The problem was that while Carlo could sing beautifully in several languages, he spoke only German and Italian fluently. Bill’s German was almost as bad as Carlo’s English and his other languages were nonexistent beyond what was needed to manage opera schedules and stage directions.
Here he was in an urban watering hole, which was slowly filling with the young and beautiful of Seattle. And all he really wanted was to go fetch the kids and bribe their happiness with take-out pizza.
One of these days he was going to have to kill Wilson Jervis. At least sitting kitty-corner from Perrin, he was able to watch her, for he couldn’t seem to look away.
Perrin could feel Bill Cullen’s attention without turning to look. Why did his attention so affect her that she couldn’t turn in his direction?
She’d also overheard his stumbling attempts to talk with Carlo. She wanted to tease him about it. See if she could goad him into a blustering defense about how he hadn’t followed her here because he’d fallen in love with her while she slept on his office couch.
She also wanted to find out more about him and his family. He was so sweet with the kids. Perrin couldn’t imagine what that was like. Cassidy’s dad had been a good guy even if he didn’t speak much, letting Perrin come and stay during college vacations so that she never had to go home. Jo’s dad had been a sullen fisherman who lived on his boat or in a bar. Not a drunk, just an every-night regular until the day he’d died. Her own dad… She wouldn’t think of him.
Jaspar clearly worshipped his dad, and Tammy, once she’d loosened up about being too careful, had leaned against him happily while she’d reached up to stuff confetti down the back of his shirt.
“So, Perrin. I will be needing a terribly alluring dress.” Melanie was laying it on a little thick, sliding her hands down her sleek form, perhaps for the benefit of the others.
A quick wink showed that Perrin was absolutely right.
“I will be coming to the opening night of Carlo’s opera. I must be the most beautiful woman on opening night so that Carlo will not be able sing without thinking of me. I must have another of your dresses.”
“Did you know I’m designing the costumes for the opera?”
“No? C’est vrai? Très bon!”
“Yes! And the best part?”
“Oui?”
“It’s making Bill absolutely nuts!”
Melanie and Perrin both turned to look at him. He turned from one face to the other, then he blushed.
“Ooo,” Melanie rested a hand over Perrin’s and whispered after Josh had started a conversation with him. “This one, he likes you.”
Perrin looked back at Bill’s profile a little more closely. “No… I don’t think so. Besides, he’s married. You should see his kids. They’re wonderful. So alive. So un… ” She’d almost said undamaged.
Melanie squeezed her hand. They had recognized that in each other at their very first meeting, a common bond even Jo and Cassidy didn’t understand more than intellectually.
“So uninhibited,” she corrected. Then she glanced once more down the table at Bill. If she was being objective, she’d say that Melanie was right. That he did like her.
But that made no sense.
Bill tried to sort out his own feelings, but wasn’t having much luck. He’d expected to spend the afternoon trapped in a yawning chasm of boredom as wide as the world, instead he was intrigued despite his better judgment. Perrin, so overdramatic when talking to Josh or teasing Carlo in broken Italian, was a different woman when talking to the supermodel. With Melanie, Perrin was calm, close, intimate. Her smile warm rather than madcap. Her gestures fluid and graceful rather than flamboyant and occasionally hazardous to those seated nearby.
When at last the party broke up in late afternoon, he figured his duties for the Opera and Wilson were well paid. Melanie had certainly enjoyed herself, which appeared to be enough to keep Carlo happy. They were within walking distance of their hotel and headed off with many hugs between the two women.
Melanie and Perrin were a little daunting to watch actually. Melanie was several inches taller, but they almost could have been sisters. Rather than having that emaciated look that so many models did, they were both simply slender, healthy-looking women of truly exceptional beauty. They were certainly easy enough together to be related.
Josh was headed to Kirkland to review some waterfront restaurant that had just been opened by a two-star Michelin chef. He’d given back his stars, closed his major New York restaurant, and moved west to open a small bistro in the upscale suburb.
Bill watched as Perrin stepped out into the afternoon light and raised her arms as if she were a goddess greeting the setting sun and the glistening waterfront. She strolled toward the waterfront to walk through the city park that lay between Cutters and the Pike Place Market.
It was a beautiful spring evening, the breeze cool, but the air warm. Other people gathered in the park, sitting on benches and staring out at the ferries and container ships working their way through Seattle’s harbor. Nothing brought out the people of this city quite like a sunny day.
Bill didn’t stop moving long enough to enjoy the view very often anymore. But the view here was stunning, in more ways than one. When Perrin saw that he’d accompanied her, she turned to him.
“I’d like to borrow your kids.”
“What? No!” The last thing Bill wanted was his kids under this woman’s influence. Or getting more attached to her. They’d already started asking him questions this afternoon once she’d left.
Jaspar liked her, dubbing her as “cool.” His current “retro-word.” Bill had just introduced the kids to Travolta in Grease. There was more going on than “cool” though. The little twerp was always hunting for a new mother to marry his dad. For a while his choice had been Nia at the front desk, then his fifth-grade teacher, and now Perrin was on the verge of replacing Olivia Newton-John. Jaspar didn’t quite understand that Olivia Newton-John, while still a fine-looking woman, was in her sixties now and his dad wasn’t. Jaspar’s only measure? Being older than his big sister, which meant you were old… just like his dad. Great!
