“She looks nice enough.”
“She’s amazing.” Perrin had missed her so much. But, she and Hogan came back last night from their honeymoon. Tonight they’d be together again. She needed a subject change for her own sake, and fast. Oh right!
“Knitting!” she practically cried it out, loudly enough for the two men to jolt. “We need knitters, Jerimy. I’m okay, but I’m not good enough to do these, and not quickly. Please, please, please tell me you know some fabulous, gonzo, out-there knitters.”
“Pretty lady, do I ever! Patsy. You have a minute?”
A short, voluptuous redhead strolled over from where she’d been overseeing the packing of costumes. Unlike Jerimy, her freckles proved that her red hair was natural, though the lemon-yellow streak over the crown certainly wasn’t.
“Patsy is the gonzoest knitter in Seattle. And she’s a gang leader, if you can imagine a knitting gang.”
Perrin looked down at her. She stood maybe five-three. She wore an opera t-shirt that fit her in a way very differently from Perrin’s. She’d redone the collar to have a deep vee that exposed a well-freckled cleavage and a tattoo of a pair of knitting needles, as if her generous breasts were still being knit into reality.
“What have you got?” Her voice was biker drawl as if she led a motorcycle gang rather than a knitting one, whatever that meant. She leaned her elbows on the table and went silent for several minutes.
Perrin almost felt a need to shuffle her feet or something, but Jerimy’s smile reassured her, and she waited.
“The Princess’ cloak is gonna be the beast.”
That’s when Perrin understood what was happening, because it was something she did herself. Patsy was structuring the garments in her head, thinking how to execute them, potential problems, what worked and what didn’t.
“What if we felted it, to get that structure over the shoulders?”
Perrin nodded, that would work. “As long as you can keep it light enough to get the movement we need on the lower part when she rushes across the stage.”
“Maybe felt from the lower point of the shoulder blades and up, then knit onto the back of that structure for the rest of it. Shift these cables here and here as structural elements. Are the colors intarsia? Or do we alternate them like a Fair Isle? It will affect the flow of the cloak.”
They reviewed it piece by piece. Perrin was peripherally aware of when Bill drifted off. Jerimy hung close by, but added little. Clearly his assistant would be the master of these costumes.
When they were done, Patsy looked up at her. “Yeah, we got this. I’ll get the girls and we can get it done this week. Have to think about the gusseting so that they can be used on different singers.”
“That’s why I designed in this layer of buttons down the side as a common theme. I thought multiple sets of buttons might work.”
Patsy nodded. “I like it. Be better if we could lose them though, wouldn’t it?”
Perrin had to smile. It was fun to work with another designer who didn’t see any predefined box when they were doing their art. She didn’t even have to acknowledge that it would be better and that she’d trust Patsy to go ahead if she found it.
Jerimy hung the last four drawings with the others on the corkboard, completing the primary costumes for the opera. There was still an immense amount of work to be done to execute it, but the designs were all there.
Jerimy made fresh coffee, Perrin took tea, and the three of them pulled up stools in a circle to admire the display.
Perrin had always worked solo, until Cassidy had practically forced Raquel on her. She’d hated giving up the control at first, but over the last two years her tiny one-woman shop had grown past what she could handle. Russell’s amazing ads and Jo’s sharp marketing advice had expanded Perrin’s Glorious Garb past anything she’d ever envisioned. Other than the weekly meeting where they reviewed the books together and Perrin signed all the checks herself, she rarely had to think about the business itself anymore.
Raquel wasn’t a designer, but she was a very astute business woman. One who recognized how to take care of all the things Perrin didn’t care about. It had let Perrin handle all of the designs and construction, though she still outsourced some of the work to Georgie in Duvall. At Raquel’s insistence, all of the designs in the shop had long since been uniquely her own and it was working. They still occasionally sold items off the rack, but more and more they were moving into custom work. Raquel had shown the numbers to Jo, and Jo had concurred that the direction change was sensible, which was good enough for Perrin.
