Dear Reader,

I’m a low-maintenance chick. The kind who’s happy with the way things turn out and not in need of a lot of extras to sustain me. So, naturally, Destiny thought it would be fun to dump me in Dallas, Texas—Planet Central for appearances and all things material.

Fortunately, I’m also a survivor and found myself a group of great girlfriends—beautiful women who spent massive chunks of their waking hours in manicures, highlights and cosmetic procedures. We got along great, those diamond-loving girls and I. They thought I was a breath of fresh air. Which, translated, meant I needed lots of help. And they were willing to give it. Sadly, it didn’t take.

But my experience got me thinking and another low-maintenance chick, Sky Dylan Stone, was born. Dylan’s friends think you can tell the depth of love by the weight of the diamond. All Dylan wants is a soul mate, someone to complete her, to set her on fire, capture her spirit, mind and heart. Not an easy find. Until Brad Davis comes along, the long-legged, boot-wearing guy of her dreams. If only he wasn’t so busy chasing his own!

Be you a low-maintenance gal or a diamond-girl supreme, we could all use a soul-scorching love. Drop me a line at carlylaine@comcast.net or visit my Web site at http://home.comcast.net/~carlylaine.

Happy reading!

Carly Laine

Sometimes it’s okay to be a virgin

Like when you’re fifteen or seventeen or hell, even twenty.

I could think of a few other situations when it’s not only okay, it’s a damn good idea.

Like if you’re the heroine of a romance novel and you lost it on page eighty-six to the guy with the big pecs on the cover.

Or you’re super-religious and want to wait until you’re married.

But lots of times it was not okay. Like when life got messy early and things hadn’t worked out the way you planned. Your friends were settling down and you hadn’t even gotten started yet. Then it was just plain mortifying.

I wasn’t sure when things changed, when I quit fighting off the guys who pretended they wanted nothing more out of life than to sleep with me.

All I know is, by the time I was a senior in college, it had gone from being a prize to a problem and I couldn’t pay someone to do the deed.

When did sex become such a hassle?

When Size Matters
Carly Laine

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After residing in many places, including Texas and France, Carly Laine currently finds herself living in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, where she spends her days wearing a hard hat and her nights writing about slim-hipped guys with magical smiles. When Size Matters is Carly’s first novel for Harlequin.

To my family, where the living is easy.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

1

DOES SIZE really matter? I mean, can how big it is actually tell you anything? Because my friends all think so. They’re convinced it shows how much he loves you. As if you can weigh love. That you measure it in carats. Mathematically, it looks like this: carats = love. And, despite appearances to the contrary, my diamond friends excel at math. Increase one side of an equation and they know the other side magically grows with it. More carats, more love. Therefore—and this is the most important part—a really big diamond = true love.

The only thing is, I don’t know if I buy it.

But if I did, then what I was witnessing on top of the hill that amber afternoon in October was the real thing. Capital T, capital L True Love. Because the bride’s ring was h-u-g-e, a diamond doorknob. And as I watched her turn from the makeshift altar they’d set up outside for the ceremony with her new diamond wedding band snuggled against the knob, I thought her left hand hung a little lower and that she had to kind of drag it back down the aisle. Think Quasimodo.

I can see my friends if they heard me think that. “D. E.,” they’d sing. Knowing for sure that mine was just another sad case of soul-devouring, stomach-cramping Diamond Envy. They could spot it anywhere. And often did. Even if it wasn’t. Or maybe it was, I don’t know. I do know I wanted some. TL. Real love. The kind you could always count on. Lifetime guarantee.

So maybe the real question was this: How do you find that? Or rather: How do you know you’ve found it?

I’d been to ten weddings in nine months. That made this one number eleven. Like the Diamond Girls, I, too, am good at math. It was October and—somebody shoot me—there was still another one to go. All things considered, it had been a fairly depressing year.

Number eleven was my fourth bridesmaid gig. The first time, back in April, I was excited. I got over it. My closest friends had trapped me into spending hundreds of dollars on dresses that made me look pale, fat and ugly. Unforgivable what those dresses do to a girl with a chest—think marshmallows, vacuum-packed.

This bride had chosen an anemic rainbow theme for her B-maids, vapid springtime pastels that made us look like little unfound Easter eggs. Faded lumps, lost and forgotten in the autumn leaves. I got stuck with the orange dress—the exact color of that milky, orange, public bathroom soap—because it does really awful things to tawny skin and because, in truth, brides know precisely what they’re doing. They know what will make their B-maids look their absolute, unforgettable, all-time worst.

Yeah, yeah, I know, brides say that’s not true anymore, that times have changed. But—and I say this with authority based on a great deal of recent experience—there are way too many sorry-looking bridesmaids out there for it to be coincidence.

Number eleven wedding was done up in the high style of the new millennium: overblown and overbudget. Six-figures if it was a dime. They staged it on the groom’s parents’ spread, a small kingdom chiseled into the Hill Country just outside of Austin, an estate on its own private hill.

When it was featured in the architectural magazine—the one that never does Texas houses if it can help it—they gushed, and I quote:

With its creamy blond fascia hewn from the chiseled limestone of the Austin hills, with its patchwork of rooftops quilted in the rusty blues of Texas slate, this magnificent home proudly straddles the hill’s rough summit. In the early evening sun, the meandering silhouette forms a miniature golden cityscape, a buttery skyline that peaks and dips in mimicry of the rise and fall of the rock beneath.

Rusty blue? Buttery skyline?

I knew the whole article by heart. It had been recited to me daily, breathlessly, for most of the past twenty-four months. It just so happened that this miniature golden cityscape, this monster mansion with its eye-bugging views of hill and river, lake and sky was more than mere backdrop. It was, in fact, the magic potion, the crucial catalyst that had brought the loving couple together. Love at first sight. My friend had seen the place on the cover of the magazine, had fallen in love first with the house and then, after a period of focused Diamond Girl determination, with its only son. Poor guy. Targeted, pursued and bagged before he knew what was chasing him. I guess if you had to marry a house, though, this one wasn’t bad. As houses go.

I know that sounds harsh but I was all weddinged out. It had been a long year.

There were two radiant white tents: one for the luncheon buffet and one for the obligatory, inoffensive, soft rock band and parquet dance floor. Each was perched in perfect symmetry on different strata of the hill, as though God had been in a good mood and had designed the terrain for just this occasion.

Music, food, a buttery skyline and champagne flowing like the Colorado River below us. It was getting late in the day. There’d been some serious toasting, especially by the father of the groom who was pulling triple duty as expansive host, father of the groom and best man. Actually, quadruple duty. Add financier to that list. Of the wedding and the doorknob diamond. I couldn’t look at the guy without thinking, prime rib. If you stuck a sweaty face—no neck—and some chunky limbs on those slabs of rare meat oozing under the heat lamps in the luncheon buffet, you’d have yourself a genuine replica of the groom’s dad. Should you want one. Which you wouldn’t.

He bellowed congratulations to his son, well-wishes for the bride and public introductions of his many, many attending business associates. And with each new toast, with each lifted glass, you could hear the subliminal scream, “This is all mine, I did all this. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

Diamonds can be pricey—and I don’t mean for the groom or his family. I pictured the carnage of my poor friend’s life now, with Mr. Prime Rib in charge. Shudder.

Thank goodness he wasn’t my problem. Because, orange-soap dress notwithstanding, I was having an amazing time. I’d danced and laughed, and laughed and danced until finally, breathless, I’d had to sneak off to a deserted corner of the dance tent to have a quick gulp of autumn air and expensive champagne. I held myself perfectly still and let the swirl fall away. The light was magic. I even forgot to be cynical for a minute or two. The hill had granted this wedding a special aura, a fairy-tale touch. And as the sun began setting, the air took on that perfect glow, that golden glimmer of moments you think you’ll always remember.

Oh, what the hell, I said to myself. What if all my best friends were wives and mothers and I was left alone and abandoned, the last singleton in Single Town? Who cares? Sure, I was destined to be childless, struggling to eke out a meager joy from other people’s kids. Smile now, smile for Auntie Dylan. So what? Dancing on top of God’s hill, bathed in that silken light, I was content. And as the band launched into a respectable imitation of a salsa beat, I closed my eyes and tilted my head as far back as it would go to let the last, slow drip of champagne bubbles tickle down my throat.

Then I got one of my feelings. One of those feelings, where the little hairs on the back of my neck prickle out with the creeps. In my head, I saw one of Spielberg’s flesh-eating dinosaurs sneaking up, slobbering, behind me. An arm grabbed me around my waist. The champagne glass banged against my teeth. Hard.

