“Just put her in the backyard,” he suggested, moving onto his side to watch her as she hastily dragged on shorts and a T-shirt.
“Nope. The family on the other side of the duplex owns the place—and the backyard. Ixnay on Darlene, and specifically on Darlene byproducts. Besides, I’d still have to go out with a shovel or something. It’s easier to just deal with it.” She hopped on one foot as she slipped on a tennis shoe. “Go back to sleep. This is my problem.”
Brady looked at her resignedly and flipped back the sheet. “No way. As sure as I let you out of my sight, you’ll get busy manufacturing fifty thousand reasons why we can’t have sex again, and since I personally am planning to get you naked as soon and as often as I can, I can’t afford to let that happen.”
He plucked his shirt off the floor and eyed her suspiciously. “So if I turn my back, are you going to vanish?”
Thea rolled her eyes. “I won’t vanish.”
“Swear?”
She stepped quickly over to him and drew him into a long, lingering kiss. “There. Satisfied?”
He looked down at his cock, already thickening. “Not even close. What would you say to—”
There was a low whine outside the door. “Looking after Darlene so she doesn’t burst, and waiting for you to catch up?” Thea hurried to the door. “Absolutely.” She blew him a kiss and stepped into the hall.
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, not too chilly, not too hot. Thea sat down on the warm, worn wood of the front steps, enjoying the early sun.
“This wasn’t very smart, you know,” she told Darlene as she watched her sniff and mark her favorite bushes. “You’re supposed to be my friend and talk me out of dumb stuff.”
Darlene seemed to be far more interested in the rhododendron.
“But that chair trick, boy, that was something amazing.”
Oh, yeah, that chair trick was a life-changer. Actually, all things considered, the situation really wasn’t that bad. No, she hadn’t planned to sleep with him again. No, it wasn’t the measured, sane relationship she’d been hoping for. Then again, she hardly trusted herself to be a good judge of that anyway.
And she’d had a hell of a good time.
What did it really matter, Thea thought, watching the little dog. It wasn’t like she was staying in Portland, no matter how cool it was. A month, month and a half and she’d be back home. In the meantime, she had a place of her own, or at least Robyn’s place, and it wasn’t as if her job depended on Brady. It was okay. It was safe.
She could walk away whenever she needed to.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she had been overcomplicating things. Maybe it was as easy as just having a good time and trusting that they could keep things separate. Fun while it lasted, Brady seemed to specialize in that. And when she went home, no harm, no foul.
Of course, that was the classic setup, sex without strings. And the plot of a thousand romances when the strings spontaneously formed anyway. In this particular case though, she was leaving, and it would take a lot of string to reach from Portland to L.A.
Anyway, a guy like Brady wasn’t built for serious. She suspected Brady had done sex without strings any number of times, happily. For her, it would be a chance to get back in practice, have some fun on a limited scale. A dry run for the real business of finding her future.
In the meantime, there was the chair thing.
She heard the door behind her open and Brady came out. “Morning, Sunshine,” she said with a grin.
He growled at her and went to his Jeep to dig out a baseball hat and sunglasses. “Do you really do this every morning?”
“Every morning, plastic baggies and all.” She clipped on Darlene’s leash. “Come on, it’s an outdoors thing. You should like it.”
“I would, if it were happening like two hours later.”
“Oh, come on, six isn’t that early.”
He glowered at her. “It’s five forty-five.”
“Darlene waits for no man.” Thea led the dog out the gate to meet him on the sidewalk. “Don’t sulk. We’ll be back in half an hour and you can go home and sleep.”
“Go home? You’re kicking me out?” In a flash, he’d pulled her to him. “I told you,” he murmured against her mouth as her knees turned to water, “I’ve got plans for you. And I noticed, Robyn’s got herself some nice kitchen chairs.”
Kitchen chairs. “In that case, let’s get this walk over with,” Thea managed weakly.
HE DIDN’T REALLY MIND getting up early all that much, Brady had to admit. He’d been doing it all week anyway. And he was a pragmatic enough man to look on the good side when he didn’t have a choice—he was outdoors, he was with a beautiful woman and there was the promise of sex later. Hell, it didn’t get much better than that.
For a while, it was just enough to walk and wake up, enjoying the sun and the presence of Thea at his side. Darlene’s claws ticked on the pavement. A bird whistled somewhere nearby. He caught a glimpse of Mount Hood rising in the distance and gauged his chances of getting Thea out for a hike.
“So doesn’t walking Darlene give you the urge to get another dog?” Thea asked, catching his glance.
“Walking Darlene makes me glad I have a backyard and a doggie door.”
“Surely even then you’d take the dog out.”
“Heck yeah. I used to take Spike mountain biking with me all the time. He had a great time cruising around, chasing squirrels.”
“He was your buddy,” she said softly.
“He was. I’ll probably look for another one just like him. Border collies are smart, tough. I like that. I’ve got a friend that breeds them.”
“Purebred?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?” He tucked his hands in his back pockets.
“They have lots of smart, tough dogs at the animal shelter,” she pointed out.
“Adopt a pet?” He glanced at her, amused.
