘besotted’ in a sentence?” I heckled, but Dimi just grinned.

  The alarm on my phone brings me back to the present. Yes, I set an alarm to alert me when eleven o’clock rolled around—just in case I wasn’t staring at the clock. Lucky, huh, since I was off in a daydream.

  I snatch up my phone and silence the really annoying alarm. It’s time to call Trav.

  That stupid grin spreads across my face.

  AS I drive to work, singing along to the radio as usual, I’m barely able to contain my enthusiasm for this gorgeous Monday morning.

  Exactly a week ago I had no idea what the universe (the regular one, not JU—although everything did happen at JU, so….) had in store for me. I had no idea that I’d spend my morning dealing with a murder and a staffing crisis, and that I’d meet a man who, just seven short days later, is already a pivotal part of my life.

  Trav.

  I always smiled tolerantly at those people who told me that when you meet “the one,” you just know. I’m still not convinced it’s true for everyone. And to be honest, I don’t think that just meeting “the one” is enough—sometimes it won’t work out even if they are “the one,” because life can be a real bitch. But after only a week with Trav in my life, I just know that he’s meant to be there, and that I’ll work damn hard to keep it that way.

  Our second date was just as great as our first—in fact, I lost track of time and ended up being late for a meeting. Lucky for me Dimi is as amazing as he is and had the foresight—once he learned about our date from the gossip mill—to reschedule the meeting for half an hour later than originally planned, so I was only fifteen minutes late, not forty-five.

  I really have to do something about finding another job for Dimi. He’s ready for more than just an assistant’s role, even if being assistant to a JU AD is a demanding and prestigious job.

  Since that second date, I’ve seen Trav three times. We sneak in quick meals and coffee breaks, and of course we text pretty much all day long and talk on the phone at least once a day. Total adolescence, right?

  This week has been a pretty good indicator of what a relationship between us would be like, though. I work (mostly) regular business hours. True, I rarely finish at five, but even if I did, Trav and I would only have a few snatched minutes together before he had to head off to work. His evenings are taken up, and he works on weekends too—which actually isn’t a problem for me, since I often find myself at Planet Joy or one of the resorts over the weekend.

  The thing is, though, that even with such limited time available to us, we’ve managed to see and talk to each other more in five days than my previous boyfriend and I did in three weeks—and we were both working the same hours. What it comes down to is motivation, and when it comes to Trav, I have it in spades. He seems to feel the same. Even when I asked about the no-leading-roles thing and he fobbed me off with “let’s not talk about that now,” I got the impression that he’d tell me one day.

  My head’s not in the sand. I know he leaves at the end of July. But we’ve only known each other a week—I think we can take some time to explore things before we start fretting about the future.

  And tonight the exploration continues. It’s Trav’s day off, which means tonight he’s all mine, all night long. We have plans—you know the kind.

  That’s right, we haven’t had sex yet. We could have, I guess—he could have come out to my place after work one night, or yesterday morning, when neither of us
had any commitments, but honestly, that didn’t feel right. Most days he has two performances, and by the time he finishes for the night, he’s tired—and so am I, since I’m up by six every morning and put in a pretty full day myself. It seemed wrong that our first time together was going to be a halfhearted effort when we were both worn out. As for Sunday morning, we went to breakfast and then to Planet Joy. I know, that’s pretty much just what I do most days, but Trav said he hadn’t actually been to the park as a guest since he was a kid. He intended to while he’s here but hadn’t got round to it yet. So we went for a few hours before he had to do the matinee, and it was fun. Usually when I’m at the park, I’m all focused on work, or on assessing the guest experience, but I wanted Trav to have a good time so I closed my eyes to all the stuff I’d usually be paying attention to, and we just enjoyed ourselves.

  It was especially cool—although if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll strangle you—when some of the impromptu performers recognized us both and went off-script to take us prisoner. The guests watching loved it so much that I think I’ll talk to Mandy and Pete about planting some of our performers as “guests” to be taken prisoner for all future shows.

  In case you’re wondering if my district’s catastrophes from last week are all resolved, they mostly are. All performers were free from symptoms by Thursday, but at my insistence, they all had to come in and see medical to be cleared before they could return to work. Most started back over the weekend, and the last of them should be reporting for duty this morning. I also spoke with Maya yesterday, after Trav went to work. She ended up breaking down in tears, because she really wanted—in her words—to “get out of this damn house and get back to being useful,” but she didn’t want to ever have to go into a guest room again, and since she’s a housekeeper, she figured that would mean she’d have to quit.

  Um, hell no.

  I interrupted Link’s Sunday, and between the three of us, we found a back-of-house job that would suit her. She’s now going to be managing inventory, which was actually a huge relief for Link because the woman currently doing that job is going on maternity leave for six months at the end of the month, and the guy who was training to take the job decided he’d really rather move to the coast. That gives us six months to find something more permanent for Maya. I also told her that if she wanted to move to one of the other resorts, she had only to say the word, but for now she wants to stay at Tiki with all her friends. She comes back to work this morning too, and while I’ll be keeping an eye on things with her, she seems like a really strong woman, and I don’t think I need to worry.