Trick and Treat - Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
"I found him!” cried Vance, as he held up his cell phone in victory and walked into his kitchen, where Lizzie sat on a stool, sampling appetizers and nursing her cocktail. “I think I found Maverick!”
Lizzie’s heart leapt. “How did you do that so fast?”
“Well, I mean, I am a social-media sensation,” Vance joked as he leaned on his granite kitchen countertops. Notes of a song by the Cure floated in from the living room as partygoers moved in and out of the kitchen, grabbing appetizers and fresh drinks.
“Look here…” He pointed to his phone, and she saw all the dozens of messages from his networked friends, all of them trying to figure out if they knew the mystery man in the Maverick uniform. He showed her a profile, and she immediately recognized the chiseled chin and dark eyes.
“That’s him!” she breathed.
Silently, she read his profile: Hunter Jacobs, private security, former Naval pilot.
“Oh my, he’s actually Maverick, though.” Vance thumbed through some of his profile pictures, and stopped on one with him smiling from the cockpit of a fighter jet. “You fooled around with the real Maverick.”
She recalled the Naval-pilot jumpsuit Maverick had been wearing and realized that it had seemed awfully authentic. And now she realized why: it was the real deal.
“He’s out of my league,” Lizzie moaned, realizing that a buff Naval pilot was probably not going to be all that thrilled once he realized that the risqué Material Girl was actually a mousy librarian.
“He is not. You’re the kindest, sweetest, smartest…and sexiest librarian I know. Besides, he might go for the sexy-librarian look.”
“I’m not a sexy librarian,” Lizzie protested, thinking about her sensible work shoes.
“You’re not?” Vance gave her sexy-bride costume a once over. “So, you just wear corsets and stilettos because you’re dowdy?”
“It’s Halloween!”
“Yes, right, when the good girls turn bad. I know. Well, go be bad, sister. What have you got to lose? Send the man a message!”
Just then, the notes of the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” drifted into the kitchen. Lizzie took it as a sign.