Chapter Two

 

Back at the shop, Monique gave me an odd look. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Just…I guess I’m still a little tired.”

“You want to head home early? You’ve still got plenty of sick leave saved up, and the flu is nothing to mess with this year, I hear.”

I shook my head. “Nah, I’m tired of being at home. I think it’s good to push myself a little. I’ll take it easy tonight.”

She studied me a moment. “Well, okay. But we don’t need those mats till Wednesday. If you change your mind, just say the word.”

“Thanks.”

I returned to the mat cutter, letting Monique take the front counter and the walk-in business, such as it was. The steady precision of the work soothed me. Measure, place the mat board; measure again, adjust if necessary; then cut, slowly but firmly. Remove, wipe away the dust and mat board shreds; repeat. Soon, the pile of cut mats had grown pleasingly high on the table beside me.

Monique was headed to the front door to turn the “open” sign to “closed” at five-thirty when Mahlen O’Connor walked in. Mahlen was one of our regular clients, an artist who showed his paintings in local coffee shops and indie galleries. He’d never made it big like I thought he should. His work was great, but didn’t sell much, barely enough for him to scrape by. He just needed his one big break…and he deserved it.

He was also just freakin’ adorable. Burly and redheaded, with a strong but sweet vibe. Green eyes, hair down to his shoulders in rumpled curls, and more often than not, flecks of paint on his earlobe or in his hair. Once I’d even seen a spot of paint on the tip of his nose.

We’d had an ongoing gentle flirtation for over a year now, which had gone nowhere. I was too shy to just straight-up ask him out; I don’t know what the problem was with him. My attempts at casual conversation had eventually yielded up the information that he was single, and straight. And he did seem to like me.

“Sorry to drop in on you guys last-minute like this!” he said now, giving both Monique and me a brilliant, apologetic smile and holding up a flash drive. “Can I get a large-format print of the dragon piece before you close up? I’ve already color balanced it and everything—we just need to run it off on the Debler.” He was already heading toward the back where we kept the computers and printers.

“I’m sorry, Mahlen, not today,” Monique said. She turned the sign around and locked the door, then headed back to the counter. “I’ve got an appointment across town, and Grace has been sick. We can do it for you first thing tomorrow.”

He turned and gave us both a look of desperation. “Oh jeez. I’ve got a collector wanting the piece tonight—and it might lead to something huge. He’s flying to Hollywood tomorrow morning.”

“I can do it,” I said. “I don’t have to be anywhere.” I reached out to take the flash drive from Mahlen. Our hands touched…and there was that electricity again. I gasped in a breath, suddenly flushed and giddy.

“Grace, no,” Monique said firmly. She rushed over to me and put a hand on my forehead. “You should be in bed—I should have sent you home hours ago.” She turned to Mahlen. “I’m really sorry.”

I swallowed, took another breath, ready to comply like I always did in the face of strong authority, but… “No, I can do this,” I said. “I actually feel great. This is—” I waved a hand at myself, helpless to explain. And not wanting to, not to my boss, anyway. Or to Mahlen. Particularly not to him. “This isn’t a fever or anything. I feel stronger all the time.”

She looked at me closely; I silently pleaded with her, wishing I was magic and could somehow communicate telepathically. We had never talked about it, but I suspected she knew how I felt about Mahlen. You’d have to be pretty dense not to…and Monique was sharp as a tack.

At last, she gave an exasperated sigh. “All right. I’ve got to go—I’m late already. You make that one print and then go straight home and rest.” She turned to Mahlen. “And if she’s sicker tomorrow, I’ll not only personally wring your neck, but I’ll hunt down this collector and tell him you stomp on puppies in your spare time, that you pick your nose and eat what you find there, and that all your work is actually stolen from Russian orphans.”

He grinned, trying to look all humble and abashed or whatever, but the relief and excitement in his eyes was winning out. “Thank you thank you, Monique! I owe you big time.”

“Yes. You do.” Her stern tone was belied by the sparkle in her eyes. Mahlen was, indeed, adorable as can be. “See you tomorrow, Grace,” she said, then gathered up her purse and jacket and left, locking the door again behind her.