But she didn’t get to often sit with other designers and just talk shop. She could get to like this, just she, Jerimy, and Patsy sitting around together. It felt normal, real, as if she belonged and was accepted. Just the way Bill and the kids made her feel. As if it was normal.
“So, Patsy, what’s a knitting gang?”
For once it didn’t matter that sitting here quietly was the least normal thing on the planet for any of the incarnations she’d ever invented for Perrin Williams.
Chapter 11
Perrin had stepped out onto the sidewalk and was locking up the shop for the day when Bill pulled up in his car. He climbed out, even though she was clearly ready to go.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t hesitate.
He swept her up into his arms, drove her back against the door hard enough to knock some of the wind out of her, and kissed her as if they’d been apart for years rather than hours. She locked her arms around his neck and returned the kiss just as ardently.
She let herself become wholly lost in the taste, feel, smell of him. His body responded and, when he went to pull back, she partly wrapped a leg around him to pull him even closer, wishing she’d thought to wear slacks rather than a dress so that she could really get some leverage. Then he leaned into her shamelessly.
Bill was starting to slide a hand under her sweater, and she was on the verge of letting him, when some teenagers in a passing car honked their horn and shouted out encouragement. He pulled back abruptly.
“Uh,” he tried to help her straighten her clothes. “Hi.”
She leaned in and gave him the gentlest kiss. He really was decent, even when lust was raging through him, he was decent. He was so darned cute.
“Hi, yourself. If you’re going to greet me that way every time we meet, you have a winner plan on your hands, Mr. Cullen. Though I don’t know what your kids will think.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “Can we, for a single night, pretend that I’m just a normal lust-filled guy who doesn’t have two kids?”
“I can. Can you?”
“Probably not. But it’s worth a try. For starters, you did say something about a request to be ravaged on a clothing design table. I happen to know that there’s one not far from here.” He eyed the darkened shop behind her suggestively as he pulled her hard into his arms.
“If you keep doing that, you just might convince me to actually do something that crazy. Though we’d be late for dinner. And we can’t do that.”
“Dinner. Forget dinner. Order out. Must have you.” He sounded like a caveman. A deliciously handsome, well-built, wonderful caveman. Maybe she should clothe him in furs, she did have a partial bolt of faux leopard in the shop.
Perrin kissed him again, locking her arms behind his head and pulling in so hard that her lips hurt before she let him go. He shifted down to nuzzle her neck.
“No. Later. I promise. After dinner.” She managed between desperate breaths totally failing at sounding like a lusty cavewoman.
He groaned without raising his head, “You drive a hard bargain, lady.”
“Bill.”
He slowly lifted his head until he looked at her from a breath away. She kissed him lightly.
“At dinner, you’ll meet the most important people in my world. Once you know them, then you’ll know me a lot better too. I’m hoping it will let you better judge whether we can still risk being together, you know, what with
the kids I’m not supposed to mention and all. Because I’m way past being rational about you.”
“Says the woman being all practical.” His kiss, so soft, so thorough, actually made her moan. It wasn’t something she ever did unintentionally, but Bill drove it from her body. She’d have slid to the ground, if the door weren’t against her back and his hands on her waist, because her knees were totally gone.
“After dinner, then we can do something about this heat between us?” His voice was rough with need.
“Please, yes!” The need vibrated through her just as it did through him. Even a night of meaningless fling with Bill Cullen would be worth almost any price.
But what if it were meaningful fling?
Perrin set that question aside carefully for the moment, and nudged him gently toward his car.
“Perrin!”
Bill watched from the doorway of a condo near Pike Place Market as a lovely woman in her late forties threw herself at Perrin. Maybe this was the Maria he was supposed to meet. Perrin leaned down and the hug they shared was so tender and so happy, he actually had to look away to give them at least a little privacy.
“Dinner,” Perrin had said. She’d failed to mention that the place would be packed solid with people and the air rippling with such amazing scents he seriously considered drooling. He couldn’t even begin to make sense of the crowd.
