The costume lady. Wait. Hadn’t she told him she’d be at Gretchen’s? She never lied to him. Sometimes she got his help when she needed to tell one, but she’d always told him the truth. Or had she? What was going on all of a sudden?
“When’s she getting back? I’m stuck on homew—”
“Not for a while, buddy. Look, I’m jammed up in this meeting for maybe another hour. Then I’ll help you. Okay? Can you work on something else until I’m free?”
Jaspar looked at the other men in his dad’s office. They had a lot of papers and drawings and notes and stuff spread all over the table. They were all looking at him, waiting for his dad.
He also had his phone out and was looking sorta pissed, like when he was trying not to scream at him or Tam for doing something dumb. He didn’t scream except when they’d really earned it, but he had that look.
“Sure, Dad. Whatever.”
Jaspar went back to the cubicle across the hall from his dad’s office where he usually did his homework. The problem was that he didn’t have any other homework except this lame book report on stupid Captains Courageous.
Tam usually helped him, even on books she hadn’t read. She’d make a game of it, just asking so many dumb questions that eventually he’d figure out what he wanted to say.
Now she was off with the costume lady doing girl clothes stuff. She’d gone all gaga over those dresses at the store. Bor-ring. Though getting to be in the opera was kinda cool. He’d liked that at first, even if the backstage stuff was way cooler, but they never let him work on any of that. Like he was still eight or something.
For some stupid reason he’d thought that being in the opera meant they’d all be spending more time together.
He turned to scowl at the book sitting on his desk. A story about a kid brain dead enough to fall off a ship in the middle of an ocean. Maybe he should have just drowned. Not that any dumb sister would ever notice.
# # #
Bill stared back at the phone message. The meeting continued around him, but what had been a fascinating snarl of problems to unravel just moments before had turned into a meaningless buzz.
Clothing emergency was cute and funny. He could hear Perrin’s voice declaring it like a national crisis or an incoming missile attack. It had made him smile until he scrolled the message enough to see the last line.
P.S. Perrin wants her fourth kiss soon.
His daughter had just told him that a woman, who he’d met less than two weeks before, had told his teenage daughter that she’d kissed him three times. And wanted to do it again.
What kind of a game was Perrin Williams playing at?
There was no possible way this could be happening. Perrin was right. Not about being toxic, but about how he should be much more cautious about letting his kids come in contact with her. What if things didn’t work out? What if she was a crappy parental figure? Which the present message sure pointed to.
And this sure as hell wasn’t his definition of slow. She was bonding faster with his daughter than she was with him. How was he supposed to trust someone who did that?
What if she hurt the kids somehow? Not intentionally. She’d never do that, there wasn’t a mean bone in her body.
And it wasn’t helping matters in the slightest how much he couldn’t stop thinking about her body. The way she had responded to him for that one stolen hour. It had been incredible, as if every touch not only seared him, but her as well. He’d never responded so strongly in his life, maybe not even to… Damn it! He really had to cut that out. Adira was only diminished by the fading of memories over time. That’s all that was happening. Whereas Perrin Williams was so vibrant, so alive, she shone like one of her costumes.
“Everything okay, Bill?”
He looked up at Timothy Winters, the Opera’s Production Manager.
“Uh, don’t know yet. Give me a sec.”
He read the message again.
I’m with her.
He wondered if that was Tammy’s voice or Perrin’s? Perrin’s. She’d been making sure that he knew she was keeping Tammy close and safe, no matter what else was going on. Maybe she was being an okay authority figure after all? She had been the one who made sure Tammy called him within minutes of entering her shop. She’d also made it clear that she’d already straightened his daughter out on lying about where she was. That was actually far above and beyond the call of duty for a girlfriend.
It was only the last line that was pure Tammy. Somehow, Perrin had decided that telling his daughter that they had kissed each other was the best option. Then, instead of any emotional storm Tammy had signed with a Love you. That was something he hadn’t seen in far too long. Then he understood, Tammy was teasing him about Perrin. Not something she’d do if she was mad or overly shocked.
For a moment, he wondered if Perrin knew about the last line. Bill had to smile. If she didn’t, he’d bet that Tammy would find a way to tell her. Kids never missed an opportunity to get back at adults.
Welcome to my world, Perrin Williams.
“What do you think, Bill? Do we have time to get these plates punched or do we need to spend the extra to get them drilled?”
Bill keyed an answer into the phone, hit send, and began juggling the production schedule versus the painting and staging schedules so they could save the money with punching.
# # #
Perrin and Tamara had ridden in silence for several minutes. Tamara fiddled with the radio but no one had music, all ads at the moment. They were both just killing time to see what Bill Cullen’s response would be.
At long last the phone buzzed back and gave a cheerful ping as Perrin was pulling into the steep, narrow parking lot.
“What does he say?”
Tamara looked at it. Then appeared a little puzzled. “He just sent a one-letter response, ‘K.’ Which is short for ‘Okay’ when he’s in a real hurry. Maybe he didn’t read the P.S. part of it.”
