Page 3 of Play With Me
Her pale, freckled cheeks pinkened. Or could she somehow have known what I was thinking about?
SWEATY GYM SOCKS!!!
But Nora just smiled. “That was low, buddy.”
Relief flooded through me. It was fine. Just like the hundred other times Nora and I had accidentally brushed against each other or hugged, or any other time I remembered my friend had boobs.
I grinned. “That’s what you get for being a traitor.”
She rolled her eyes, but still smirked. Then she lifted her camera again.
For a moment, it was like everything was back to normal. She was my best friend. Completely platonic. And she seemed happy. I’d been imagining her weirdness over the past few weeks, that had to be it. Maybe it was the stupid idea I’d emailed my agent about that was making me nervous. I’d stepped way out of my comfort zone for that.
But Nora lowered the camera again and pressed her lips together. “So…when did you say your dad was going to be here?”
That’s why we were still out here. The reality TV show that had taken over our hotel’s restaurant for the past six weeks just had its finale. We were waiting for Dad and my sister Cass, the hotel’s CEO, to come outside before heading to the restaurant downtown. Cass had kept Dad away so he didn’t barge on set or talk the crew’s ears off about the history of the hotel or the ghost who haunts it. Seriously, he would. But now that it was over, she’d relented.
“Any minute,” I said, frowning.
She nodded, but when I met her eye, she quickly looked away.
Nope, it wasn’t me. “Nora, speak.”
She smiled again, but this time it wobbled. She was nervous. Shit, I’d thought she was going to tell me someone had asked her out at the library again. Or her brother was coming to town. That always threw her off. But suddenly, I wondered if it was something far more serious.
“Do you want to grab coffee tomorrow? At Betsey’s?” she asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“I want you to talk now.”
Nora glanced over at the door where my father was set to come out of, then the others, still wailing balls at each other.
“You’re scaring the shit out of me. Are you dying or something?”
“What? No!”
My relief at that was short-lived. She was okay. But something wasn’t. “Is it Christian?” Her brother was a pilot. I knew she worried about him.
“He’s fine.”
I wanted to keep grilling her. But right then, my phone buzzed.
I would have ignored it, but I knew it might be my agent. It was a call I’d been anxiously awaiting.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I warned Nora as I patted my coat for my phone.
But Nora was already backing up toward the others. “It’s fine, Jude. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I didn’t want to wait, but I’d found my phone. There was a plus sign on the screen, followed by a string of numbers across the top, indicating a foreign call.
“Jer,” I said as I picked up the call, unable to contain my nerves. I’d been waiting for my agent’s call. I’d pitched him about an idea, which wasn’t normally the way we operated.
“Allo? Jude?”
Everything in the air seemed to contract at the sound of the woman’s voice, those words coming out in heavily accented French.
