Love Everlasting

by Tracey Alvarez

  Mac gave him a widened watch your step gaze, then a sardonic smile. “Thanks, Reid. Josie asked for the best, which means you.”

  His peripheral vision caught sight of Josie’s nostrils flaring in and out in the mirror’s reflection. Her chin wobbled, and she blinked rapidly, her extra-long fake lashes fanning her flushed cheeks.

  “MacKenna and I wanted a second opinion on how to tackle the alterations.” Laura’s cheeks were also flushed, and her gaze shot an invisible volley of dressmaking pins at her client.

  Translated that meant Mac and Laura didn’t want to deal with any more of Josie’s bullshit and were passing the baton to him. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Nice Guy, but in a female-dominated industry he was a quick study in the masculine fallback of flattery.

  He aimed an I got this smile at the mirror and squarely met Josie’s gaze. “Forget about the dress for a moment, Josie. You look amazing. Strong and toned and drop-dead gorgeous.” Maybe that was laying it on a little too thick, but whatever worked.

  The nose breathing and chin wobbling ceased and Josie’s spine straightened at least two inches—nearly causing a wardrobe malfunction in front. Thoughts of wardrobe malfunctions led to a memory of Darby’s sexy curves and peekaboo panties, and that image put a genuine smile on his face.

  “You’re so sweet,” Josie said. “I’ve lost twenty pounds going to the gym six days a week and completely giving up sugar, carbs, and nasty, nasty fat. I want to be in the best possible shape for my big day.”

  Josie tugged at the sweetheart neckline of the gown—was she trying to nipple flash him or just demonstrate the toll rabbit food had taken on her cup size? He cleared his throat, refusing to glance either side of him to Mac and Laura who he knew would be rolling their eyes.

  “Well, you’re in great shape,” he said. Though there was nothing wrong with her shape when Laura had measured her for the dress. “May I make some minor adjustments to accentuate all your hard work?”

  “Of course.” Josie tossed her hair coquettishly over her shoulder. “You’re the best, right?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” he said, taking the pincushion holder from Laura and getting to work.

  Once he’d finished pinning the gown, Laura guided Josie into the private dressing room to help her change. Mac crooked her finger at him and he followed her into their office. She slumped into what was once her office chair and spun in a half circle, crossing her ankles and propping them on an open desk drawer. “Guess I’m springing for lunch.”

  He folded his arms and leaned against the door. “And beer. I’ve earned a beer after Bridezilla out there, plus a visit from your new friend, Darby Livingston.”

  “Poor Bean,” Mac said, dredging up his old nickname—given because he towered over her five-foot-three frame. She cocked her head, looking so much like a blond-feathered bird with her pursed red lips and matching red heels that he chuckled.

  “Though I admit, meeting Darby wasn’t a hardship. She made quite an impression.” One he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.

  “Really?”

  He grinned. “You’ll have to buy me beer before I elaborate.” Not that he planned to tell Mac about the pink panties. Some details a guy kept to himself. “And you can explain why you volunteered me to sew the costumes for this play.”

  “Hoo no. You’re not pinning that on me. That was all Kaitlyn. I just went along with it because it’s a good, um…” Her gaze darted sideways to his computer screen, currently displaying a screen saver of an old photo of him and his mum skiing. Her mouth thinned and her eyes softened as they swept over him, as if waiting for cracks to appear.

  “Cause?” he finished for her. “You mean the Sunflower House and breast cancer? Take something ugly and brutally lethal and stick a pink ribbon on it. Anyone who’s had any experience with the disease knows wearing pink doesn’t change anything.”

  It certainly hadn’t changed his mother’s diagnosis, no matter how many rallies he’d been on. No matter how many pink tee shirts he’d worn.

  “Reid.”

  Not even Mac knew the unexplored depths of the grief he’d experienced watching Angela Hudson die in painful increments. Mac’d been the best friend she could, understanding and supporting him when he’d quit design school to take care of his mum. She’d made sure he ate and took care of himself, and tag-team sat with Angela during the final days of her hospice stay to give him a chance to sleep. Still, he’d never shared that part of his soul with anyone.

