Personal Touch by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page B

actually climbed into it and every time you hung a rope from a tree limb, I actually tried to shinny up it.”
    “You were irresistible,” said Tim, grinning.
    My heart flopped into an anatomically impossible position at the thought of being irresistible to Timothy Lansberry.
    He does not mean you were irresistibly sexy, I told myself. He means you were irresistible for putting on the receiving end of his tricks.
    But even knowing that, I blushed too, at the very thought that he might know what I was thinking. Know I was wishing I could be irresistibly sexy and appealing to him, of all people. We stared at each other, embarrassed and hot and flushed, and I sat down heavily in the chair, just to end the scene, and the blasted chair split down the middle and dumped me agonizingly right on the tile floor.
    “Timothy Lansberry!” I screamed. “You rotten, worthless, perverted, warped creep ! I can’t believe I fell for it again !” My rear end hurt so much I was almost in tears. The rage I was feeling at him and at myself was enough that I think I really could have strangled him with pleasure.
    Tim, incredibly, was not laughing with glee. He was staring at me in horror. “Oh, Sunny,” he said, and you would have thought he was honestly traumatized, “really, I didn’t do that. I’m sorry. I really meant to offer you a chair, honest, I didn’t—”
    “Drop dead!” I said fiercely. I tried to get up and I literally could not. Pain shot through me. Great. I’ve cracked my spine, I thought.
    At least it had knocked out the crush on Tim. A forty-five-minute crush. Well, that was probably the best kind to have. I would not have to lie in bed tonight dreaming of Timothy Lansberry. I could lie there meditating on my own stupidity instead.
    “Oh, no!” said Tim, “What did you do? Crack your spine or something? Really, Sunny, I’m sorry. I didn’t plan that. It just happened.”
    I told him where he could go and we both blushed again, because I had definitely never said that to anybody before. We both kind of glanced around in a panic to see if my mother had heard me, but she was out back and there were no customers.
    Tim bent over me and wrapped his long fingers around me, right under the arms, and effortlessly picked me up. Perhaps the good guys in Westerns really could swing young maidens up onto their horses. If the good guys were built like Tim.
    Tim set me on my feet and sort of dusted me off. Even in the midst of my wrath, I felt my crush coming back at the touch of Tim’s hands. Terrific, I thought. I’m going to be one of those women who loves unreformable alcoholics or criminals.
    “I’m sorry, Sunny,” said Tim, sort of desperately.
    I tottered a few steps. “You didn’t cripple me, at least,” I said. I stared out at the rain, aching. Let Mother and her dear Tim run this stupid store. I was going home.
    I took two steps toward the front door and just as Tim was saying I could not possibly walk home in this rain—he’d borrow my mother’s car and take me if that was the way I felt—and just as I was saying that I wouldn’t trust him to shift gears in a Tonka toy, in barged this great big fat woman. She was truly impressive. Anyone who can gather in that much poundage must be truly dedicated to food. Tim and I paused for a moment to pay our respects.
    “I see you’ve found my chair,” she said, kicking at the one that had thrown me to the floor. “Something wrong with it. I used it only once and it collapsed. Tried to exchange it half an hour ago, but you two were all involved with some silly idiots blathering about the color of umbrellas, so I left it here and finished up my other errands. Now. Is there any possibility of exchanging it?”
    Tim and I did not even look at each other. I think we knew it would be fatal. Tim managed to say, “Yes, ma’am. Certainly. Perhaps a sturdier style?” He guided her over to a display of large yellow metal chairs that looked as though they could take