“Hey,” a deep voice behind him. “Keep moving forward.”
Bill glanced back over his shoulder. The guy behind him was big. A couple of inches taller than Bill and enough shoulders that you wondered how he fit through doorways.
“Wait a sec, who are you?”
Before he could answer, Cassidy Knowles came up the hall behind him. “This is the man that I told you about, Perrin’s friend. Bill Cullen, Russell Morgan, my husband.”
The guy suddenly loomed taller, his light eyes darkening. “Bill. Cullen.” His voice deepened like a storm gathering over the infinite deep of the ocean.
Before Bill had time to duck for cover, someone was tugging on his sleeve from behind.
“Bill,” Perrin’s voice.
He turned carefully, keeping an eye on the big guy for as long as he could. He ended up facing the woman Perrin had first greeted.
She glanced over Bill’s shoulder at the man Bill could only assume still loomed behind him.
“Oh, cut it out, Russell. There’s beer in the kitchen, now be a good boy and behave.”
The big guy slipped by a little sheepishly carrying a couple bottles of wine.
Cassidy patted Bill on the shoulder as she passed. “He’s harmless, but he means well.”
Bill remembered the far more nuanced, but perhaps more dangerous threat this woman had made on Perrin’s behalf and restricted himself to a careful nod in reply.
“Hello, I’m Maria,” she held out a graceful hand.
“Mama Maria Amelia Avico Parrano Stanford,” Perrin corrected her and slid a hand around the smaller woman’s waist. Mama Maria could never have spawned the tall, blond beauty that was Perrin, being darkly Italian and full-figured, but they stood as close as Adira and Tammy ever had.
Bill didn’t know if he should shake the offered hand, or bow and kiss it. He decided on the latter. It earned him a bright laugh and a quick hug.
“So, Perrin brings home a man for the first time. And she doesn’t tell me beforehand. That means that she’s really worried.” Maria briefly flashed a radiant smile at Perrin. “And my Perrin never worries about men. I look forward to getting to know you Mr. Cullen.”
“Bill.” He tried to think of something more intelligent to add, but didn’t come up with anything.
“She’s scary smart,” Perrin told him, leaning down to kiss Maria on the temple.
“Just like you.”
That earned him Maria’s full attention. “You see her?”
“I, uh,” Bill scrabbled about to find an answer to the odd phrasing of the question. “I see a brilliant, beautiful, chaotic, loving, wild, confusing woman who I can’t seem to look away from. If that’s what you mean, then yes.”
Maria pulled him down to her level using their still-clasped hands and then she kissed him lightly on each cheek.
“Yes,” she whispered in his ear. “That’s exactly what I mean.” Then she stood back up. “Now, go meet everyone,” and she gave him a gentle push into the room.
Perrin took his hand and went to lead him forward as the latest arrival greeted “Mama Maria” and began asking about her honeymoon. A quick glance revealed a darkly handsome Mexican man and a beautiful, slim Italian woman, both in their twenties, both sporting wedding rings. They had that newly married look, both smiling so hard their cheeks must be hurting. Even fifteen years later, he still remembered that feeling with Adira. So sharp, so visceral, it took his breath away.
“Uh, hang on,” he tugged Perrin to a stop, pulling her sideways slightly out of the fray. “I need a second.”
She held his hand and kissed him on the shoulder, then settled. Though he could feel her vibrating with good cheer.
First he looked at the setting. It was stunning. To his left was a long table, already laden with flatware and candles and several cold dishes. The wall behind the table was covered in pictures. Formal portraits and candids, many more of the latter. Though when he leaned in, he saw that even those were magnificent. He recognized a number of the faces as being in this room.
“Russell’s work. He’s such an amazing artist with his camera, I just try to be as good with my fashions as he is with a lens.”
