Only Uni (17 page)

Trish twisted around to snatch at her purse straps and put her phone inside. Spenser walked up to lend a hand. She jumped away as if he carried the Ebola virus.

“Only trying to help.” He put on an injured expression.

No effect on her. “I’m fine.” Acid dripped from her tone.

She was just peeved because she was having problems with her roommate. Spenser plunged full-speed ahead. “I watched a romantic comedy last night.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her jaw drop and her eyes widen to the size of silver dollars. But she definitely wasn’t as attractive as when she was flaming mad. She kind of looked like a goldfish.

“
Bridget Jones’ Diary
,” he answered her unspoken question.

“Get outta here.”

“No, I really did.”

Her eyes narrowed in distrust. “Okay, how long did you last?”

“From beginning to end. I promise I’m telling the truth.”

She crossed her arms, but reluctant amusement pulled at her mouth. “I’m impressed. What did you think of it?”

Here was the dilemma. With any other girl, he could get away with a white lie. But would Trish see through it?

Probably.

Other girls would get bent out of shape if he told the truth. Would Trish brain him with her purse?

Maybe not.

“It was okay.” He shrugged. Maybe he could get away with a vague answer.

No such luck. “Define ‘okay.’ ”

“Um . . .” Spenser paused, then abandoned caution. “To be honest, it was kind of stupid.”

Her lips pouted in frustration. “No it wasn’t.”

“Well, it had all kinds of things that didn’t make sense at all.”

“Like what?” she barked.

“What the heck is a bloke?”

Then Trish’s big, glorious smile opened on her face. The spotty gray clouds disappeared and the sun shone down. He found himself smiling back like a dolt — he couldn’t seem to help it.

“You idiot, it’s like British-speak for a guy. Man. Male.”

Even though her words made him sound like a dummy, the low sound of her voice did strange things to him. There was a purring somewhere in his ribcage.

A footstep sounded behind him. He nodded at a coworker, Kevin Clark, who passed them to enter the building. When Spenser turned back to Trish, he found her eyes following Kevin as if he was filet mignon and she was starving.

Wait a minute. Kevin?

“Did you know that Kevin’s Christian?” Trish’s voice had lowered from normal to dreamy.

“What?” Why was she telling him this?

“I needed to ask him a question about the plate reader, and I forgot it was lunchtime — ”

“Forgot? Isn’t that bathroom break number thirty-five?” He needed to snap her out of this.

He earned a venomous look. “Anyway, I interrupted him doing his assignment for Bible study.”

“So? Rule number one is — ”

“I know, I know. No looking. I wasn’t looking . . . not really . . .”

“What’s there to look at?”

“Are you kidding?” She lifted her eyebrows. “Kevin looks like Keanu Reeves.”

What? Spenser countered with a disbelieving snort. “Are we on the same planet?”

Her eyes squinched, and her mouth thinned into a toothpick line.

“Well, he’s not as cute as Keanu, and he doesn’t have that sexy tousled look.” “He looks like he came straight out of prep school.”

She ignored him. “But he’s got shoulders out to
there
, and he cycles, and he fills his jeans in all the right places — ”

“Hey, hey.” He stabbed at her with his finger. “You’ve been looking.”

Her face flushed. “Well . . . and he has that strong jaw and those chocolate brown eyes. He’s a little shy and quiet, but he qualifies as a hottie, I think.”

Kevin? Dorky, skinny Kevin? Was she crazy? His frustration squeezed his throat shut, and he started to sputter. “You — He —I — ”

Her brow creased, and she tilted her head. “You sound like a frog. What’s wrong?”

A frog?
Indignation clamped onto his tongue.

Trish’s head tilted the other way. “I can’t understand you if you won’t finish a sentence.”

He finally found his voice. “You prefer Kevin to me?”

Her confusion melted into a smug gleam in her eye. “First time a girl’s preferred someone else to you?”

Spenser started sputtering again.

A wicked grin rolled across her mouth. “I’m honored to be your first.”

His incoherent sounds deepened into a growl, and he stalked away.

I’m honored to be your first.
Had she really said that? Trish surprised him. Last night, after reviewing that entire conversation in his head a couple hundred times, Spenser decided that it wasn’t worth the repeated insults to pursue her.

This morning, he just wanted to annoy her.

He hunted Trish down outside the women’s restroom — where else would she be? Talking on her cell phone — what else would she be doing?

“I’ve reminded you every day this week but you still leave your door open and the cat escapes . . . Because I got an emergency doctor’s appointment and she gave me allergy medicine. Just because I’m not sneezing lately doesn’t mean the cat dander isn’t making my allergies go haywire . . . Well, the medicine isn’t working . . . No, I don’t want to go back for stronger stuff, this stuff is already giving me headaches . . . Because you promised to give the cat away. It’s against the rules . . . I’ve told you before, I didn’t write the rules.” She snapped her phone shut.

