Talk Nerdy to Me (Nerds, #5)(30)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"I can’t believe this."

"Oh, I’m sure the pose is possible." Eve had meant to ask Charlie if he wanted to test it, but they’d been too hungry for each other to get involved in unusual positions. Maybe another time. She hoped there would be another time.

"I meant the bakery, not the pose. This is a small town. Small towns are supposed to be conservative. They’re not supposed to have—"

"Frosting the cookies was fun." Eve decided to keep it up. She seemed to have thrown Denise off balance, and this time she hadn’t even had to use beads. "The tricky part was getting the red frosting dots of her n**ples exactly right. A couple of times I had them way too close to her neck."

"Incredible."

"So, are you up for a trip to the Pastry Parlor? You can’t very well leave town without at least taking a peek, right?"

"I… we’ll see. First I want to inspect this thing you’ve built. Where is it?"

Eve considered telling her sister that the hovercraft was stored under her bed, just to see if Denise had so little imagination that she’d go looking there. But she decided that she’d pulled Denise’s chain enough for now. "It’s out in the garage."

Denise looked at Eve’s bare feet. "You can’t go out there tike that."

She could so if she wanted to. But the floor would be cold and there was no point in rebellion just for the sake of bagging Denise. "I’ll stand in the doorway and answer questions from there." She noticed that Denise had picked up all the pans in front of the door and stacked them neatly on the counter. Of course. Opening the door, she held it back so Denise could walk through.

"It’s purple." Denise said it as if the color were illegal.

"It’s designed as a fun toy. It needs to be bright. Besides, I like purple."

"I know." Denise walked around the hovercraft. "I’ll never forget the birthday cake you made me. Lavender inside, dark purple frosting outside."

"Yeah, I used grape Kool-Aid." Eve had been proud of that birthday cake, too, one of her first efforts in the kitchen. Her family’s horrified reaction had killed any urge to keep experimenting in there. Now she ate mostly salads, anyway, where all you had to do was slice and dice. Tough to louse up a salad. But she usually put beets and purple cabbage on the salad, to give it visual zip.

"How does it work?"

"There are magnets underneath, which are what make it hover—like those hoverboards in Back to the Future Part II. Remember those?"

"Vaguely. I thought those movies were kind of silly, but I know you loved them." She looked at the engine mounted on the workbench. "So you’re going to put this in there?"

No, I’m going to wear it on my head for a photo shoot next week "Yes. After I test the new fuel source I brought home last night and make sore the engine runs okay with it."

"What fuel source?"

"Used cooking oil." She pointed to the can sitting beside her workbench. "I need to do some analysis on it, but it might convert much better than the veggie scraps I’ve been using."

And by explaining these things about the hovercraft, she was handing Denise all the ammunition she needed to sabotage the project. Charlie might think she was being foolish, but what was she supposed to do, refuse to show the hovercraft to Denise? If Denise was guilty, she’d already seen the project, anyway.

Denise made another circuit of the hovercraft. "You talk as if you’ve done some research on this." She sounded reluctantly impressed.

"I’ve been researching this kind of thing all my life," Eve said. "I model to make a living, but inventions are what I love. I always have."

"That would be all well and good if you’d stayed in school, but I’m afraid you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous."

Eve crossed her arms, because if she didn’t she might run into the garage, bare feet and all, and start a girl fight with her sister. "You know what? It’s not your responsibility whether I’m taking unnecessary chances with my safety. I’m an adult now. I’m free to make my own choices." And didn’t that sound defensive?

Denise faced her. "How do you expect me to stand by and let you kill yourself?"

"I won’t, but if it comes to that, how do you propose to stop me?" That was the crux of the situation. Was Denise prepared to do whatever it took?

"You are impossible, you know that?" Denise’s expression darkened. "Don’t you ever think of anyone besides yourself? First you dump a guy that the whole family liked, and now this!"

"I was supposed to marry Lyle because everybody else liked him?"

"You liked him, too! Or I assume you did. You dated him for a year, so you must have thought he was worth something."