“Dance wi’ me,” it snarled, its mouth pressed into my hair, reptile lips on the back of my ear, swamp breath on my scalp. I knew that slur, had heard it all afternoon. And as he hoisted me onto the dance floor, I knew that the groom’s dad had now become my problem, too.

I am not a tiny girl, not readily hoisted, but I was weightless, fragile in those beefy arms. Centaurs came to mind. Exactly what was it they’d done with maidens they’d snatched?

The thought was pre-empted. With a scowl of fierce concentration, he pressed my arm out to full extension—totally ignoring the crystal flute I still had clutched by its stem—and stuck a dripping jowl to my cheek. We swayed backward to gain momentum and then lunged theatrically forward into a full-body tango. I had to take several quick, ridiculous-looking, little running steps to keep from losing my balance, from being swept, literally, off my feet with my little dyed-to-match orange satin shoes dragging behind me, heels up, across the floor.

“Please don’t do this,” I managed to gasp when I finally quit trying to swallow my tongue in surprise and actually took a breath.

The band, knowing for sure upon which side their bread was buttered—and by whom—gamely switched to a tango. The dance floor cleared in a flurry of self-preservation. People crowded around the perimeter, unable to spare themselves the discomfort of witnessing my humiliation. And as we raced by their faces, I caught the looks of distaste and nervous glances. Groom Daddy was rich, old and male. Somehow this would all be my fault.

When we reached the far edge of the portable dance floor, I saw the guy I’d come with—finally—rushing to my aid, angling in on us for a cut-in rescue. Sing Hallelujah! I didn’t think he had it in him.

But Groom Daddy wasn’t having any of that. Switching arms without loosening his grip even a notch, he angrily executed that one-eighty tango turn, slammed his pot roast body back into mine and sped with long, bent-kneed strides toward the center of the floor.

“I need to…Please stop,” I squeaked out in a pathetic little wheeze. Like a gnat to a rhino, I was ignored.

Okay, okay, think! As my body tried to find some rhythm, some little bit of grace, my mind started whirling with the adrenaline rush. Options, I thought, you have to do something. Scenarios formed in my head. In one, I’d scream, he’d freeze, the band would shut down. As the echoes of my shrieks vibrated in the silence, the sobbing bride would stumble up the granite steps to the looming stone fortress, dragging her ring hand behind…Nope, no good. The bride was my friend, or at least she was before I got stuck with the orange dress. How could I mess up Her Day?

I could swoon and faint, slump against my tormentor in total dead-weight collapse. That might stop him. Oh, great, Dylan! Then they’d all think you’re drunk. You have no choice, I reasoned with myself. You have got to pull this off.

Bracing for further indignities, I composed my face into the amused and tolerant countenance of a good sport. I smoothed the stress from my forehead, brightened my eyes and just as I was working on a sparkly, little laugh, Groom Daddy stopped dead, leaned precariously and flung me backward over his knee in a back-snapping dip. Our arms were stretched overhead, the crystal flute inverted. One perfect drop of champagne splashed on the tip of my nose and slowly seeped inside. All good-sported sentiments drained away as I hung upside down and tears of frustration began trickling up, or rather down, my forehead, the rush of blood and humiliation burning my cheeks.

In another flash, I was restored to vertical and hauled off flailing in a different direction. Okay, that’s it. Rag-doll helpless was not my style and I…had…had…enough. A cold, clear fury crackled down my still throbbing spine. I hesitated just a moment, debating whether to turn and bite the hair-filled ear attached to the side of my head—blech!—or to stick out my dainty orange shoe and trip him violently, mid-stride. But before I could maneuver my foot into position, Groom Daddy tangoed us—wham!—into a guy who’d materialized on the dance floor directly in our flight path.

The impact jostled us around and we bounced off each other a few times until this guy steadied me with a firm grasp on my elbow and eased me off to one side. I shot a quick glance at Groom Daddy and then couldn’t look away as he burst into a snarling rage. Thwarted? his look said. You think you can stop me? You. Stop me? N-e-v-e-r. Apparently you don’t get a house on your very own hill by letting things slide.

Oh, God, this was gonna be ugly. I just had the time to wonder, as I slammed my eyes shut, how my high-strung friend—the “everything has to be perfect” bride—was going to handle this little digression from the program. I turned away, held my breath and braced for the blast.

And then…nothing.

Risking a quick one-eyed peek, I saw Groom Daddy’s scowl had been arrested midsquint and amazement was washing back over his face. The guy bowed to him, low from the waist. And then I, along with everyone else under that tent, watched as he straightened into an elegant long-necked pose, miming a tango embrace with his arms. His voice was low but it rang out in the silence as he politely inquired of Groom Daddy, “Shall we dance?”

No one breathed. But he was too perfect—serious, gracious and so very ballroom proper. In one giant gust, the crowd exhaled a collective breath of relief and puffs of delighted laughter floated through the saffron dusk.

Even Groom Daddy, sniffing the odds, half chuckled with them. “Aww, let’s get a drink,” he barked, grabbing the guy’s neck with one arm. He raised his other arm to the bartender, hollering for a glass, and dragged the guy with him toward the bar. As he was towed off the floor, taking my place in the prison grip of Groom Daddy’s soggy embrace, my rescuer turned to look at me and winked.

Whoa. Just like a movie! I pictured a gorgeous actress lifting her chin, flashing the spectators her dazzling smile and then turning to float imperiously away. I pictured her, however, wearing a stunningly simple column of a dress and not the offensive orange pouf. I reapplied my good-sport face, thrust out my vacuum-packed marshmallows and glided off the floor, daintily twirling the delicate and apparently indestructible stem of the crystal flute.

As I cleared the dispersing crowd, my date rushed to my side. Except he wasn’t really a date. Matt was the discarded ex-fiancé of my best friend, Eva. Wounded and hurting, he’d started working on me, trying to convince me that he and I could be more than friends. I didn’t buy it. But I did—at the risk of sounding somewhat mercenary—need a date for the wedding. So there we were, not buddies, not dates. Matt took my arm and leaned to whisper in my ear. Solicitous murmurings? Embarrassed apologies?

“Dylan,” he said, “you could see everything!” I cut my eyes at him and gave him my look.

“Your thong!” he groaned and peered anxiously around him to see who was watching us. Everybody.

Thong? My little peach lace thong? A hollow spot began to grow in my stomach. Oh, God! It must have been when I was hanging upside down and my leg flew up in the air. What did a thong look like from that angle? I winced. No wonder everyone was staring. The hollow place turned into a knot. I widened my eyes, trying to blink away the sting of tears. Because I never cried anymore. Ever.

I took a big breath, and…There was the guy, looking right at me, all the way across the dance floor, held captive at the bar, paying too steep a price for his gallantry. A humid hug. Another toast. And Groom Daddy roared, “To the tango, to beautiful girls, to cham-pagne!”

I looked at my rescuer. Who was this guy? He seemed fairly standard-issue. Maybe late-twenties or thirty. Hard to tell. Really tall but otherwise pretty ordinary. Definitely not a hunk, but not bad, either. Right then he had hug-rumpled brown hair. It’s too long. Or maybe not…Yeah, no, it’s too long. And long legs. Not too long, though, just long. And a dark tan. In October? Probably looks better wearing jeans and a T-shirt than that dark suit. Then I looked at his eyes, his midnight-black eyes and it was as if he was standing a foot away. I felt a zap, a physical jolt. The skin all over my body shrank up and I could feel him, feel the change in the ions between us. I stood there gawking. I just hoped my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

Then he grinned.

I forgot all about the upside-down thong, turned and handed my champagne flute to my erstwhile date, gave him a tiny smile and walked straight back into Groom Daddy hell to meet the guy.

2

WHAT WAS IT about an honest-to-God rescue? I swear I would have swooned if I’d been the type. I saw myself—in the movie star’s sleek column of a dress—weaving my way across the crowded floor. In my head, no one leered. People smiled and moved aside.

It wasn’t just me. We all wanted that perfect someone to waltz—or, even better, tango!—in and deliver us from our dreary, boring, ordinary lives. Someone to save us from ourselves. We’ve watched Pretty Woman, seen the tender young thing being saved by a handsome, rich, charming, intelligent man—in a limo, no less—and we’ve said, “Right there! That’s exactly what we want.”

