Chapter Eight

I jerked away from Ben, startled at the scream. Then I felt the vibrating at my waist and remembered my damn cell phone. The one with the new ring tone Bella had so thoughtfully put on it. Nothing like the scream of James Brown during “I Feel Good” to stop you from potentially getting as close to a wonderful set of lips as possible.

“Dammit,” I said, fumbling for the infernal phone so I could at least turn off the loop of the song. I teetered on my extremely high heels (that made my legs look extra sexy but did nothing for my poor sore feet) until Ben grabbed my elbow and steered me to the edge of the dance floor.

Flipping open the phone, I looked at the digital readout and groaned when I saw it was Bella. “Yes, Bella? Why are you calling me when we’re in the same room?”

She snorted. “As if you didn’t know. I’m saving you from yourself. Things were looking a little steamy with you and Ben, and I wanted to stop you from making a mistake.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“I absolutely am not kidding you. I saw that wily hand of his creeping down to your ass and your fingers playing with the neckline of his fabulous hair, and decided to jump in, but not in an intrusive way.”

“You don’t find this intrusive?”

“Not compared to physically insinuating myself between the two of you. I guess I could have come over and moved his hand back up to the middle of your back where it should have stayed in the first place. Or maybe I could have smacked your hand while it played with the hair on his neck. Either way, I thought this was the better option.”

Damn cell phones and their innate ability to make you available to any loon who has your number and wants to get in touch with you. A perfectly good moment had been ruined, all because I’d been waiting for a call from my father and so had brought the phone with me in the first place. Although, on the other hand, I much preferred being interrupted by Bella than my dad, who had always been able to tell when I was doing something he wouldn’t approve of. On the third hand, I was twenty-four and wandering hands were part and parcel of being a sexually active adult, which was what I eventually wanted to be with Ben.

“I don’t really need a keeper, Bella. I’m capable of handling myself.” I whispered the last part because Ben was taking an inordinate amount of interest in my conversation.

“Of course you need a keeper. Even from all the way across the room, I could see your eyes getting all dewy and droopy with that latent lust thing. I bet you would have been naked by now if you two had been in a room without all these people around.”

“That is so not true,” I said, a little louder than I meant to and had several heads turn my way. I lowered the volume of my voice. “Look, I know what I’m doing, and it’s not nearly getting naked.”

“Are you sure?” The words were whispered in my other ear. Ben, entering my conversation when he was least wanted, as always.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I backed away from Ben and his eternal, goose-bump-raising whispers.

“What do you mean, what am I doing? I told you, trying to save you from yourself. And why is Ben in your ear again? Did you put some kind of special perfume back there that he’s drawn to?”

I was not going to tell her that was precisely what I had done on one of my trips to the ladies’ room. I was not that stupid.

The distance separating Ben from me diminished when he grabbed my free hand and started kissing my knuckles. “I’m going now, Bella. Thanks for the Mom moment.” I hung up and endured Ben’s laughter while I tried to get the cell phone hooked back into its holder at my waist.

“Ha, ha, Ben. Shut up.” I yanked my hand out of his grasp and gave him my best “you’re a shit” look.

Once he composed himself and stopped acting like a snorting high school freshman, he apologized, but the mood was ruined. Bella had served her purpose. Dammit again. I guess I wasn’t doing so hot on the whole not-swearing thing.

I stalked off to the punch table and grabbed up a mini cauldron of steaming apple cider. Stupid men and their stupid laughing, I thought. Ben could take his sense of humor and...and... Well, I didn’t know, but when I came up with something suitably, appropriately horrible, I would let him know.

I started looking around for someone to talk to, since I was no longer talking to Ben and maybe not even Bella. I didn’t need a keeper and I didn’t need an idiot who thought he could take up where he left off after he embarrassed me. So I looked for Janice. She would be nice and not laugh at my expense. She wouldn’t check up on me like I was a child. And, hopefully, she would tolerate my out-of-whack foul mood until I settled down.

Asking other partygoers if they’d seen Janice was easier when people didn’t know who I was. The mask covered half my face, so I didn’t get the attitude I’d previously experienced in town. The last person I asked told me she’d seen Janice go behind the thick red velvet curtain obscuring the stage.

I pushed the curtain aside and slipped behind it. Immediately, I was hit by the musty smell of cardboard and dust. There was very little light back here, but I did see a faint glow coming from a corridor behind another curtain, this one black. Although it could have been orange, for all I knew, it was that dark back here.

The clack of my heels rang extremely loudly on the hard wooden stage. I didn’t realize how loudly until the noise stopped and I was left listening only to my own breathing. This was getting a little weird. The farther I moved into the stage area, the more muffled outside sound became.

I wove my way around big scene boards filled with trees and rolling hills, past boxes overflowing with props, and around a huge potted plant. One of the silky leaves brushed against my bare arm and it took me a moment to control my pounding heart. “Just a tree, just a tree,” I whispered to myself, since there didn’t seem to be any other living thing back here.

For some reason I started hearing the theme from Psycho ringing in my ears. On the surface there was nothing to be scared of back here, but something was making my skin crawl. A nebulous something. I laughed at the tension I felt and congratulated myself on another good word. Unfortunately, that wasn’t working either. Something was wrong. I could feel it down to the toes of my reinforced pantyhose.

More silence greeted me when I finally came to the door with the only light under it. I listened, my ear against the wood for a moment. I did not want to interrupt some assignation Janice had set up for herself, or barge into a meeting. Though why someone would set up a meeting back here in the dark was beyond me.

My cursory nod to appropriate behavior over, I knocked. No noise came from behind the closed door, so I tried again. “Hello?” I said. “Anybody in there?”

Again no answer came, so I thought about turning around and looking for Janice elsewhere. But a niggling little voice in my head kept telling me something was on the other side of that door. Combined with the lack of a response from said side of the door, my natural curiosity was aroused, and I tried again, this time jiggling the handle to the door.

“Hello? Anyone?” Should I break down the door? But that sounded ridiculous. I mean, anything could be going on inside the room. Who said there weren’t people in there who were ignoring me because they had no clothes on and were going at it like wild animals? Although wild animals usually made some kind of noise and I was still hearing nothing. I jiggled the doorknob again, and this time the door popped open.

Once my eyes adjusted to the light, after its absence in the backstage area, I barely held back a scream to rival that of Mr. James Brown. There on the floor, in a very unnatural position, was the one person I’d been looking for. The one I thought would tolerate me in my bad mood. The friend I had hoped to make and keep and add to my very small collection in a town that was not turning out to be the friendliest place for out-of-towners. And maybe not for towners, either, since Janice, in all her flapper glory, lay at the foot of a grape-colored sofa with blood crusted on the front of her sequined top.