Stella, Get Your Man

“Eww! Dog breath! Spike, do something! Oh, God! You dog!”

Nina’s eyes popped wide open and she reached out to push Lloyd away, but he ducked down and under her arms, bounding into her chest with a leap that sent Nina sprawling backward onto the floor.

“Help!” she sputtered.

“Oh, Nina, now honestly. Your uncle was only trying to reassure you,” Aunt Lucy said. “Benito!” she called. “Enough! She is a grown girl. If she wants to sit on the floor and moan, so be it!”

Lloyd, who had answered to my uncle’s name ever since he learned that it usually resulted in people food, stopped licking Nina immediately and trotted to my aunt’s side. She smiled and bent down to pat his head softly. “I brought pepperoni,” she murmured.

Jake crossed the room to stand beside me. “You see why I wanted to fish?” he whispered. “Your family is nuts.”

I rocked back with one heel and planted it squarely on the toes of his left foot. With steady pressure I transferred all my weight onto his defenseless foot.

“All right, all right!” he cried softly. “But you got to admit—” He broke off as I ground my heel in harder.

Spike offered Nina her hand and pulled the distraught girl to her feet. “Come on, honey,” she said. “Let’s go look upstairs. Maybe there’s a more appropriate place for you to meditate.”

Nina smiled up at her. “You wanna meditate, too?” she asked slyly.

Spike tilted her head, looked around the room at the rest of us, and shrugged her shoulders. “You never know,” she murmured.

Damn those two! They made it look so easy, not to mention special and intimate. Oh, well, some days you get the bear and some days, your love life just sucks. I wouldn’t let myself look at Jake. I knew he was watching me. The damn man was always watching me! Too bad he didn’t have a romantic bone in his muscle-bound body.

Aunt Lucy was unpacking groceries, setting bottles and boxes on empty shelves and muttering to herself.

“I know it’s a bit rustic,” I said, “but it’s only for a few days, just until I get a handle on Joey Smack.”

Aunt Lucy looked up, giving me one of her cut-the-crap glares. “I need to be in the lab,” she said. “The Household Shopping Show booked me back next week and I need product.”

So that was the problem. It wasn’t that she missed her kitchen and cooking homemade Italian specialties for us. My aunt had discovered a new forum for her inventions and she just couldn’t wait to go on the air again.

“Hey,” Jake said. “My grandmother saw you on there last week. She said you’re a natural. She said you had them eating out of your hand with that little-old-grandma act of yours.”

Aunt Lucy feigned shock. “Jake Carpenter, I never act. All I did was show the people how my homemade cleaner works on all surfaces.” Without even realizing it, Aunt Lucy had swung into gear, staring out at us as if we were the audience, smiling sweetly and gesturing to a bottle she brought out from one of her many bags.

“I thought I told you not to let her pack,” I muttered.

“It was that or face her digging in her heels and refusing to come,” he answered.

“I can’t disappoint my people,” she snapped. “I’m wasting valuable time here.”

I tried changing the subject. “So the guy on the float today, who was that?”

That stopped her in her tracks. “What guy?” she asked.

“She didn’t see him,” Jake reminded me. “We went out the back.”

I didn’t care. I was just happy for the working distraction. I told her all about the groundhog, about his float, the song and the way he’d danced across the platform. I was rewarded with the most unexpected reaction. Aunt Lucy’s eyes widened, and for a moment I thought I saw all-out panic.

“Huh!” she said, and turned her back to us. She started fumbling with the empty grocery bags next, carefully folding them, but having difficulty with the creases. Her hands shook ever so slightly. Aunt Lucy’s hands never shook.

“Did I say something to upset you?” I asked.

Aunt Lucy opened the refrigerator door and stuck her head almost all the way inside it. I felt Jake go still beside me, watching.

“No, Stella, what makes you think a foolish thing like that?”

“Well, if you’re not upset, then why didn’t you answer me? Who is that guy? Don’t you know him?”

Aunt Lucy threw her hand up, waving it like a flag. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Stella Luna. He probably saw me on the shopping show and decided he needed a girlfriend. I don’t have time for that sort of nonsense. I have work to do.”

She still wouldn’t look at us, but I thought I knew why. She missed Uncle Benny and was embarrassed to be so publicly wooed. It was too soon, and frankly, I doubted there would ever be room for another man in her life. That’s why she insisted Lloyd was my uncle reincarnated. She couldn’t stand the thought of Uncle Benny really being gone. A dog was a safe enough way to keep suitors away. After all, men don’t want crazy women.

Jake touched my arm and gestured toward the front door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he murmured.

“But I don’t want to…”

“Yeah, you do,” he whispered.

Lloyd squirmed into the space between us, seizing on the word walk, and agreeing vigorously with the suggestion.

I rolled my eyes at Lloyd and grabbed my coat. “It’s freezing out there.”

Jake smiled. “It’s not so bad. Might go up to fifty tomorrow. Great fishing weather.”

He held open the door, waiting patiently while I wrapped a long furry scarf around my neck, tucked my hair up into a knit cap and pulled on wool gloves. Lloyd shot past him and ran down the steps, ready to explore his new turf.

When the door closed behind us, I was surprised that Jake didn’t move. He stood on the stairs, staring up at the sky, slowly surveying his surroundings with what seemed to be satisfaction.

“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” he said. “The sky’s so clear you can see every star, and the moon’s got a ring around it. Now, how often do you see that?”

I stamped my feet to keep them from going numb and wrapped my scarf a bit tighter around my neck. “Have you lost your mind? It’s gotta be twenty degrees out here!”

Jake sighed. “It’s all in how you perceive it, Stella.”

“I perceive it as freaking freezing!”

Jake wasn’t listening. His attention was caught by something lying on the ground next to the house.

“Would ya look at this,” he said. “Somebody must’ve left it behind. It’s a nice one.”

Jake inspected the rod. “Even left a nice lure on it, too. Wonder how that happened.”

He turned, holding a fishing rod in his hand. A silver bauble dangled from its tip, catching the moonlight as it twirled. Whatever agenda Jake had was forgotten as he started off at a brisk pace, walking straight toward the ocean.

“Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “It’ll warm you up to walk.”

No, snuggling down under an electric blanket would warm me up, I thought. Walking along the beach at midnight in December would only cause pneumonia.