Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(62)

And oh, man, the pity party was getting ugly, but she couldn’t seem to snap out of it. She’d already tried her usual tricks. The Oreos lay on the table, packaging ripped and ravaged. Music annoyed her, movies bored her or filled her with a vague sense of dread. She’d tried a scented bath, with bath pearls and bubbles and perfumed goop. She’d even broken out her emergency stash of Godiva. Nothing worked.

So get busy. Get off your lazy bum, her helpless, hijacked practical self lectured her miserable, depressed, useless self. It’s the only way.

So very busy, her depressed self scoffed. Like always. Busy, busy Becca. Too busy to notice that what she did had no meaning. None at all. Zip.

The phone rang again. Becca groaned, flung her head back and her hands over her ears, bracing herself through the interminable shrill six rings, and her own tooth-grindingly cheerful outgoing message. God, had she ever really been that perky? She wanted to smack herself.

Click. Beep. “Hi, Becca? Are you there? It’s Carrie. I’ve been calling you for three days now and you’re never—”

“Carrie?” Becca pushed the stop button on the machine. “I’m here.” For her baby sister, she’d break the paralysis.

“Oh, thank God. What the hell is going on? Are you OK? I talked to Josh, and he said he hadn’t been able to reach you either! And I tried you at work, too! They told me you were out! Have you been sick?”

“No,” she mumbled. “I just…didn’t feel like going.”

“Didn’t feel like going?” Carrie echoed her words in a disbelieving voice. “Wait. Don’t you work Thursday nights at your catering job?”

Becca felt a zing of alarm, swiftly smothered by another wave of weariness. “Oh, shit,” she said heavily. “Yes, I guess I do. I, uh, forgot.”

Carrie was eloquently silent for a moment. “This is just too weird,” she said. “You’ve never forgotten an appointment in your entire life.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said crabbily. “I’m not that much of a robot.”

“What’s the matter with you? Is it about that scum-sucking man slut, Justin? Would you like me and Josh to flatten him for you?”

Becca hesitated. She’d fretted over how much she should tell her younger brother and sister about what had happened on the island. She’d decided that for the time being, she would go with a highly edited but literally true version.

“It’s not about Justin,” she said. “I, um, had an encounter this weekend.”

“Encounter?” Carrie made an impatient sound. “What do you mean? A close encounter of the third kind? A romantic encounter?”

“I think romantic would be overstating it,” Becca said cautiously. “Intense would probably be the better word.”

“Oh! You mean sex? Yowza! You bad girl! I didn’t know you had it in you! Did you get Justin out of your system?”

She blinked, startled by the question, and realized that, for all her misery, none of it was caused by her ex. Her feelings about Nick were oh, so much more compelling. Not that it made the situation any better.

Misery was still misery, after all. No matter what caused it.

“I suppose I did, though I wasn’t thinking about it in those terms at the time,” she said.

“So? What’s he like?” Curiosity sharpened Carrie’s voice.

“Not my usual type,” Becca said. “Big. Tough. Lots of muscles. Long hair, beard stubble, tattoos. A foul mouth. Sort of…dangerous.”

“Woo hoo! He sounds virile. So? Was he, you know, good?”

“I tell no tales,” Becca said primly.

Carrie made a disgusted noise. “Hello? Becca, this is me, Carrie. Your sister. We’re alone. I’m legally an adult. Was he good?”

She took a deep breath, and it rushed out. “He was amazing,” she confessed. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

Carrie crowed with delight. “Oh, thank God you’ve finally gotten properly laid! I was wondering if it would ever happen! It wouldn’t have ever, if you’d married the dickwad. So when do we meet Mr. Muscles?”

She winced. “You won’t. It ended. Very badly.”

“One of those one-night stands where the guy never calls again?”

Becca let out a long, measured sigh. “I guess so. More or less.”

“Those suck,” Carrie said sagely. “But it’s probably just as well. He’s just a rebound boy. Slam, bam, thank you, Sam. Those Neanderthal types are great when the lights are out, but you can’t take them to the opera. You can’t let yourself get depressed about that.”

She was obscurely irritated by her sister’s superior, lecturing tone. “Actually, it would appear that I can,” she snapped.

It always needled her when Carrie played the role of the more sexually experienced sister. At nineteen, she was just too damn young, but Becca had always been too frantically busy keeping her orphaned family afloat to do the role justice herself. Carrie had picked up the slack with great enthusiasm. It worried Becca sometimes

Carrie was still nattering on. Becca jerked her attention back to her sister’s voice. “…up to Seattle, just to check on you,” she was saying. “It’s definitely time for a visit.”

Panic exploded through her. She sat bolt upright. “No! Carrie, no. Don’t come up. Please.”