  “Yeah, sorry.” He waved a hand at her, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know I’m overreacting. It is a good publicity opportunity.”

  “Are you in, then?” she asked in a familiar wheedling tone.

  His mind flicked sideways to the imprinted memory of Darby smiling and, sue him, those pink panties. He wouldn’t need to dwell on the fundraising aspect of Darby’s project with that kind of interesting distraction to contend with.

  “You’ve already designed the costumes, haven’t you?”

  She grinned and pointed at her messenger bag beside his desk. “In there ready to show Darby at lunch today.”

  His pulse leaped like a starter gun had gone off. “You invited her to lunch?” He mentally winced at the almost-falsetto pitch at the end of the question.

  “Problem?” She dropped her feet off the desk drawer and straightened, as alert as a sniffer dog catching a scent.

  “No problem. This is just happening faster than I expected.”

  “Opening night is only four weeks away.” Mac smirked. “So, Fairy Godfather, you and Darby oughta get busy.”

  “Go deal with your client. I’ll look at your sketches, and then we’ll go get busy with Darby.”

  Mac patted his cheek affectionately and strolled out of the office.

  A guy could interpret getting busy in a completely different context. Especially a guy who’d gotten close enough to Darby to smell her fresh, flowery scent or to admire how cute she’d looked in his sweatpants.

  And to imagine how hot she’d look out of them.

  Chapter 4

  Darby was running late, as usual.

  So late—thanks to an elderly cocker spaniel who’d mistaken the clinic’s green linoleum for his backyard dump site—that she still had her vet scrubs on. Better to arrive almost on time in scrubs to a lunch meeting than super late wearing her final professional outfit dragged from her closet that morning. Air quotes around the word professional, since even her selected black pants and charcoal shirt had a light dusting of cat hair. A crazy cat lady’s ultimate accessory. Her two cats sure thought so.

  After finding a parking spot close to The Cheeky Leprechaun, Darby caught a glimpse of her reflection in a hair salon’s window. A flushed-cheeked woman in “It’s all fun and games until someone ends up in a cone”-printed yellow scrubs with hot pink Converse high tops stared wide-eyed back at her. One who hadn’t had time to reapply a coat of mascara, so her eyelashes were all but invisible under her mop of hair.

  Still, at least she had eyelashes now. And hair.

  She poked out her tongue, then waved sheepishly at the stylist frozen at her station, staring at Darby as if she’d just hatched out of a giant egg. Game face on, Darby strode along the sidewalk and pushed through the glass doors into the pub/restaurant. Kaitlyn and her ex-husband owned the Leprechaun, though her friend wouldn’t be here today to save her.

  The lunchtime crowd was out in full force. University students in beanie-to-toes black, a smattering of underdressed-for-spring tourists, tradesmen, and a few bored office workers were crammed into one big noisy, busy room. Darby hovered a short distance inside the entranceway, gaze skimming over the line waiting at the bar to order drinks and the packed tables in front of her. She didn’t recognize anyone and the familiar twinge of discomfort, of being the odd girl out—the odd tall girl out—sent a flood of heat onto her face.

  “Darby?”

  She froze at her name being called from behind her. Warm tingles raced over h
er scalp at the chocolaty-rough rumble of Reid’s voice. She didn’t need to turn to know it was him. After only meeting him twice she could still identify him by the trace of baffled amusement in his tone. Amusement that probably meant what the hell is that female Froot Loop going to do next?

  She couldn’t blame him. Nothing said sexy like splitting your pants in front of a man. Not exactly a meet-cute moment. She forced her mouth into an easy smile, spun a one-eighty, and—

  Smacked her chin against someone’s hand.

  A long pianist-fingered hand, which connected to nicely muscled forearms that ended at the rolled-up cuff of a white button-down shirt, that led to wide shoulders and a jaw you could slice ham on.

  Reid’s hand.

  Reid who’d moved through the crowds to tap her on the shoulder.

  Oh—for the love of the great budgie in the sky. Would the man ever catch her being seductively sophisticated instead of a natural-born klutz?

