Page 13 of Light

My brain pounds me with the mantra despite how my pulse rate quadruples and my heart begs to burst from raw emotion. Everyone in here has been with RRO since our days as a fledgling nonprofit, working with me to convince the world that we truly wanted to change it.

But you don’t recognize any of them. You can’t recognize them. They’re complete strangers to you right now. That has to be your truth, damn it. They’re just a sea of curious but friendly faces…

“Well, hey-ho! It’s Sophie and Steve-o!” For once, Mel’s dorky humor is a welcome interjection. Despite the fact that I still have to grit out a smile in return, it’s a grateful one. Nothing like one’s fake name being turned into a lame rhyme to convince everyone how authentic it must really be. So thanks, Mel Baby, for flying that douchebag flag high and proud—and not showing any sign of letting it drop anytime soon either. “Come here, little space strawberry”—the guy thinks his awful nickname for “Sophie” gives him the right to yank me in for a hug that would send most bears into therapy—“and hello to you too, baby berry!” And then to yell at my stomach with the same scary familiarity.

I look up to see I’m pretty accurate with the “scary” label. Though everyone’s good about masking their discomfort, I’m at least able to silently flash them with mine. Their resulting round of laughs is also given discretion. Thank God for Reece, who tosses enough of a gawky flair into his possessive grab to not only rescue me from Mel but increase the authenticity of our cover in front of the gang still stabbing us with their curious gawks.

“That’s Mister Baby Berry to you, Mel,” he drawls, managing to diffuse the awkward moment by giving everyone permission to openly chuckle. No one does so more than our party host, who adds a wry shake of his head while shaking Reece’s free hand.

“Says the cat that got dragged in, eh, man?” he returns. “And maybe I do mean dragged.” He waggles his brows at me. “Did this wanker make you pull him the entire way?”

Reece whips back his hand under the pretense of scratching his grimacing jaw. “Uh, yeah.” He tightens the expression until it borders on a snarl. “Sorry about that. Thought I saw something unusual in the Cetus spiral galaxy, and I lost track of time.”

I tilt my head, angling a gaze up at my husband with no pretense about its admiration. Between all the strategy meetings with the team, including their countless and fruitless searches for Faline’s new hiding spot, he’s been actually opening the books in “Steven’s” vast space creature library. Clearly—and alluringly—it’s been rubbing off.

“And I didn’t have the heart to disturb him.” My murmur coincides with the smoldering lock of our gazes. From his side, there are the memories of how we actually made ourselves late. And from mine, there’s the message that I’d like to create some more—especially with what his space guy talk is doing to my geeky lady loins.

“Now I’m not sure whether to introduce you two or make sure you know where the spare bedroom is.”

This time, Mel’s the only one chortling at his one-liner. But my hero husband proves he doesn’t possess the knack for just finessing lightning bolts. He saves the moment from transforming from an ice breaker into a glacier with his easy grin. “Well, sticking to the introductions means you can keep mixing the cocktails.”

“Excellent idea.” The volley comes from a new arrival to the little circle: a redhead who could seriously be a descendant of Rita Hayworth, with voluptuous boobs to match. Additionally, her full lips and sculptured profile are absolutely created for any camera lens—as she shows us all when tucking her nose against the side of Calvin’s neck. “That is a super idea, right, Calzie palzie?”

Calzie palzie? Baby Hayworth looks like much more than a “palzie” with Calvin, snaking a hand toward his beltline with the determination of a woman familiar with the area. Cal grabs her wrist in time to redirect her hold around his waist, but not without a noticeable blush stealing up his face.

I watch the exchange with teeth firmly embedded into the inside of my lip. Oh hell, how I yearn to demand an explanation from “Calzie” along with an introduction to his new “palzie.” Ever since the first day we helped Cal and his little sisters, there’s been a special protectiveness in my heart for the guy—and now, the fact that he has a “special friend” in his world is a stunner I can only experience on the inside, turning my gut into an aching knot and my head into a throbbing mess. Holding back tears is a lot freaking harder when I have to paste on a fake pleasant smile.

