“That’s me,” Sofia said.
“My kids loved The Half Pint Detective!” he said. “Especially the one with the dog.”
There had been a lot of episodes with dogs. Half Pint was hired to find lost dogs and cats a lot. Hard to believe she did that in real life now. “Weren’t those dogs so cute?”
He looked past her at the wedding hall.
“Would you like me to sign something, for your daughters?” she asked.
He was calming down. The music was quieter than before, a lovely classical piece she didn’t recognize. If Aidan could keep Grigoryan away, everything would be fine.
“Thank you,” the officer said. “That would be nice. For Mindy and Cindy.”
Behind his head, she saw Grigoryan coming out of the hall. She scribbled an autograph on the policeman’s ticket book as fast as she could. Aidan came out after Grigoryan, carrying a piece of cake. He’d let himself be distracted by wedding cake. Understandable, but lame. She planted a kiss next to her signature.
“Thank you, officer,” she said. “Tell Mindy and Cindy hi for me!”
Aidan grabbed Grigoryan’s elbow, but Grigoryan shook him off and kept on coming. When he reached them, he shouted. “And another thing!”
Sofia enveloped the angry Armenian’s barrel-chested torso in a giant hug.
“What a lovely wedding!” she said loudly.
Clearly confused, Grigoryan froze.
She pulled him in close. In an undertone, she told him, “He’s going over to cite Befort for making a false call. You don’t want to get in the way of that, do you?”
Sure, it was a lie, but if it kept things from exploding, what harm was there in it?
CHAPTER 12
T hey were finally on their way home. But since Aidan was driving they were now rolling down the hill about as fast as a senior citizen jogging.
“Hurry,” she said. “I need to drop you at the office before I head out for the show.”
“We’re not stopping at the office.”
She didn’t like the sound of this. “Why?”
“I’m taking you to Burbank. I checked the traffic on my phone before we left, and there’s no time to go back to the office.”
“Are you crashing my date?”
“I thought you said it wasn’t a date, and Emily and the kids were coming along, too.”
“I did not.”
“It was in that text you showed me, the one with Action Jaxon with his shirt off.”
She regretted showing him that stupid text. She called up her own traffic app. He was right.
“See?” he said. “I’m right, as usual.”
“I wouldn’t call that usual.” She sighed. “Pull over.”
“Pull over?”
“We’ll never get there on time with you behind the wheel. We won’t make it off this hill.”
But Aidan hadn’t pulled over, and so they had arrived ten minutes late. Emily, Tex, and the kids waved from the front entrance. Violet scuffed red cowboy boots against the ground, and Van sported a black cowboy hat. Emily’s calico summer dress flowed when she moved. Where had she found calico? Tex had come in jeans and a cowboy shirt with pearl snaps down the front.
“You guys look like you strolled off the set of Gunsmoke,” Aidan said.
“We dressed up, Maloney Junior.” Violet scuffed her boots against the ground. “It’s called a theme.”
“Sorry I didn’t have time to stop off at home for my cowboy clothes,” Sofia said. “And thanks for dropping me off, Aidan. Tex can give me a ride home.”
“Well, I was really hoping I could see the show,” Aidan said.
“It’s probably sold out,” Sofia said. “I had trouble getting tickets last night.”
“Mr. Ford left two tickets for you, Auntie Sofia,” said Van. “You could give one to Maloney Junior.”
She looked at Emily, hoping for a rescue.
“I used one of those tickets for us,” Emily said. “So there isn’t really an extra.”
Emily was a good liar when she applied herself.
“I have two,” said Tex. “You can be my date.”
She threaded her arm through Aidan’s and marched for the entrance.
“Sorry,” said Emily.
“Why are you sorry?” Violet asked. “Because Sofia forgot her outfit?”
“Because of that.” Emily started toward the entrance.
With any luck, Tex’s seats weren’t next to theirs.
