Goddess of Love (Goddess Summoning #5)(9)

"We just wanted to say thanks," Pea said, feeling herself getting caught in the blue depths of his eyes.

"Thank you, that was nice of you, and we always appreciate food around here," Griffin said.

"Thank you," Pea said, and then realized she had thanked him several times and had now begun thanking him for thanking her for thanking him. Well, hell. "Okey-dokey then. I'll just leave the brownies. Don't worry about the plate. It's old. You can just throw it away when you're done. Or keep it. Or whatever." Oh, God. She was babbling. "Well, thanks again. And you guys stay safe out there." Pea gave Griffin a jaunty little salute and then bolted out the door. Her limited edition Thunderbird was a cream-colored sanctuary, which she decided was a perfect analogy since she had about as much social couth as Quasimodo. Pea closed the door and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel.

"I saluted him," she said miserably. "I really shouldn't be allowed out in public without supervision."

Dance class, which had been Pea's weekly escape from the annoyances and disappointments of the world for twenty-five of her almost thirty years, didn't work its magic that day. She felt sluggish and Madam Ringwater, her ancient but timelessly competent ballet instructor, had to reprimand her sharply for missing basic movements. Twice.

Pea couldn't stop thinking about Griffin.

She knew it was silly and childish and unrealistic, but she was smitten. Her year-long crushfrom-a-distance had morphed into a full-blown close-encounter crush. She was an idiot.

"Dorreth! Concentration, merci. I clearly asked for battement tendu jete and not the battement degage you so sloppily performed." Madam Ringwater stamped her practice stick against the smooth wood floor of the studio and spoke sharply in her thick French accent. "Faites-l'encore!

Do it again!"

Pea gritted her teeth and began the delicate lift of her toe from the floor, trying to focus and move in time with the classical music.

Griffin had smiled at her and met her eyes. Twice. Stacy had even said she thought he was interested in her, and Stacy should know. She was happily married to Ken-doll looking Matt, and men still showed way too much interest in her.

Maybe she was right. Maybe he had been interested in her.

Then Pea remembered how Griffin hadn't even really recognized her, for the fourth time, when he'd first seen her at the fire station, and her stomach sank. No. He was just being nice and polite like a fireman should be. What was it he'd said? It's all part of the job. But if she were gorgeous...or somehow memorable...maybe then his little almost-interest would change into real interest. And how was that supposed to happen? How was she supposed to become memorable?

Didn't she remember how disastrous it was to try to pretend to be something she wasn't? All she had to do was to think back to her freshman year in high school, and like it was yesterday instead of a decade or more ago, she remembered all too well that

humiliation...embarrassment...failure....

No. The past was the past. She was a grown-assed woman now. She shouldn't let that childish stuff still mess with her. But she did.

With a huge effort, Pea pushed the memories from her mind and focused on her reflection in the wall-sized studio mirrors. She saw what she always saw. Plain, ordinary Pea. She had on her gray dance sweats, which were rolled down around her hips (which really weren't hips at all -

she was too damn little to have those fabulous curvy, luscious hips she'd always envied in other women). Her ballet IS the pointe long-sleeved T-shirt was tied up just under her ribcage, exposing way more of her skin than Pea was normally comfortable showing. But this was dance class, and dance class was somehow on a different standard when it came to showing skin and such. She wished she had great boobs to fill out the top of the shirt, but she didn't. She had what Stacy's daughter had once called bumps. Little bumps. Her hair was, as usual, crazily escaping from scrunchie bondage, and brown tendrils of it were plastered against her flushed and sweaty face. She hated her hair. Truly hated it.

Okay, but at least she wasn't all fat and saggy and out of shape. Truthfully she'd probably never sag. Her internal editor whispered nastily that was because she didn't have anything to sag, but Pea forced herself to ignore the voice in her head that was always so negative. It didn't really matter why she wouldn't sag - it just mattered that she wouldn't. Right? She didn't give herself time to answer the question; instead she took her mind down a path she rarely ventured. Maybe she did have something that could be worked into unique or memorable. Or at least maybe she could have something attractive about her, like Stacy kept saying. Maybe she just needed some direction so she could develop her self-confidence. She wasn't in high school anymore, and there were no hateful girls on the dance squad to humiliate her and call her names. She was a successful adult. Actually she had managed to attain self-confidence about several things: ballet, cooking, her job as program director of Tulsa Community College. She even had self-confidence about her ability to create a great home.

She stared at herself in the mirror as she manically battement tendu jete-ed. Why was it so hard for her to transfer the self-confidence that permeated the rest of her life to her personal style and appearance? Was it just her past that was holding her back? Her fear that if she tried and this time, as an adult, failed, she would truly be forever doomed to the ranks of wallflower and undesirable dork?