Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols Page A

different from Grayson, was a one-eighty, and I felt dizzy with the turn. “I haven’t even seen Alec since the fune—” Even drunk, I was able to stop myself, almost.
    “Come to work tomorrow morning,” Grayson said as if I hadn’t spoken. “Flirt with Alec. He’ll ask you out. You’re local and it’s spring break, so it should be easy for you to show him a good time.”
    “Grayson, that’s nuts!” I was yelling now, and the pit bullbarked viciously in response. I lowered my voice. “Why in the world would you want me to date your brother?”
    “I can’t tell you,” Grayson said simply.
    “Then I’m not doing it,” I told him just as glibly.
    “Then I’ll hire someone to deliver this forgery to your mother when you’re not around to stop it.” He leaned forward to stand up.
    “No!” I exclaimed. “Sit down.”
    He seemed to be watching me as he eased back into his chair.
    “I’ll do it,” I said, “but you have to tell me why.”
    “No.”
    “Grayson!” His name set the pit bull off again. I whispered, “Is it for something illegal?”
    “No.”
    “Or something else that will screw up my commercial license?”
    “Nothing like that,” he assured me. “It will get you out of trouble, because I’ll give you back this form and all the copies I made.”
    And I would burn them. “Why do you think Alec’s going to ask me out just because I flirt with him? He hardly knows me.”
    “But I know him, ” Grayson said.
    I shook my head. “Alec would not go out with me.” He might never have seen my trailer, but he knew. Everybody at the airport knew.
    “Yes, he will,” Grayson said. “I’ve seen you in action. That oh, you’re a big strong man thing you do. Do that.”
    I was tired of Grayson basically calling me a slut. “Why do you keep telling me I have to sleep with people to get a job? It’s a fourteen-year-old boy’s wet dream about how the business world functions. Grow up.”
    Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could tell my words had finally affected him. He shifted backward in his chair like I’d slapped him.
    Then I realized where I’d gotten that “grow up” line. From Mr. Hall himself. It was his favorite thing to yell at Grayson when he forgot to lock the hangar door or left a banner out in the rain. Mr. Hall didn’t mind yelling it across the tarmac for the Admiral and the other pilots and me to hear. Grow up, son .
    “I said I want you to date him, not sleep with him,” Grayson said sharply. “If you assume you’re going to do everybody you date, that’s your problem.”
    The palm tree above us swayed violently in the breeze, and my feet ached, two things that should not have gone together. I had been flexing my feet in my flip-flops as if pressing the foot pedals in a plane, stabilizing it against the buffeting wind.
    “And”—his voice was soft now—“you’re a beautiful girl. If you show the slightest interest in Alec, he’ll want to go out with you. I know I would.”
    My skin prickled with goose bumps, a chill in the hot April evening. My brain knew Grayson didn’t have the crush on me that I’d imagined when he got mad at me at the airport that afternoon. He wouldn’t have asked me to date his brother if he’d been interested in me. But my body didn’t know this, or didn’t care.
    “Tell me why you want me to do this,” I said, quietly this time.
    “It’s for his own good.”
    I laughed, because that was a ridiculous thing for Grayson to say. Grayson and Alec were twins, exactly the same age, yet Grayson sounded like their father.
    Grayson didn’t laugh. And as I watched him, he bit his lip nervously, gripped and relaxed his fist, kept himself barelyunder control. Convincing me to date Alec mattered to Grayson. A lot. Almost as if he were trying to do something for Alec’s own good, for once. As if someone needed to fill those shoes now that their father and their older brother were gone.
    I understood why Grayson had recruited