Opposites Attract (6 page)

Ethan tilted his head down, looking over the top edge of his sunglasses. Slowly, he pulled them off his face. Blue, his eyes were blue with just a hint of green. She was surprised to find they were very pretty. Slowly, he looked her over and she felt her body heating at the way in which he seemed to take in her every curve. Breathless, she waited for him to speak. ‘You’d look better if your body could actually fill out that dress.’

Alexis gasped, too stunned to retort. She didn’t move as he slipped his glasses back on and walked around the car to get in.

‘Let’s go,’ Susan said. Ted opened the door for her. ‘I’m ready to roll.’

Alexis opened her own door, sliding into the passenger seat. Without looking at Ethan, she lifted her chin and said, ‘I need you to stop somewhere.’

He turned to her. ‘We are stopped somewhere.’

‘This place won’t work,’ Alexis insisted. ‘I need you to stop some place else.’

‘For what?’ He was gritting his teeth now. She could actually see it.

‘I need to use the restroom, if you must know.’ Alexis pressed her lips tightly together and gripped her little handbag.

‘Didn’t you use the bathroom inside?’ Susan asked.

‘No, ew!’ Alexis turned around in her seat. ‘Did you see that place? Gross.’

‘It’s a bathroom,’ Ethan said, his voice rising in exasperation.

‘It’s a gross restroom and I have to go. Just pull over some place else,’ Alexis said.

‘Listen, doll, I am not stopping every five miles so you can inspect bathrooms to see if they’re good enough to pee in. Either you get out of this car and go to the bathroom right now, or the only place I’m pulling over will be the side of the busy interstate where everyone can see you. Your choice.’ Ethan motioned his hand towards the gas station. ‘Decide fast.’

‘Oh!’ Alexis gnashed her teeth and got out of the car, storming back inside. The man was really too much.

Ethan watched Alexis leave for the bathroom before taking a deep breath. All day it had been something with her. The music wasn’t right. The car was too hot. The car was too cold. The roads were too bumpy. He drove too slow, too fast, too straight. The bathrooms were too icky for her delicate, pampered bottom. Turning to Susan and Ted, he asked, ‘Is she for real?’

Ted couldn’t meet his eyes. He turned to gaze out the window.

‘She spent nearly a half-hour in that bathroom and she didn’t even use it?’ Ethan continued. ‘Is she doing this because I tried to kick her out of the car? Because I really can’t think of anything else.’

Ted chuckled. ‘My guess? It’s because you made a comment about her ass being scrawny.’

Susan looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Ethan. She’s going through a hard time right now in her personal life. I’ve never seen her act this horribly before. She’s just under a lot of stress.’

‘You always do that,’ Ted said softly. He sighed, shaking his head. ‘You don’t have to make excuses for her. Her attitude today has been horrible. I’m embarrassed we even invited her at this point. This trip was supposed to be a fun adventure. She’s done everything she could think of to make sure we’re all as miserable as she is.’

‘I know,’ Susan said, her voice harder than usual. Ethan saw Susan stiffen, getting a little defensive at Ted’s words. Alexis really didn’t deserve such a loyal friend. Under her breath, she asked, ‘Can we not talk about this now?’

Ethan turned in his seat to look straight ahead. He took a deep breath, doing his best to be calm, to just let everything that had to do with Alexis Grant roll off his back. ‘Listen, I’m trying hard to take into account that her mother just got arrested. I know that stress can make people act in ways they don’t usually behave, but this? This really is too much.’

‘I know.’ Susan leaned forwards and placed a light hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll have a talk with her. I promise. It’s just she’s not used to living like a real person. She’s grown up in hotels with maids and room service and limo drivers that she has gotten to boss around since the age of five. I’m so sorry –’

‘Don’t apologise for her. She’s a grown woman and not your responsibility.’ Ethan saw Miss High and Mighty coming from inside. He started the car before she got back in.

Sliding into the seat next to him, she crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t say a word. That suited Ethan just fine. It seemed the only time they could get along was when they didn’t talk at all.

‘Can I see the map?’ Alexis asked, turning around to look at Susan. Pennsylvania was a pretty state full of mountains and trees, with apparently no place to pull over to eat along the interstate. Alexis wasn’t hungry, but she was ready to take another break away from Ethan. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’re not almost there yet, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ Ethan said.