I don’t think we were brainwashed by the perfect Hollywood story, though. I think we inherited the want from the cave ladies, as with our good eye for color and great gathering skills. I figure the only cave women who survived long enough to produce offspring were the ones who got rescued on a regular basis, it being tricky to run from a saber-tooth while pregnant. We’ve got a genetically patterned appreciation of the whole rescue business.

If you thought about it, though, it wasn’t enough to be rescued. There was that part about the rescuer being handsome, rich, charming and intelligent. We wanted that, too, please. Liberation be damned, we’d like the whole hunky package.

Actually, that’s not quite right, not for all of us. Not for the Diamond Girls. Their definition of happiness had that overriding mathematical bias: perfect someone = rich guy. It seemed the rich part of the fantasy was an adequate substitution for the handsome, charming and intelligent parts. Or maybe more accurately: rich = handsome, charming and intelligent. Automatically.

Not me. I was looking for someone to capture my imagination, to ignite me, to complete me in every way. Mind. Body. Soul. For me perfect guy = soul mate. Tragically, the soul mate had proven to be a lot tougher to find than a diamond.

But now I’d been rescued. In real life. My heart lurched up in my throat and I could feel a silky dampness in my thong. Dylan! Do not think about the thong!

The guy met me halfway across the dance floor, having taken advantage of the momentary distraction of a passing hors d’oeuvre tray to deliver a good-old-boy whack to Groom Daddy’s back, bark a fond farewell and then half sprint away. It had worked. I could see Groom Daddy leaving the bar, storming up the hill toward the luncheon tent, hunting for less agile prey.

The guy walked me through the dancers to an empty corner at the dance floor’s edge.

“Thanks doesn’t quite cover it,” I purred as I tried to arrange myself back into bridesmaid propriety. I made a swipe at my forehead, repositioning wanton curls, brushing sweat salt from my hairline—probably Groom Daddy’s…Yuck—and wiping away any mascara tracks running up my forehead. All with—I hoped—one casually elegant stroke.

“Yeah, you looked like you could use a break out there,” he said, turning to face me, still grinning out of the corner of his mouth, a mouth just bold-ass begging for kisses. “You’re Dylan, right? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Brad. Brad Davis.”

I’d like to say that I believed in love at first sight. It kind of went with the whole soul mate thing: when you meet him, you will know. I was sure that’s the way it would be. But if I’m truthful with myself, I don’t think I was thinking right then about love or sight or souls or anything else. I wasn’t thinking; I was on fire. Consumed. That was not an everyday occurrence for me. I was usually quite calm. Other girls could go on and on about a guy’s this or that—his lips or abs or some damn thing. Blah, blah. I never got it. To me, a mouth was a mouth, like a knee was a knee. I was an eye chick. I didn’t have a color preference as long as they were deep, soulful and carried thoughts without words. Eyes spoke to me.

But here was this crooked smile. Lips you could take a nap on, lips that could undo buttons…And then his name wormed its way into my thinking brain. “No!” It was a yelp.

“‘Scuse me?” he asked at the damsel’s ungrateful response.

“The Brad Davis? Brad Davis of Dallas?”

“Well, not the Brad Davis. There’s prob’ly more of us up there, if that makes you feel any better. But—” he flicked his hand in the direction of a group of my guy friends standing now at the bar, all sporting goofy smiles as they watched us “—we do seem to have some of the same friends.”

Damn. I’d been avoiding this guy forever. There I was thinking about hot lips and they belonged to Brad you-two-would-be-just-perfect-together Davis, the blind date I was never going to have. My guy friends were always trying to set me up with him. Poor old Dylan. And they knew I didn’t do blind dates anymore. I’d eventually figured it out that lonesome was loads better than loathsome.

“But,” they said, “you’d love Brad. Y’all would be great together.” I knew what they meant by that. They loved Brad. All of them. He was a man’s guy. All rough and tumble, dirty fingernails from fixing stuff and not very successful. Not the kind of guy who would threaten their egos, but good to hang out with, good to hunt with or bowl with or some damn thing. Perfect for good, old low-maintenance me. It made me mad that they’d think I’d want someone like that. He didn’t even live in Austin, but up in Dallas. On top of every other bad thing, he was G.U. Geographically undesirable. Hardly Mr. Perfect.

And here he was, in all his glory. Manly Man himself.

“Oh, um, sorry. I, uh, just wasn’t expecting…Well, I mean I’d heard about Brad Davis and thought…” Get a grip! I grimaced at him and extended my hand, intending to introduce myself.

Instead, he took my hand in both of his and held it. His hands were strong and hard. Not gravelly like sandpaper, though. Smooth and tough. More like an old shoe. Ooh, romantic. At least his nails were clean. “You’re not exactly what I pictured, either. Lemme see. Shapeless clothes, thick glasses. Long stringy hair. Earnest and a little intense.”

I pulled my hand back with a jerk. “They said that?” “Nah.” He laughed as he lifted my hand again, pretending to study my palm. “They said I’d love you. A free spirit. Said you’d be purrrfect for me.”

“So why stringy hair and shapeless clothes?” I asked, but I knew. It was the usual response to my name. I’d been born in ’79, aka the reckless years of my mother’s life. Her decade of free love, peace and the noble, all-consuming quest for self. She’d named me in one of those classic flashes of seventies free thinking. An innocent act of whimsy and she’d guaranteed—for my entire life—that complete strangers would feel compelled to hunch up their shoulders, squint at me knowingly and exclaim, “Your folks were hippies, right?” I quit answering. The truth was I didn’t know. When I was little, I’d once asked my mother if we were hippies.

“Hippies?” she’d giggled, rolling her eyes. “Dylan! Nobody’s ever called themselves a hippie. They might say, ‘I’m into peace’ or ‘I seek enlightenment.’ But—” She stopped and balanced on one leg with her other foot pressed into the knee. She tilted her head to her shoulder, put on a dopey face and raised four fingers in twin peace signs. “Oh, wow,” she droned. “I’m a hippie.” Then she unwound, laughing her luscious laugh and dropped down so she’d be right at eye-level with me. “Dylan, love, ‘hippie’ is a word used by people on the outside.”

I didn’t ask again.

Over the years I’d tried out different responses to the hippie question, trying to discover the one that most effectively discouraged further inquiry. I’d abandoned the humiliated silence that I’d used in elementary school when the Jennifers and Ericas first heard my name and sang, “Sky-dle is a hippie. Sky-dle is a hippie.” Outsiders, I thought. By the time I was in college I was affecting a world-weary shrug and an ironic grin anytime anyone brought it up. But no response had been half as effective as my latest reply, which not only halts the line of questioning, but usually puts an abrupt end to all further conversation. “Oh, no!” I say, fixing them with my best wide-eyed gaze. “We’re from New Mexico.” The question marks form in a bubble above their heads as I make my escape.

Brad kept his head tilted down, peered at me from under his eyebrows and grinned. He looked quite guilty. And sooo fine.

“It’s my name, right?” I asked him.

He didn’t say anything. I could tell he wasn’t about to get tricked into saying something wrong. He was probably thinking this was a hot spot. Guys are never really sure where the land mines are so they try to be really careful to avoid setting one off accidentally. At least in the beginning, they try.

But I had no hot spots. Not anymore. Just lots of little frozen places. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my own fake ID, my camouflage. I love my name.” And just how dumb did that sound?

“Me, too,” he said with not a hint of irony. “Dylan’s great.”

Now what? I was stuck to the spot. Manly Man appeared to possess some kind of magnet, an intense gravitational pull. I couldn’t budge. It always took me a while to get a rhythm going when I was first talking to a guy, even one I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be talking to. Or maybe especially then. I just knew I was a whole lot easier with a breezy tempo. I made a stab at it. “I guess I should properly introduce myself. Glad to meet you, Brad Davis. Sky Dylan Stone,” I announced, turning my hand into his palm for a shot at a breezy handshake. “Sky with no cute little ‘e’ on the end.”

“Sky Dylan Stone.” He rolled it around on his tongue, tasting it and laughing at the same time. I watched his mouth as he said it. All other issues aside, it really was an incredible mouth. It was saying now, “Where’d it come from? Your name.”

I took my hand back and looked away from his lips, off to the side. So I could concentrate. “Who knows?” I shrugged. “My mom’s been typically vague on that point.” I laughed a little then, thinking about it, about her, seeing her again in my head.

“Oh, I don’t know, Dylan,” she’d said, laughing, when I’d asked about my name. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which was her favorite explanation for the stuff she did back then, her only excuse for the reckless years.