Then her shoulders sagged, her eyes pooled with despair, and even her hair looked limp. Her mouth drooped in that interesting rosebud shape. “Her cat ate my goldfish. Gonzo.”

His sarcastic remark died on his tongue. He wondered if she would deck him if he responded with a pun.

Then she looked past him. In an instant, she shed her distress like tossing off a coat. She bristled and rumbled low in her throat, and he could almost see porcupine spikes rise from her rigid shoulders.

One of the biologists from virology sauntered by with a loose-lipped smile for Trish. It looked like he intended to stop, but her eyes stabbed daggers at him and he scurried away.

Spenser raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

“When I got into work this morning, we passed through a doorway at the same time, and he was groping me.”

That dog. Spenser clapped his jaw shut. The muscles in his cheeks tightened and spasmed. He inhaled a sharp breath. The next time he saw him —

“So I stamped on his foot, and he backed off. I was kind of disappointed I didn’t get a chance to elbow him in the gut.”

Spenser’s righteous indignation deflated. Bloodthirsty girl. Trish obviously didn’t need a knight in shining armor. He’d have to be careful about that personal space advantage next time.

“It’s all your fault.” She jabbed an accusatory finger at his face.

He jerked his head away before she impaled his eye. He grabbed the offensive digit and lowered it to a safer vantage point. “What are you talking about?”

“All these slimy guys are paying attention to me because they’ve seen
you
with me the past couple weeks.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to get transferred to your group.”

“Who cares? You’ve become the bane of my life!” She accompanied her melodramatic screech by flinging her hands up.

He should have been offended, but he saw the humor in the situation. Plus, it was fun to aggravate her.

Another guy approached them. Spenser leaned into Trish and propped his arm against the wall over her head. His proximity made her jump and back into the wall, and he eased closer. Her eyes flitted everywhere but at his face, and her breath quickened.

She didn’t seem to mind Spenser the way she minded the guy from virology. When she looked up, she looked bemused and hypnotized.

After the guy walked past them, Spenser pushed away from the wall. Trish remained standing there, confused and dazed.

Then her eyes snapped into focus and started sparking at him. “Are you doing this to annoy me?”

“Partly.” He gave her a cocky grin.

She growled. She sounded menacing even though he stood a good three feet away. Her hands tightened into white-knuckled fists, then she whirled and marched away.

He resisted the unwise urge to chuckle.

At eleven o’clock that same day, Spenser stalled Diana to cover Trish’s tardiness to the group meeting. She awarded him during the meeting with one of those terrific smiles and a scrawled note on her notepad: “Thanks. I’ll buy you lunch.”

He was in her good books. Perfect timing.

Spenser and Trish returned to their building from the café with their lunch — him with the Friday burger special, her with fried chicken salad. As they entered the card-key doors, he set a gentle hand on the small of her back. She started, but didn’t pull away.

Things were getting better and better.

“Trish, I was wondering . . . There’s a great new Italian restaurant that opened on Castro Street. Let’s go tonight.”

A piercing wail from the direction of her purse nearly shot his ear off. Her cell phone. Again.

“Why do you keep the ringer so loud?” He rattled a finger in his numb ear.

“I can’t hear it otherwise. Hi, Marnie.”

Her fingers suddenly lost hold of her plastic lunch container. Spenser congratulated himself on his Superman reflexes when he caught her salad.

Trish didn’t even notice. “What? What was he doing there? . . . How did he get a key? . . . Grandma doesn’t have a key, she couldn’t have given Kazuo one . . . He did
what?
. . . I don’t care if he did it to keep you company, neither of you are supposed to smoke in the apartment . . . You did
what?
. . . What do you mean, it’s not very big? A burn spot is a burn spot. Our carpet is white, in case you didn’t notice . . . I don’t know how to fix it . . . Okay, bye.” She snapped her phone shut and stared into space, immobile.

Spenser snapped his fingers in her face, balancing two lunch containers in the other hand. “Trish?”

She turned to him. Her eyes didn’t quite focus, but at least he had her attention . . . he thought.

“So, um . . . dinner tonight?”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“Dinner. Tonight. With me.” Spenser smiled his warmest, most charming smile. A light came on in her eyes . . .

No
, that was an inferno spitting flames.

“Dinner?”

Oops. She shifted moods faster than Dale Earnhardt Jr. shifted gears.

“
How can you ask me out on a date when I’m going out of my mind?
” She exploded into noisy sobs.

Spenser beat a hasty retreat.
Maybe next week . . .

When Trish had spent all her tears, she sniffled and made her way back to her thankfully empty office.

What was Spenser doing? He had made her very . . . uncomfortable this week. A girl could almost believe those soulful looks . . .

She had to stop that. He was up to something. He was annoying. Well, amusing, too. And at times he was quite, quite attractive. Trish let out a puff of air and started fanning herself with her hand. It had taken heaps of willpower to not respond to him this week. That strength must have come from God, because she knew she didn’t have any when Spenser was around.