"He definitely was." Eve shifted her weight uncomfortably. She’d stayed with Lyle way too long, and she wasn’t happy about that. She’d led him on, in a way, because she been unwilling to face the truth about herself.

"What was wrong with him, anyway? He was cute, made good money, treated you like a queen. Guys like that aren’t all that thick on the ground. At least I haven’t met that many."

Eve heard the underlying envy in that statement. No doubt Denise would have taken Lyle in a heartbeat, but he wouldn’t have dated her. He required a certain amount of physical beauty from his girlfriends, which was another reason Eve hadn’t wanted to stick around. She could see him trading her in once her looks started to fade.

"Lyle would never have understood my need to invent things," Eve said. "He wouldn’t have wanted to live in a little town like this, either. He was into glitz and glamour."

"Eve, hello. You’re a model. It doesn’t get any glitzier than that."

"I work as a model. That’s not who I am. Who I am is an inventor." There. That was her manifesto. Maybe she’d make a sign out of that and tack it up on the wall somewhere. The sign would be for herself, because Charlie already believed those things about her. She was the one who sometimes doubted it.

Obviously Denise doubted it, too, because she laughed. "You can call yourself an inventor all day long, but until you’ve invented something that you’ve patented and marketed, you’re a hobbyist."

Eve tried to tell herself that once again, jealousy was the motive behind Denise’s comment. But that was small comfort. Unfortunately, Denise was right. Until Eve had created something that was of use to someone, something that would improve the world in some way, her inventions were only a hobby, not a profession.

"Well, now you’ve seen the hovercraft," she said. "I’ll grab a quick shower, you can change into something clean, and we’ll go to the Pastry Parlor."

"I’m not sure that I want to go to—"

"Sure you do." And Eve really wanted to go there and see a couple of women who liked and admired her, two people who believed she was going to succeed. She hadn’t realized how nice that felt until confronted with Denise’s skeptical negativity. "I’ll be back in a flash and we’ll go."

"I have a suggestion," Denise called after her.

"We’re going to the Pastry Parlor," Eve said as she walked quickly through the kitchen. "No arguments."

"About the hovercraft"

Eve paused. Her sister was nothing if not smart, and maybe she’d actually have something to contribute to the project. "What about it?"

"You should put a rubber bumper all the way around the bottom edge."

"Why?" But Eve had a good idea what the answer would be.

"Because, sure as the world, you’re going to crash this thing, and a bumper might just save your ass."

"Right." Gritting her teeth, Eve left to take her shower. She had to move the dry cleaning back to her bed before she could do it.

When she finally stepped under the hot spray with a sigh of relief, all she could think about was that damned bumper suggestion of Denise’s. It took her the whole length of her shower to finally admit that it might be a very good idea.

Rick stared across the table at Charlie, his expression one of complete disbelief. "You’re shitting me, Charlie."

"Don’t I wish. But not this time. Someone is definitely out to steal this hovercraft concept from Eve."

Rick pushed away his empty plate and brought his coffee cup closer. "But this is Middlesex. People don’t break into houses and steal things in this town. We have a few speeders, a few more jaywalkers, especially during tourist season. Right before graduation somebody always paints the water tower. That’s the crime beat around here."

"I know." Charlie was having a hard time believing it himself. If he hadn’t seen Eve’s back door and heard that ominous click of the front door closing, he’d have Rick’s same reaction to the news. "But considering that Eunice could be the one, I wanted to clue you in."

"Thanks, cuz." Rick gazed down into his coffee cup. "It’s a damned shame, though." He glanced up and grinned. "Because she may be crooked, but she’s also bent, if you get my drift."

"I could see that for myself when she opened the door wearing black underwear and a set of antennae."

"Was that wild or what? And I don’t care if she got her techniques from that Gonaug dude or from Penthouse. She knows stuff, man. She knows lots of stuff."

"I’m sure." Charlie wondered if she knew how to market a hovercraft design.

