Then again, he did hold the key to her salary.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Stephen turned his attention to the deviled eggs. He dropped a couple onto his plate. “And lose the makeup. There’s a time to be in character, and there’s a time not to be in character. This time’s the latter.”
In character.
In character?
In . . .
She dropped her toothpick on the bone china plate and touched her cheek. Her fingers came back mossy green. Character.
Well then. She was in a room full of influential people, wearing a coffee-stained dress three inches too short and a Shakespearean fairy’s makeup, getting chewed out by her boss, and offering up a bowl of nuts, half an hour late. She couldn’t have set herself up for a better evening.
“Terrific,” she muttered as Stephen moved off.
A voice behind her spoke. “What’s terrific?”
Bree recognized the voice and, for a wild moment, considered running out the door Evie had just exited. But it wasn’t as though Theodore hadn’t seen her like this a dozen times.
Slowly, she turned.
A rueful smiled formed on her lips. “Oh, nothing. Care for a cubed cheesecake?”
The man’s onyx eyes matched the tuxedo tailored around his broad shoulders.
His jaw dropped slightly before he recovered. “Actually, I prefer my cheesecake cut into other shapes, but thank you. Have you tried the crab?”
“Shellfish allergy.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’m more of a pickle-chip girl.”
He paused for a moment. “So, are you headed back to the theatre tonight?”
She peeled off one of her magnetic lashes, and he took a startled step back. She laughed. “To answer your actual question, I forgot to take this makeup off.”
To her credit, she spent hours every day layering on the avocado-colored foundation, brightening her cheeks with a heavy rouge, and installing magnetic lashes around her thick eyeliner. At some point she lost all awareness of the makeup that once so bothered her.
And here she had been smirking over Evie’s heavy-handed cat eye. She could only imagine how she looked right now.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a gilded mirror on the wall.
Scratch that. She wished she could only imagine how she looked right now.
Her long red braid fell to her waist, and the short green satin gown hugged her figure. Her avocado-cream face stared back at her. Basically, she was Mrs. Shrek.
Well, at least that settled what she was going to be for Halloween this year.
Theodore followed Bree as she moved over to the row of coats and dug inside the pockets of her beaten parka. She pulled out a crumpled package of makeup-remover wipes and yanked a few out. Oh, the price of the career; she was ever finding a bit of green behind the ear.
“So,” she said, rubbing from the cheek inward, “any word on the fall lineup? What’s the inside scoop?”
Theodore Watkins III, financial adviser to the Barter’s chief administrator, well-known supporter of the arts, and heir to the town’s beloved Christmas tree farm, set down his flute of champagne. His amiable brow creased. “I don’t know what the ‘inside scoop’ is, but I do believe Mr. and Mrs. Richardson were just discussing the next show with some interested parties.” He tipped his chin up and over, where sure enough the reclusive Mr. Richardson and his wife were standing among a small party, all furs and feathers.
While caking her wipe in green foundation, Bree kept her eyes on the renowned chief administrator, his wife, and the “interested parties” who circled the couple. With large and intense eyes, they resembled chickens awaiting their after-dinner scraps.
There was interested, and there was interested.
And now Bree, too, was interested.
“Do you mind?” Bree heard Theodore say, and she forced her eyes back his way. He inched closer, tugging one of the wipes free from her palm.
He smiled tentatively as he held it up.
“Oh. Oh yes. Sure.” Bree lowered her wipe to let him sub in. She sucked in her breath as he stepped closer and entered her bubble. He had never entered the bubble before. And yet every chance encounter since their first six weeks ago seemed to present another opportunity for them to draw closer. Greetings lengthened. Greetings disappeared altogether as the two slid directly into conversation, as though the days between their last meeting had been but a pause. Their smiles widened when they saw each other. And as of last week, for the first time, they didn’t even pretend not to look for the other after the Friday show.
He rubbed the wipe against the tip of her green nose.
He moved to her cheek.
