Cassidy crossed her heart like the true friend she was.
Perrin heard a voice rumbling out in corridor, placating one person while handing out instructions to another. And his voice sounded as if he’d just finished ripping someone a new one.
“That’s him,” she tried not to go all weak in the knees.
# # #
“Perrin! You made it!” Bill wanted to devour her, she looked glorious and delectable. That same blazer as the other night, but without the t-shirt made him want to drag her down to the floor and pick up where good manners had stopped him last night. Had he even slept last night? Yet he felt energized rather than exhausted.
He spotted the second woman just in time. Bill slammed a brake on his libido and held out a hand to shake Perrin’s as if they were just two professionals.
She looked down at his hand, then rolled her eyes at the other woman, “What did I tell you about him?”
“You were right. He’s too damned decent.”
Perrin stepped into his arms and kissed him long and deeply enough to completely scorch any of his body’s responses that hadn’t already gone ballistic over the outfit.
Then she stepped back, “I, uh, may have already told her about us. Bill Cullen, this is Cassidy Knowles, my best friend in the whole world.”
“I know her, you just distracted me. We sort of met at the last board meeting, Ms. Knowles. You’re the one who saved Perrin’s life.”
Cassidy startled and turned to face Perrin even before Bill could shake her hand.
Perrin shrugged, “That’s all I told him.” But she appeared very interested in the tiling of the floor.
Then Cassidy turned back and took his hand, shaking it carefully.
“What did I just miss?”
Cassidy inspected him closely. “You had best be worth it, Mister Cullen. To the best of my knowledge, you are only the fourth person on the planet to know that.”
“Fifth,” Perrin offered without looking up. “I told Melanie a while ago. She kind of already knew. Forgot to tell you she was here this week, dating an opera singer, but she’s gone again. Back in five weeks for opening night.”
Again some inexplicable exchange occurred silently.
At length Cassidy turned to face him once more. She was perhaps five-eight, a good four inches shorter than he was. And very trim, though with fuller curves than Perrin. But he was left with no doubt that the woman before him, having somehow saved Perrin’s life once, would do absolutely anything she felt necessary to do so again.
Chapter 8
Perrin had the drawings spread down the entire length of her workbench. She’d had to get them back from Jerimy, because the last of the designs were being stubborn. She just couldn’t see them.
The heavy colors and threads of hope and failure in the lineage of the Overlord and the Empress. The vile reds and blacks of the court Magister and his cohorts in the clergy. The opera had set them as almost pure evil, bent on the destruction of the royal lineage and replacing them with their own line. The Magister would bring about the ultimate downfall of the Tragic Prince. His snare would fail to catch Tamara as the young Empress-to-be.
But the arranged-marriage Princess, and the Prince’s one True Love were eluding her. These were the two women who tore the Tragic Prince in two directions, ultimately allowing the Magister’s untimely blade to make his end.
Once she had the Princess, then the Maid Confessor and Queen Mother should follow easily enough. But at the moment, nothing about any of the four of them was being easy. Nothing!
She’d tried most of her tricks. Sketching, painting, pulling pieces randomly out of the scrap bag and stitching them together on the embroidery machine until something came of it.
And not a decent idea.
“Perrin,” Raquel stuck her head in. “You have a visitor.”
She almost cried out in relief. A customer needing a special dress, or a friend, she didn’t care. She knew it couldn’t be Bill, he had one opera coming down and meetings about getting the set construction for Ascension back on schedule. He said he’d be frantic all week.
“Hi, Perrin,” Tamara peeked around from behind Raquel.
“Hey, you! Come here!” Without thinking Perrin had thrown her arms wide.
Tamara eyed them for a moment, then came forward and accepted the hug. Perrin kept it brief, as she would if just meeting some friend on the street. Bill hadn’t been kidding, the girl was so self-conscious of every nuance of being thirteen. Of course, Perrin was also the woman who’d kissed her dad.
“So, did your dad drop you off?” She wanted to ask where he was, why hadn’t he at least come in to say hello, how was he. He’d been so busy that she actually hadn’t seen him since the night she and Cassidy had attended Turandot. They’d barely traded late night texts after the kids were in bed. But she thought it better not to ask. It was best to appear completely neutral on the topic of her dad.
“No, he didn’t,” a little hesitant. Then in a rush to block Perrin’s next question, “I was hoping you could show me more about design and sewing. I really want to—”
Perrin held up a hand to cut her off. She too had once been a teenage girl. Her life had been nothing like Tamara’s, but she knew the tones of voice that had and hadn’t gotten her out of trouble. The first part was a clear lie, even if the rest of it sounded true enough.
Keep it light, she told herself.
“Wow, girl! You just told a whopper, didn’t you?”
Tamara blanched but struggled on valiantly. “No. I really wanted to learn how you made those costumes. I don’t get how you…” Her voice petered out as it became clear that Perrin wasn’t buying the distraction for a second.
Before she could make further excuses, Perrin held up her hand.
Tamara wisely closed her mouth.
“Okay, first you sit and listen to the world according to Perrin. Then you get two choices.”
