Need You for Mine (Heroes of St. Helena)(36)
“Labels are so passé,” Clovis said. “I told Giles that we didn’t need to DTR in order to get DND.”
“DTR?”
“Define the relationship,” Peggy said. “And DND means to get down and—”
“Got it.” Harper held up a hand and tried not to picture her grandma and Giles getting DND.
“Harper, order up,” Lexi said from the counter where she was dangling Harper’s box of courage.
“We aren’t DNDing or LH6ing or sexting or any of the other terms you might come up with.” Although they had been KISSing. “Adam and I are just friends. F R N D S.”
“Say what you want,” her grandmother said, “but I know women, and I know lingerie. No woman wears Luscious lace cheekinis for a friend. Especially when that friend ranks a solid fifteen on the man-candy meter.”
Harper didn’t bother to ask how her grandmother knew her lingerie of choice—the woman had a God-given gift. But she also had a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, so Harper needed to make herself clear. “We. Are. Not. Dating.”
“But Facebook—”
“I lied. Okay?”
Clovis tsked. It was a sound that always managed to make Harper’s throat fill with guilt, even if she hadn’t just confessed to lying.
“Oh, honey, you’re a horrible liar. You always look like you’re going to cry when you fib.” Clovis patted her on the arm, and if she weren’t Harper’s grandmother, Harper would say it was condescending in nature. “Kind of like now. But a word to the wise, even if Facebook is saying you had him at hello”—Clovis looked at Harper for so long she felt her ears heat—“if you want to have him screaming Oh, you might want to be more forthcoming with your cookies.”
There wasn’t much Adam couldn’t handle. From jumping out of planes to charging headfirst into some gnarly situations, he tackled problems balls-out and head-on. The bigger the risk, the bigger the rush, and the greater the thrill.
So then why did he feel as if he was about to pass out just looking at a book of party themes?
“How about this one?” Seth said, pointing to the page with black tablecloths, poker table paraphernalia, and fuzzy dice table decor.
“It’s a family-friendly picnic, not a bachelor party,” Adam said, wondering how, out of everyone he knew, he’d managed to get stuck with the FNG as his party planner.
Right, because the universe was bitch-slapping him for his past indiscretions. So when Seth mentioned he’d planned all the poker nights for his fraternity, Adam drafted him as the decorations committee. A decision he should have made before they’d ordered their second round of beer.
“If this is a picnic, then can’t we just buy some hotdogs, paper plates, and chips? I mean, everyone likes hotdogs and chips.”
“The handbook says we have to have games and craft tables and an overall theme. I don’t think tailgate eats counts as a theme.” Adam flipped to the next page, which had everything one would need to throw a clambake engagement party. And slammed it shut. “I’m screwed.”
He had less than an hour before his meeting with Lowen, was thirty minutes from town, and outside of securing a caterer, who wasn’t talking to him, he had accomplished jack shit on his massive to-do list.
“Maybe we should just go back to St. Helena and ask the cute girl at the party store to help us plan it,” Seth suggested, and Adam was tempted to give in.
Megan had approached him this morning, explained how Harper had cleared everything up, and said that she would be happy to help with Beat the Heat. Only, Adam had politely declined, then lied, telling her he had it all under control. Because (a) she wasn’t all that forthcoming on what everything meant, (b) Megan looked exactly like what Jonah had said—a bad decision—and (c) Adam was tired of making bad decisions.
If he wanted to prove worthy of the badge, then he needed to start acting like it. And that did not include spending the next two weeks flirting with a pretty party planner on company time. So he’d driven right past Parties to Go-Go, and all the way into Napa to the party store there, where he asked a lovely saleslady in her sixties for help. She’d directed him to the party themes book, and that’s when the panic had started.
He didn’t know a centerpiece from a sash, had not a clue as to what kind of kid-friendly activities to plan. Should they match the theme? Were water guns a bad choice?
As a kid, he’d never missed Beat the Heat, yet he couldn’t remember a single thing about it except when the firefighters pulled the engine out to the middle of Main Street and threw the ladder, then picked a lucky awestruck kid from the crowd to climb it.
One year, when Adam had just turned seven, he’d been that lucky kid. And it had rocked his little world. At the first rung he’d been hooked. Not much had changed—firefighting was his life, and his days were still spent hanging around the engine. Only instead of watching from the sidelines, he was the one who got to run the show and rock some kid’s world.
“How about a fireman theme?” he said, flipping to the back of the book to where the kid-themed parties were. “We can swear in little honorary firefighters, give them a plastic hat and sticker badge.”
“You mean like what we do with the school kids during their fieldtrips to the station?” Seth said.