A star seared its way through the icy black
of space as if it were fabric.
Becoming something else.
“DO YOU HAVE rain boots? Or know where I can get some?” Beau asked Ian the following day when he came over.
His friend, who stood at the counter in his wet dream of a kitchen, gave him a wary look. “Should I ask why?”
“Cora tells me I might want them at the pumpkin patch because it could be muddy.” Beau grabbed a slice of mango from the cutting board.
Ian gave Beau all his attention then, one of his eyebrows rising a moment. “Oh, Cora does. Well then.”
“She’s apparently wild about Halloween. I’m apparently wild about her. I’ll make her a meal when we get back.”
And then he needed to find a way to be invited to the gallery event. She’d brought it up to him in the first place, which he had decided to take as an invitation. Of a sort. He just needed to get that firmed up.
“That’s a lot of togetherness in a short period of time for you. This is the woman you knew back in the day in LA? The composer’s kid?”
“She’s only five years younger than I am.” Beau rolled his eyes. “It’s easy to be with her. God knows that’s not always a thing. She’s weird and thoughtful and funny and sexy as fuck.” Beau leaned against the kitchen counter and looked out the windows over Elliott Bay, thinking about her laugh and the way she sounded when she came.
Need for her, to be around her more, made him greedy. It confused him but not enough to make him so wary he didn’t pursue her.
“You’re breaking your rule about not getting involved with people in your friend group. So does that mean she’s not in your friend group so I keep my distance? Or, you’re breaking your rule because she’s different? In which case I really want to meet her.”
Beau said, “She’s unlike anyone else I’ve been attracted to. Like I said, it’s easy to be with her and we have wild sexual chemistry. Off the fucking charts, for real.” He shoved a hand through his hair as the remembered heat between them brushed against his skin.
“So you’re up for the pumpkin patch because you want to get some? That’s the tale as old as time there, dude.” Ian snorted and indicated the cabinet near Beau’s head as a way to invite him for a cup of coffee.
Beau grabbed himself a mug and after getting the coffee sugared up, he eased into a chair at Ian’s breakfast nook just off the kitchen. “Like I said, mad chemistry. But there’s something else about her. Like she’s going on an adventure even if she’s just going to get her mail. I can’t say I ever really wanted to, but I find myself thinking maybe going to a pumpkin patch with Cora would be fun.”
“You came up here to start a new chapter in your life. So it’s not that strange really that you’re attracted to someone who is also a new sort of chapter. And you know her, which alleviates all that suspicion that she might want something from you. Her mom is famous in the music and art communities. She gets the celebrity thing.”
They shared a look, both of them having experienced people trying to use them for something. To get an endorsement, investment in this or that business, wanting to be on TV as a date at some big event. Ian had a divorce under his belt because of it.
As a result, Beau had a policy about not getting involved with anyone in his social group because if it was going to go wrong he could walk away unscathed and still protecting the strength of his private life. His closest friends were family. They’d seen him through some pretty dark times and no one was worth threatening that.
“I totally think the fact that she’s familiar with the weirdness of our world is a big part of why I’m so comfortable around her. She doesn’t want me for anything but my dick and maybe my cooking. I’m good with that.”
At least while he tried to figure out just what it was about her that fascinated him so much. She was unexpected, but not an engine of chaos. Another thing he found interesting.
Ian shrugged. “Okay then. Yes, I have some mud boots you can use. I wear them when we go digging for clams and when I head out to the fields of any of the produce farms that supply my restaurants. They’ll do.”
“Thanks.”
“Bring her around one of these nights to meet us all.”
Cora and a bunch of foulmouthed chefs drinking and eating at one in the morning? Yeah, he could see her fitting in just fine.
* * *
JUST TWO DAYS later and the sky was blue-gray, the clouds dark with the rain threatening to fall on them any minute, and yet Cora nearly shone with her excitement when he showed up at her place Friday morning.
“Hi!” she told him with a huge grin, right before she launched herself into his arms for a hug.
Delight warmed him. No one greeted him like this, with such raw happiness.
She seemed to exude it. Give it off in waves. The more he experienced it, the more he craved it.
“Hi yourself.” He squeezed her, smiling into her hair a moment before releasing her. “Do you treat everyone like this when you see them or am I just that lucky?”
“You’re just that lucky. You could be again, later on if you’re extra sweet to me today. Are you ready to go?”
“Hell yes. Let me put this inside before we go though.” He held up a basket of food he’d put down to hug her.
“Oooh! What did you bring me?” Her eyes lit with interest.
“Supplies for a meal after we bring home all the pumpkins.”
“You’re going to feed me too?” She clapped her hands without a bit of sarcasm.
“It’s the least I can do. Think of it as payment for introducing me to something new.” And cooking for people was his way of taking care of them. Showing his love or concern, whatever.
“The least you could do would be fast food. Or a bag of chips or something. A talented chef cooking for me is really nice. Thank you.”
He made quick work of unloading the food, putting things away and before too long, they were headed south in a landscaper’s truck she’d borrowed, on their way to a pumpkin patch.