Or, Perrin could hope, he’d decided that the single response covered both messages in the text. They continued in silence, each thinking their own thoughts until reaching the store.
“What is this place?” Tamara climbed out and glared at the building.
Perrin looked up at the aged two-story, concrete-block building, with peeling taupe-blah paint. To one side was a vacant lot, some old apartments towered over it from behind.
“A knitting store, Tamara.”
“But it says, The Weaving Works?”
“Don’t you trust anything I tell you?”
Tamara considered, “I guess I trust you.”
“Good, the moon is made of green cheese and Justin Bieber has a poster of you on his wall.”
“Eww!” But Tamara was smiling as they arrived at the door. “Hey, that’s cool.”
Knitting in a bright sock yarn wrapped about the door handle.
“There’s more of it,” Perrin pointed to the bike rack in front of the store. The galvanized steel had been knit over in a succession of the colors of the rainbow. “The Weaving Works” had been boldly knit right into the fabric.
“It’s called yarn bombing.”
“That is just so cool!”
“You’ve been hanging out with Jaspar too much. You’re using his adjectives.”
“He’s my kid brother, I don’t get a whole lot of choice on who I hang out with. I would have filed a request for a girl, but I was only three when they had the punk. He’s mostly okay except for being a boy. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Deal.” Perrin pulled open the glass-and-steel door. “Welcome to knitting heaven, Tamara.”
They toured the whole store together. Racks of every color and type of yarn towered about them. Like a small, labyrinthine bookstore, its shelves stocked to overflowing with heavy yarns for fisherman’s sweaters, fine yarns for baby clothes, and feathery “eyelash” y
arns for when you just wanted to feel utterly ridiculous.
“Check this out,” Tamara called Perrin over to the Jamieson yarns. “The skeins are so small and cute. I just love the colors.”
“They’re my favorites,” Perrin pulled out four different colors. “Come on.”
She led Tamara to a small mirror.
“Watch your face as I hold up each color.” She started with a blue and Tamara shrugged, then an orange that clashed with her hair and her complexion.
“Eww!”
Then a black.
“That one’s good.”
The Perrin held up the dark green heather yarn. It played off Tamara’s rich-red hair. With her fair skin, it snapped all attention to the girl’s dark eyes. The extra softness kept it from being to severe beside her young woman’s features.
“Wow… ” Tammy offered on a long drawn sigh.
“This doesn’t mean all your clothes should be Loden green, but when you want to really knock out some boy, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”
They took the skeins back to the shelves.
“Hey Perrin. Why aren’t there any guys here except for that one over there looking bored?”
“Not a lot of male knitters. Funny thing is, there are a lot of cultures where it was traditionally the male who did the knitting. Now, this is just a cozy place for women to hang out. See the big table in the corner with a couple knitters around it? There’s almost always someone there to sit and knit with. Or you can bring in hard problems if you get stuck and someone will always help you out. I often think that this is how the world would feel if it was run by women.”
“Cozy.”
“Exactly. Now, we need the color sets for the four designs we were missing.”
“You want me to help you pick colors for clothes that will go onstage?” her voice was wispy and awed.
Perrin figured it was part of that distant-and-impossibly-remote “Dad’s world” and Tamara felt as if she were just a kid intruding. Like Tamara, Perrin had been plenty precocious, and that had caused its own set of problems. Well, it wouldn’t for this girl. Not if Perrin had anything to say about it.
“You’re the one that found the solution to something that’s been making me crazy for over a week. You solved it, I’ll make sure every knows that. As a matter of fact… ” Perrin stepped over to the display of knitting tools and pulled down a massively ridiculous crochet hook that had to be there as a joke, it was two feet long and almost as big around as Perrin’s wrist. She rolled it to the label, “Size 50.” It wasn’t a toy, some project actually required this monster. That was just too crazy. If she could think of what to do with it, she might buy it.
“Kneel, Empress-to-be Tamara Cullen.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Kneel, or I tell your dad that I’m not the only one kissing boys.”
“Oh man!” Tamara knelt.
Perrin tapped her lightly on each shoulder with the crochet hook, then thonked her on the head hard enough to elicit an, “Ow!”
“I hereby dub you my official design assistant. Rise oh Tamara of the thank-you-for-saving-my-butt design team.”
As she clambered back to her feet, several of the nearby women who had stopped to observe the goings-on offered a round of applause.
Tamara blushed a brilliant red while Perrin waved the hook as if acknowledging her adoring subjects. When the applause had turned to kind laughter and everyone had returned to their shopping, she turned once again to Tamara.
“Now, assistant, let’s go choose some colors.”
Chapter 9
“God. You should have seen her, Bill. I wish I could have shared it with you. We had the best time picking out the yarn.” Perrin’s voice over the phone was almost as breathless as Tammy’s had been.
“Wish I could have seen it.” He wished it so much it ached. His daughter had come home from her afternoon lit up like she was the queen of the world. Any lingering desire to chew her out for lying to him about going to Gretchen’s died when she threw herself into his arms.