Each brow.
The business of the room slowed.
“There now,” Theodore said at last, pushing the wipe into his pants pocket as if it was one of his many monogrammed silk handkerchiefs. He took a step back and the room returned to a breezy 72 degrees. “Much better.”
“So . . .” Bree released a breath. Where was she? Her eyes ticked back to Mrs. Richardson. Oh yes. “Let’s get a little closer, shall we?”
“You mean you want to spy on your employers from an auspicious distance instead of walking into the group and joining the conversation.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
Bree led the way and together they danced around clusters of people, sidestepping platters of shrimp and the stray arm flinging out in dramatic story. Theodore followed her lead as they melted into the regal drapery, twenty feet of royal blue cascading from an empire valance. The perfect vantage point for eavesdropping.
Mr. Richardson glanced toward his wife. “And yet as much as I’d love to put our actors to work, I can only imagine how they’d handle a paint bucket and a brush. Things have changed just a bit since Porterfield’s time.”
“Nonsense!” replied Mr. Thieves, owner of no fewer than four restaurants in town and never spotted in any of them. He set his quiche cup on his plate. “If the casts of old days could earn their keep collecting props and running the cafeteria, they certainly could be useful to you now with some hammers and caulk. After all, besides their little acts, what else must they do during the day? Might be good to keep them busy.” He leaned in conspiratorially and tapped his nose. “Might even get the crime down.”
Theodore raised his brow to Bree with a tilted smile. In this town, with a verifiable crime rate of nil, the cast’s weekend trips to the farmer’s market were positively barbarous.
“Yes, well,” replied Mr. Richardson, less enthusiastically, “thankfully we don’t have to do a lot of things we had to during the Great Depression anymore. I for one can’t remember the last time we boarded a rabid dog or criminal beneath the stage.”
The group laughed politely, everyone well aware of the Barter’s fascinating history. The area beneath the stage at one time had served as a jailhouse, and at another, a pen for suspected rabid dogs. The theatre itself had garnered its name from the fact that actors worked for vegetables, dairy, livestock—even snakes and underwear—during the Depression years.
When Bree heard all the bizarre facts of the Barter’s past, she didn’t take Evie’s word for it. One quick internet search verified it was true—everything down to the fact the actors had to shout to make themselves heard over the pigs and chickens during the plays.
Now that would’ve been a heck of a time to be an actress.
“No, I’m afraid a few buckets of paint would not solve this theatre’s problems,” Richardson said. “The Barter needs more than a freshening up. It’s time to take it down to the studs and give it something that will last another hundred years. The Barter needs a facelift.”
The women touched their foreheads and cheeks, the very word clearly reminding them of distant—and in the case of Mrs. Thieves, not so distant—procedures.
The group was silent for a moment.
“I can’t agree more,” Mrs. Richardson replied, removing her hand from her slender jawline. She picked up her glass
of champagne from a side table with a smile. “To new youth!”
The huddle scurried to raise their glasses.
“To new youth!” they replied, lifting the glasses to their lips.
“When are you going to do it?” Mr. Henderson asked, drawing Mr. Richardson’s attention.
“It’ll have to be in between seasons.”
“Who’s going to do it?” Mr. Henderson inquired. “You know, Turner just completed the entire renovation of the administration offices at the hospital—”
“Maybe Turner was fine for you, Gerry, but I don’t want just anyone coming in to slap tile on the floors and ceiling and call it a day. We’re talking about the Barter here. We’re talking about art. If the man can’t brushstroke an oil painting just as well as he can build a skyscraper, I don’t want him so much as driving a nail.”
Mr. Henderson, the hospital’s top donor, tightened his smile and his grip on his glass. He held a long pause. “Yes. Well, I’m sure that’ll be difficult to find in this area. I wish you luck.”
As the conversation turned to someone’s latest trip to Sicily, Theodore and Bree slipped away.
“Well now,” Theodore said quietly as he led the way through the crowd. “Was that everything you dreamed it would be?”
