“Tell me about the team,” Deanna said. She lifted her chai tea with straw to her lips. Careful not to smear her bright-red lipstick, she nibbled on the straw to draw a sip. “It sounds so cool and mysterious.”
Team? No. I did my thing. Raven and Jo did theirs. We traded help and favors. That was all. Bentley was probably the only one who liked thinking of us as a team.
“What I think is cool,” I answered, “is that it only feels like you pull liquid upward through a straw. What really happens is that after you suck air out of the straw, atmospheric pressure pushes the liquid down to fill the vacuum. We’re close to sea level, which means there’s about sixty miles of air pushing down on us, so it’s about fourteen pounds per square inch, more than enough to force the tea upward. I mean, commercial jets fly based on a lift of only a few pounds per square inch across the wings.”
I expected her to dismiss my geek comment, which was why I had thrown it out there. As a simple distraction. I didn’t want to reveal information about Jo or Raven or Bentley. Instead, she tilted her head and gave it some thought.
“Huh,” she said. “But if all that atmosphere can push tea up the straw, why don’t I feel like I’m being crushed?”
“We’re made of bone and water,” I said. “Percentage varies by gender. So you’re roughly 50 percent skeleton and 50 percent liquid. Fourteen pounds per inch isn’t nearly enough to crush water or bone.”
“Huh,” she said again. She gave me a full and frank gaze. Her blue eyes were enhanced by masterfully applied makeup. “Clearly you are the brains of the team. I like that.”
I gave her the bashful grin that any geek would give when patted on the head like a puppy.
After another sip Deanna said, “I hear the two girls on the team are kick-ass. And hot.”
“Well…”
“And there’s the fighter, right?”
“Boxer,” I said. Fighting is crude. Boxing takes strategy and discipline. Bloody results might be the same, but still…
“He kind of has a Johnny Depp vibe going on, is what the rumors say. When Depp was young and before he got all seedy-looking, I mean.”
“That’s fairly accurate,” I said. “Some people say he has the ability to make Depp look like a geek in comparison.”
She sighed. “I’d like to meet the boxer. Was hoping he’d be here. No insult or anything.”
I gave her a wounded but brave smile. Depp wasn’t the only one who could act.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “Intelligence has a good vibe too. Different but good.”
I got the implication. She was establishing early that I’d been placed in the friend zone. Forever.
“So,” I said. “Someone is blackmailing you?”
She dug out her device, swiped the screen, found what she needed and handed it to me. “Link to a private YouTube video. Only I can access it.”
I tapped the screen to play. A series of photos came up, taken, I guessed, by a drone. A few photos of a man and a woman, casually dressed, sitting in lounge chairs beside a swimming pool, enjoying the sun and glasses of wine. Then a couple of photos where the woman was leaning over the man, kissing him. Nothing that couldn’t be printed in a daily newspaper.
“Must be something high at stake here. We’re not talking tens of thousands of dollars, are we? It’s more, right?”
She blinked. “Hundreds of thousands. You guessed that just from the photos?”
“The technology involved is expensive,” I said. “Nobody would go to that much trouble to take those photos unless it was worth it.”
“Technology?”
“Private link. No point in putting photos online of something that looks like an innocent kiss between consenting adults. Means either the man isn’t supposed to be kissing the woman or the woman isn’t supposed to be kissing the man. Which means if they knew there was a drone above, they’d make sure not to be caught like they were. The drone was too high to be seen or heard. Expensive technology. And close-up, high-def photos from that altitude means an expensive camera and a skilled operator.”
I handed her back the device.
“The man in the picture is my father,” she said. Flat voice. “And the woman is his secretary. So no, not innocent at all.”
“Hurts?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m trying not to hate him. And yet I have no choice but to protect him.”
Suddenly, with her pain so raw and obvious, this wasn’t fun anymore.
“Tell me more,” I said. Quietly.
“Huh,” she said.
“Huh?”
She studied my face. “Interesting accidental shift there. Like suddenly you’re a real person.”
She touched the roughness of my knuckles, hardened by hours of punching the heavy bag in the gym. “These aren’t computer hands.”
I didn’t move.
She reached over and pulled off my glasses. She removed the plastic pocket protector from my shirt pocket. She half stood and leaned over and ran her fingers through my hair, roughing it up.
She sat back again and examined me as she wiped her hands on a napkin to get my hair goop off her fingers.
“Roll up your sleeves,” she said.
This was the voice of a new Deanna Steele. Tougher than the one who didn’t want to stain her teeth by drinking chai tea without a straw.
I saw no point in not obeying her. I’m not muscled like a steroid user. But hitting a speed bag for hundreds of hours definitely adds some definition to your forearms and biceps.
She took her time evaluating my arms before speaking again. “So you’re the mysterious Johnny Depp one. For the record, though, he kicks your butt as an actor. In fact, even I’m better than you. Totally bought into the entitled-princess act, didn’t you?”
My mind was flicking through what this meant. In short, she’d been the one to get me to underestimate her.
She pulled the straw from her chai tea and drank directly from the cup, leaving a lipstick stain on the edge.
“How about we start over?” she said. “No pretending on either side. Geek and princess are no longer at the table.”
“Sounds good,” I said. She’d won the first round, but I wasn’t going down without more of a fight. “You owe me a beverage. I’ll take a coffee. One cream.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Please?” I said, defeated again.
“I would be happy to get it for you,” she said, rising to go stand in line.
Not going to lie. I watched her walk away and enjoyed the view. Now it was back to fun again.