‘I wasn’t,’ Alexis snapped at him, making a face and rolling her eyes. They’d been driving pretty much nonstop all day. Though it was beautiful, the state seemed to go on for ever.

‘I think we should be almost out of Pennsylvania,’ Susan said, handing the map she’d printed off the internet to Alexis. ‘Close to the Ohio border. We just passed a sign that said Youngstown.’

‘It doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten very far,’ Alexis said, eyeing the map. She looked out the car window, watching the rolling green hills in the distance. Pennsylvania wasn’t a bad state. She’d been through the area before. She’d actually stayed at a bed and breakfast once with her mother when she was little. It was one of the rare times they had vacationed together. Well, her mother was taking a working vacation with her current lover at the time. She ended up buying the bed and breakfast and tearing it down when the man dumped her. Anyway, the place had been beautiful, close to a quaint little covered bridge and a quiet stream.

Alexis took a deep breath, drawing her thoughts back into the car. The landscape around them looked the same as it did back then, but it didn’t hold the same childish fascination and pleasure. ‘Why did we come this way anyway? Isn’t there a shorter route?’

‘I’ve been this way a thousand times and I didn’t want to have to follow a map,’ Ethan said. ‘Takes away from the spontaneity of the trip.’

Great
, Alexis thought,
a man too good to use directions. He’ll get us lost for sure.

Pretending to study her manicure, Alexis asked, ‘Still, shouldn’t we be further than this by now?’

‘We would be if someone didn’t take an hour each time we stopped,’ Ethan grumbled.

‘Well maybe if your piece of junk car didn’t toss me around so much, I wouldn’t need to take such a long break to recover,’ Alexis returned, mimicking his tone.

‘And maybe if you weren’t such a spoiled little princess –’ Ethan began.

‘Hey, you guys want to stop somewhere for the night? It’s starting to get late anyway,’ Ted said, ending the impending fight. ‘Cleveland is only about an hour’s drive and I saw some signs for hotels. It’s been a long first day and we should maybe stop to relax, eat and perhaps go over a game plan for the trip?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Ethan said, lightening his tone as he spoke to Ted.

‘Fine,’ Alexis said, only too happy to get out of the car. ‘We should have some sort of itinerary. If we stick to it we could get to California in a few days.’

‘A few days? This isn’t an airplane, doll.’ Ethan laughed.

‘Airplanes only take a few hours,
doll
,’ she said.

‘Whatever,’ Ethan dismissed. ‘I am not driving with an itinerary. That takes away from the adventure. I say we go with the flow, whether we get there in two days or fifty.’ Ethan glanced at her, his look challenging. Was he just trying to think of ways to upset her? ‘Do what we feel like doing.’

‘Great idea,’ Susan said happily. ‘We don’t have to be there any time soon. We’re free as the wind.’

‘Cool,’ Ted added. ‘My accounts are pretty much automatic and I can check on them anywhere, so long as I can plug my computer into a phone line every once and a while.’

‘I feel like having an itinerary,’ Alexis said between clenched teeth.

‘Then it’s settled,’ Ethan said. ‘No itinerary. If there’s anywhere you feel like detouring to, we’ll take a vote. Majority rules.’

‘Agreed,’ Ted said.

‘Agreed,’ Susan said.

‘Whatever,’ Alexis grumbled. She was clearly outvoted in this. She rested her head back and closed her eyes, keeping her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned towards the door and away from Ethan. The man just bugged her, any way she looked at it, especially because she was attracted to him. To make everything worse, it now seemed their cross-country trip just turned into a cross-country never-ending nightmare.

Ethan took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to work. He’d be better off cutting his losses and taking Alexis back to New York City. The first day of driving had been horrible. Pennsylvania was a long state to travel through to begin with, then add to that the fact there had been no place to really pull over to escape Alexis’s attitude, he never thought the day would end. When Ted asked to pull over in Cleveland for the night, he couldn’t have been more relieved. They didn’t make very good time, but that didn’t matter. He hadn’t lied when he said he had nowhere to be.

‘I’m not sharing a room with that psychopath,’ he heard Alexis say from where she whispered with Susan. Did the woman have a hearing problem? Did she not realise her whispering wasn’t actually quiet?