Tammy had been just the opposite, though making the same assumptions. His pointing out that he’d met her on Monday and this was only Wednesday did nothing to appease his daughter’s suspicions. A teenager who was in and out of crushes almost weekly wouldn’t understand that actual, adult relationships didn’t happen overnight.
“Why can’t I borrow them?” Perrin asked as she arrived at the thick brass railing that overlooked the waterfront. “I promise I’ll give them back.”
“What do you want them for?” He moved up beside her, giving that anonymous nod that Seattleites always traded with strangers to the guy just a few feet farther along.
Perrin flipped open the sketchbook and pointed to a drawing. Three thumbnails across the top and then the two larger drawings of children. His children!
“Having them as models would really help.” Perrin had drawn Jaspar and Tammy in costumes.
She’d captured Jaspar with his wide-eyed wonder at the world. His costume vibrated with that energy as if always reaching for the next thing. He looked caught on the verge of his favorite question: “Why?” He’d gone through the “Why” phase when he was four, just like every other child on the planet, but now he’d circled back around to it, and this time really wanted to know rather than just being assured that there was indeed order to the universe.
Tammy was different. Perrin had caught her on the edge of becoming a woman, but less ready than she thought she was. In ways Bill couldn’t sort out, Perrin had captured both her surety and the slight fracturing that occurred from being overeager to grow up. He glanced around to see if anyone else was watching this shocking exposure of his children’s true characters, but everyone was interested in their own world, not his. The cool breeze sent a chill up his spine. Who was this woman? Had she been researching his kids somehow? No, she was just…what? A psychic? A…
�
��There’s no boy character in the opera,” Bill retreated to the known. He had to, to cover just how perfectly this enigmatic woman had captured his children, as if she’d known them their whole lives.
She waved the libretto at him, “Hello. Not stupid. So add one who doesn’t sing. Jaspar would love the role.”
“Little twerp would,” Bill had to admit with a smile that he hadn’t intended. “But his sister would be some kind of pissed if he got to wear a cool costume on stage and she didn’t.”
“Is the girl’s part cast yet?”
Bill tried to think through the cast list. The major singers had all been cast a year ahead for scheduling reasons, and the standing Emerald City Opera Chorus would fill all of the villager and guard roles as well as most of the courtiers. Those with half-solo contracts could fill the Chief of Guard and Missionary roles. But a couple of the middle characters weren’t yet cast. That included the child. Children?
“Tammy doesn’t sing, except with her guitar.”
“So teach her! She only has seven lines and three of them are only one word long.”
Bill looked up from the drawing to study Perrin. The sun was almost directly behind her, making her face hard to see. As if she were deeply inscrutable, mysterious, so powerful that she wore the sun as a halo.
She couldn’t have had time to read the libretto more than once since she’d left the Costume Shop this afternoon, there simply wasn’t time. And the child’s lines were spread out. Odd thing to tally on a single reading, unless she’d somehow tallied everything. To avoid feeling totally humbled by the shining Empress, he’d let that one go unremarked.
The light breeze that always ghosted along the Seattle waterfront on even the calmest days made her hair, now out of its ponytail, dance on her shoulders. The brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen argued that the blond stripe, or something near to it was her proper hair color, though the dyed-black look was a nice contrast to her pale skin. It also accented her strong cheekbones.
She’d added a fleece jacket. It was strange in a way that took him a moment to identify.
“Black t-shirt, blue knit vest, REI jacket. You look almost… ” He bit his tongue to avoid saying it.
“Almost human.” A wicked glint came into her eyes.
“Uh, I was going to say normal.”
“Normal compared to what?”
Bill grinned at her, “I think this would be a good time for me to be in a different conversation.”
She grinned and leaned against the rail but stayed facing him.
He couldn’t help noticing that the guy a little further down the rail was admiring the view, and not the one of the waterfront. He turned away when Bill glared at him.
“Okay, Mr. Cullen. What conversation would you like to be in? Shall I go get one of those first-date conversation deck of cards for you? I’m sure I saw some in one of the game stalls in the Market.” She waved a fine-fingered hand over her shoulder indicating Pike Place Market behind her.
“You’re amazing!” He didn’t know where that came from, but she was. Intelligent, funny, wild… amazing.
After a long pause, she slowly stood up straight, took her sketch pad back from him, and, closing it, slid it beside the libretto. Pulling her jacket closed against a sudden gust, he could feel a type of shield forming around her, like on the Starship Enterprise.
“I think I should be going.”
It was only then, like he’d been caught in a time warp while watching her change, that he realized that he didn’t want her to go. Not at all.
“Why?”
She began moving off.
“No, wait.”
She stopped.
“Why?”
For a long moment she stood still, rigid, then turned to face him. There was no sign of the wild blond, or the powerful Empress. Instead, in their place, stood the waif with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.
“The likes of you aren’t for the likes of me, Mr. Cullen. You should go home to your wife and children, I’m sure they’re missing you.”
“Wait!” he called before she could turn away once more. “Just wait.”
