“It doesn’t,” he said forcefully. “We can call and e-mail and IM.”
“There’s a time difference,” Ivy cautioned.
“I’ve always wanted to visit Europe,” Brendan said, unfazed. “Everyone says it sucks.”
“You’d visit me?” Ivy quavered. Brendan looked into her eyes, put his arms around her, and pulled her close.
Ivy buried her face in his chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to say good-bye to you,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to,” Brendan said into her hair. Ivy looked up at him, and her heart fluttered.
He smiled down at her easily.“I think we need a new game,” Brendan said, looking around, “one that we can play when we’re apart and then compare scores.” Suddenly his eyes focused across the room, and his eyebrows shot up. “Skee-Ball!”
He started pulling her across the arcade, but Ivy hung back; somehow, it didn’t seem right to play a game. “I don’t know,” she murmured.
“Ivy,” Brendan said firmly, “we only have three weeks. It’s okay to be sad when you’re gone. But I don’t want to spend time being sad while you’re still here.”
You’re right, Ivy thought. And you’re mine! She smiled, and together they raced across the arcade.
“I’m warning you,” Brendan told her, “my high score is unbeatable!”
A few minutes later, Ivy had sunk her second five-hundred-point bull’s-eye in a row. “She’s . . . killing . . . me,” Brendan croaked. He slumped onto the empty next lane, his eyes closed and his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
Grinning, Ivy prepared for her next throw. She was just releasing the ball when Brendan sprang up and hissed at her, baring imaginary fangs. The wooden ball careened wildly up the slope, shot up against the top of the cage, and bounced out of the alley.
“Brendan!” Ivy scolded.
The ball rolled onto the floor, and Ivy chased after it. For a moment she lost sight of it among people’s legs, but then she spotted the ball as it collided with someone’s black wingtip shoe with a hollow thump.
The man whose foot she’d hit leaned down and scooped up the ball. He held it out in front of him, staring at Ivy curiously. Underneath a gray wool overcoat, he was wearing a dark blue shirt. He wore round glasses, and he had wild, graying curly hair that emanated from his head in all directions. He looked like a maniacal genius.
“S-sorry,” Ivy stammered.
The man dropped the ball into her hand.
“Dad!” Brendan exclaimed, coming over to join Ivy. “What are you doing here?”
Ivy turned to look at Brendan and then back at the man standing before her. She couldn’t believe her luck. Not only was Brendan being more A positive about her move to Europe than she could ever have hoped but now she was getting to meet his father without even asking!
Brendan inched up to his dad. “I’m on a date,” he murmured in a low voice.
Somehow, Ivy thought, embarrassment makes him even more gorgeous.
“Your mother asked me to tell you to be home in time for dinner,” Mr. Daniels said haltingly. He glanced at Ivy again, then stared expectantly at Brendan.
“Dad, this is Ivy. Ivy, this is my dad,” Brendan muttered.
Brendan’s father extended his hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you,” he said, turning Ivy’s hand over in his own curiously. He looked up at her with sparkling eyes. “I understand you have a twin sister?”
“Dad!” Brendan scolded. He looked at Ivy apologetically. “My dad’s a geneticist.”
“It’s okay,” Ivy said. Mr. Daniels seems just as eager to talk to me as Olivia and I are to talk to him! she thought excitedly. “Great to meet you, Mr. Daniels.”
He peered into her eyes. “Any health problems as a child?” he asked clinically.
Ivy thought about it. “No. I got a marble stuck in my ear once.”
“Are you allergic to garlic?” he asked.
“Of course,” Ivy answered.
“Inconceivable,” Mr. Daniels muttered to himself.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Brendan said, sounding annoyed, “but did I mention that Ivy and I are on a date?” He grabbed his father’s arm and dragged him away.
A minute later, Brendan reappeared, unaccompanied, next to Ivy at the Skee-Ball game.
“Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly as Ivy handed him a ball. “Ever since he heard about you and Olivia, he’s been desperate to meet you.”
Brendan shot the ball, and it bounced into the circle just outside the bull’s-eye. “Four hundred points,” he announced.
“You want to hear something deadly?” Ivy said, taking a ball. “I was actually going to ask if I could talk to your dad.” She shot one hundred points and grimaced.
“How come?” Brendan asked.
“Olivia and I found a research study that he wrote about whether vamps and humans can have babies. We kind of wanted to ask him about that.”
“Then you would actually be willing to come over to our house for lunch on Sunday?” Brendan said with a hint of relief. “My dad asked me to invite you and Olivia.”
“That would be killer!” Ivy said.
“Maybe to you,” remarked Brendan. “You don’t have to listen to him talk about work all the time! But at least this way he can get all his scientific mumbo jumbo out in one dose, and you and Olivia can ask any questions you want.”
“He doesn’t know that Olivia knows about, you know, though, right?” Ivy said cryptically.