Chasing Christmas Eve
Page 8“Tall order,” Finn said and pulled out his vibrating phone to read a text. “Huh,” he said and gave Spence a funny look. “So, uh, there’s a 9–1–1.”
Spence shook his head. “Let me guess. Elle.”
Finn nodded. “Wants me to rescue you.”
Colbie tried not to take umbrage at that and failed, but Spence just laughed.
“Tell her she needs to get a grip,” he said.
“Do I look crazy?” Finn asked and slid his phone into his pocket. “Besides, we both know she’s paranoid for you for good reason after all that media crap.”
Spence lifted a shoulder but didn’t comment.
“Food, ice, and rice, coming up,” Finn said and vanished into the back.
Colbie looked at Spence. “Are you sure you’re not in a relationship with Elle?”
“No, I’m in a relationship with bad judgment.” He pointed to the other side of the room. “See that guy through the back doors playing pool like he was born to it?”
Colbie turned and looked. The man leaning over the pool table lining up his shot was . . . holy moly hot.
“That’s Archer Hunt,” Spence said. “Elle’s his. But more importantly, he’s 100 percent all hers. They’re both crazy, but they make it work.” He lifted her arm and again eyed her elbow. “Still swelling.” He gently probed at it.
“It’s not broken,” she said.
“How do you know?”
It was more of a hope than actual knowledge, so she pulled away just as Finn came back. He tossed two baggies at Spence, who caught them in midair and offered her the one holding the raw rice. “Put your phone in here,” he said. “Ziplock it. The rice will draw the moisture out of your phone and, with any luck, it’ll still work a few hours from now.”
Colbie had heard of the trick but she still hesitated.
Spence met her gaze, his eyes warm but curious. “Problem?”
He gave a wry laugh that told her more than words could how very much he sympathized with her. “You’re talking to the guy who earlier today threw his phone out the window,” he said.
“So . . . we both fantasize about going phoneless?”
His smile said he fantasized about other things as well, and her body did that inner quiver thing again. She slipped her phone inside the baggie and then dropped it all back into her purse.
“Next,” Spence said and pressed the ice bag to her elbow.
Finn came back with a huge platter of chicken wings and deep-fried zucchini. Colbie eyed the platter and then Spence’s extremely fit body with disbelief.
He shrugged. “That’s what the gym’s for.”
Colbie couldn’t even look at a French fry without gaining weight, but her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the sad pack of three whole peanuts on the plane.
They dove into the food and she asked one of the questions that were killing her. “Tell me about this amazing building.”
“It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He smiled. “The fountain actually came first. The building was built around it back in the mid-1800s, when Cow Hollow was still actually filled with cows.”
“Wow. Really?” Hard to imagine San Francisco as anything but the incredibly hilly, unique, busy but somehow also laid-back, quirky city it seemed to be.
“This building was a compound for one of the biggest ranching families in the state at the time,” Spence said.
“When did the infamous legend come into play?” she asked. “The one where if you wish for true love, you’ll find it.”
He looked both pained and amused. “Shortly after. Some idiot made a wish and got lucky. Most of the businesses in the building perpetuate the legend because it makes good press and brings in foot traffic.”
“But you don’t believe,” she said.
Finn was back, refilling their drinks, and spoke for Spence. “It’s more like he can’t help but believe and he’s terrified.” He grinned when Spence shot him a dry look.
“Explain,” Colbie said.
“Because . . .” she eyeballed Spence “. . . he doesn’t want to be happy?”
Finn snorted and moved on.
“He thinks he’s funny,” was all Spence would say on that. He studied her over their tray of food. “So what’s your three-week plan while you’re here besides writing?”
“Rest,” she said. “Eat. Be a tourist. I made a list of things I want to do.”
“Let’s see it.”
She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t said anything, because there were some really embarrassing things on that list . . .
“I won’t laugh,” he said.
She grimaced. “Yeah, I’d need that in writing first.”
He produced a pen from his pocket and grabbed her cocktail napkin. “I, Spencer Baldwin, hereby solemnly promise not to laugh at your to-do list,” he said as he wrote and signed the napkin. He pushed it toward her. “There. A binding contract.”
She opened her purse to locate the list and had to paw through a bunch of her various notes to do so.
“How do you ever find anything?” Spence asked, not with any censure at all but with actual genuine fascination.
She shrugged. “My purse gets sad when it’s all neat and organized.” She finally got a hand on her list. The first eight items were places she wanted to see in San Francisco. Number nine was learn how to drive, something she’d not been able to do in New York. Nothing all that embarrassing. But number ten. Number ten took the cake. She grabbed his pen to scratch it off before giving him the list, but he put his hand over hers.
“I promised not to laugh, remember? And I don’t break promises, Colbie.”
“Ever?”
There was a rather fierce light in his eyes. “Not anymore.”
That was interesting enough that she let him pull the list from her fingers. She knew the exact moment he got to number ten because he had to fight a smile when he lifted his gaze to hers.
She moaned and closed her eyes.
“Pretty detailed,” he said, running a hand over his deliciously scruffy jaw to hide the smile she knew he was fighting.
“I told you!” She snatched back the list. “Shit.”
“Thought you didn’t swear.”
“I don’t,” she said, “but that’s a body function, so it doesn’t really count as a swear word.” She sighed.
Not Spence. He out-and-out laughed, tipping his head back to do it, and it was such a nice sight that she had to crack up too. “You promised not to laugh,” she reminded him.
“I’m not laughing at your list, so it doesn’t count. My grandma used to swear by saying ‘Shiitake mushrooms!’ That was her favorite.”
When he spoke with good humor, or actually whenever he spoke in general, his voice sounded like sex personified and it had her wriggling in her seat, no longer embarrassed but something entirely new now.
She blamed the combo of that sexy stubble with the glasses.
“I like your list,” he said. “But you could do even better.”
She felt some of her bones liquefy. “I’m going to assume you’re talking about items one through eight.”
He just smiled.
Okay, so she was going to pretend he was talking about one through eight. “I got some of those things from Googling what’s a must-see in SF,” she said. “If you can’t trust Google, who can you trust?”