Next the gold chain and dangling orca she’d worn for the date with Yuri.
“Almost.” Perrin tossed that on the bed as well.
She finally held a silver chain bearing a sparkling silver filigree medallion with an amethyst-colored backing that Jo had loved and bought, but never found anything to wear it with.
“Oh my God.” Jo was finally able to see the breathtaking woman in the mirror. “You made…my wedding dress?”
Perrin’s reflection finished fastening the chain then peeked over Jo’s shoulder. Her face was pixie bright.
“Am I good, or am I good?”
Jo could only gaze in amazement. “No, you’re way better than good.”
“Wait until you see the back.”
Perrin spun her around and grabbed a hand mirror from the table scattering a couple of necklaces and an earring to the carpet.
It felt as if nothing were there and Jo was worried about having to let Perrin down gently. She wasn’t the sort to wear a risqué dress, especially not to a wedding, most certainly not to her own, and Perrin should know that by now.
But when she had the hand mirror aligned with the one behind her, Jo could only shake her head in amazement. The line of the dress followed the line of her hair. With her hair down, there would be constant flashes of bare shoulder and glimpses of skin, but it was somehow, impossibly, demure as well. The conservative shape of the rest of the back balanced the piece perfectly and made her look impossibly enticing.
In profile, well, her chest was too damn big, but it didn’t look like it in this dress. The dress design accented without embellishing.
She turned to hug Perrin, “It’s incredible!”
With their arms around each other, they turned to look back in the mirror.
“It’s just incredible. I’ve never looked so beautiful.” She rose up on her toes and considered. Maybe she’d wear heels on this one occasion.
Perrin looked simply radiant. “I’ve also got ideas for Cassie’s and my dress to go with it.”
That brought Jo back to reality, which was an almost crushing blow. She’d felt giddy, as if she were flying. And had now crash-landed in a dark swamp.
“Uh, Perrin. There’s just one problem.”
“What? What is it?” she began inspecting the perfect dress for some hidden flaw.
“Perrin,” she had to take her friend by her shoulders to stop her and make her to focus on Jo’s face.
“What?”
“I’m not getting married.”
“Oh,” Perrin shrugged that away as being of no consequence. “Is that all? That’s not a problem.”
Jo stared at her. “Not a problem? You give me the absolutely perfect wedding dress and now I have no reason to wear it? That’s a big problem in my book.”
“Phft,” Perrin waved a hand again and turned them both back to admire the dazzling woman in the mirror. “With a dress like this in your closet? No worries. You’ll find someone to fall madly in love with you, just so you get to wear it.”
“Years, Perrin. I’ve still got years of my career before I’m ready. I’m going to be commuting to northern Alaska for at least two years on my next case for goodness sake.”
“Never underestimate the power of a really good dress,” her friend insisted cheerfully.
As always, it was pointless to argue with Perrin. Jo looked in the mirror again. One thing Perrin had right, it was a really, really good dress.
# # #
Perrin slept through breakfast and lunch. Jo had stuffed her into the shower and then tucked her into bed in the guest room. She’d only allowed herself to sneak in twice to make sure her friend was actually still breathing.
It felt like being back in college, back when Perrin was so wild that she and Cassidy had often taken shifts making sure she’d be okay after her latest escapade. This time, thankfully, it was just exhaustion. Perrin had stayed straight and sober since she and Cassidy did an intervention during junior year, except for the occasional gal’s night out, but that was nothing compared to the bouts with alcohol poisoning Perrin had been habitually pursuing.
By late afternoon Jo sat in the living room doing her best to pretend she was interested in the latest Grisham novel. Normally his legal thrillers kept her riveted, she had every one in hardback, a few of them even signed, but not now.
The problem was that everything was in churn. And the dress was not the least of her problems. Last night, after she’d made sure Perrin was finally settled, she had returned to her bedroom and locked the door. She’d carefully brushed out her hair, knowing it was her best feature, and slipped back into the dress. This time she selected a pair of dark-blue Kate Spade heels making her several inches taller.
She’d studied the woman in the mirror carefully. She remained a mystery. Jo could still smell the stench of fish that had permeated the home of her youth. It had seemed to waft down the high school hallways behind her and no matter how she scrubbed in the shower, she’d never been clear of it.
Her early physical development had drawn the boys, but she’d built up a barrier knowing that the smell followed her. She’d heard the whispers of “arrogant” and “stuck up” and each time they had cut out a piece of her soul.
But she simply couldn’t stand what someone would think if they really knew, so she did her best to never let the pain show. She trusted no boys and very few girls and had instead dedicated her every waking minute to getting out of Ketchikan High and Ketchikan, Alaska. Valedictorian, straight four-point-oh student, Native American heritage, a cakewalk for scholarships. She’d left and never looked back. When the call came from Debby Rowe for the tenth year reunion, Jo had asked her as a personal favor to please lose Jo’s contact information somewhere dark and obscure.
By the time she’d arrived at Vassar at sixteen, she’d built a barrier so high that none could pierce it. Or so she’d thought. Her roommate, Cassidy Knowles, had been the perfect match, both of them quiet, both younger than others, both dying to get away from somewhere.