“How was the rest of your first week back home in Seattle?” he asked.
“I’ve been at the gallery a lot.”
When an asshole cut her off, she smiled, sunny and sweet, enough to disarm the guy, and then she flipped him off before heading her own way.
“So, road rage with a little pizzazz?” he teased of her middle finger salute.
“Well, I’m a work in progress.”
He snickered. “I can dig that. Tell me about the event we’re going to tonight.” He just slid that in there, his assumption they’d be attending together.
She gave him some world-class side-eye though, which had him leaning back with a satisfied smile on his face. In some nearly perverse way, he absolutely got off on the idea that she would be a person who didn’t let him get away with things like pretending they already had a date without doing the work of asking.
“Would you like to come to the gallery tonight?” she asked, laughter in her voice. “Gregori will most likely be there with Wren. A few of the artists showing are friends of hers.”
“I should offer you an out here. Some sort of self-deprecating bit about how you don’t really have to ask me to go tonight. But I won’t. I want to be there. And not because I’m in the market for art.”
“You should always be in the market for art.” She said it like a mantra.
“Clearly I have a lot to learn.”
“Hmm,” was all she said for a moment. “Seems to me you know a lot of useful things. So you’re welcome to make me food, make me come and eat appetizers while looking at evocative artwork. But that’s a lot of Cora in one day. Just an advance warning.”
It would have been a lot of anyone in a day. Aside from a few very close friends, there wasn’t anyone he liked to spend a lot of one-on-one time with.
But he’d already accepted she was different than most other people. His reaction to her most definitely was unusual.
“I like a lot of Cora in my day. Come to think of it, why aren’t you at the gallery now? You strike me as the type who likes to manage closely to be sure things are perfect.”
“That’s the coolest way to be called a control freak ever.” She laughed. “I was there most of yesterday and into the night, and then back first thing this morning. And now it’ll marinate until later. If I hang out too much I start to pick my work apart, second-guess and redo stuff. Then everyone hates me and I do three times the work because, in the end, I go back to how I originally had it.”
She pulled into a patch of dirt that’d been transformed into a lot where people parked their cars to head out into the wide fields of pumpkins just beyond. “This is still early days for this patch. In two weeks or so, there’ll be ruts deep enough to make your teeth hurt when you drive over them.”
“It’s weird how cheerful this makes you.”
“I like knowing I made a good choice when I’m lucky enough to make one. You come early and you get the best pumpkins and avoid the worst of the crowds and traffic. This lot is the one we went to when I was a kid. Family owned. It always smells like mulling spices and kettle corn.”
And on that word salad, she hopped out of the truck, turning back to grab her camera. “It’s a little muddy, but not too bad. You don’t have to wear the boots if you don’t want to.”
* * *
BEING OUT THERE with the brilliant orange of pumpkins against the pale gold of the straw and hay bales all around, Cora let herself fully live in that precise moment. Happiness at being back home. Comfort in the familiar signs leading to the corn maze. The same goofy cutouts she and her siblings had stuck their faces in for the pictures their father had on his desk to that day. Butterflies and giddy delight in the birth of something new and delicious between her and Beau.
“So what’s the process then? Do we just pick one?” He looked dubiously at the big, flat-bottomed wagon she grabbed.
“They’re sold by the pound, so at the end we’ll come back and put them on those big scales over there.” She pointed. “As for one? Pah! I’m no amateur, Beau. I’ll get as many as it pleases me. I have a nice-sized porch so naturally I’ll need several for that. And whatever else that strikes my fancy. And my fancy is easily struck.”
He just shook his head as he looked out over the wide fields beyond, full of pumpkins ready for the grabbing before he took the handle of the wagon. “I’ll pull. Point me the way.”
It was early enough on a weekday that the patch wasn’t crowded at all, which didn’t stop a few people from nearly falling over themselves as they stared at Beau. It wasn’t even that they recognized him—at least not at first—but purely the fact that he was so beautiful.
Because he tried to ignore it, she did, as well. And it wasn’t like she didn’t totally understand everyone who gawked at him. She felt like gawking at him too.
“Is that weird for you?” Cora asked him as she began to think about just exactly what she wanted her porch to look like.
“Is what weird?”
“Being so handsome you literally make people halt in their tracks to stare at you.”
His surprised laughter rang out and made her smile in response.
Seeing the pumpkins for herself, she began to build a theme. She headed toward a group of tall, narrow ones. “Look at these bumps all over. I love that. Then I need squat ones. So they can group together.”
He bumped her aside with a hip and loaded the ones she pointed out onto the wagon. “Getting recognized is nice usually. People are respectful. But sometimes it’s invasive, offensive, scary even.”
“Oh, you mean like stalkers? Or people who don’t like the, uh, group you grew up in?” From everything she understood it was a cult. But it wasn’t relevant what she thought on that point. Not right then.
“Both.” He shrugged. “The people who were either part of my former church or who were wronged or hate groups like Road to Glory pop up less than they used to. New outrages I guess. New self-appointed prophets all too eager to drain people dry and ruin lives.”
