Crazy for You Read online

  “Thea shouldn’t be with somebody,” Jason said. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I can’t believe you.” Quinn smacked the script down on the table to get his attention “If you’re this jealous, why aren’t you dating her?”

  Jason shrugged. “She’s smart. She’ll want to talk Shakespeare or something.”

  “Well, you’re smart, too.” Quinn shook her head. “I don’t get this. Just ask her out, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I did,” Jason said, hell in his voice.

  Quinn sat down so she could concentrate. “What happened?”

  He shrugged again, painfully nonchalant. “I told her we should go out so people wouldn’t think I was hot for you. She said people didn’t think that and thanks anyway.” He looked at her, suddenly concerned. “Hey, don’t worry, nobody thinks that. I just thought it would be a good way to, well, you know, ask her.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “That was a lousy way. Go tell her you want to go out with her for you, because you want to be with her.”

  “I can’t do that.” Jason’s expression looked vaguely familiar, and then she realized where she’d seen it before: on Max and Nick. It was that mule I-don’t-want-to-hear-this look.

  Quinn stood up carefully, her voice brisk again. “Then you’ll never date her. No big deal.”

  “Says who?” Jason said, outrage in his voice.

  Quinn leaned against the table. “Jason, for crying out loud, just go over there and ask her out and be honest. She likes you. She wants to go out with you. She just doesn’t want you doing her any favors.”

  Jason looked back at Thea, who was laughing at something Brian had said. “If she likes me, why is she messing with him?”

  “Because you’re ignoring her and she’d like to have children someday. And that is my final word on this subject.” Quinn picked up the prop box. “Here, take this over to her and tell her I said the two of you should run inventory.”

  “That’s lame.”

  “So are you. Go.”

  Quinn took her crutches and went to lean against the wall, where she could see them better. Jason carried the prop box across the stage, looking grumpy and vulnerable, and for the first time she wasn’t worried about Thea. If Thea was lousy to him because he’d been such a dope—

  “So what do you do when you’re not getting dates for techies?” Nick said as he dropped a coil of wire on the prop table.

  “I think about my own lousy love life,” Quinn said, refusing to look at him. “Which has gotten so much better since I don’t have any. A huge improvement.”

  He came to stand in front of her, making her see him, and he looked dark and hot and dangerous, and she realized she was enjoying it all, him chasing her for a change. He smiled at her, confident as ever. “Okay, I’ll say this again, I screwed up.”

  Quinn stuck her chin out. “You certainly did.”

  “Well,” Nick said, “Jason screwed up, and you’re hoping Thea’s going to take him back anyway.”

  “Jason didn’t pancake on Thea three times.”

  “I did not pancake the third time.” Nick came closer, blocking her off from the rest of the stage, and her pulse kicked up as she edged back until she was flat against the wall. “I may have made a small musical error and blown my dismount, but pancake, no. As I keep reminding you, you came.”

  “I faked it,” Quinn lied.

  “You did not,” Nick said. “You were like wet Kleenex afterward.”

  “Thank you,” Quinn said. “That’s very romantic. You can go now.”

  “You liked it,” he said, and she refused to meet his eyes.

  “Some.”

  “A lot.” He leaned over her, his hand on the wall above her head, and she could feel herself flush, just because he was that close. “We should try it again. Why should Jason and Thea have all the fun? Want to talk Shakespeare with me?”

  Quinn put as much scorn in her voice as she could. “You don’t know Shakespeare.”

  “‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,’” he said. “And I didn’t even alter. Except I’m smarter. No Fleetwood Mac, which is a crime because they did some good stuff.”

  Quinn tried to glare at him without meeting his eyes. “Where’d you read the sonnets? They putting them on cereal boxes now?”

  “College,” Nick said. “GI Bill, remember? Business major, English minor. Good for seducing women. ‘The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace.’ Be a shame if we never tried again and died not knowing.”

  “I can live with that.”

  He leaned closer, his cheek almost touching hers, and whispered in her ear, “‘License my roving hands, and let them go/Before, behind, between, above, below.’” His breath was warm on her skin. “Let me touch you again. Come back to me, Quinn. I’ll drive you out of your mind, I swear.”

  She felt her breath go. “Who was that one? I got Marvell, but not—”

  “Donne. My favorite.” He looked down into her eyes, so close. “‘Thy firmness makes my circle just/And makes me end where I begun.’ Come home with me tonight.”

  His mouth was so close to hers she thought about taking it, right there on the stage, everybody watching, but she’d been here before. “No,” she said, so dizzy she wasn’t even sure what she was saying. “Don’t stand so close. People are going to notice.”

  “Screw people,” he said, but she shoved past him to cross the stage to Edie, feeling rattled.

  “You okay?” Edie asked. “You look feverish.”

  “I’m trying to remember why I’m saying no to Nick.” Quinn shook her head. “I had a good reason.”

  “Fleetwood Mac,” Edie said.

  “I like Fleetwood Mac,” Quinn said, and then she got a good look at Edie’s face, pale and drawn, and forgot about her own problems. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  “It’s nothing,” Edie said. “Really.”

  “It’s the BP,” Quinn said, and watched Edie’s smile evaporate. “What did he do?”

  Edie closed her eyes. “He’s had parent complaints.”

  Quinn frowned. “About the play? That can’t be. We—”

  “About my morals.” Edie looked ghastly as she said it.

  “Your morals?” Quinn felt her temper rise as she thought about Bobby’s smug little face. The treacherous rat. “That’s not parents, that the fucking BP. Don’t worry, I will fix this. Tomorrow morning, I’ll make him sorry he ever lived.”

  “Is he in there?” Quinn said the next morning before school, and Greta nodded. She looked tired, and Quinn would have stopped to find out what was wrong, but she had a principal to maim first.

  She slammed into Bobby’s office and said, “Robert, you have gone too far.”

  “Greta, where’s my coffee?” he said, and from outside, Greta said, “On the corner of my desk.”

  “Well, bring it in here, damn it.” The BP’s voice was full of exasperation.

  You are such a moron. “Robert, you have to stop harassing Edie.”

  Greta brought the coffee cup in and set it in front of him. “Was that so hard?” Bobby said to her, and she ignored him with studied completeness as she left. “That woman’s got to go,” he told Quinn and sipped the coffee. He made a face. “It’s cold, too. It’s always cold.”

  “Robert, are you listening to me?”

  He shoved the cup away. “She has to go,” he said, and Quinn stopped.

  “Greta?”

  “No,” he said, “although I’ve put her on notice, too. I mean Edie. We can’t have her type here.”

  Quinn swallowed so she wouldn’t start screaming at him. “Her type has been teaching here for thirty years,” she told him as evenly as she could. “She was Teacher of the Year three years ago. Her students adore her. Parents ask for her—”

  “That was before,” Bobby said. “They’re not asking for her now.” His voice was smug.

  “What did you do?” Quinn said, already knowing.