She didn’t look happy about it, but she climbed up on the stool across the cutting table, dropping her school pack on the floor.
“Your dad doesn’t know you’re here.” She didn’t make it a question.
“Gretchen’s.”
“And when he shows up and you aren’t at Gretchen’s, how much trouble will you have found?”
Tamara shrunk down in her seat. “Lots. Seriously grounded at least.”
“Girl, he’s going to put one of those house-arrest GPS ankle bracelets on you and never let you out of his sight again. He loves you so much that he’ll probably end up in jail for punching anyone who gets in his way while he’s trying to find you.”
“No way… ” Suddenly she didn’t look so self-assured.
“Way!” Perrin informed her. “That’s assuming he doesn’t have a heart attack from worrying himself sick about you first. Lost, maybe missing in the Big Bad City.”
“I’m old enough to get around Seattle on my own if I want to. Besides, he’s always at work. What does he care about—”
“You have no idea how much he cares. His whole world revolves around raising you two. He’s so afraid he’s going to screw up, that’s probably what makes him screw up half the time.”
Tamara appeared to be mulling that one over seriously.
“So, time for your two choices,” Perrin informed her.
“Am I going to like either one of them?”
“Not a chance.”
It took some negotiation, before they ended up with a compromise. Perrin would call to break the ice, then hand it off to Tamara.
She dialed Bill’s cell and put it on speaker phone. Only after she did so, did she think that maybe dialing his number from memory hadn’t been the best choice. Thankfully, Tamara appeared too miserable to notice. With each ring, Tamara cringed down further on the stool.
“Hi Perrin. I have to be quick. I’m so
rry, but I’m really busy right now. Gods but I miss you.”
Tamara heard that one loud and clear. Her head shot up and she faced Perrin rather than continuing to study the chips in her nail polish.
“Uh, Bill. I think I may have just screwed up. I have you on speakerphone.”
There was a pause, “Who else is there?”
Perrin nodded to Tamara to go ahead. She had to repeat the gesture to get some action.
“Uh, hi Dad.”
“What?!” His voice roared out of the phone and echoed about Perrin’s design space. If his daughter had needed any proof of what Perrin had told her, his tone said it all. She positively cowered, in shame rather than fear, Perrin was glad to see.
“Bill,” Perrin cut him off. “Before you lay in, I’ve already done a good job of making her feel like a total shit. She understands what she did wrong. How about giving her a one-time ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card?”
There was a long silence. So long that Tamara started cringing again.
“Is she okay there with you? I could probably find someone to come and—” His voice was tight, but he was holding onto control. Barely.
“She’s fine with me, Bill. I won’t let her out of my sight. You have Jaspar?”
“Yeah. The little thug just shook me down for a buck for the soda machine but I’ll bet he’s getting a candy bar instead.”
Tamara nodded her agreement.
“His sister agrees, candy it is. Take as long as you need, Bill.”
“Thanks, Perrin, you’re absolutely wonderf— Aw, crap! Explaining this is another problem I’ve left in your lap. Tamara, give her a chance. Sorry about that, gotta run.” And he was gone before she could even reach out to cut the connection.
Tamara was eyeing her carefully.
“Look, girl, I got you off the hook this one time. You gonna throw me to the wolves?”
Tamara considered that for a while and then shrugged that maybe, just maybe they had a fair trade.
Perrin could see the next question building, but was not at all ready for it when it finally arrived.
“You going to marry my dad?”
Perrin managed a laugh. “Whoa there! I’ve only kissed him twice, wait, three times. We’re barely dating. We haven’t even gone out to dinner together, if you don’t count the time you guys were here for pizza.”
“Is he good?”
Perrin rested her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm and inspected her interrogator. How did you deal with a kid? A kid who has probably spent the last four years doing her best to be mother to a young boy and a comfort to her own father? Truth, she decided. She hadn’t any basis to go on, so she would simply always tell the truth. It was the only option she could think of that had any chance of success.
“I mean, is he like you said, ‘the right boy’?” Tamara added another question over Perrin’s silence.
“Tamara, honey. You’ve gotta make a promise to Perrin.”
“What?”
“Stop asking such hard questions, please?”
It earned her a tentative smile but no promises. Guess that would have to do.
“Is he good? He’s almost as good a kisser as he is a dad, which is pretty incredible. Is he the right boy? I have no idea in the world. The other question I have to ask, ‘Am I the right girl?’ I can’t believe that I am.”
Tamara did another of her deep thought things before responding. “I don’t know the answer either, but I can kinda see how you might be.”
Man oh man. And she’d thought the questions were tough.
# # #
“Look at these. Maybe you can tell me what’s missing.” Perrin had enjoyed teaching Tamara through the quiet afternoon, she was an apt student. She quickly understood right and wrong sides of fabric, seam allowances, and pinning. Cutting on the bias had tripped her up, but she was getting a handle on it. She also successfully threaded the Featherweight several times as well as jamming it up once royally.
But the unfinished costume designs had lain there on the cutting table the whole time and beckoned silently. And she was no closer to solving them.