I put her away and looked back at him, smiling, plunging ahead with my breezy tone. “She said the Dylan part came from Bob Dylan. She and my dad really loved that old guy. Still do.” And God knows, it could have been worse. She liked Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin a lot, too. Or, heaven forbid, Roy Orbison. I could just hear her. “Well, Orbison, darling, what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It’s not so bad,” I continued, “I like Dylan’s songs okay—well, the words to his songs. I think his voice must be an acquired taste.” I saw my mom again, thirty-some years ago, in halter top and hip huggers, hair to her waist parted straight down the middle, acquiring a taste for Dylan with a bong and a beanbag chair. “Anyway,” I breezed on, “Nobody calls me Sky, except my grandma. Thank goodness. I’ve been Dylan since birth.” I stopped, suddenly aware of the important distinction between breezy and windy, not even sure which parts I’d said aloud. “It suits me just fine,” I mumbled, puttering down to a halt.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Kinda no-nonsense and poetic both.”

Ooh. I liked that. I stared at his mouth again.

“But Sky…” He let the thought trail. “Sky’s magic. Sky…just floats off your tongue.”

I shouldn’t have been looking at his mouth. I flushed red at the image. It’s okay to be a visual person if your visions don’t play out on your face for the whole damn world to witness. I pictured myself, legs dangling, head and arms thrown back, floating off his tongue. I blushed.

“So…no more images of shapeless clothes and stringy hair?” I croaked, probably sounding way too earnest and intense.

His look took in the straying curls and vacuum packaging. “No, no. Sorry about that. It’s just that I quit trusting my friends ever since they hooked me up with that Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleader who was uncomfortable with silence. Hell, my ears are still throbbin’. But now it’s your turn. You tell me. How’d ya have me pictured?”

Lord. That smile again. He could have been talking about worm farms for all I cared. I didn’t answer. I was thinking that this was what a heart-melting grin must look like. A true Texas-boy smile. Impossible not to get pulled in. That was the magnet. The beautiful teeth, those fantasy lips, the smile that tugged over too far to the right. It made you want to stick around, hang out. Maybe I could learn to like bowling.

“Dylan?” he coaxed, eyebrows up.

I forced myself to look up at his eyes, or at least his eye. I could never look at both of someone’s eyes at the same time without mine crossing. I just picked one and stared at it. Come to think of it, the saying is “look him in the eye” so maybe everyone does that. I like it when I find evidence that I’m not totally weird.

His eye was pirate black. I could hardly even see the pupil. I looked right at the bridge of his nose to see both of them at once. They were so, so dark, not dazzling like his mouth, but deep and unreadable. I wondered what our children would look like. Stop it, I ordered.

His question had hung in the air too long; I decided not to answer. I gazed back at him, smiling my version of Mona Lisa’s smile. Then I had this image of a baby smiling when you don’t know if it’s grinning or having gas and decided to just plain smile. I felt the heat in my body, wanted him to touch me again. The quiet hung between us but it didn’t worry me. It was a good thing. Unlike Chatty Cheerleader, Silence would be my friend.

He read the vibes, stepped closer and took my hand again, holding it to his chest, cupped loosely in his. “You wanna go somewhere?” he asked in a kind of croaky whisper. “Now?” If this had been a movie, he would have said, “Let’s get out of here.” He was good in this new role, husky voice and all. I knew he knew the effect he had, knew he did it on purpose. He was too close. I wanted to step back, get a little space, but he’d tightened his grip on my hand and I’d have had to yank it to get it loose. I willed myself still and tried to read the vibes, tried to get a sign from those night-black eyes.

And then, pop! The bubble burst. My mom always said I got too tangled up in my own antennae. I felt myself spiraling into rapid cool-down, getting uncomfortable, antsy. I looked around to see if I could see my date, see if maybe he’d like to take another stab at a rescue. He was gone.

I shook my head, telling Brad, no, sorry, no, I was busy. That’s what I said to guys who made me nervous. But this time it was true. Somewhere out there I had a date, a date anxious to relive my special moments of humiliation on the dance floor.

“Come on. Just coffee. I’d like to get on out of here. I’ve enjoyed about all I can stand of the funny looks.” He tilted his head at the people walking by, sneaking peeks. I’d been in my own world, thought we were alone. “How about it? We leave now, you’d have time for just a little coffee. Yes?” He stepped back, turned down the heat and cranked up the sunbeam. It looked like it came from inside, way deep down inside.

And I could feel the pull again, tugging. No way, Dylan. Magnet Man’s a player. A rough-edged, hard-handed player. A noncandidate. I looked away from him, still shaking my head a little, and tried to go through my usual list, those things that I absolutely required in potential candidates. The list I used to talk myself out of guys. Except I couldn’t focus. I just knew that he wasn’t shorter than me and that he wasn’t dumb—that was a guess. It was hard to tell with all those long drawn-out Texas vowels.

I couldn’t seem to help it, flopping around from flame to ice to fire again. My friends said I did it so I could stay safe, keep guys from getting too close. But it wasn’t that. It was just that I was looking for the right guy. A real guy. Someone I could count on.

It took such a leap of faith.

But here was this guy with the sunshine smile, a guy who made my heart flip and my toes curl. This time I needed to get brave enough to jump. Except my feet were nailed to the floor.

3

BY THE NIGHT of number eleven I’d already had a thousand first dates. Let me make sure that’s right. Let’s see, a thousand first dates calculates out to about a hundred and eleven first dates every year since my first soul-shriveling date with Cal Richardson when I was fifteen. That would mean at least two first-dates every single weekend for the past nine years…Okay, no, not a thousand, then. But however many there had been, I had a tight, blue rubber band around my heart from each one of those disasters. Pity I couldn’t just look inside and count the bands. Like rings on a tree.

Sadly, my second dates numbered somewhat less. Like maybe ten. Steady, long-term relationships had not been my specialty.

If somebody else told me that about themselves, I’d guess the problem was something subtle, not immediately apparent. Like maybe misplaced nipples or braided nose hair. So what was it with me? My super-helpful friends had offered their theories: I was too cautious, I was scared of being left, yada, yada, yada. I had no idea what the problem was, either, but I did wonder why I kept trying. ’Cause it kept getting harder.

Cal Richardson was my first first date. Cal was fairly typical of the guys at my high school—walking hormones with lips. I was so flattered that Cal-oh-my-God-Richardson had asked me out that I floated on air the week before the big date. My feet didn’t once touch the ground from the time he called until the disastrous end of the date when I had to put one foot in front of the other as I stumbled to a pay phone to call my mom to come get me. I went out with Cal because he was gorgeous, intelligent and had crystal blue eyes. Cal went out with me to see if my boobs were real. Apparently he and his jock friends were unaware of the phenomenon of girls maturing suddenly and dramatically over the few months of summer vacation. They nicknamed me Mammy, short for mammary. It stuck for a long, long time. And, okay, I’m not going to think about that anymore.

The day of number eleven, I’d already had one thousand and one and counting first dates—okay, really, some-big-number-less-than-a-thousand plus one with Matt. The guy who wanted to be friendlier than friends. The guy who didn’t rescue me. A perfect Dylan-style first date. And like so many before it, a date that would have no second date follow-up.

So there I was, searching the reception for Matt, Dr. Nice Guy, trying to think what excuse I’d give for dumping him and running off with Brad the Magnet. Because that’s what I was going to do. While I’d been shaking my head “no,” feet firmly nailed, I’d started thinking about Brad standing on the dance floor, asking Groom Daddy to dance, heels together, arms extended. My last head shake kind of morphed into a nod, and I heard myself saying, “Yeah, okay, I guess.” I tried not to feel that sizzle of fear in my veins after opening myself up like that. I smoothed my face into complacency so he wouldn’t think I was flaky, or rather, wouldn’t know that I was.

As I looked for Matt, my head kept asking me, How are you gonna pull this one off? Without lying? And then he found me.

“Dyl, are you okay? You want to go home?” he asked, putting his arm around my shoulders as though he was protecting me from physical blows, not just more prurient stares. I saw again what they’d seen, an upside down me, leg waving in the breeze. Stop thinking about it! I snuck a peek at Matt. There was no anger evident in him, no sign he was bothered that I’d run off to talk to Brad. Matt and I had been friends a long time. Of course he’d understand. Matt was a practical guy. And careful. If Matt were a girl, his name would be Prudence.

“Yeah, I guess maybe I do.” I sounded fairly pitiful. Poor Dylan, ready to go home and lick her wounds. Liar!