“Why not? It fits with Portland—reuse, renew, recycle.”
“We’ll, maybe I’ll—” Brady stopped dead, staring. “What the hell is that?”
The yard in question was a sea of green—gravel, that was. Grass, bushes, trees, all gone. A pair of neatly tended petunia beds up by the front porch softened the house. And in the center of the artfully raked gravel, on a shrinelike pedestal, stood a lawnmower—spray-painted gold.
Thea cleared her throat. “I believe that’s a statement of personal freedom.”
“I guess.” Brady grinned as they crossed the street. “You gotta love this town. Too bad you weren’t here about ten years ago. They had the twenty-four-hour Church of Elvis downtown.”
“The Church of Elvis?”
“Not a real church. A storefront in a downtown gallery. Coin operated,” he added. “You could read messages on the sacred Elvis monitor, see the miracle of the spinning Elvises. Even try to call him.”
“In heaven?”
“At Graceland.”
“And here I thought it was the weather that Portland had going for it.”
He gave her a look over the top of his sunglasses. “No need to take potshots.”
“I was serious,” she protested.
“Careful, now. It’s easy to say that in summertime. It’s the winter that really shows you what Portland is. Try six straight months of Portland mist and then tell me you like it.”
“You don’t?”
He gave a careless shrug. “It’s weather. That’s what happens when you’ve got sky. I figure outdoors is good no matter what’s coming down. Then again, I grew up here. Imports tend to have problems adjusting.”
“Imports, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I’d like it,” Thea said, watching Darlene sniff at the base of a maple.
And he wondered why that interested him so much. “Big talk.”
“Trust me, I grew up in the desert. Water falling from the sky is good.”
It was the first time she’d ever told him anything about herself voluntarily. “Desert, huh? Whereabo
uts?”
“Blythe. In the southeast corner of California, down by Arizona and the border,” she went on at his look of incomprehension.
“What’s it like?”
“About what you’d expect. Barren, dry. And hot? You have no idea. The temperature breaks a hundred pretty much every day in the summer.”
Brady whistled. “Not sure I’d go for a steady diet of that. Although I’d approve of you in a bikini. Or out of it,” he added as she swatted at him.
“The desert’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but I love rain. I really, really love rain.”
“Why live in L.A. then?”
“My people are there,” she said simply.
“Your family?” She’d cracked the door; he figured he’d nudge it open a little more.
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “No. My friends. My sister lives in the Bay Area.”
“What about your parents?”
She moved a shoulder. “Just a phone call away.”
And somehow he had the feeling she didn’t make that phone call very often.
“So, what, you grew up in Blythe and then moved to L.A., right? College?” he guessed.
She nodded. “That’s where I met my friends. Doing a school play.”
“What, you were an actor?”
“No, I was into dance. Modern, jazz. I was going to live my life on the stage.”
“And that’s where you met Robyn.”
“Well, I—”
Just then, a frenzy of enraged barking and snarling and black-and-tan motion exploded behind the fence of a house up ahead. Darlene lunged against her collar, adding her own high-pitched yelps to the mix, fighting to get her face right up to the slats and what resolved itself as a big, tough, muscled rottweiler.
“You’ve gotta give Darlene her props, she’s not backing down,” Brady said, admiring Thea’s arms as she dragged the dog back.
“Girl don’t take trash talking from no one. ‘You want a piece of me, prison boy?’” Thea grinned. “It’s funny, though, she knows this dog. It’s gotta be something about the fence. When he’s outside or they’re in the park, they’re the best of buddies. I guess he’s territorial.”
Brady pulled her to his side as they walked on. “We guys are like that.” He let his arm down to capture her hand. “So you studied dance?”
Thea wrapped Darlene’s leash around her hand a few times. “What’s this, let’s hear Thea’s life story?”
“I’m curious.”
She shook her head. “Trust me, it’s not that interesting. You now, that’s different. I bet the history of the McMillan clan’s got more than a few good stories in it.”
Patience, Brady reminded himself. It was all a matter of time. “You want McMillan stories?”
She nodded.
“Well, there was the time Michael and I went down to the McCall Park fountain with a bottle of dishwashing liquid. We were going to make bubbles,” he explained.
“Oh, this one, I’ve got to hear,” she said as they turned toward home.
“NOW, THIS IS THE PALETTE for the rooms and upper floors.” Dana Stadler, the interior designer, laid the sheet of paint chips and swatches before Brady.
They sat at a table that had been thrown up on the raised platform that was destined to be the theater’s restaurant. Somewhere, a radio was blasting classic rock over the sounds of hammers and drills.
“Have you had a chance to think some more about the stage-set concept I laid out last week?” Dana asked. She reminded him of k.d. lang, only her suits were twice as sharp. She pointed to the sketch with one short, unpainted fingernail. “I really think it would work. We could play with partial backdrops or props to give drama to the rooms.”
“I was thinking of something else,” he said.
“Really?” Her voice was scrupulously professional but a tad cool. “Like what?”
“Well, playing off tango, first of all. Costumes, music, art. But down here, maybe working the dressing room angle.”
“The dressing room angle?”