They hurried inside the tent toward their seats. Ponies romped around the ring with children standing on their backs. The kids didn’t look much older than Violet.
“I want to do that,” she said. “Mom?”
Emily flinched, but pretended she hadn’t heard. “We’re A27 through A30. You go first and clear a way, Sofia. I’ll follow up and sweep.”
Emily always went last so she could keep an eye on the kids. They had to keep the rugrats flanked.
Sofia said ‘excuse me’ twenty-six times until she got to their seats. And there, right next to her seat, sat Aidan.
“I got popcorn,” he said. “For the kids.”
CHAPTER 13
T he show was similar to Cirque d’Soleil, but with horses. The lighting and music were entrancing, and she couldn’t take her eyes off the performers. Violet and Van sat still as statues, staring at the stage in wonder. They didn’t even finish Aidan’s popcorn.
Riders and horses moved in complicated dances around the ring. The performers were constantly standing, jumping, and tumbling on and off the horses. It made her dizzy to watch.
Then Jaxon entered. He rode two horses at once, with a foot on the back of each. No wonder he didn’t have trouble balancing on a surfboard. Loose green pants flowed around his legs. His bare chest glistened with sweat or oil. His hair was dark brown when it was dry, and it streamed behind him as the horse galloped into the ring. As cute as he had been in his wetsuit, he looked much better out of it.
Emily put her finger to her lips and then onto her leg, making a sizzling sound. Yeah, he was that hot.
“Are you OK, Mom?” Violet asked.
“Shh,” said Emily. “This is the best part.”
“Is that Auntie Sofia’s new boyfriend?” Van pointed at Jaxon.
“Maybe,” Sofia said. “Just maybe.”
Aidan hummed the song, “macho, macho man.” A hit from the Village People.
Jaxon and the horses galloped straight toward Sofia and her party. Violet and Van shrank back in their seats, because it looked as if the horses wouldn’t stop. Aidan tensed up next to her.
But the horses glided to a stop a few feet away from Sofia. Jaxon smiled the same way he had on the board that morning and murmured something. Each horse dropped its outside leg in front, rested its weight on the inside knee, and bowed to her. Jaxon ducked his head and swung his arm to the side.
The crowd erupted in applause, and Sofia blushed. She didn’t blush often, but when she did she went tomato-red.
Aidan leaned to the side, probably to say something dumb, and Jaxon looked between them. His green-brown eyes asked a simple question.
Tex grabbed hold of Aidan’s head and pulled it back toward her, shaking her head. “They’re not together,” Tex said loudly. “At all. He’s with me.”
Sofia buried her face in her hands. If she hadn’t been embarrassed before, she certainly was now. She peeked between her fingers.
Jaxon winked, murmured something else, and the horses stood and cantered off to the side.
Fanning herself with one hand, Tex leaned across Aidan to talk to Sofia. “That may be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s just a cowboy,” Aidan said.
“He is more Khal Drogo than cow-boy,” Emily said. “Wow.”
Sofia was still watching him on the back of those horses. He slipped from one horse to the other, then disappeared entirely behind the back of one horse, coming up as sinuously as a snake, jumping lightly to the first horse and doing a hands
tand on its coal-black back. Jaxon’s muscles flexed as he slid from the handstand until he was lying flat across the horse’s back. Then he stood and murmured again. The two horses moved into close formation, and he mounted their backs again.
A dark-clad figure skipped in from the sidelines and threw Jaxon a flaming torch.
“That kid gets to play with fire!” Violet pointed to the child throwing the flaming torches. The kid looked about eight, a little older than Violet.
The youngster threw Jaxon another torch.
“That kid probably never accidentally burnt down his father’s toolshed,” Emily said.
“You don’t know,” Violet whispered. “Maybe he burned down ten toolsheds. On purpose.”
“Shh!” Van put his finger to his lips. “We don’t want Auntie Sofia’s new boyfriend to fall down because we’re too loud.”
Jaxon didn’t look likely to fall down. He looked completely in charge.