“You want me to drive you? We could always come back and get your car tomorrow.” We each had our own cars because I’d spent the night before at the bride’s house, playing lady-in-waiting. Is there just no end to bridesmaid fun?

So there was Prudence, the most serious, dependable guy on earth, caring about me. I hated myself. But apparently not enough to find my way back to the path of righteousness. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine.” I stared at the grass, avoiding his eyes.

“Are you sure?” he asked, turning to look at my face.

By now I’m thinking, Yes, already! “I’m sure. Really.” We went back and forth a few more times. He seemed truly, genuinely concerned. But it came down to this: I couldn’t stand not being with Brad more than I could stand being deceitful to Matt. Where was the guarded Dylan I used to know?

Meanwhile, my second first date that day had already been arranged. The Magnet had agreed to meet me at Skinny’s after I’d extricated myself from the festivities. We both knew that would take some time. I was in the bridal party, after all.

I was home in twenty minutes. I’d no sooner gotten the words “better go” out of my mouth than the bride had me air-kissed, hugged and sent me on my way to the parking area with an escort. I felt like a fart being fanned out of the room with a towel. I knew the entire Groom Daddy incident would be all my fault!

The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door to my little detached apartment. I kicked off the satin pumps and ran to answer it, guilt propelling me forward, knowing for sure it was Matt, dear Prudence, calling to make sure I was okay. All the way home, I’d been feeling kind of heartsick about the whole thing. I’d messed up again. Why, Dylan? Why run from such a decent guy as Matt? And to what? A good-ol-boy chick magnet? G.U., financially U., and—if I had to venture a guess—commitment challenged to boot.

I held on to the wall, did a quick spin around the corner on the hardwood floors, was almost to the phone in the kitchen, when wham! I tripped right over the top of my oversize chocolate Lab bounding around the corner from the other way. Guinness was always late, a burglar alarm on a sixty-second delay. I actually felt myself horizontally airborne a blink before I crashed to the floor.

The orange pouf, with all its unflattering layers of tulle underskirts, saved me, cushioning the blow. “See,” I could hear my sunny-side-up mom say as my knees banged into the floor, “Nothing’s all bad.” Not true. The pouf was bad, all bad.

The phone was still ringing. I’d programmed my answering machine to pick up after nine rings. It helped eliminate all but the most ardent of callers. How many is that? I couldn’t say; I’d lost count while falling. Hang on, Matt, I’m coming. I crawled on stinging knees over to the counter, fighting the dress every tangled-up inch of the way.

guilt = incredible motivator

I reached up to the counter and grabbed the phone. “Hello?” I didn’t sound half-bad…considering.

“Hello, little one,” my grandma sang out of the earpiece.

I adored my grandma. I can’t think of a time when I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to her. Except maybe right then. It took me a second to switch gears, to turn off all the what-am-I-going-to-say buzz whizzing around in my head. Maybe it was a good thing, though, that it wasn’t Prudence. The whizzing hadn’t come up with anything.

“Grandma Frank!” I sang back, trying to sound easy, relaxed. I didn’t want to get into it right then, to try to explain my situation to her. First, I had to explain it to me.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. I should have known. Grandma Frank could read vibes before they happened.

“Nothing, Grandma. I just tripped over Guinness and I’m really in a hurry. That’s all,” I said. It was the truth. I had another first date to screw up.

“Speak quickly, then.”

“There’s nothing. Really. At all. Nothing’s the matter.” How lame was that? I didn’t even believe me.

“And the truth is…?” she asked, patiently.

Grandma Frank was my mom’s mom. She lived in a rambling old adobe in Socorro, a dusty little town in the center of New Mexico, famous for its green chile burgers and for having the most powerful radio telescope in the world. Grandma Frank was eighty, lived alone, wove expensive hand-dyed shawls on giant looms, read people’s minds and occasionally answered the door to her little hacienda stark naked—spare yourself, don’t visualize it. And she was the stable one in my family.

“I don’t know, Grandma Frank,” I said, sighing, giving up, letting her suck me in. “Maybe you could tell me. Because I can’t seem to figure it out.”

“You have a date tonight.” She didn’t ask it like a question. She already knew. “That’s good? You’re pleased?”

“Well, it’s not really a date. A date is something you plan. In advance. This is more like a—”

“Sky, darling,” she interrupted. I loved it that she called me that. It meant I was someone else in Grandma-world. “Maybe you’re too rational,” she said, chuckling to herself. “It’s important also to listen to your heart.”

“Yeah? What? And end up like my mom?” I asked her, sounding a little harder than I’d intended.

“But your mother’s very happy.”

“Yeah.” I tried laughing but it came out like a snort. Note to self: You might want to work on that ironic laugh. “She makes damn sure of that. Nothing else matters. If happiness was a church, she’d be kneeling at the altar.”

It sounded so harsh in my head when I did the instant replay. Wow, Dylan, I thought. Where’d that come from?

“From deep inside,” my grandma said. “Sometimes it’s good to hear what you think. Helps you decide if it’s true. Happiness is good, too, Sky.” She continued speaking, not waiting for my comment. Or maybe not wanting to risk another snort. “What is it going to take to make you happy?”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I did. Someone who would always be there. With or without the diamonds.

“Ah, yes, if only it were that easy,” she whispered. “You go now. You’re in a hurry. I love you.” Then she was gone.

The wood floor was hurting my knees. I settled onto my butt. The bridesmaid dress puffed up in front like a just-landed parachute. Guinness came and sat on his haunches beside me. Maybe I wouldn’t go, instead just stay here with Guinness, in my hideout, where things were uncomplicated and I was safe. I put my head against his. “No offense, Guinness, but I like it that you’re so simple.” He jerked away. Offense apparently taken.

I took his big head in my hands and looked him right in the eye. “So, my little pet,” I told him nose-to-wet-nose. “What’s it going to take to make you happy?”

Guinness stuck out his tongue and gave me an enormous Lab-kiss. And then couldn’t stop because, slurp-slurp-slurp, Groom Daddy sweat was too yummy to resist.

4

I’D BEEN LATE getting to Skinny’s. With all that time to spare I’d still managed not to make it on time. No wonder we drove guys crazy! I’d felt better after my talk with Guinness, had taken a quick shower and raced around my apartment trying on different outfits. Good thing my roommate, Andie, hadn’t made it home from the wedding yet, to delay me even more, asking a billion questions I couldn’t answer. I did have to keep stopping to explain to Guinness that we weren’t playing fetch. But that wasn’t why I was late. I’d felt so relaxed in my jeans, short sweater and favorite tennies—really, for the first time in ages—that I’d decided to walk down the long hill from my apartment to the coffee shop instead of driving. Or maybe I was stalling. I never know with me.

Brad was still wearing his suit pants and dress shirt, but he’d pulled off his tie, undone the strangle button on his shirt and rolled up the sleeves a couple of turns. One yummy look.

He was waiting for me in the parking lot, leaning against his old, faded-blue BMW and looking out over Lake Austin, that lengthy stretch of the Colorado River where they’ve dammed it up on the West side of town. I could feel the lick of the flames again as I walked up to those long, long legs. Brad pushed himself off the car—no hands, just legs—told me I looked great and kissed my cheek. There were those lips again, wrapped around the off-center smile. Matt who?

Skinny’s was a big deal to me, my wild life refuge, a place I went by myself not to be lonely. And I never shared it with people who wouldn’t be good to run into at a ragged three in the morning or at ten o’clock on a dateless Saturday night. Brad lived in Dallas, which made him pretty safe.

“Hey, thanks again for the rescue,” I said to fill the silence while we were waiting in line, perusing the pastry case. “I’d been about to do something dire.” It came out breathless. Maybe because of the gravitational pull.

“My pleasure,” Mr. Magnet replied. I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m not really all that fond of bullies.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I answered, witty conversationalist that I am, apparently out of brains as well as breath.

And that was the end of that conversation volley. The quiet grew so thick, it was like having another person there. Then I remembered what Brad had said about Chatty Cheerleader and my vow that Silence was my new best friend. She inched forward in line beside us.

I looked back over my shoulder at him. He stepped closer and smiled. I started rationalizing—we excel at that in my family. Really, Dallas and Austin weren’t all that far apart, less than an hour away on Southwest Airlines. By car, they were hooked together with a straight, flat, slice of the same freeway that linked Mexico to Canada. You just got in the left-hand lane of I-35, set the cruise control for 84 miles per hour, leaned back and prayed. And there was a lot of interface between the people in the two cities. That’s what Brad and I could do, interface.