“I’m sorry,” she said simply.
“I got away. Mostly. As far as being a celebrity and getting recognized, that’s complicated. It’s nice that people care. That’s why they watch my shows and buy my books. I like that. But some people have messed-up filters. Or they forget I’m a real person.” He turned to face her. “And sometimes it encroaches on my personal time. I want to be all about you right now, so I would be aggravated. Which is why I generally avoid eye contact if I get that buzz that they might think of intruding.”
Damn. “You make my stomach all floaty.”
He smirked. “Is that good?”
Cora nodded.
“All right then. What’s next?” He indicated the area all around them.
Cora considered following up but he clearly wanted to change the subject so she let him. She went to her toes, kissed him quickly and pointed. “Let’s head that way. I see some fat ones. I need fat ones.” Cora danced away, taking in deep gulps of the fresh air, happy with her life and the sight of one pumpkin with super deep grooves on it that she decided she had to have.
Each time she would pause to really examine a pumpkin, and then later the gourds, he patiently waited for her to do whatever she pleased. He never glanced at his phone. Never looked bored. In fact, he began to point out his own pumpkins, even grabbing a few he said he wanted to put in the windows of the apartment he was staying at.
He never complained about the weather, even after a light rain began to fall, or how heavy the wagon got once it was laden down with pumpkins. He didn’t bat an eye at how many she ended up buying and unloaded them all at her side, making her smile the whole time.
“So, what did you think of going to the pumpkin patch?” she asked as they headed back toward Seattle. She held a big bag of kettle corn out for him to grab a handful.
“I liked it. Food, a pretty girl and a huge bag of fresh vegetables to go with a thousand pumpkins make for a pretty enjoyable outing. Thanks for bringing me along.”
“Probably less than a thousand. I’m all about new experiences,” she teased, undeniably pleased that he’d apparently enjoyed their day. “Next up is decoration. I pulled the Halloween boxes out of my crawl space and I’ve got a general idea and some notes.”
“Notes? Crawl space? I feel like such a newbie to the Halloween decoration game.”
“Remember I just told you about how I was all about new experiences? Anyway, you’ll be there making me food, which is like, way more important than stringing lights and helping me create the super spider lair.”
“Super spider lair, huh? Okay, I’m game. I’ll make tacos while you get to super lair creating.”
“Tacos? This day keeps getting better.”
They listened to music all the way back up north to her place, where he then helped her carry all those pumpkins to her porch.
“I’m on call for you if you need anything heavy moved or whatever. Just yell, okay?” he told her.
“Thanks,” she said before he gave her a kiss and allowed her to watch him walk back into her house looking all hot and tasty.
Once he’d gone, she began to set her porch to dark, spooky fun with spiders tucked all around. Some with glowing red eyes. A few with realistic-looking bristles on all eight legs. And at the end, she installed the ones on motion-detected triggers that would have them dropping from the ceiling or jumping across a trick-or-treater’s path.
After that she strung all the lights and draped the fake spiderweb, giggling to herself as she thought about all the scary fun she was creating.
All while she peeked through her front window and watched him in her kitchen. He moved like magic. All to his own rhythm. He cooked like he was totally, utterly sure of himself.
Sexy as fuck.
And he wanted to spend time with her.
If he’d been smooth about it, or calculated, she could have just let it be a fun fling. But he wanted to go to a gallery event. Not to buy art. Not to meet artists. He didn’t need her for that. No, it was about her.
No one could have ever described to her just what it would feel like to have someone focus on her like that. Put all their attention, attraction and ability into her. It was by turns flattering, confusing and thrilling.
He looked up from where he’d been sautéing something at the stove and met her gaze. A startled smile broke over his mouth and holy shit he was just stupid gorgeous.
All points south of her eyes stood at attention.
She smirked at him, letting him see that she was done with the spider lair and was coming inside.
“Damn, you make me sassy,” she said once she’d put away her tools and the boxes were back in the crawl space.
He leaned back, resting his butt on the counter behind him, crossing those fine legs as he looked her up and down. “That so? And how do I make you sassy? Seems to me, you were sassy when I got here.”
Laughing, she swaggered over, pausing just a foot away. “That’s a fair point. You make me sassier. The way you look at me sometimes just revs me up. Makes me feel all sexy and goddess-like and stuff.”
“You are sexy.” He all but growled it.
She let out a shuddering breath.
“Food and then.” He lifted one shoulder and sent her a smoldering leer.
If he weren’t a chef who’d just spent all that time and effort cooking for her, she’d have jumped on him right then.
“Oh, you mean after we carve the pumpkins?” she teased.
He grabbed her, yanking her to him. “The idea of you with a knife is alarmingly arousing.”
Cora would have laughed, but he bent to kiss her before she could, stealing her breath for a moment.
By the time she managed to gather her wits, he’d broken away, again wearing that sexy smile of his.
“Lunch is ready, my spider queen.”
“I’ll set the table,” she told him after clearing her throat.