“There’s a lineage missing.” Perrin had set out blank pages of paper with the role titles on them: Princess (arranged marriage), Maid-servant Companion, Queen Mother (of Princess), and True Love (same lineage?). She’d set small snips of different fabric possibilities on each, but they all looked like crap.
Tamara stopped in her efforts to undo the latest snarl she’d made by catching a fold in the machine. Only way to learn stuff like that was do it wrong enough times.
She came over to lean on the table beside Perrin. Close, if not quite rubbing elbows. A good sign that she wasn’t too uncomfortable about Perrin and her dad.
For a long time, they looked at the blank pages in silence. Then Tamara turned to face the room. She started doing all of the things that Perrin had done. She’d walked slowly about the room, running her fingers over a red velvet, a blue chiffon, and some black corduroy. Occasionally Tamara’s hand hesitated and Perrin noted which fabrics they were, just in case she couldn’t come up with any other ideas.
The girl dug through the patches bag under the table for a bit, asked a couple questions about the crazy-patch embroidery Perrin had rammed back into the bag in frustration. Next Tamara would be walking through the whole store and find nothing to help her. And then Perrin would call Bill and admit that he’d been right all along, that she was a clothing designer and not a costume designer. Crap, but she really didn’t want to let him down.
Tamara was passing the rack where Perrin hung works in progress, and also some of her own clothes in case the weather changed, or she suddenly felt cold.
She stopped there, and Perrin twisted around to see what she took down.
The electric-blue knit sweater Perrin had worn to lunch last week.
“You getting cold, honey?”
Tamara took it off the hangar and brought it back to the table. She folded it up and set it on the Princess’ blank sheet. Stepping back, she tipped her head sideways to inspect it.
Perrin waited for it. Let her eyes drift over the texture and color. The knits were soft, following lines and curves, a sharp contrast to the rest of the highly structured costumes. They’d be able to accentuate or diminish based on how they were knit: ribbed, stockinette, cabled… And the blue. It was close. So close. Not electric-blue, but…
“Jewel tones,” she let it out as little more than a sigh. Then she squealed. That was it! That was so it! Knit jewel tones.
She swept Tamara into a hug and then leapt up to waltz about the room with her. Both giggling madly as they went. When they passed her computer, she tapped the play button. Fleetwood Mac Second Hand News came roaring out of the speakers. And she did a shimmy that Tamara did a good job of imitating. They’d circled the cutting table twice, even doing an impromptu two-woman conga to totally the wrong rhythm when Tamara shouted something to her.
Perrin leaned down to hear.
“You and Dad will be perfect for each other.”
“Why?” she shouted back.
“You both have the same crappy taste in music.” Then Tamara did a shimmy-dip-twirl that Perrin did her best to copy as they danced a full circle about the cutting table. Arriving back at the computer, she stopped Stevie Nicks in mid-throaty growl.
“Come on, kid,” Perrin grabbed Tamara’s hand. “We’re getting out of here.”
“But Dad thinks I’ll be here.”
“You own a cell phone?”
She held it up. “But only for emergencies.”
“Fine, as soon as we’re in the car, you text him. Say, ‘Perrin had clothing emergency. I’m with her.’ Make sure you put ‘Hugs’ or a smiley face or something at the end. He did a real hard thing letting you off the hook before. He deserves something nice.”
; They dashed out the door, Raquel and Kirstin barely having time to wave. They piled into Perrin’s mini-van and pulled out onto the streets of Belltown.
Tamara dutifully punched out a text. “Is ‘love you’ too mushy?”
“For your dad, you can never be too mushy.”
She finished the text, with a somewhat evil grin.
“What?”
Tamara looked out the window, watching downtown Seattle unfold and carefully avoiding Perrin’s question, but obviously terribly pleased with herself. “Do you always drive so slow?”
Perrin looked down to check as they drove up the Mercer Street ramp and merged onto I-5 northbound, “I’m going the speed limit.”
“But like everyone is passing us. Even Dad doesn’t go the speed limit.”
“Well, first, I have someone else’s kid in the car, which is kind of freaking me out. Second, yeah, I usually go the speed limit in self defense. I know how easily I get distracted, so moving slower helps. Now give, or am I going to have to pull over and wrestle you to the ground for your cell phone.”
Tamara studied the slowly moving landscape and gave out a long sigh of exasperation at their lack of progress. But her smile hadn’t gone away.
“I just included a P.S.”
“Sewing machine privileges,” Perrin threatened.
“I only said, ‘Perrin wants her fourth kiss soon.’” At Perrin’s strangled sound the kid just laughed. “Think it got a reaction?”
Perrin just imagined Bill’s reaction and hoped he didn’t drop her then and there for telling such a thing to his teenage daughter. Then she imagined the look on his face and wished she could be there to see it.
# # #
“Where’s Tam?” Jaspar had to tug on his dad’s sleeve to get his attention. He was sitting in his office and glaring at his phone as if it had just bitten him, like that gerbil did to Tommy Hancock in Mr. Melk’s class.
“She’s with Ms. Williams today.”
Where Dreams Unfold Page 9