We moved ahead one half step. Skinny’s was quintessential Austin. Besides the best coffee, Skinny’s could claim the most sinfully decadent desserts on earth. The owner had the genius idea of hiring two pastry chefs: one French pâtissier and one local Austin guy, each to create their own desserts. Hot-blooded sparring between the two had given birth to such creations as Mocha-Morning Blossoms and The Czar’s Chocolate Clouds, Aphrodite’s Cream Puffs and, my favorite, Cupid’s Toes in Cocoa Sauce. Skinny’s wasn’t very big and sometimes the cozy little rooms with the overstuffed chairs weren’t enough to hold the multitudes that crowded there after movies and night classes and on weekends. It didn’t matter. There was always space. Outside, on both sides of the little shop, were acres—okay, maybe not acres—of wood decking, at different levels. On mild nights, like that night in October, you could take your Cupid’s Toes, find a private little world at a table under a gas lamp and contemplate life, talk or just sit there and watch the boats putter by on the lake.

We waited until we’d finally gotten our coffees and cakes, found a secluded table outside and sat down across from each other before we said anything more. “Sorry I let it go on so long. It took me a while to come up with a plan,” he chuckled. I could see him remembering. I hoped he’d had the face view.

“Well, it was perfect and I thank you.” It had come out like a coo. As though I was saying, “Oh, you’re so big and strong…and poor little me.” Except I’m not a very good cooer; I run out of pucker too fast. “You were there on the groom’s side?”

“Yeah, roommates at U.T. Used to play squash, have a beer together whenever I was in town. Good guy. Or he was,” he said wistfully.

“Married, remember?” I reminded him. “Not deceased.” “Well, I haven’t seen him once since she got her princess-cut boulder. Think she’ll let him out now?”

Good point. End of another conversation volley. Dylan: 0.

It was Brad’s serve. Silence sat down, hung around, watched the boats with us. And then finally, he said, “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a bridesmaid. Certified.”

He smiled his smile. Thank goodness. When you joke around as much as I do, you have a better-than-even chance of a flop. “Full-time?” he asked, eyebrows up.

“Nope. Believe it or not, it’s actually not much of a moneymaker. I have to sell stuff to support the habit.” I realized, all of a sudden, that I hate telling guys what I do. It was one of those midchat epiphanies I get sometimes. And midchat, I started to wonder why.

“Like what stuff?”

“Services.” It wasn’t the job I hated, so much. I was new at it but that wasn’t it. The real problem was trying to explain my industry to people who had no idea what the whole thing was about. It could get painful. They usually ended up saying something like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

“Are you makin’ me guess or somethin’? All right…I know. Wedding services? No, no. I got it. Dance lessons.”

At least he didn’t say peep show. “Professional.” Now comes the painful part.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Um…professional services.”

“Yes, Dylan, I got that part,” he laughed. “What…kind of…professional…services?” His slow Texas syllables got even slower. As though I was deaf. Or really stupid.

I didn’t want to get into all this. I wanted us to be on the same page. I can’t believe I said that. I hate that stupid expression. But I knew Manly Man wasn’t going to know about all this stuff and it was going to get embarrassing. For both of us. “How do you like Cupid’s Toes?” I asked.

One eyebrow shot up. I’d kill to be able to do that. Maybe I should start interpreting his eyebrows instead of his eyes.

“Your little cakes,” I answered the eyebrow.

“Dylan,” he said with a big, exasperated sigh. “This is real painful. Are you gonna tell me what you do or not?”

“I sell professional services. B-to-B. Um, that’s business-to-business—Internet logistics, human contact technologies. Stuff like collaborative browsing.” I waited for the zone-out.

“What? Like e-Boost?”

Okay, maybe someone else could have seen that coming. If I’d had any fillings, he’d have had a great view. It took me a while to get my jaw back in its socket. “That’s my company,” I said with a big, old, toothy grin. In the collaborative browsing world, happiness is being on the same page.

“Sales, huh? Seems like I’m remembering somebody told me you were a programmer or analyst. Designer or something like that. Something super…nerdy.” He gave me one of his scrumptious grins so I wouldn’t be offended. I pursed my lips and pretended to consider it. But I was really just thinking about his mouth.

And then I got the uneasy feeling that maybe he knew more about me than I knew about him. Like maybe that’s where he’d gotten the idea about thick glasses and stringy hair. Another midchat epiphany: Duh, Dylan. It’s the job, not the name. Damn. I’d rattled on about my name for no reason. Talk about paranoid. Get over the name thing, Dylan. Lots of people have weird names—Pawnee, Breeze Zed, not to mention Keanu and…Rats! What had my friends said about him? I couldn’t recall. Did he really bowl and skin opossums and pick his teeth with a knife? No clue.

He was waiting with Silence.

“Yeah, I was. All of the above. Except for the part about being nerdy.” I gave him a little stink eye for that. “In the business, we prefer to call it technical,” I informed him. He kept grinning at me, enjoying himself. “But I decided to get into sales instead. Something opened up and I went for it.”

“Why?” he asked.

I had to think a little about what to say in response. There was no way I was going to tell him the real reason.

“Money?” he guessed, while I was doing my pondering.

“No, not really.” I mumbled it.

“Did you like your job, like being…technical?” he asked. “Yeah. I did. It’s who I am.”

“Then why?” He really wanted to know. This was one of those first-date tests, I could tell. What if I did switch for the money, was he going to think less of me? Probably. And why did I care what he thought? Because I did. For some dumb reason, I cared a lot. And why do you suppose that is, Dylan? I asked myself. Because, I answered a bit testily, gravity is one hell of a force to resist, that’s why.

“If I tell you, could we talk about you for a while?” “Sure, if you want. Not much to tell.”

“Deal,” I said. “But you’re going to be sorry you asked, and, okay, here it is. I got out of development because I have a good friend, Rex, who’s one of the best technical guys I’ve ever seen and we were talking one day and he said if I wanted to be really good at it—I mean, really, really good—then I’d have to turn off certain areas of my brain so that more blood could flow to other parts, the analytical ones.”

His left eyebrow rose slowly toward his hairline.

I ignored it, took a breath and pushed on. “And the parts Rex was talking about shutting off were the social parts, the parts that care about other things besides geeky stuff, the parts that make normal people different from techies. I thought a lot about what Rex had said and I knew what he meant. And also knew he was right. But I couldn’t do it, didn’t want to do it—I like those social parts—so I got out.”

Both eyebrows were up. He just sat there looking pleased.

It was essentially the truth. My decision had been only a little bit about the money. Okay, maybe more than a little bit. But did I pass his test? I wanted to pass. I could tell he was getting ready to follow up with a whole barrage of other questions. I’d never been with a guy who wanted to talk about me so much. You think that’s what you want, what’ll make you really happy, but then it happens and it’s sort of weird. I cut him off before he could launch them. “Okay. It’s your turn. How did you know about e-Boost?”

I could see him switching gears. Whatever he was going to say about my career strategy, he let it go. “A while back I was considering contracting with them. But—” he took a breath and tried to make his voice small “—‘Y’all are tooo ‘spensive,’ as my little sister would say.”

What a tempting serving of data that was, all piled up and steaming on the output platter. It looked as if Silence was going to be gone for a while. Which tidbit to munch on first, family or job? I’m a sucker for kids. “You have a little sister, too? How old?”

“Four. She’s my half sister. Emily. She’s my dad’s kid with his new wife. But, man, she’s a great little kid.” His grin got even bigger, if that’s possible. Or maybe it got less lopsided.

More data. My mom always said to avoid relationships with men from broken homes. This from a woman who’d busted up at least three.

“We’re not allowed to say that,” I told him.

“Which?” he asked.

“Half. I have a half sister, too, but my mom turns purple if anyone says that. ‘There are no half people in my house.’” I did a pretty good impersonation of her.

“Hey, I agree with that. Emily’s my sister. She calls me bro. So you got any others? Halves or steps or…half steps?”

I thought we were going to talk about him. How did we get down in this Dumpster so quick? It was one of the few situations where I followed my mom’s advice. “Avoid revealing the details,” she always said, “until they’re hopelessly in love and less likely to bolt.”