The hotel clerk looked at him and smiled. She was young, pretty and was definitely checking him out. Her hair was feathered at the sides in a sort of 70s retro and she wore a brightly knitted sweater under her dark-blue work vest. Her eyes dipped and her voice probed, as she asked, ‘You and the gal-pal in a fight, eh?’

‘She is not my girlfriend,’ Ethan said, recoiling in horror at the very idea. ‘She’s just some pain in the ass.’

The clerk giggled, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. She blinked her big blue eyes at him as she bit her lip. She wore too much green eye-shadow and her cheeks were a bright shade of pink. Ethan didn’t care. He liked seeing people express their individual style, especially when it was a little off from norm.

‘So, just the one night?’ the clerk asked.

Ethan nodded. His attention was again caught by Susan and Alexis talking in the corner of the lobby. The hotel wasn’t a bad one, but surely nothing the rich Alexis was used to. To his surprise, she didn’t complain about the location, even when they stepped into the tiny blue and red lobby with its broken television set and old mismatched couches.

When Susan suggested they get two rooms instead of three, he should’ve said no. Ethan didn’t know why he agreed to split the cost of the room with Alexis. All day in the car with her had been a real chore. Did he really want to be around her all night as well?

Maybe it was the look on Alexis’s face as Susan said the words. Ethan chuckled to himself. She looked horrified by the idea. So horrified, in fact, he’d come to the conclusion that whatever pain he suffered in her presence for the night would be well worth watching her suffer alongside him.

‘Listen, the trip is young,’ he heard Susan say. ‘You don’t have a lot of money. Sharing a room is the best solution for that.’

Ethan already guessed the woman was broke. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Maybe she should try selling her three hundred dollar designer dress. It only made sense. Many boutiques in New York would’ve given her a good price for it.

‘But, we don’t know him,’ Alexis said. ‘What if he tries to rape me?’

Ethan rolled his eyes. Yeah, like he’d cast his line into that fishing hole. He’d have more fun trying to hump an iceberg on the
Titanic
.

‘You and Ted get your own room,’ Alexis said, sounding panicked. Ethan hid his grin. Oh, yeah, she was already suffering. Usually he wouldn’t take pride in a woman abhorring him, but with Alexis he was willing to make an exception. ‘I don’t want to share with him.’

‘Ted is paying for our room tonight,’ Susan answered.

‘Must be nice to have a man paying for everything,’ Alexis snapped. ‘What happened to wanting to make it on your own?’

Susan actually looked guilty at that. Ethan watched them, not even pretending he couldn’t hear them. Since they were speaking loud enough to be heard, who was he not to listen to the conversation?

Ted walked in the door. He’d been on his cell phone with one of his colleagues from work. ‘All set?’

‘Ah, not quite.’ Ethan pointed at Alexis and Susan.

Susan said, ‘No, go ahead, we’re ready.’

Ted came up next to him. Under his breath, he said, ‘You sure you want to spend the night in the same room as that barracuda?’

The clerk giggled. Ted smiled. Ethan shrugged. ‘Yeah, we’ll try it out for a night and see if we can’t play nice. Susan was right about saving money where we can. If by some miracle the sleeping arrangements work, it’s the wisest choice. That is, if I can keep myself from raping her before the night’s over.’

‘She didn’t say that, did she?’ Ted asked, appalled. Ethan chuckled and nodded his head. He liked Ted. They’d gotten along almost instantly. ‘Man, she’s such a drama queen.’

‘You guys travelling far?’ the blonde clerk asked. Ethan again smiled at her. She was young, twenty perhaps. When she moved her whole body bounced with energy.

‘California,’ Ethan said, easing his voice so it dripped honey. She responded just as he knew she would. Her eyes cast down and her lips puckered ever so slightly.

‘Man, I wish I could go to California.’ Her sweet voice was almost a pout. Ethan swallowed. Maybe he should get his own room, then again, maybe he could get them a free room.

‘Yeah, I’m a tattoo artist,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m going there to open my own shop. You know, tattoo on movie stars.’

The blonde’s eyes rounded. ‘Really? I so want a tattoo.’

‘Do you?’ he asked. Yeah, he really was the rock star without the music. Everywhere he went doors just seemed to open with those simple words:
I’m a tattoo artist.