“Okay, then.” Mel sweeps an empty blender over and tosses in some crushed ice. “Another round of Bolt-inis, coming right up!”

“What-inis?” Reece beats me to the punch on getting to siphon off some of his shock through the query, though his finesse with a mildly amused gape is better than my acting game.

“Oh, yes. Bolt-inis!” Surprisingly, Baby Hayworth isn’t the source of burst. The exclamation comes from Yuli, a member of the New York RRO team. She’s as petite as Cal’s girl but bigger with her fashion statement. She’s wearing a black leather pencil skirt that laces up the sides, with dark-green ties that match her high-heeled patent boots. Her black knit tank has Wicked spelled out across the front in sparkly green rivets, and the tips of her spiky updo are accented with similar hardware. Since I hired her for her creativity with RRO’s marketing pieces, she’s a perfect fit for the look. “Mel got to inventing it about an hour ago, as a tribute to our favorite superhero,” she explains. “Like him, it zaps you before you know it.”

“Zap, zap, zap, zap!” The cheeky chant grows as the whole group catches on, with Calvin’s date adding a shimmy worthy of a Rio Carnival parade line. The look across Cal’s face is a familiar one, making me long to hug him. That’s the scowl he gets before having to break up a tiff between Tosca and Jina.

Reece steps in for the rescue yet again. “What’s in it?” he asks Mel, tripping up the group’s rhythm.

“Seeeecret ingredients,” Mel jokes, starting to douse the ice in the blender with vodka. A lot of vodka. “Designed for loosening its victims’ inhibitions—and checkbooks.”

“Completely valid.” Chester, our hipster PR guru from the LA office, arcs a finger into the air. “I think I’ll be taking out a second on my condo to pay for the Bora Bora package.”

“Unless I snap it up instead,” cracks Clark, one of our awesome case management specialists. Like his comics canon namesake, Clark is boyish and charming on the outside but dogged and driven when given a no when he needs a yes. Or when he’s hell-bent on going to Bora Bora.

“I think I wanna snap you up, baby.” Though Cal’s girl declares it to the whole group, she only has eyes for her guy. While I get it—Calvin is a drop-dead gorgeous mix of three different races—I can also see, along with everyone else, that the last thing on the guy’s mind right now is getting “snapped up.”

“Juliet.” Once more he halts her wandering hand before she cups it all the way around his crotch. Past his well-trimmed beard and mustache, I can tell he’s blushing worse than a Disney deer in a Deadpool plot. “This isn’t the time or the—”

“Oh, yaaayyy!” Juliet herself cuts him off, jumping forward for a Bolt-ini refill along with everyone else. “More blue zaps.”

“What are we drinking to this time?” Yuli asks.

“No better reason than welcoming our new party guests.” Mel hands Reece a large glass of the magic blue libation, which seriously does look to be glowing now. I glance to the countertop and see that the man had the chance to add a number of blue liqueur components to the concoction when I was more focused on whether Juliet would succeed at her hand job efforts with Cal or not. After Mel gives me a glass of ice water, he raises his glasses and shouts, “Everyone, please say hello to Dr. Steven Sarsgard and his lovely wife, Sophie.”

After the group toasts us in a round of boisterous greetings, I summon “Sophie’s” subtle Brit lilt, along with my most open and innocent smile, and reply, “And who all do we get to thank for this rousing huzzah?”

Mel’s too busy strutting out from behind the blender to notice the eye flare I get from Reece, answered by my sheepish shrug. Okay, so maybe the nerves are getting to me. Borrowing British-isms from my Renaissance Faire days wasn’t likely the best call, though everyone smiles as if I’m the hip Londoner in the room with new slang they’ve yet to learn. Not that Mel goes that far in caring. After puffing his chest and tossing his hair, the guy raises his martini glass yet again.

“Another toast!” he proclaims. “As I proudly introduce the LA and New York teams from the Richards Reaches Out organization.”