But it was getting embarrassing avoiding his questions. I opted for a quick, emotionless inventory. Be honest, be light, get it over with. “Yeah, I’ve got a few. Let’s see—one current stepfather, one current stepmother, four ex-stepmothers who each had a kid, so three ex-stepsisters and one exstepbrother, three ex-stepfathers, so add one more exstepbrother, one half sister—no make that one real sister who had a different dad—and one real brother who has a really different dad. Is that right? No, sorry. Only three step-fathers, total. She didn’t marry Asia’s dad.”

I’d caught him midbite. He didn’t react or say anything, just sat there slowly chewing the little cocoa-dipped toes, watching me. His eyes scanned mine, then my mouth, my forehead, down again to my mouth. He swallowed, took a sip of coffee, swallowed that, eyes studying me the whole time.

What? That was supposed to be light. What would he have done if I’d gone into some of the nauseating details? Bolt?

I’d sure been wrong about one thing: Silence was back, filling the space. Boats floated by, people at the other tables talked and laughed and no one at this table made a sound.

Then a picture of Dr. Matt Sears, erstwhile wedding date, popped into my head. I saw him like one of those white mannequins in the window of some posh store, wearing nice shoes.

“Hi,” a voice said before he appeared. “I thought I’d find you here.” And his Cole Haan loafers stepped into our silent little world under the gas lamp.

“Hey, Matt,” I said, looking up at him and smiling, and willed myself physically out of the equation. Whatever happened next, I wasn’t going to be one of the parameters.

Matt put out his you-could-have-been-a-surgeon hand and said, “Hi. Matt Sears. And you must be the White Knight.”

Brad beamed his smile in Matt’s direction, stood and introduced himself. We were all just so happy to be there.

I was left looking at trouser flies. We don’t like to do that nearly as much as guys think. Eyes, I liked gazing at eyes. I moved over on my bench to make room for Prudence. “All right,” I said. “Everybody sit. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

Brad said, “Yes, ma’am,” and sat.

Matt watched Brad sit and then looked back at me, amused. “No, thanks, Dyl. I was just dropping this by your house. Your Jeep was there and you weren’t so I figured you’d be here.” He handed me a white napkin. “I’ll see you guys later. Nice meeting you, Brad.” Prudence was always nice. Super nice.

Brad raised that eyebrow of his. “Dill? Like pickle?” I shrugged, thinking about the napkin and what was inside.

We stared at each other a minute and then I unwrapped it. A champagne glass. I set it on the table between us.

“Oh,” I said. That was a loaded “oh,” meaning, “What in hell?”

“A souvenir,” Brad answered.

“Oh.” This time I meant “Souvenir of what? Me leaving with another guy?”

“Or,” Brad suggested, “it was an excuse to come see you tonight.”

No comment. I was visualizing Matt walking back to his car alone, head down, shoulders slumped. One of those sad country songs playing in the background. This was Austin, so the singer would be Willie Nelson. I didn’t exactly know any of the words to his songs, but probably he’d be singing something about hell is having a heart in this heartless old world.

“Who is Matt?”

“A friend.”

He looked at my eyes a minute. One at a time, back and forth. “And who is Asia?”

I laughed. Because it was good to not be talking about Prudence. I’d been holding the guilt off, but just barely, and my wrists were getting tired. “Asia is my sister. My beautiful, mysterious, little sister. Asia Cézanne McKay.”

“Man, I love these names. What’s your little brother’s name?” Jeez, he’d heard that part, too.

“Greyson. Greyson Carter McKay. We call him Grey.” His lips worked their way over to the right into his sexy, crooked grin. The one that showed all of his pretty white teeth. I may have mentioned it…

“Their last names are both McKay? I thought you said they had different dads.”

“Yeah, that’s right, but remember? We were talking about you and your family.”

“We were?”

We weren’t but I nodded my head.

“I got a mom who didn’t remarry, a dad who did, a stepmother a couple years younger than me and a real sister, Emily.”

I tried to keep my face impassive, the whole time thinking, Whoa! Younger than you? Out loud I asked, “What’s that like?” Seemed like the Magnet Man and I had some family tree mutations in common.

“Oh, you know, strange at first. But she’s a good mom to Emily and a nice tasty treat for the old man. She and I get along okay. Not too friendly, though.” He chuckled to himself, popping his eyebrows up and down. “She’s pretty hot.”

Trophy wife. Arm candy. I named her Candy Love. Man, oh, man. You just knew Candy Love was a card-carrying Diamond Girl.

“Big diamond?” I asked.

“Huge,” he answered, deadpan.

I knew it! Older = bigger. At least when it came to men and diamonds.

We sat at our little table, pleased with ourselves, as though we shared some secret or maybe an inside joke. I didn’t need my grandma’s antennae to read the vibes. He wasn’t into the whole carat thing. You could just tell. And I was grinning, letting him think we were on the same page. But I wasn’t really opposed to carats. In fact, getting some would be nice, before I was too old and wrinkly to wear them. I knew they didn’t measure love. But if love went with it, a little, itty-bitty carat—or three or five—would have been fine with me. I got squirmy then, knowing I was deceiving him by allowing him to think I was above it all. And then the air changed, the moment was gone.

Acting on some parallel cosmic impulse, we both reached for the champagne glass at the exact same time and knocked it on its side. It didn’t break. Of course not. If it could withstand Groom Daddy’s affections it could withstand anything. Brad reached for my hand with one of his and used his other one to hand me the glass. I took it but he didn’t let go and we became a completed electrical circuit. Switched on.

“You gonna keep it?” he asked, lightly rubbing my palm with his thumb, increasing the voltage.

I barely nodded.

“Good,” he whispered.

Another nod from me. What that thumb was doing to my insides!

“And, Dylan,” he said in that soft, growly voice of his. “I wanna promise you something…”

This time, I just let my eyebrows speak. Up they went.

Both of them. I sat very still, watching him across the table and holding my breath. Waiting with Silence.

“Sky Dylan Stone, I promise I, Bradley Hamilton Davis—”

Oh, nice name. But I wasn’t about to distract him.

“Also known as the Brad Davis and Brad Davis of Dallas—”

No breath would pass my lips until he finished.

“—will never, ever—” he said, dropping his voice even more, but still managing to heat up the “ever.” He paused and looked right into my eyes. Both of them. At the same time. And his thumb kept circling my palm. “—ever…call you Dill.”

I took a deep breath and looked past his upturned lips, straight into the quiet of his charcoal eyes and I felt the rubber bands around my heart begin to snap apart, one by one, and that big, hard knot inside of me start to melt away. And I fell again, for the second time that day. Crashed hard. But this time there was no puffy orange dress to break my fall.

5

WE LEFT Skinny’s in the middle of a raging electrical storm. It wasn’t the drenching kind that we usually had in Austin, with water flooding the curbs and broken tree branches dragging down the power lines. This was more like a New Mexico storm where the sky spits fire—all dry crackle and flash—and zaps until the air gets that weird, edgy feel, like impatience or maybe anticipation. That balmy, October night in Austin, it wasn’t the whole sky that flickered with fire, only the part in between us. And that part was smoking.

We worked our way up the levels of decking, past benches and tables, hand in hand, generating our own private atmosphere, making the molecules dance. It wasn’t just me; I knew that. You can’t cook up that kind of turbulence without two weather machines. We were moving slowly, savoring the suspense, and had just come upon a table in the front close to the sidewalk when I heard Matt’s voice, low and laughing. I’d know it anywhere. Matt laughs like he’s saving his energy for something else. So much for slumped shoulders and sad country songs. He was sitting with a group of people I didn’t know, mostly guys, probably some of his doctor friends. He saw me notice him and raised his glass, a no-expression expression on his face. Everyone at the table turned to look. Brad and I waved back with our un-held hands and we sizzled by without stopping. How lovely it would be, I thought, not to run into Matt anymore.

We reached Brad’s car in Skinny’s parking lot, looked at each other, smiled, and got in without saying a word, neither of us mentioning that I’d told him at the wedding that I was busy, that I had plans for the night. Silence rode in the back and stayed with us the whole two and a half seconds it took to get up the hill and around the three bends to my apartment. Okay, it took about five minutes but he was flying. I think he actually straight-lined the drive and avoided the curves altogether. Maybe not, I was afraid to look.

He parked to the side of the big house—where you have the best view of the lake—and before the engine had kachunked to a stop, his hardened hands were holding my face as if I was the most precious thing in the world and he was kissing me. And if I’d died right then at least I’d been kissed. Really kissed. Those beautiful lips came down on mine and he drank me in, as if I was water in the desert, as if he’d never drank before. His lips were so soft—but not too soft—and his tongue was pressing without being scary. His hot mouth became my world. The power of it sucked me in and sent me tumbling in the dark.

