Crazy for You Read Online Free PDF Page B

gakkk! Someone had ralphed all over the hallway floor. I swallowed hard, stifling my gag reflex. I was not getting paid enough to deal with this! This was one of the life situations that demanded magic. I wanted to be Harry Potter, pointing my wand at the mess, muttering “Scourgify,” and watching the puke vanish.
    Since the closest thing I had to a magic wand was my mascara wand, I dealt with the mess using a mop and bucket. Cleaning up the barf left a damp film on the floor. When some drunk slipped on it and broke his stupid neck, Rhonda would blame me for it. So I squatted down with a wad of cocktail napkins and began blotting the wet floor.
    “Mazie?”
    I looked up. And broke out into flaming pustules of embarrassment. Ben Labeck, who’d somehow managed to break free of Rhonda’s stranglehold, was standing there inthe doorway, taking in the mop, the mess, and me.
    I closed my eyes, clinging to the fantasy I’d cultivated during the past six weeks, the one in which Labeck spies me in an elegant restaurant. I’m wearing a low-cut, slinky black dress, diamond earrings, and Stuart Weitzman shoes. George Clooney is whispering in my ear, begging me to blow the joint with him, but Labeck, driven mad with jealousy, rips me away from Clooney and…
    “You’re not falling asleep down there, are you?” he asked.
    Opening my eyes, I aimed my gaze toward Labeck’s kneecaps. “Oh, hi,” I said, shooting for nonchalance, but betrayed by my voice, an octave above Minnie Mouse’s.
    Labeck squatted down next to me. Our shoulders touched and I felt an electric shock go through me. Grabbing a wad of napkins, he started swiping at the floor.
    “Stop that,” I snapped. “You’ll get your pants dirty.”
    “Was this in your job description?”
    I snatched the globby napkins from him. “You should get back to your date. If you bring her home late, she’ll be grounded.”
    He laughed. “Aspen isn’t that young. She just started at the station and I’m teaching her the ropes.”
    “How totally unselfish of you.”
    “Mazie … look, is there someplace we can talk?”
    Talk? He wanted to talk ? I wanted to yank him by the necktie, pull his face down to mine, and demonstrate exactly how much I’d missed him. I wanted to say all the things
    I should have said before I’d let him drive off to Big Sky Country. I wanted to fling my pride to the wind and beg for another chance.
    Labeck stood up. He took my hands and hauled me to my feet, his eyes dark and serious. “Mazie…,” he said.
    “Uh-huh?” I scarcely dared breathe.
    “Do you …”
    There were a million ways this sentence could end. Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you? Do you want me to dump Aspen so we can get back together? Do you want to come back to my place for a round of passionate makeup sex?
    I waited impatiently. I could have rattled off Hamlet’s soliloquy in the time it wastaking his Adam’s apple to bob up and down.
    “… smell smoke?” He sniffed. Raised his head and sniffed , like a dog scenting fresh garbage.
    “What?” I rubbed one of the rat lashes out of my eyes.
    “Do you smell smoke?”
    “No.”
    “Fire!” a woman screamed.
    Pandemonium. Glasses smashed, chairs overturned, party guests rushed to the windows. Outside, the bags of leaves lined up along Rhonda’s sidewalk were on fire. Bright orange flames shot up, smoldering debris whirled through the air in fiery pinwheels, and faint fumes of smoke snaked into the house and uncurled with an acrid stink.
    “My car,” yelled a man, tearing out of the house. That was the signal for the other partygoers to burst out of the house, everyone frantic to move their cars off the fiery curb before their paint blistered or their gas tanks exploded.
    Labeck and I ran out along with everyone else, but we were jostled apart by the milling party guests. The cold night air smacked me like a fist. Where was my car? My head spun. I vaguely recalled parking in Rhonda’s driveway.