What would have happened to them if Perrin Williams hadn’t entered their lives was anyone’s guess.
She and Cassidy had still been gently probing each other as new roommates by comparing favorite high school classes, when a wild girl had stumbled into their room. “I’m Perrin! Right across the hall!” She had hair in five colors and a henna tattoo that ran up one arm and down the other, “and right over my left breast. Wanna see?” she’d cheerfully begun hauling the hem of her blouse out of her skirt’s waistband. Despite her awful background, that she’d shared much more reluctantly, she’d consciously chosen to be a positive person, albeit with an often manic intensity.
For reasons Jo had never been able to unravel, the three of them had been inseparable for the four years following that moment.
Without Cassidy and Perrin in her life, would the woman in the mirror, wearing the dress made of pale blue ocean waves and passion, be staring back at her? Probably not.
Without Cassidy’s heart and Perrin’s deep-seated joy, Jo would have continued on some perfect track and married some New York stockbroker who would never be as smart as she was.
The woman in the mirror didn’t look like Jo. She had a confidence that Counselor Thompson only found in the courtroom wearing black powersuits. She didn’t recognize the feminine form that stood before her, constantly running her hands over the fine stitching and soft shapes that encircled her form.
Who was this woman?
What decisions would she make that the Counselor would never even consider?
Jo had no idea, but she watched the woman in the mirror for a long time before taking off the dress and putting it away again.
She’d been careful not to look in the mirror before going to bed.
# # #
Perrin stumbled out of the guest bedroom in the early evening as the sun he
aded toward the Olympic Mountains. It filled Jo’s apartment with the warm oranges and reds she so loved. She’d decorated with her west-facing view and this time of day in mind, white walls and neutral carpets so that the changing light of outdoors would fill the room.
Perrin had clearly raided Jo’s closet with what should be amusing results but were fetching instead. She’d folded over one of Jo’s billowing floral skirts and trapped it about her trim waist with a belt leaving the waistband to flop over the belt. The Vassar college t-shirt, rather than being grossly too large, slid off both of her shoulders leaving a broad expanse of bare skin that made her look cute instead of slutty.
Her hair was still dyed as black as Jo’s, making her pale skin and blue eyes even more startling. She’d finished it with Jo’s mother’s pearls and a pair of bright green and red woolen Christmas socks despite the evening’s warmth. On Perrin the outfit looked ludicrous and wonderful.
Jo sighed. Once again Perrin had proved that a woman with a thirty-two inch chest could get away with wearing anything and still look charming.
“What day is it?” Perrin collapsed onto the other end of the red leather sofa at perfect ease. Like a cat waking from a long nap in the sun.
“Sunday. You’ve been asleep for almost twenty hours.”
“Good. Guess I needed it. Do you have any food?”
“How about pizza?”
“Yum!”
Jo dialed downstairs. One advantage of living in a condo built on top of prime downtown retail space, there were a dozen restaurants in her building and they all delivered.
Perrin propped her feet up on the glass coffee table and admired Jo’s Christmas socks as she wiggled her toes.
“Now, we need to figure out who you’re going to wear that dress for.”
“Perrin.”
“What happened to that banker you were seeing?” Perrin rolled right over Jo’s admonishment.
“That ended months ago.”
“Too bad. How about Russell’s dad? He was really cute, in an older guy sort of way, seriously rich too, but he seemed pretty attached to his wife.”
“Have you heard from Cassidy?” Jo shot for a subject change.
“All I’ve been doing is your dress. I couldn’t stop until it was done. Even Cassidy’s didn’t attack me like that. I just saw this one in my head and I had to do it. Tell me again you think it’s amazing.” There. That was why she loved Perrin. Beneath all of that bravado and flair and extrovert assuredness, was a woman cautious, uncertain, and impossibly real.
“Beyond amazing, Perrin. You keep outdoing yourself, but this time you really did.”
Perrin nodded. Jo could see that she still had trouble accepting she was any good.
“I need to check in with Raquel,” Perrin offered her own subject change. “I left the shop to her all week.”
Jo didn’t really want to pay for a wedding dress without a wedding, but Perrin had invested so much of herself in it that she’d have to. Even without a major designer label, a dress like that was worth thousands. Even worse than figuring out how much to pay, would be figuring out how to pay Perrin without paying her. Perrin didn’t care about money, especially didn’t want it from friends, which was one of the reasons she and Cassidy had practically forced Raquel upon her. The woman possessed immense business sense. Maybe Jo would just pay Raquel and tell her not to mention it to Perrin.
“Did she send any pictures?”
“Raqu—” Jo started then cut herself off. They were back to the subject of Cassidy. Even with a decade of practice, it was still hard to keep up with Perrin’s mercurial subject changes. Jo again wondered, as she had from time to time, if Perrin wasn’t the smartest of the three of them. Probably the most screwed up, which was saying something, but astonishingly intelligent in her own way.
Jo pulled out her iPad and tapped for the last three e-mails from Italy. She checked, yes, they’d been copied to Perrin.
Then she held it out.
Instead, Perrin scooted over so that sat shoulder to shoulder.