He ended that kiss with another one that was even better followed by three small kisses, little sucking pulls on my lower lip. Then his lips were gone and I just felt his strong hands on the sides of my face. I didn’t move. He leaned over and again brushed my lips with his and finally, I opened my eyes.

He fell back into his seat and looked out the windshield at the lake. There was a soft breeze messing up his hair a little. That was one of the best things about being by the water—the gentle winds. Breezes kept our little corner of Austin from having that help-me-Jesus-I-can’t-breathe sauna-feel you get in the other parts of the city. I could see the heave of his chest, as though he’d just run up the hill instead of flying. I put my hand there to feel the rise and fall and he covered it with his, closed his eyes and smiled.

The crunch of tires on gravel chased away Silence as Andie pulled up in her little red Miata. If she saw us sitting there in Brad’s car, she gave no sign. I watched her jump out of the car, gathering the pale blue bridesmaid dress into a bulge as she ran inside. She looked great. It’d take more than a horrid dress to do Andie in. Many seconds later, Guinness barked his belated greeting at her.

“My roommate’s home,” I said.

“So I hear.” His head was tilted back, eyes still closed.

“Maybe we should stay out here,” I suggested.

“Whatever,” he said.

Uh-oh. Was he already losing interest?

I got out of the car, cooling off the exact number of degrees that he had. Or trying my damnedest to do so. I leaned against the hood of the car, and wondered what the hell I’d been thinking. The guy I’ve been waiting for my whole life hadn’t been waiting for me.

After a little while, or maybe a long while, Brad got out and leaned on the car next to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in to him, pressing his leg into mine.

Hot, cold, hot, cold. What was the deal here? I felt as if I was dangling in space, hanging out over the water. I turned my head slightly away, tried to get my feet nailed back down on firm ground. I spoke but I couldn’t get the real question out, the one I wanted to ask. So I settled for a lame “You’re in construction, right?”

He didn’t answer, just kept his arm around me, rubbing my back. He could have swept me up and swallowed me whole if he’d wanted to. Instead, he barely kissed my ear, my neck and then said into the crook of it, “Yeah, I have my own company. Commercial construction.”

The part of my brain that was still working thought about that. Construction. Hard work. Hence the tan, the hands, those strong arms inside the rolled up sleeves. The long, tight legs.

He pulled away again, let his arm fall down on my waist.

Okay. I get it. We’re playing the old game of Restraint. The most nonchalant one wins. I was good at this, had been playing all my life. I cranked myself in and croaked out, “Why’d you need e-Boost?”

He pulled away some more. “We put our project plans on the ‘Net,” he said, all business now. If I wasn’t careful, he was gonna win this game. “Time lines, permits—they all go up.”

But I was world-class at Restraint. Or at least at being repressed. I pulled back, too. So now only our hands were touching. My breathing was back to normal. Almost.

“Who’d you use instead of e-Boost?” I asked. If they had sent me up to Dallas, I would have sold him. Winning Restraint game strategy: Think about work not about his hands, strong and smooth, holding mine.

“Just us. I used to work for a couple of start-ups,” he said. Mr. Easy Cool. Man, he’s good.

And then I thought, This is all right. Talking like this. Getting to know each other. It’s nice. It’s good. I just wished he would kiss me again. His hands on my face. His mouth…

“So, I still had some contacts from that, around the metro-plex,” he went on. His voice was becoming animated—about work! No restraint now. “I put together a team. Formed a new company. Man, we had a rough time, starting out. Worked every night and all weekends ’cause my partners had day jobs and I had real buildings to put up. We got it figured out, though. The slickest way to do the pages. And we started offering the service to the big guys, contractors and subs, first in Dallas and Fort Worth, and then all over the state.”

“Are you technical?” I asked. I knew he wasn’t. I could always sniff out the techie guys. Sometimes literally. But I needed to show him how casual I was. Casual and brain dead.

“Are you asking if I’m a geek?” He smiled, teeth glowing in the moonlight. “Naw. I understand it all on some level, but I’m mostly the idea guy. My partners have to do the dirty work. They like it though. I think a couple of them have those brain lobes you were talking about. The ones that are permanently shut off.”

I liked how he’d heard what I said, even when I was babbling. And I really liked the way his voice sounded in the dark—soft and rumbley. Maybe this was turning out okay. The electric storm had simmered down to a kind of background turbulence. We looked at each other, glanced out over the water, then looked back. It wasn’t fireworks and shivers now. It was…what? And then one of my mom’s words popped up. Mellow.

“What services do you offer?” I asked, letting myself get into it, learning about him.

“You name it. We’re just getting started. Six whole customers. But they’re big. The coordination they need on a job can be staggering. So they contract with us to solve that.” As he talked, he forgot to sound as though he’d only made it through a third-grade panhandle education. He still stretched out some of the words and cut other ones short—but that’s like any good Texan.

“The ‘Net gives you a control center.” He kept holding on to my hand and, as he explained, he’d lift and motion with it as if it was his own. Up our two hands would go, two beats for emphasis, then down again. He seemed happy to have someone to talk to. Someone outside of work who could understand what the hell he was talking about.

“Our stuff isn’t flashy—it’s workhorse, B-to-B comm. We give ’em fast, easy, intuitive access to all the critical information. Did I say intuitive? Make that bombproof. The users are construction guys, not your average computer wonk.” He took a breath and cocked a smile at me. “No offense.” Then he got right back into his pitch. “It’s all about coordination. Coordination, collaboration and control.”

Our clasped hands beat the air three times. “Coordination, collaboration and control, oh my!” he chanted.

“Oh, my!” I echoed, lifting our hands up together and dropping them again in my lap.

He grinned. “Sorry about that.” He let go of my hand. No! “We’re pushing so hard right now. It seems like that’s all I do. Plug our stuff. I can’t seem to talk about anything else.”

How about we talk about us! “I know,” I said, serene as could be, as though I didn’t want to reach up and touch his hair, and curl into those sturdy arms. “It’s the curse of sales. Everything’s a pitch. Man, but you should hear my roommate, Andie. She sells on a turntable…” I stopped. I saw Andie in my head, with her incredible red hair and those freckles on her satin-brown skin. I turned toward our apartment and waited.

“Turntable?” he asked.

I put up a wait-a-minute finger.

“What is it? Dylan?” he asked after a couple of beats.

“Andie’s coming out,” I whispered. And one long minute later, counted out by a few breezy sighs from Silence, we saw Andie and Guinness appear in the door and step into the night.

“Guinness,” I called. “Here, boy.”

Brad looked at me, looked at the dark missile streaking toward us and braced for the impact.

But Guinness is a classy dog. He’s been trained. He knows not to be ordinary and obnoxious and jump up on people. He shot over to my side of the car, threw his front paws in my lap and did a little half hop up so he could give me a huge, wet, chin kiss. Sometimes Guinness forgets, but he’s still classy.

“Down,” I said, wiping my chin with my sweater sleeve. He obeyed. I pointed my finger at him. He sat.

“I thought that was you when I drove up,” Andie said when she reached the car. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop. But I was going to get real ugly if I didn’t get out of that damn dress.” She looked at Brad and showed him her dimple. “Hi, I’m Andie.”

His hands were free. Unfortunately. He reached for her tiny hand and engulfed it. “Brad.”

“Don’t I know,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “No one’s been talking about anything else. Nice rescue.”

I watched Brad to see how’d he’d react. Andie was a petite porcelain doll from the piney woods down in East Texas. Except don’t think Hummel figurine. Andie was black porcelain with incongruous red hair and freckles. That hair had caused Andie no end of hurt when she was growing up. Her father never did believe she was his. There was something breakable about Andie—probably from that beat-down childhood in those piney woods—and it made guys get all mushy inside, made them want to scoop her up and take her home to mama. Especially big guys.

But there was no sign of scooping from Brad.

“Where you going?” I asked her. She was all dressed up for going out. Red, red and more red—to match her hair—with a few shots of gold. All of it tight and short, except the shoes. They were high and strappy.

“What did you do to your hair?” she asked reaching over and ploinking one of the curls by the side of my face. It brushed my cheek as it snapped back up. “This isn’t Dallas, honey. ‘Member? We don’t do big hair down here. We have class.” She flipped her eyes over to Brad, to let him know she was teasing about Dallas, even though she wasn’t. He just showed her his lopsided grin.

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