While the horses galloped in a tight circle inside the ring, Jaxon juggled the torches, hurling them high into the air and catching them before tossing them back to the assistant, smiling one more time at Sofia, and cantering out of the ring.
Tex looked at Sofia and gave her a thumb’s up. “This is why swimming is good for you.”
“Auntie Sofia swims?” Violet asked. “I know some good underwater moves. How to punch a shark, things like that.”
Sofia stared at the ring right where Jaxon and the horses had bowed to her. Horses had never bowed to her before.
“Quite the talented animal, that horse,” said Aidan. “Both horses actually.”
Tex punched him on the arm. It must have hurt, because he reached up to rub it.
Everyone was quiet during the rest of the show. Sofia relaxed into it, breathing in the smells of horse, sawdust, and popcorn. The performers were amazing. They must have rehearsed for hours to hit every mark so perfectly. What if she’d been cast in a horse show, instead of a detective one? Would she have ended up in a show like this instead of in a detective agency?
Life had just happened to her. She’d tagged along with Emily for the audition for Half Pint Detective because she was too sick to go to school that day and her mother hadn’t wanted to leave her home alone. The casting director had seen Sofia, probably high on cold medicine, trying to pry open a window to let out a moth beating itself to death against the glass and insisted she audition, too.
The moth’s dusty scales had left marks on the glass. The window was painted shut, she’d never have been able to open it, but she’d still regretted she hadn’t freed the moth before she got dragged off to run lines. When she came back after her unscheduled audition, the moth was gone. She always wondered what had happened to it.
So, her whole career came down to a lost insect. If she hadn’t been standing on the chair struggling with the window, the casting director probably wouldn’t have noticed her. That’s how random her life was. Maybe how random everyone’s life was.
If she hadn’t seen that surfing documentary and decided to go swimming yesterday, Jaxon might not have a life. He might still be hanging from his surfboard by the leash, his eyes closed, and his skin gone cold.
“Are you OK?” Aidan whispered to her.
“Fine,” she answered, but she wasn’t sure. She concentrated on the performance again, but it was mostly over. The actors and horses were coming in and taking their bows. The crowd roared for Jaxon, and he caught her eye.
“Backstage?” he mouthed.
She looked from side to side.
“All of you,” he mouthed.
She nodded, and he bowed.
CHAPTER 14
J axon’s assistant, a dark-haired boy who looked about eight, came up to them after the show.
“My name is Sage,” he said. “I’m supposed to take you backstage.”
“How long have you been working with fire?” Violet asked. “At what age exactly did you start?”
“When I was five or six, I guess.”
Violet vibrated with outrage and glared at her mother.
“Is that a katana embroidered on your jacket?” Sage asked. “It looks cool.”
“My mom did it for me,” Violet said grudgingly. “It’s a weapon I get to work out with at the dojo on Saturday, if I’m good. The practice one is only wooden, but it’s still fun.”
Sage and Violet led the way down the aisle and over towards the back of the tent talking about martial arts.
“That Sage is one to watch,” said Tex.
“Auntie Sofia will be too busy watching Jaxon,” said Van. “She blushed.”
She blushed again. What was up with that?
“It’s hot in here,” said Emily. “That’s all.”
“That Khal Drogo raised the temperature in the whole tent,” said Tex. “I thought I was having a hot flash.”
“He’s not Khal Drogo, that’s from Game of Thrones,” said Van.
“What do you know about Game of Thrones?” Emily asked him.
“Jake at school watches it. He says a lot of people die, and a lot of people get naked.”
“Which one is Jake?” Emily asked.
Sofia slipped through the back tent flap and entered a different world. Horses of every color and size milled around, tended to by performers in and out of costume, and attendants in jeans and t-shirts. It smelled of horse and hay. She liked it.
“Hey!” called a familiar voice.
Jaxon stood between two large black horses. One rested its muzzle against his bare shoulder.