“It took her a good half hour at top speed to tell me about all the things the two of you had done. And she can talk awfully fast when she’s on a roll.”
Bill lay back on the top of his bed covers and stared at the dim ceiling.
“You aren’t upset, are you?” Perrin’s voice was soft.
“Upset? At what?”
“Well, I mean I know I shouldn’t be attaching myself to her, or letting her attach to me, but she’s such an amazing kid. And she wants to grow up so badly. Do you remember what that was like?”
Bill remembered joining the high-school theater as a freshman and having his entire life changed when Mary Ann, an awe-inspiring junior, had wandered across the stage carrying some tools to go fix a broken Fresnel lamp. She’d been tall, slender, with dark hair down past the middle of her back. His worldview had altered in that moment. He’d never grown up fast enough to get her attention. Hell, he’d never once been able to tell her how he worshipped her in the two years they did shows together before she graduated and was gone.
“Yeah, I remember what it was like. I just wish it wasn’t my girl doing it. And no, I’m not upset. I just wish I could have been there with her… With you. How can I miss you so much? We hardly know each other.”
“You could ask me out on a date.”
He could, if he could just figure out how to arrange it. Turandot was finally down and the set struck and returned to storage. For a while, the weeknights and weekends were his once more. His and his kids.
“Where are you now?”
“Why? Are you asking me out now? I thought your kids were asleep.”
“They are. I just wanted to picture where you were, what you were doing. What I really wish is that you were lying on the pillow beside mine.” And he did. Against all likelihood, he could picture her here, in the bedroom where no woman had ever been. He wanted to turn and see Perrin beside him. All her chaos, all her uncertainty, all her beauty, and all that magnificence curled up beside him. He could see it so clearly, as if she were—
“I’m in my studio.”
“Oh,” a dose of reality. He was sprawled on the bed thinking more about sex than any teenage boy, and she was working.
“I’m lying naked on my cutting table, just waiting for a strong man to come and ravage me.”
The heat that flashed through his body left him sweating and his pulse racing.
“O-kay. That’s an image I going to be glad to be stuck with for a long time.”
Perrin giggled, just like a happy teenage girl who was thinking as much about sex as he was.
“How about something simpler?”
“Spoilsport,” she made a raspberry sound. “Such a party pooper, you don’t even want to come here. Big meanie would rather leave me all alone and unravaged in my little bed.”
“Thought you were… ” he lowered his voice to make sure it didn’t carry down the hall to the kids, “… sprawled naked on your design table waiting desperately for me?”
“Oh no, any strong and willing man would be fine. You just happen to be the one I’m talking to. And I’m not naked, I’m wearing a flannel nightgown. Yes, all alone in my own bed.”
“Not how I pictured you.” Not at all. He’d thought Perrin would be one to sleep naked, or in one of those oversized t-shirts that always made a woman’s legs look so amazing.
“No, Bill Cullen, I’ve never worn a little black teddy, nor am I planning to anytime soon. Not even for your fantasies. If you’re going to ravage me, you’ll just have to deal with a woman who wears plain white flannel nightgowns.”
“Not even pink?”
“Nope, white.”
“JC Penny’s?”
“Caught me.”
“Actually, that’s an image I could definitely work
with. And no, Perrin Williams, I don’t want to ravage you… ” he let the silence drag for several seconds. “I’m desperate to ravage you.”
Her voice was soft and dreamy. “You’d better make it soon, Bill Cullen. I don’t know how much longer I can stand it if you don’t.”
“I’ve have to see you. What are you doing tomorrow?” It so hard to form normal, practical thoughts with her voice whispering into his ear.
“I thought you were going to be with the kids.”
“I am. I was thinking we could have a picnic.”
“With the kids?” she sounded suddenly cautious and practical. He knew he should be as well.
“They do appear to know you better than I do. Maybe it’s time I caught up a bit.”
“You’re sure?”
Was he? Even though he’d been the one to invite her, Perrin was still giving him an out. Pushing him to do what was right rather than what she knew was their mutual desperation to be with each other. Yet another layer of flighty designer was peeled off to reveal the practical woman inside.
“Some day, Perrin, you’re going to have to tell me why you carry your shields so high.”
Her echoing silence told him he’d screwed up. Cassidy Knowles had only reinforced Perrin’s statement that she wouldn’t be sharing her life history. He cursed himself for being eight kinds of dumb. To have been hurt so badly and rise above it, how much strength had that taken? How many conscious choices had she made to be a better person despite her past? He didn’t even need to know what her past had been to know what affect it had upon who she was. She had risen triumphant from whatever ashes…
“I don’t know if I can, Bill. I truly don’t know if I can.” Her voice was so small.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Again the interminable silence. Honey? He was becoming awfully attached to her. Well, it was no less than the truth, he was.
“Would you still like me on your picnic?” Her voice was even smaller if possible.
“Yes. No equivocation. No doubt. I’m not the fastest guy around, but I eventually get there. I would very much like you to join us.”
Where Dreams Unfold Page 10
