The Trouble with Dating Sue (Grover Beach Team #6) (8 page)

As we passed in the hallway, I smirked and winked at her. Her cheeks turned red with alarm. Like being ripped out of a daydream, her eyes grew wide, and she rushed after Ethan. The door banged shut behind her, apparently her own subtle way of saying hi to me. It made me chuckle. In addition to the fact, I realized Ethan wasn’t behaving like a gentleman with her, which was another surefire clue that he wasn’t into her.

Susan Miller was free to take and seduce. Goodbye, bad conscience—hello, freezing-hell challenge.

Someone squeezed my hand. Oh, right. Lauren. She led the way to the front door and turned on the threshold with a quizzical look. “That’s the girl who talked to you in school the other day, right? Is she your brother’s new girlfriend?”

I wasn’t sure how much she knew about my brother, but I definitely wasn’t going to discuss him with her. “Guess I’ll find out later,” I answered, shrugging one shoulder. Then I kissed her on the corner of her mouth. “See you tomorrow.” It certainly wasn’t the kind of goodbye kiss she’d expected, nor was this abrupt ending to our Spanish hookup lesson. Yeah, whatever.

When she was gone, I closed the door and made a beeline for the kitchen. “Mom?”

“Hm?” She turned with the smile of a bunny in carrot heaven. That alone answered the question I hadn’t yet asked her.

“Is Sue staying for dinner?”

“Hhhyesss,” she hissed, frantically nodding her head. “And isn’t she a nice girl? So polite and
so
pretty.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “Pretty.” It was hard not to pick up on her happiness and feel a slight bit of joy about it myself. Not quite because Ethan finally seemed interested in a girl, but because it gave me a chance to get to know my target a little better.

After re-buttoning my shirt in the correct order, I started peeling the boiled potatoes Mom had put in a bowl. “Ethan said he was taking her out to Charlie’s. I wonder why they came home so early.”

“They want to play video games,” Mom informed me, leaning her back against the counter next to me and wiping her hands on her apron. “I hope that’s just a new teenage code word for being alone.” Her crumpled look turned a shade of soulful. “Is it a code word?”

I rolled my eyes, suppressing a snort. “Yeah, Mom. It’s a code word.” And it stands for:
Ethan is a douche
. Video games, gee! I could think of a hundred things to do with Sue in my room, and none of them involved a console or controller.

But when my mother returned to preparing the salmon fillets and began humming joyfully under her breath, I didn’t have the heart to burst her bubble. I could actually
feel
her excitement, and it made me shake my head, amused.

After I’d tossed the potatoes in hot butter with French parsley, she asked me, “Would you please get the two of them, Christian? Dinner’s ready in three minutes.”

Did she for real just call me by my full name? Gross. Laughter rocked my chest. Beverly Donovan hadn’t been this nervous since the day she applied for her dream job as a real estate agent. And here I’d thought nothing in this house could surprise me anymore. Total error.

Leaving the spicy-smelling kitchen, I walked to Ethan’s room, knocked, and opened the door—by God, almost. Fingers gripping the doorknob, a terrible memory made me shudder and jerk my hand away as though the metal was shriveling my flesh. Video games, my ass. I’d learned my lesson last time and would never again walk into Ethan’s room uninvited. Instead, I shouted, “Feeding time!” and trudged back to the kitchen.

Less than a minute later, the supposed sweethearts showed up, not holding hands or anything a couple would do. I deemed it a good sign. The challenge of seducing Sue was on until Ethan told me to lay off—directly.

Having a girl I wanted to seduce in the same room with my family was a little out of my comfort zone, though. Also, it would break my mom’s heart if I stole Sue from under Ethan’s nose right in front of hers. I wasn’t that kind of an asshole.

Needing a distraction, I fetched a jar from the island and made a tour around the dinner table to fill our glasses with water. New plan: Catch Sue alone sometime.

But, screw me sideways, not staring as she followed me around the table to lay out the plates required more self-control than expected. Her already short dress rode up her thighs a little higher each time she leaned forward.