“Glad he didn’t put on a shirt yet,” murmured Tex.
Sofia hoped Jaxon hadn’t heard.
“Hello,” Sofia said. She quickly introduced everyone.
“If it isn’t Action Jaxon, the professional surfer,” said Aidan.
Jaxon quirked his mouth into a half smile. “Horses are easier to ride than waves.”
Violet tentatively stroked the nearest horse. “What’s her name?”
“Inky. Wanna sit on her back?” Jaxon asked.
“Yes.” Violet actually sounded a bit worried.
Jaxon lifted her up with one arm and deposited her on the horse’s back. Violet clung to the mane and smiled.
“Good girl,” she said.
“What’s the other horse called?” Van looked longingly at the second horse.
“Clyde.” Jaxon boosted him atop the other horse.
“Like in Pac Man?” Van asked. “After the ghosts?”
“Exactly,” Jaxon said. “Most people don’t notice.”
Van puffed up with pride.
“The show was great!” Sofia said.
“If you’d told me you were bringing the whole family, I would have left out more tickets,” Jaxon said. “But I’m glad you liked it.”
“We loved it,” said Emily.
“Especially the part where the horses bowed,” said Aidan. “Very subtle.”
“Aidan’s an old family friend.” Emily put her hand on his arm. “The kids love hanging out with him.”
“Can you train these horses to do anything?” Violet asked. “Like battle?”
“I wouldn’t want these two big babies going into battle.” Jaxon stroked their muzzles. “But horses have been trained to go to war as long as there’s been war and horses, so it would be possible.”
“Can you train them to make noise? Or poop?” Van asked.
That was actually a useful question. Had Grigoryan’s neighbor trained the horse to poop right in his car?
“Sure.” Jaxon grinned again. “A lot of horses are trained to go pee when you whistle.”
“Not a bad skill to learn, huh, Sofia?” asked Aidan.
Jaxon looked puzzled. Maybe he was the last guy in Los Angeles who hadn’t seen the video of her peeing in the Big Rock Rehab parking lot. It made her like him more.
“Inky and Clyde,” she said. “I like those names.”
“Blinky and Pinky are back at the ranch. They work with cows, not this kind of trick riding.”
“American quarter horses,” Jaxon answered. “Blinky is a red dun and Pinky is gray. I got them all at the same time.”
Clyde sniffed Sofia’s hair. His breath felt soft and moist against her scalp.
“He likes you,” Jaxon said.
“I like him, too,” Sofia said. “I haven’t ridden in a long time, but I used to love horses.”
“She had horse posters in her room,” Emily said. “And she went riding every chance she got. She loves horses.”
“Would you like to go riding on Tuesday? The show isn’t performed on Tuesdays, so the horses are free to get some exercise on their own.” Jaxon flashed that smile again.
“I could come after work,” Sofia said.
“Tuesdays are busy days at work,” Aidan piped up. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” Sofia said.
Tex threaded her arm through Aidan’s. “Why don’t you take me over there to look at that giant Percheron, Aidan?”
Before he could answer, she’d tugged him away. Aidan went unwillingly, like a dog who was barely leash trained.
Jaxon walked the horses around with the kids on the back, Sofia and Jaxon exchanged phone numbers, and then it was time to go.
While Emily was dusting off the kids and frisking Van to make sure he hadn’t discovered some kind of tool that would be used to take apart the minivan, Sofia got a moment alone with Jaxon.
“I really enjoyed your show,” she said. “The horses. The acrobats. The costumes. Just great.”
“Your friend, Aidan, didn’t seem that impressed.” Jaxon glanced over to where Aidan fidgeted next to Tex. She hadn’t let go of his arm since she’d dragged him away. “Did you two used to go out?”
“Aidan?” Sofia laughed. “Not ever. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and we both work for his father now. We’re just friends. Work colleagues. Barely that.”
“Good,” said Jaxon.
CHAPTER 15
D is for Drunk Page 6