  She let out a pained groan, which Reid must’ve mistaken for actual pain as he swore under his breath and cupped her face in both hands, studying her with an intensity usually reserved for Darby’s canine clients who’d spotted a treat in her pocket.

  “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  Her mind blanked, his words making as much sense to her as if he’d broken into interpretive dance. Which, day-um, she’d pay top dollar to see. She blinked, vocal cords in lockdown while her face combusted into a thermonuclear meltdown from the touch of his fingers.

  “Ungh,” or something suspiciously like it, dropped out of her unhinged mouth.

  Look, if an extremely good-looking man cradled a woman’s face the way a chick-flick hero did in the dramatically climactic moments before he planted one on her, could anyone blame a girl for losing the power of speech?

  His forehead crinkled. “Are you okay?”

  She must have continued with the moron-hit-by-lightning stare as the corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Or do you need a FAST check?” He stroked his thumb just a fraction below her lower lip.

  She blinked again. Diabolically, disastrously discombobulated, as her mum would say.

  Try uttering that five times in a row. “A-a what check?”

  His hands dropped from her face, and with severely impaired impulse control she nearly snatched them up and put them back. His palms had been warm and smooth—and as a bonus, not at all damp and sweaty.

  “It’s an assessment for someone suspected of having a stroke,” he said. “F for face lopsided when smiling. A for unable to lift arms evenly. S for speech unclear. And T for time to get the person to the hospital.”

  All of which was already rooted in the back of her mind from her years training as a veterinary nurse, though her expertise was more with animals who were a little trickier to diagnose than humans.

  “I’m not having a stroke.” But she certainly was having something—a something that currently galloped laps around the pit in her stomach.

  “Good to know.” He angled his chin toward his shoulder. “We’re sitting back there in a booth.”

  Darby followed the trajectory of his gaze to a table at the pub’s rear. A tiny blonde watched them with unabashed interest. That must be MacKenna Jones. Next to her sat another woman with long brown hair and spectacles. Which left an empty bench seat across from them for Reid and Darby.

  Cosy.

  With her luck, she’d probably impale his rib cage with her elbow.

  She zigzagged through the crowd after Reid to the table, adjusting her smile into one of polite social niceties. Darby made her hello, nice to meetchas with the two women and slid into the booth seat. She shuffled over it, squeezing herself into the corner so as not to contaminate her seat partner’s white shirt and charcoal dress pants with another client’s dog hair. Tyrion the chow chow shed like a bastard.

  Reid settled next to her, casting a wary side-eye in her direction before returning his gaze to MacKenna, who smiled the kind of smile Darby imagined a cat got when it found an open door to an aviary.

  “These are the sketches I’ve done.” MacKenna pushed a sketch pad over the table. “What do you think?”

  Darby looked down at the first pencil drawing and her pulse gave a little happy dance. MacKenna had perfectly captured the dreamy, romantic quality of Cinderella’s ball dress. Stapled to the corner of the sketch were fabric swatches in various shades of pink and cream.

  “It’s perfect,” Darby said.

  “I know pink is a bit on the nose and cheesy, but since it’s to support breast cancer patients…” She rolled a shoulder, but Darby didn’t miss the glance she sent Reid.

  “I don’t think these shades of pink are at all cheesy.” Darby flicked over the page to Prince Charming’s ball outfit—Hugh had refused to wear breeches—which consisted of tailored dress pants, a loose-fitting pirate-style shirt, and a slim-fitting vest. Imagining him wearing it and looking rakishly handsome gave Darby a few pleasurable little shivers.

  She quickly flipped through the rest of the pages of outfits until she came to a sheet of paper that wasn’t attached to the pad. This sketch was completely different to the style of the other ones. There were no flowing lines or soft shading—it was a bold, unapologetically simple design. She’d already seen MacKenna’s two sketches of the Ugly Stepsisters’ dresses—functional enough gowns in purple and mustard yellow with flowery little details.

  But this—Darby’s gaze locked onto the paper. Black pencil lines emphasized the model’s curves beneath an almost Goth-girl dress in electric blue and slashes of black that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an eighties female pop star.