She sidled up to Ethan after she was done and asked him in a low voice, “Isn’t your father coming home for dinner?”

“My father lives in L.A. with his former secretary,” Ethan huffed, scowling at the chair that once was Dad’s. “He hasn’t been home for dinner in almost six years now.”

The color of embarrassment zoomed across Susan’s face. “Oh.”

She could be a kitten with claws, all right, but tonight she was a guest in our house. Ethan shouldn’t make her uncomfortable. He deserved a slap upside his head for that retort. Since I could hardly slap my brother in front of her, I covertly poked him in the ribs with my elbow as I passed him and coughed.

Ethan jerked his head to me. I narrowed my eyes, which he also did in return. At least he got the hint and told her quickly, “No worries.” Then he offered her a seat.
Any
seat. Dammit, that guy could drive me up a tree sometimes.

Unknowingly, of course, Sue lowered into my chair. Call me finicky, but in this dining room, we’d had a certain seating order for years, and not even Ethan’s first female guest since elementary school would change that.

I could just ask her to move over, but there was another possibility, which allowed me to touch her and might get us a lot farther. Holding my tongue, I took Susan’s hand and made her sit in the chair to the left of mine. She seemed all right with that and didn’t even flinch at the contact. Yep, we were definitely making headway.

After dishing out salmon and potatoes for everyone, Mom lowered into the chair across from me, and Ethan sat down to my right. “I think my car needs to go to the shop,” he said around a mouthful of fish. “It’s been pulling slightly to the right since last week.”

“Might be low air pressure in one of the front tires.” I didn’t know much about cars, but that’s something my dad had detected on Mom’s car during my last visit with him in L.A. “We can take a look tomorrow, if you want.”

“Mm-hmm.” He sipped from his glass, and Sue did the same. Did she even know that she’d been mirroring his every movement for the past three minutes? The girl sat shy and hunched at the table, obviously trying not to draw attention to herself. Well, major fail with that red dress, sweetness.

But where the heck was the tank with the bad manners tonight? If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said this was a total stranger and not snappy geek Sue Miller. Then again, she might’ve only been playing the nice girl for my mother…like I was playing the gentleman. We both knew better, and yet it could turn out to be fun.

I decided it was time to include her in our conversation as Ethan had obviously shipwrecked in that department. But Mom beat me there. “So, Ethan said you know each other from school. Are you in the same classes?”

“Umm, no.” Susan picked at her fish. “I’m a junior.”

“Ah. Ethan wants to go to UCLA next year, did he tell you? How did you two meet, anyway?”

Throwing a wary glance at Ethan, Sue looked like she was fighting a blush. But after a quick cough, she straightened and informed the Spanish Inquisition, “We met at soccer practice this week. He made me late getting home.” Obviously a memory that made her smile. “It was my granddad’s birthday, so I almost got in trouble that evening.”

“Sorry for that,” Ethan mouthed at her across the table and grimaced. Although, for once, it looked more flirtatious than anything he’d done since we sat down.

It didn’t surprise me that soon enough my mother steered the conversation toward houses. She loved talking shop when she got a chance, and grilling Sue about her living situation was obviously a must on her list. Ten minutes later, I knew that Susan Miller lived in a yellow two-story on Rasmussen Avenue—two bedrooms upstairs, a small but cozy kitchen downstairs, an open fireplace in the living room, and too much junk in the garage to fit a car in. Nice.

When my mother next demanded to know the year of construction, Sue’s face went blank.

“Don’t mind her,” Ethan came to her rescue, ending the interrogation and offering her the bread basket, from which Sue sneaked a slice. “She’s like that with everyone. Mom’s a real estate agent, always on the hunt for houses to sell.”

“Wow, that’s a cool job.” Sue’s eyes gleamed with a whole new interest. “Must be awesome to see so many houses from the inside.”

“It’s the best job in the world. I love houses.” Mom, who’d finished her meal by then, wiped her hands and mouth on a napkin and then leaned back in her chair with a friendly smile. “Do you already have plans for after high school? College? Traveling? Any job you’d like to do?”