Jo tapped for the first image. It was an airplane bathroom shot through a partly open door.
Cassidy’s caption on the picture was, “So not!”
“Bummer,” was all Perrin had to say to that.
Chapter 8
“How’s the head?”
Angelo looked up from the bench-press machine to see Jo towering over him. Again she wore little enough to reveal exactly how amazing her conditioning was. Cyclists’ legs of strong thighs, a workout-flat stomach, and arms with just that womanly hint of muscle that did nothing to mar the illusion of smooth skin but hinted at lurking power beneath.
“Uh, fine.” He lowered and released the handles then sat up. That brought his face level with her breasts, dark green sports bra this time. He struggled to his feet.
“Barely a lump any more.”
“Sore from the ride?”
“Not particularly.” He’d been teased throughout dinner service for hobbling like an old man. “You?”
“Plenty. Clearly we need to do that more often.”
That he liked the sound of. “Anytime.”
“Well, I should finish my workout and leave you to yours.”
Angelo scrambled for some way to keep her close, even for a few moments.
“I’m off today, the restaurant is closed Mondays. We could go for another ride.”
“This is my work week. I have to be in the office soon.” She glanced down at the slightly scary wristwatch, heart monitor, exercise thing she wore. “Actually, I’m done and headed for the showers or my assistant will beat me up for being late. She’s fierce.”
They shared a smile over that. Angelo remembered the sweaty years working for one chef after another in New York, and several summers in Italy. The former had cared about time, the latter about flavor. However, both had busted his ass enough on both points that he could really appreciate being his own master. And the fact that he drove his staff as hard as his mentors and himself harder was only par for the course.
Angelo eyed the wall clock. It was barely seven-thirty. Right, that’s when they’d gone riding too. Jo was clearly a morning person. He was a night owl who’d learned to be awake for two hours every morning to do the restaurant shopping and a workout before sleeping three more hours.
“After work?”
She’d started to turn for the locker room, but turned back and did that appraising thing.
Then she smiled, “Do you run?”
“Sure.”
“I’m training for the Hagg Lake triathlon next month in Forest Grove, Oregon. Meet at five o’clock by your restaurant?”
“Sounds great.”
Angelo watched her head off, damn that woman could walk. Then he pictured her in a sleek one-piece swimsuit and decided he’d better look into that triathlon himself and see if it was too late to sign up.
# # #
He was already well stretched and warmed up as she trotted up to him. Again those legs killed him. She wore a loose black t-shirt and bright, fluorescent orange running shorts. The wrap-around shades and her hair back in a ponytail swinging easily side to side completed the picture. But she had legs of bloody iron.
He fell in easily beside her. They dropped down Stewart Street and, after a little judicious zig-zagging around tourists, they followed Western Ave. toward Broad Street.
“You enter many tri’s?” He’d signed up for the Oregon event online. He’d been lucky enough to catch the last day of registration. He’d been relieved that it was a short one, a mile swim, twenty-five mile bike ride, and a ten-K run. There’d also been a shorter sprint tri, but he figured he could, depending on which Jo was doing, more easily choose to drop down to the shorter one than climb up to the higher one on race day.
“No.” They jogged in place waiting for a light chang
e where Alaskan Way cut uphill as Broad Street. “This is my first. Figured I’d embarrass myself where no one else would ever see me.”
Whoops! Well, he could always just lose the entry fee.
“Let me know if you want some company.”
Again those impenetrable glasses inspected him.
“Green,” he noted the light and trotted across the street.
They dropped down through Myrtle Edwards Park and turned north along the shore of Elliot Bay. The water was busy with ferries and sailboats, a pair of container ships, and a ridiculously tall cruise ship. The wind off the water tasted of the ocean and the mountains beyond, crisp and fresh on the warm afternoon. The sun beat down on them from high in the west, heating his back.
They ran in silence and Angelo worked on finding his rhythm. He used to run a lot, but this last year had been so crazy with the success of the restaurant that he hadn’t been out much. He knew that he’d have to push to be ready in a month, even for just a ten-K.
At Roy Street, Jo turned and cut uphill. A dozen blocks later they were winding through the mansions that covered the western slope of Queen Anne Hill. The narrow twisting streets wound and climbed in a maze-inspired array and he was quickly as lost as the dumbest rat.
“Damn, there’s some serious money here,” he managed to gasp out. He’d seen enough of that, growing up in Russell’s house. These places weren’t as big as the East Coast mansions owned by the New York magnates. The Morgan estate sat on a small island in Old Greenwich, Connecticut with only three other homes across the short causeway that separated them from shore. Their house had been a modest one by Old Greenwich standards, and would be a major one here, but not the biggest or best.
Jo drove up the hills at a steady pace, and he had to struggle to keep up without dying on the slopes. At long last, they crested the hill and ran down along Queen Anne Avenue itself. He could feel his legs unknotting, though his lungs didn’t recover as she upped the pace.
Either she was in as amazing shape as she looked, or she was trying to run him into the ground. Or maybe both. She ran as if a demon dogged her heels but as if winged Mercury, the Greek messenger god himself, had blessed her feet.
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