“Russell, the big guy?” At Perrin’s nod, all he could do was wonder. More proof that you could never judge someone from the outside; Bill would have guessed stevedore or professional intimidator for a loan shark. Of course, he was married to the very elegant and sophisticated Cassidy Knowles which told another story. One that he’d like to hear someday, though he doubted he’d believe it, they made too odd a couple.
The side wall was mostly books which led to a comfortable-looking seating area near a wall of windows. Beyond the windows spread the Seattle waterfront in all of its sunset glory. The condo was perched at the top of Pike Place Market. The piers that they had explored over the weekend were spread immediately below. Elliott Bay, alive with ferries, sailboats, and a tug-escorted container ship, stretched out into the distance where the Olympic Mountains rose silhouetted against the sunset sky.
“It’s magnificent.”
“Thanks.” A man had also retreated to their safe corner as the crowd in the condo grew. “Hogan Stanford, Maria’s husband. Have you met her?”
“Oh yes,” Bill spotted her headed into the kitchen. “I’ve definitely met the Queen Mother.”
“Queen Mother. That’s good, I like it. Isn’t she amazing?” His smile, more serene but no less radiant than the other couples, told Bill exactly who had been on the honeymoon with Maria.
“Nice tan. How was the trip?”
“You a sailor?”
“Not much,” Bill looked out at the water and the several sailboats skimming along in the last of the evening breeze. “But I’d like to take the kids out someday.”
“Oh, we can definitely arrange that. Make an outing of it. Russell’s boat or mine. Then—”
“Did you say, ‘kids’?”
Bill found himself shaking hands with Jo Thompson. She stood quite close and was not releasing his hand.
“I did. I have two of them.” Jo Thompson made an interesting contrast with the other two friends. Perrin had told him enough to know that the three of them had gone through college together. Perrin might not speak of anything prior to turning eighteen, but she couldn’t say enough about the two women she’d met twelve years ago on her very first day of school.
Perrin was the tall, slender blond. Cassidy, the trim, and nicely figured brunette. And Jo Thompson the seriously built, raven-haired, Alaskan beauty. Bill also knew that if he didn’t take some control shortly, Jo and Cassidy would steamroller him right back
out the door on Perrin’s behalf.
“You three,” Bill offered a nod to include the approaching Cassidy. He noted with some chagrin that Hogan had wisely abandoned ship. “You must have cut quite a swath through the men.”
“You’ve got no idea!” Perrin offered one of her ridiculous giggles. Suddenly she was in full whack-a-doodle mode. “Jo found this one guy and latched onto him for four years, just so she didn’t have to deal with dating. Sneaky, but dull. Cassidy, sheesh, she was so shy that if she hadn’t had Jo as a roommate and me across the hall, no guy would have even known she was there. It was all up to poor Perrin to make sure these two had any college stories to tell at all.”
Bill watched with interest as the two women reacted to Perrin laying out college escapades at his feet. No shock, no surprise, and, curiously enough, no anger. The slightly manic Perrin was a wholly accepted fact and still they loved her. Cassidy had even slipped a hand around Perrin’s waist from the other side as she continued.
“And no matter how much loving care these two are getting from their new husbands, about which they tell poor Perrin depressingly little, they still haven’t turned me into an auntie. Now I ask you, Mr. Cullen, is that fair?”
Bill looked at the two women, inspecting them as carefully as he would an opera singer about to tip off the deep end. They were expecting… Well tough! It wasn’t what he was thinking, so all sails ahead or whatever sailors said, and the consequences could go jump.
“I’m on your side, Perrin. I think that’s really unfair. They should be having much more wild times. And not telling us the all the juicy details, where’s the fun in that?”
He could feel Perrin do a little dance step hop of glee against his side. Cassidy almost doubled over to hide a sharp snort of laughter.
Jo, who had retained his hand, studied him with those dark, dark eyes of hers before delivering her verdict.
“You just might do, Mr. Cullen. You just might do.” Her slow smile lit her face like magic as she shook his hand solidly. He’d thought her pretty enough, but that rare smile transformed her into a great beauty.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 74