  A fingernail tapped on the page. Darby glanced up to Laura, whose eyes glittered with amusement behind her blue-rimmed specs.

  “I found this sketch hidden under some papers on Reid’s desk,” Laura said. “I showed Mac and she reckoned he must’ve drawn it with you in mind.”

  Reid, who’d been telling the harried server their drinks order, turned back to the table with a bland expression. “Mac mentioned you were playing the role of one of the stepsisters. Mustard yellow won’t do you any favors under stage lighting.” He shrugged. “It’s just an idea I had; scrap it if it’s too unconventional.”

  “No,” Darby said quickly. “Unconventional is my middle name. I love it.”

  “I thought nimble was your middle name?”

  She didn’t know why, but it gave her a little tingly thrill that Reid remembered their conversation from the other night. It didn’t surprise her, though. She got the impression that the man had a lot going on behind his bluey-gray eyes. A lot more than most people got to see.

  “Nimble and unconventional. I’m kinda unique that way.” If by unique you meant not only weren’t her ducks in a row but they’d mutinied and joined a conga line. She’d learned, over time, to stop trying to herd those ducks back into conformity and just roll with the conga line, baby.

  “Grand, as my Joe would say,” said MacKenna. “The world’s got too many peach-colored people in it and not enough orange. Right, Reid?”

  The grin he shot across the table at MacKenna made Darby’s stomach flip, even though she only caught the profile angle of it.

  “Right,” he said. “Let your freak flag fly, ladies.”

  And then, dear Lord, he turned that grin her way, and her freak flag spontaneously combusted.

  “Does this mean you’re agreeing to make the costumes? Officially agreeing?” MacKenna asked.

  Darby could’ve hugged the tiny blonde because, although she was desperate to know Reid’s answer, her tongue refused to cooperate.

  “Yeah.” He angled his head at her. “If you’re still willing to be my assistant?”

  She couldn’t have unlocked her gaze from Reid’s face if she’d been handed a crowbar, yet even over the pub noise she heard MacKenna and Laura gasp.

  “Absolutely. Anything I can do to help.”

  He broke eye contact to slide his phone out of his shirt pocket. “
I’ll add your number and be in touch.”

  “This event is really important to you, isn’t it?” Laura said as Reid tapped a long finger on his phone’s screen. “Got some skin in the game, huh?”

  Darby froze, invisible icy fingertips playing down her spine as she sensed Reid stop tapping. Yeah, she had skin in the game. But she wasn’t ready to uncover just how much and become that Poor Cancer Chick all over again. Not with these women, and not with a man who’d lost his mum to the disease.

  Once he knew, Reid would look at her with worry and pity mixed with a little of his own transferable baggage of grief. He’d no longer look at her with a flicker of male interest, and her bruised ego still had some pride.

  “I had a friend who stayed at Sunflower House during her chemo rounds. She said being able to stay overnight so close to the hospital instead of the ninety-minute commute for treatment was a lifesaver.” This was true.

  “Had?” Reid looked up from his phone.

  The man really didn’t miss a thing.

  She swallowed hard to push the thorny knot of hurt in her throat down. “She died nine months ago. I want to do my part to keep the house functioning in the community for people like Sandra.” Also true. That she had a lot in common with those fighting the good fight was something she’d keep to herself.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said softly.

  Darby picked up the laminated pub menu on the table and scanned the lunch choices. “Thank you.”

  The sincerity in Reid’s voice both reassured her that he’d bought her explanation but also sent a ripple of guilt coasting through her body. She ignored it. It wasn’t as if that little flicker of interest she thought she’d seen in Reid’s eyes actually meant anything.

  One thing Reid could state with certainty when he walked into the Invercargill community theater was that Darby made a sexy-as-hell ugly stepsister.

  The evening rehearsal was in full swing. He slid into one of the back rows, out of the way of the milling cast—some of whom he recognized from around town. Bethany Davis, who worked as a pharmacist. Eddie Mueller, an electrician. Danielle Brown, a university student who’d been a bridesmaid for one of their brides a few months ago.