Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(66)

But if not John, then who? I didn’t really have a social life outside of work and my extended family. All my coworkers were either married or college-aged, and going with one of my male cousins would only make my pathetic dating situation more pronounced. Simon would probably be willing to come as a friend, but he had a long-term girlfriend, which made me feel awkward about asking. The guys I knew from summer softball were all married. I wondered if I could get away with bringing Lily. She’d probably get a kick out of it, but it would start a whole bunch of rumors. I didn’t mind being thought of as a lesbian, really, but I wasn’t comfortable lying if my parents asked me outright, which they undoubtedly would. And that led me right back to where I’d started.

Stop stalling, Lex. I knew what to do, of course. Even as I told myself it was a stupid, halfway crazy idea, my fingers were already typing away on my phone, checking what time the sun would set the next night.

Then I called Quinn.

“So you’re asking me to be . . . what, your arm candy?” he said once I’d explained the situation. He sounded amused, but in a remote way, like he wasn’t yet invested in the conversation, much less the actual event.

“Pretty much, yeah.” I fidgeted, embarrassed, but I didn’t know what I could say to make the situation less awkward or my case any stronger.

“Isn’t your family going to think that we’re dating?”

“I’ll tell them we’re just friends,” I offered.

There was a beat of silence. “Are we friends?” he said in a low voice. “Is that what we are?”

I thought about that for a moment. I was never going to have Quinn over to watch a movie or help me move my couch. He was never going to drive me to the airport or come rock climbing with me. But he had kept investigating Charlie’s kidnapper after being told to stop, and he’d done that for me. That wasn’t the same as choosing me over his boss, but it was something. Maybe friendship. “Don’t you think we could be?” I said.

“Yes, but I’m . . . drawn to you,” he said reluctantly, in the same tone you’d use for “yes, but . . . you have crippling body odor.”

“Well, I think you’re supposed to be,” I offered. “Death in my blood, remember?”

There was another moment of silence, this one much longer. Then I sighed into the phone. “Look, Quinn, I promise I’m not going to try to take advantage of you. I pretty much just need a warm body to convince my parents I’m not a hermit. Uh . . . you know what I mean,” I added hastily, as I realized “warm body” might not necessarily apply to Quinn. “It’s a favor, like being a date to someone’s cousin’s wedding.”

“Well . . .” Quinn said slowly, and he trailed off for so long I thought he was scrabbling for an excuse to say no. But then he admitted, in a shamed voice, “I do kind of like to dance.”





Chapter 29



At three o’clock the next afternoon, a cadre of my female cousins descended upon my house.

My feet were much improved, but I was trying to stay off them as much as possible in order to pass for healthy at the party. So instead of going for a hike, I was in the basement lifting weights and listening to NPR in bike shorts and a yoga top. Then I heard the dogs flip out. A moment later the doorbell rang.

Grabbing a towel, I went up the steps and down the hallway as gingerly as I could and peeked through the front window. There stood my cousins Elise, Brie, and Anna, and Jake’s wife Cara, all with mischievous smiles and armfuls of clothing. Expensive-looking clothing, so I herded the dogs into the still alarmingly clean mudroom. Maybe they would normal it up a little.

I opened the front door with my eyebrows raised. “Surprise,” they chorused. Anna even did jazz hands.

“It’s not my birthday,” I said.

Anna, who was twenty-six and a grad student at CU, stuck out her tongue at me. “We’re getting ready for your dad’s party here,” she explained. “Your mom and my mom’s idea.”

Yep, that sounded like my mom. Making sure I was involved. I eyed their armfuls of clothes and makeup cases. “Isn’t that kind of a lot of work for you guys?”

“Your dad’s bribing us,” Cara said shyly. “He’s sending a limo.”

Brie shot me an evil grin. She was thirty-seven, the oldest of our generation, a dentist with two sons and a perpetually harried expression. “Plus, the men have to get all the kids ready,” she said.

Shaking my head, I opened the door wide. “Well, come on in.” I was smiling despite myself.

The four of them trooped inside, chattering about who was watching Brie’s and Cara’s kids and what they were going to wear. Elise, the last one through, paused in the doorway and whispered, “I think Aunt Christy was afraid you’d be sad, you know, without Sam.”

I nodded. “And afraid I’d decide to just stay home?”

Elise smiled ruefully. “You know your mom.”

“I heard Lex has a daaaate,” Anna teased over her shoulder. “Who’s the guy?”

“Or girl,” Elise said, fake offended. Anna grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and chucked it at her. Elise batted it aside with a stagy karate chop.

I shrugged. “Just a friend.”

Cara, who was nearly as soft-spoken as her husband, asked, “Where’d you meet him?”