“Yeah. Either use the real rooms or add new ones on the far side of the stage, where the storage rooms are now.” The more he’d thought about the idea, the more he’d liked it.
Dana flipped through some papers. “That wasn’t in the original plan.”
“Nope, but someone in our group came up with the idea and I’m going to run with it.”
“You’re going to run with what?” a voice said from behind him. Michael’s voice.
Brady waited a beat, then turned. “A-ha, look who’s here. Happened to be in the neighborhood?”
“No, I figured I’d sit in.” Michael pulled up an extra chair.
Kitchen chair, Brady thought, and worked to force his mind elsewhere. “Showing up at the contractor launch meeting, inspecting in the mornings, sitting in on design. Boy, you know, for a guy who didn’t have the bandwidth for this project, you’re sure in the middle of it.”
“I’m not in the middle of it,” Michael countered. “I’m merely keeping an eye on things.”
“An eye on things,” Brady repeated. “Including me.”
“Not you, the project. So this new room idea, maybe you and I should talk about it before we move forward with Dana, here. Dana,” Michael continued, “you all right with taking ten?”
She glanced up from the notes she’d been conspicuously concentrating on. “Fine with me. Is there a place around here I can get coffee?”
“Left out the front door and take the next left,” Michael responded before Brady could open his mouth. “Good scones.”
“I’ll bring you back a couple.”
Brady studied Michael as she walked away. “Been around here a lot, I guess.”
“Off and on. So what’s this about new rooms?”
It wasn’t worth being frustrated. Michael was being Michael; it was his money at stake, too. “It goes with the theme. The backstage idea works all right, but it’s not enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the Lincoln School, we turned classrooms into guest rooms. We could do the same thing here by playing on the dressing room angle. I’m not talking about a huge number, just three or four. Call ’em the premium suites. We can turn the storage rooms over on the other side into real dressing rooms for the performers—no way are we going to need to store costumes and props and stuff.”
“What are we looking at for cost?”
He had that, had crunched through numbers all morning after feverish consults with the architect and contractor. “Five percent over our current budget. Pay for itself in two years of occupancy.”
Michael mulled it over. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. Good idea,” he added.
“It wasn’t mine. Thea came up with it.”
“Thea?”
“The tango dancer.”
“Ah. You bringing on consultants, now?”
“You know I am. Tango’s an integral part of the theme.”
“And is she the babe from the park?”
Brady gave Michael a sharp look. “She’s the dancer, yeah. The tango studio that ran the dance is on board to provide an entertainment program for us. Thea works there.”
“She’s got a lot of opinions about the theater for never having seen it.”
“I brought her over a couple of nights ago to answer a couple of questions about the stage.”
“A couple of nights ago?” Michael repeated.
“She has a job. That’s when we could get here.”
“I heard you brought a date into the Cascade Brewery. That her?”
Brady’s brows rose. “Chatty bunch we’ve got over there.”
“You’re an owner. People notice what the owners do.”
“And report it, apparently.”
“That shouldn’t come as a surprise.” Michael nodded his head to the beat of a Pearl Jam song playing behind them. “Brady, we’ve got a lot of money riding on this project,” he said abruptly. “Make sure you’re pa
ying attention to what’s important. And the difference between business and pleasure. We can’t afford to screw this up.”
Brady’s jaw tightened. He looked at the stage, then back at Michael. “Don’t worry about the project. It’ll get done.”
“Just make sure that’s all that gets done.”
Brady gave him a level stare. “I’d say that’s between her and me.”
“Oh, man.” Michael sighed.
Just then, Dana walked up with a bag and a carrier tray holding three coffees. “Okay, I’m back with ammo. We going to talk design, guys?”
Muscle by muscle, Brady forced himself to relax. “Yeah we’re going to talk design.”
11
THEA SAT ON THE SWING on Robyn’s front porch, one foot tucked under her, the other dangling down as she swayed gently. On a pad in her lap, she scribbled notes for a tango showcase. If teaching was her first love, choreography was her second, turning imagination into movement, shepherding the flow of the dance.
Rough out an opening night program for the theater, Brady had requested, so she’d designed showcases, enlisted the efforts of the tango society in supplying performers. Now it was a matter of putting the finishing touches on at her end. And soon, she’d be one of the performers on stage.
Darlene lay in the shade at her feet, panting in an adenoidal manner. Not that the day was all that hot; it was still morning. Then again, pugs didn’t have all that much of a nose and snout to cool down with. Thermally challenged, Thea thought, reaching down to rub the dog’s ears. Darlene was also metabolically challenged, which meant that a walk in the afternoon, when things cooled down again, would be good. They could haul Brady along, in case of exhaustion.
A smile curved her mouth. They’d gone hiking in Forest Park days before. Or at least Brady and Thea had; Darlene had started flagging after maybe a quarter of a mile. Brady had wound up carrying the tired thing the rest of the way, refusing to answer to anything but Brady Sherpa.
A night’s sleep—and she let him sleep a fair bit, she didn’t know what he was complaining about—had seemed to revive him. Surely he’d have recovered by now. She was pretty confident she’d be able to lure him along again.
At her side, her cell phone burbled. “Hello?” she answered.
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