Bree trailed him, blinded by his broad shoulders. “The Barter getting a renovation? Riveting. Someone alert the papers.”
“By next week they’ll all know.” He pushed open a door.
And suddenly they were standing outside, overlooking the elegant curved driveway. The parking valets stood in the distance, bouncing on toes as they shivered in the cold. Theodore slipped one hand into the pocket of his tux. “Sorry. It was getting a bit stuffy.”
“No, this is a good idea,” Bree said. She crossed her bare arms across her chest.
Theodore shifted to look over Main Street, then turned back to face her.
“It is a nice evening out. Would you”—Theodore paused—“care to . . . stroll?”
The sky was clear. The bright yellow moon hovered over the Barter just across the street, its maroon-and-yellow flags flicking in the light breeze.
Her eyes fell on the road between the Barter and the Martha, where Chip had raced across in his fancy suit, his tie flapping as he grinned like a golden retriever with a Frisbee.
The man with a girlfriend.
The man who drove like a maniac, whose bumper stickers alone had proven him to be the type of man she’d never be interested in.
The man who had thought so little of their interaction he couldn’t even remember her name.
And she had stood there like a fool and smiled at him onstage.
“A stroll would be perfect,” Bree said, her words swift and sure as she reached backward for the door. “Let me just get my coat.”
Chapter 4
Chip
Chip tried really, really hard to keep a smile from playing on his lips as Bree stomped out of the sleet and onto his concrete porch in black galoshes. She pushed her damp, dripping hair out of her eyes and swung the five-gallon paint bucket off her hip onto the ground between them.
To top off the moment, she pulled a half-eaten Slim Jim out of the back pocket of her jeans and ripped off a chunk. “I need water,” she said through her mouthful. “Fill ’er up.”
This time he couldn’t help it. He grabbed the smile and pulled it down with his hand. The two-day-old stubble on his chin bristled against his calloused palm. The smile started to creep up again.
She smiled in return, but only, it appeared, to show off her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he said for the fifteenth time in five days. “Had I known your roommate would take to the, uh”—he shifted his gaze to their porch where Evie, head flipped over, with a smile a mile wide, was dunking her hair in a bucket—“to the natural lifestyle, I would’ve put you girls up in a hotel.”
In truth, he didn’t have the funds to set the girls up in a hotel. Even so, it was a nice sentiment.
For almost a week now, trucks had been pouring into Stonewall Heights, bringing in heavy equipment and throwing dirt around Evie and Bree’s yard like confetti. The girls hadn’t been prioritized in the way they deserved, as Chip couldn’t justify hiring a twenty-four-hour plumber for twice the cost when his own company, Redpoint Construction, could do the job. That meant he had to shuffle three jobs—a fact two of his clients weren’t happy about. It would cost him relationally, if not financially, but at the moment he had no choice. He was nearly broke.
Which explained why he had broken off a job site yesterday to meet his plumber and why he himself had just hauled back three bales of wheat straw and seed to smooth over the girls’ yard tomorrow morning. He was paying for his mistake. In every way. Heavily.
It just turned out that they were too.
Correction.
Bree was too.
Evie was having the time of her life.
After going without water for five days, Evie apparently had experienced some sort of lifestyle revelation. Judging by the way she dunked her head in the bucket now, the already eccentric costume designer from the Barter had found her calling just short of going entirely off grid.
“Or you two could stay at my place.” Chip gestured toward the living room behind him. “The invitation still stands.”
She squinted through the Sheetrock dust cloud permeating the unfurnished room. “I think I’ll pass.” She enunciated each word. “Now if you’ll please give me some water . . .”
Chip took the bucket, observing a sort of nest developing in the bun on top of her head. In fact, if he tilted his head a few degrees, he could imagine a bird in there.
Bree’s frown turned to a scowl, and he watched as she ripped off another chunk of meat. Her eyes dropped to the object in her hand.