“College,” Susan shot back without a millisecond of thinking. I didn’t expect anything less from the girl that actually did homework in detention. “I want to study languages and later on find a job that gives me the chance to work with books. That’s what I love. Great stories. So I was thinking maybe a librarian, or a literary agent, even.”

“Sounds like you have a plan,” I chipped in for the first time, though the term
literary agent
was something I’d have to Google later in my room. Sue nodded with real pride as she looked at me.

The clock struck eight a couple seconds later. All of us seemed equally surprised about how long we’d been sitting in front of our finished plates, just talking—or in Ethan’s and my cases, mostly listening. “All right, guys,” Mom said then and clapped her hands once. “Dishes to do. Go play it out.”

“Oh, come on, Mom,” Ethan whined. “I’ve got a guest.”

Heck, it was so clear that he was going to try to worm himself out of the dishes contest. He wouldn’t stand a chance against me at hoops in the yard, which usually decided which of us had to clean the kitchen when Mom did the cooking.

But I wasn’t in the mood to wash plates, pans, or pots either. Just for fun, I picked on Ethan’s tactics and cast a smirk toward Sue. “Yeah, right.
She
can do the dishes.”

Mom pointed a criticizing finger at my face. “Your brother’s girlfriend won’t be doing your chores.”

In that very instant, I could hear Susan’s surprised intake of a breath from where I sat. In a shy way, she lowered her eyes.

“Mom, she’s not my girlfriend,” Ethan contradicted—fast. Despite Susan’s disappointment, this clearly wasn’t him being embarrassed by Mom calling him out on dating a girl. It was him telling Mom to lay off, because he really
wasn’t
.

“See?” I said to my mother. “She’s not his girlfriend.” With a grin, I rose from the table. “She
can
do the dishes.”

But of course Mom wouldn’t let me get away with that. “No way, buddy. You do your job first.” She grabbed me by the back of my collar, stopping me from leaving the room, and I laughed out loud.

“Ah, all right, I’ll do it!” Anything to stop the
mom
ster from strangling me. With a quiet chuckle, I stacked the dishes and winked at Sue as I took her plate. Her shyness seemed to have eased out of her during dinner, and she even smiled at me this time. Hell was starting to cool off already… Mmm, I liked how this evening had developed.

Since I’d evidently cracked open the door to Sue’s good side, I decided to sweeten my chances a little more. “Dessert in twenty!” I called to her and Ethan before they left the room for yet another game of Wii.

Everything a nice cream and fruit dessert needed was there in the fridge. I lined the ingredients up on the island counter: different fruits, coconut juice, a lemon, powdered sugar, vanilla beans, yogurt, and some mascarpone. Sweets were my specialty, and Sue was going to get wooed in an unforgettable way.

Mixing everything except the fruit in a bowl, I got ambushed by the
mom
ster again. She slung her arms around my waist from behind and squealed in my left ear. “Oh, isn’t she lovely?”

“Mom…” I moaned as some of the cream splashed on my front during her attack. Unbuttoning this damned shirt for the third time today, I escaped my mother’s clasp of excitement and draped it over the backrest of a chair.

Of course, she couldn’t keep her fingers out of my dessert in the meantime. Licking cream off her forefinger, she smiled brilliantly. “They make such a sweet couple.”

“You heard Ethan. They
aren’t
a couple.”

“Yet.”

I rolled my eyes. She was a hopeless case. “Why don’t you take a timeout, relax in the living room, and sip a glass of wine?” I suggested with a less-than-subtle nod toward the door.

Mom pinched my cheek. She stuck her finger into the cream a second time and walked out in a happy skip. Half a minute later, she popped her head in once more and tossed me a fresh t-shirt to make amends for the stained shirt.

When she was gone, I finally finished the cream and poured it into four dessert bowls from the cupboard. Ethan had bought them for us a couple of years ago. While his name was painted on the green one, he’d found it funny to give me a blue bowl with the name
Christopher
on it. That was his way of rubbing it in that so many people got on my nerves by assuming my full name was Christopher. I’d liked the colors of the bowls, though, and had just used a sharpie on mine to replace the
opher
with
ian
.