"Like for instance, she does this thing with her tits where she coats them with something sweet and gooey. I know because she let me taste it. She claims it’s made by ‘ a certain kind of beelike insect on Trillium. So she puts it on her tits and then she rubs them all over my—"

"I get the picture." Charlie wasn’t in the best of shape to hear Rick’s war stories. They only made him think about being in bed with Eve. "Listen, we have to focus on the problem. You can’t let yourself get distracted by sex." And neither could Charlie. "It’s not only Eve and her invention I’m worried about. You could be a victim, too."

"Me? How?"

"I’m not sure. Was there… bondage involved?" That made him think of leather, which reminded him of his chaps.

"Oh, yeah. You know how most people do it by tying each other to the bedposts?"

"Um, I guess."

Rick gazed at him. "You don’t know squat, do you? I can see it on your face. You’ve never stuck your toe in the bondage game pool. Am I right?"

"Well, I’ve… no, I’ve never done that." But he’d bet Eve would like to play. Anybody who wanted to have him wear chaps to bed would definitely be interested.

"Eunice, she doesn’t mess around with bedposts. She has eyebolts in her bedroom wall, two at the top and two down by the baseboards. Sort of like a medieval torture chamber, you know?"

"See, this is what I’m talking about. This kind of extreme thing." Charlie wasn’t ever getting into eyebolts in the wall. Bedposts would be fine. Except he didn’t have any, and Eve certainly didn’t, with her round bed. If he designed a trapezium-shaped bed for her, though, he could put bedposts on it. Cool.

"Extreme sex! Exactly. Charlie, you don’t know what you’re missing. There I was chained to her bedroom wall, and you could have used my dick for a coatrack."

"You were helpless. She could have taken your credit cards, your—"

"Actually, she did hang a few things from my dick." Rick stared off into space, lost in his hot memories. "She played ring-toss with these big hoop earrings she has, and then there were the feathers. She used those to tickle my balls."

"She could have done anything, Rick!"

"I know." Rick’s eyes glazed over. "That’s what makes it so damned exciting."

"Especially when you discover she’s stolen your identity. That would be very exciting. Rick, will you pay attention? We have a thief among us, and I’m trying to figure out who it is."

"All by yourself?"

"No. Eve’s thinking about it, too. And I was hoping you’d be some help." But after this lunch discussion, Charlie had serious doubts.

"What about the cops?"

"No cops. First of all, Eve doesn’t want to answer questions about the hovercraft. When she tests it, she’ll be flying it without any kind of license, and she’d rather do that quietly."

Rick nodded. "Smart. Okay, let me get the players straight. You think it might be either Eunice or the sister, Denise. And there’s the off chance that it’s the g*y guys out at the Christmas tree farm. How am I doing so far?"

"Better." Charlie decided he had to level with Rick. "Don’t take this wrong, but Eve’s suspicious of Manny and Kyle, too."

Rick laughed. "That’s a good one."

"You can’t blame her. They were there Monday night when we were talking about this as being a potential gold mine. I don’t know how much you’re paying them, but they might see this as a shortcut to some fast money."

Rick smiled and picked up his coffee cup. "You don’t have to worry about Manny and Kyle."

"How can you be so sure?"

"They have their eyes on the big picture. They want advancement in their field. They wouldn’t louse that up with something like this. It would be professional suicide." He took a sip of his coffee.

"I hope you’re right."

"Cuz, you can take that to the bank. Kyle and Manny aren’t suspects. But I have a plan."

"Yeah?" Charlie was hesitant, but ready to listen. Right now he could use a plan, and sometimes as kids Rick would surprise him with a halfway decent idea. "It doesn’t involve explosives, though, does it?"

"Hey, will you ever let me forget that? Sheesh."

"Not likely. When your cousin and best friend decides it would be cool to build a bomb, and he’s thinking cool idea and you’re thinking juvie, not to mention the end of all hope for a scholarship to MIT—let’s just say that sticks in my mind."

"I wasn’t really going to build it," Rick said. "I only said I was to give you a mental wedgie. Worked, too."

Charlie didn’t want to concede that point. "I didn’t think you’d really build it"