“Dinner.” She raised a brow. “I was going to make spaghetti, but you can imagine how silly I felt when I tried to turn on the faucet.” She waved the Slim Jim and the long meat stick wobbled. “About that water . . . ?”
He snapped his attention into place. “Right. Sure thing. Be right back.” He pushed the door open behind him. He paused, then added with a significant smile, “Bree.”
Using customers’ names whenever possible was a thing he did to bond. He was doing it with his new neighbors—everyone from Jerry, the man who wore a bathrobe to the mailbox, to Mrs. Lewis, the kind elderly woman with the dog across the street. But Bree? He must’ve said her name fifty times in the past five days.
Maybe it was because she was trudging over to his house for water five times a day. Maybe it was because he felt like he’d spent more time at her place than his these past few days, sorting out this water problem. Maybe it was because their cars sat a foot from each other in their pocket-sized driveways, and it happened to be impossible to walk outside without seeing her.
But it mattered to him that she knew he knew her name. Not just because they were neighbors, or even because right now he needed to get on her good side. It mattered.
And yet, since the moment he first stepped foot on his driveway five days ago, she acted as though they’d never met.
This bothered him in a way he couldn’t explain.
He stepped over the paint buckets and around several tubes of caulk on his way to the kitchen. As he turned the faucet on, he glanced up to the window above the sink. It had become a habit. The sky was a blanket of rolling gray clouds; the humble mountains spiked like the heart rhythm of an EKG from corner to corner.
The mountains within the Pacific Crest Trail were wild, untamed. The Rockies were sharp and dramatic and figuratively—and, if you were hiking, sometimes literally—took your breath away. The quiet, unassuming Blue Ridge Mountains were home.
He may not have heat. He may not have furniture. But the view was worth every penny.
He turned his head back in the direction of his neighbor, who watched the chickens as she ripped off another piece of jerky.
Russell must’ve heard the water filling the buck
et, because the jingle of his collar sounded upstairs, and a moment later his nails tapped the stripped wood as the 230-pound English mastiff trotted down. Chip moved to the back door and picked up Russell’s empty water bowl. Back at the sink, he pushed the faucet to the left side. The bowl began to fill.
Then he heard it: a warble of words at the front door, a string of yelps and incomplete sentences from Russell and Bree. He dropped the bowl and it clattered in the sink, water splashing as he rushed toward the door.
“Russell! Down!” Chip yelled, trying to assess the damage.
All he could see when he reached the living room, however, was Russell’s enormous backside and the soles of Bree’s galoshes.
Chip mustered up his deepest voice. “Russell. Down. Now.”
The dog lay down on Bree, sniffing her face, neck, and arms. She grunted.
Russell was a well-mannered dog. He could sit. He could shake. He could stay by Chip’s side, racing obediently through a ride in the mountains.
But Slim Jims? Slim Jims were another matter.
“Russell,” Chip said, his teeth grinding as he grabbed the collar buried deep within the rolls of the dog’s thick neck. Russell licked the length of Bree’s face.
Bree squeezed her eyes shut and gave a muted shriek. Her arms, pinned to the porch by Russell’s haunches, strained to be free.
Chip yanked the dog, but it had the same effect as trying to move a bank vault by the handle.
Bree grunted as she attempted to shove him off before getting slapped, quite unfortunately, in the face with a stray bit of drool while Russell shook his feverish head.
“Uuuugh,” she groaned. She turned her face away from the dog as she cried out between her pressed lips, “Get. It. Off!”
“Impressive tone,” Chip replied, while giving another yank. “Now if only you could just redirect your frightening command from me to my dog—”
“It’s your dog,” Bree practically shouted. “Get your dog off me—”
But her mid-yelling spiel turned into a yelp as her eyes widened. Her whole face seemed to condense into her neck, like a turtle seeking shelter in its shell. Only, of course, her face had no shell to seek refuge in.
The Cul-de-Sac War Page 4