So she did. Standing there all alone, the lost girl fighting off a shiver on a warm sunny day, her jacket still clutched closed across her chest. The wind still toyed with the tips of her hair.
“I’m not married.” Where on earth had that come from? He wanted to work with Perrin, not bed her.
She eyed him skeptically.
“She died four years ago. A drunk hit her with a car. Broad daylight in a crosswalk.” Heaven help me! Why was he ripping his guts out in front of this woman? It almost killed his heart all over again to say the words out loud.
The change was instantaneous. Sympathy poured out of her as her hand shifted from holding her jacket closed to holding her palm over her heart.
“I’m so sorry. And I was teasing you about— You must hate me.”
“No.” Bill closed his eyes, not knowing what he was feeling. “No, I don’t hate you. It’s just hard sometimes.”
Perrin took a step closer and rested a hand on his arm. “You’re such a good father.”
“What? What makes you say that?” He blew it more days than he didn’t. His daughter was drifting away and he didn’t know why or how to bring her back. He didn’t spend enough time with Jaspar. They were both growing up so fast that he—
“Because it’s hard for you. If it wasn’t, it would mean you didn’t care. Trust me, I know.” For a moment longer, the sad-eyed girl patted his arm. Then she began brushing at his shoulders, as if dusting him off.
“What? What are you doing?”
She dusted harder, squinting her eyes as if it were hard work. She moved around him until she was practically pounding him on the back.
He tried to turn to face her, but she shoved against his shoulder to keep him in place and continued her way around him. Passers-by were eyeing them strangely. When she arrived once more in front of him, she brushed her hand lightly a few times over his heart.
“There.”
“There what?”
“There,” Perrin now stood quite close before him, those sad eyes brightening. “You can now leave all that ‘bad father’ nonsense behind, I brushed it off you.”
Bill could feel his jaw slacken, but clamped it shut before he looked even dumber than he felt. But he couldn’t help looking down to see what now lay at his feet. Nothing but the gray concrete of the walkway.
“You think it’s as simple as that?” What kind of a ditzy—
“Of course!” Perrin chirped merrily. “Wait. It didn’t work? What’s wrong with you?” She moved even closer and lifted up on his eyebrows and inspected one eye and then the other, her fingers cool on his brow. “That’s strange.”
“What?” He was having trouble breathing she was so near. Her eyes were an incredibly pure blue. And the way she smelled. He’d expected perfume or at least an exotic-scented soap. Instead she just smelled immensely, deliciously female.
“I have a terrible diagnosis for you, Mr. Cullen. Are you ready for it?”
This should be good. He nodded with only a little hesitation.
“You’re human. I can’t just brush that off you. Not even the Empress can do that.” Then she grew solemn. “If it were so easy, Bill, we’d all be so much happier, wouldn’t we? I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow. And I’m expecting you and your children in my shop tomorrow evening for dinner. I’ll get the pizza.”
His light touch on her arm stopped her from turning. Toe to toe he let himself enjoy the sensation of being so close to her.
“I think, Ms. Perrin Williams, that you may well be the most startling person I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should, I think… Yes. You should.” He really was a lost cause. He couldn’t even pay a beautiful and kind woman a decent compliment without bumbling.
She rested a hand on his cheek. Then she leaned forward and rested her cheek again
st his.
An electric shock rippled through him, like a static discharge on a doorknob, but without the pain. A sense of simple wonder coursed down through him. The small pleasure of being touched by an attractive woman for the first time since Adira. That’s all it was.
Perrin pulled back, but didn’t remove her hand from his other cheek. She studied him carefully from just inches away. Then she leaned in and kissed him.
Bill forgot to breathe, or think, or anything. He simply marveled at the sweet tenderness of her lips on his. He leaned into it: the warmth, the sensation, the trust. He didn’t know which overwhelmed him the most, but there was no question that “overwhelm” was the operative word here.
Whether the kiss lasted a second or a handful of minutes, he’d never know. He just knew that when Perrin once again moved back, she’d left a taste of her behind. A taste that he couldn’t compare to anyone. Not to Adira, not to his first-ever kiss. This was wholly Perrin Williams. Whoever in the world that might be.
“Well,” she whispered from a bare inch away, “that was certainly interesting.”
“You sound like the Empress, but you look like the wacky designer.”
“I’ll try switching that.” She composed a serious expression that he wasn’t buying for an instant. “We gonna have ta try that kiss again some day soon. Because if that was real… Holy Wow, Batman!”
At least she now sounded like the wacky designer. But she looked like the empress. As to the kiss?
“Oh yeah!” Most definitely had to try that again. “Real soon.”
Chapter 5
Perrin sat in the rehearsal space on the upper level of the Seattle Opera House about a mile from the Emerald City Opera’s offices. It was a beautiful space, nearly the same size as the main stage without all the extra space off to the back of the stage and the sides that Bill told her were called wings. The rehearsal space was actually on the top floor of the building, off the side of the upstairs lobby behind an unmarked door. Decorated in a soft beige, it had been turned golden by the tall windows at one end letting in the Seattle sunshine. A shining black grand piano replaced the orchestra.
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