I turned to Mahlen. “So. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

He followed me to the computer where I popped in the flash drive and started up the software. It took a minute to load; Mahlen pulled up a chair and sat beside me. “It’s the same piece we printed last month, but I made some changes to the background, lightening the sky a bit. And I tweaked the dragon some too.”

“Sounds good…” I muttered as the picture filled the screen. “Ooh, yes, that does look better.” It had looked amazing before; now it was spectacular. This man really needed to get discovered.

“I need a thirty-six by forty-eight inch giclée print.”

I stopped and gaped at him. “Seriously? How’s the guy going to take that on an airplane? Do you not want it matted?” He wasn’t going to let it get rolled up, was he? That would totally damage the print.

Mahlen grinned. “He’s got a private plane. Plenty of room.”

“Ahh.”

“So you see how important it is to get this to him without any drama or delay…”

“I do, yes.”

He leaned in, watching as I made a few adjustments onscreen, getting the file set for the printer we used for the largest pieces. His proximity was…distracting. I had been attracted to him for a year, but I’d never been this close to him. He smelled delicious. Was that just his soap? Or his shampoo? He didn’t even have flecks of paint on him, for once.

I cleared my throat. “Um. Can you give me a little room here?”

“Oh! Sorry.” Mahlen got up and stood back a few inches, as though he thought he was just jogging my elbow or something. In his defense, the printer area was crowded with, well, printers, and he couldn’t go very far and still be in the same room.

“Thanks.” I tried to ignore his presence and concentrate on my work. It was a challenge. I sent the file to the printer, then remembered to get up and actually turn the printer on. Which of course messed with the settings, so I had to cancel the print and start over again.

Finally, the big printer started rolling. I went and stood over it, watching to make sure the print heads were clean and the paper wasn’t in all wonky. It looked good.

Mahlen came up behind me, looking over my shoulder. And there was that scent again…

“Okay, there we go!” I said, a few minutes later when the print was done. This was one of our older printers without so many automatic bells and whistles, so I pulled the bar down on the huge paper-cutter attachment, scissoring it neatly, then lifted it off and set it on the drying table. “Just a few minutes for it to set. Want to talk matting?”

He scrutinized the print carefully, nodding in satisfaction. “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I’m thinking just the light grey we did last time, with the charcoal behind it?”

“Perfect.” I had to squeeze past him to get to the stacks of mat board in their vertical shelves. As I brushed by, I felt that shock of electricity again…even stronger this time.

Mahlen cleared his throat.

I was obviously still a bit under the weather…it took me forever to find the right sheets of mat board. It was like I had no brain at all. It couldn’t have been that I was reacting to being so close to this man. Sure, I had a crush on him, but we’d been in this crowded room together before. He probably had things printed at least once a month.

I’d never been alone in a closed-up shop with him, though…after hours…

“Okay!” I said, when I finally found the right sheets. “Now just to get these cut…”

He again stood nearby as I measured. “Um, I’m sorry, but…doesn’t that one want to be the larger?”

“Oh!” I stammered, entirely flustered. I’d gotten the colors backwards, and almost ruined a whole sheet cutting it wrong. “Jeez, that was close. Thank you!”

“My pleasure. After all, it’s my work you’re doing here. I have a vested interest in making it come out right.”

I measured three times before cutting, and again three times before the second sheet.

By this time, of course, the giclée print was totally dry—it really only takes a minute or so, even on a heavily saturated piece like Mahlen’s art—and I was able to get it matted, bagged, and wrapped in brown paper without looking like a total incompetent boob. “There you go!” I said at last, handing it to him.

“My, what a huge package,” he said.

I burst out laughing. “That’s what she said!” Then I clapped a horrified hand over my mouth. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight, Mahlen, honest to god.”

He took a step closer to me, his eyes dancing with merriment, though his expression was serious. We were in the front of the shop now, both behind the counter; I had been about to ask him whether I should ring him up now or if he would need to pay after he’d delivered the print and been paid himself. Outside, it had grown dark. It must be six-thirty, if not later.

“Grace.” He swallowed. “Thank you so much for doing this for me.”

“It was my pleasure,” I said, trembling a little. “You’re a good client of the shop. We like to take care of our own.”

He nodded. “Yes, but that was above and beyond.” He blinked his lovely pale green eyes, seeming to struggle with something before adding, “I have to deliver this right away, but that will only take a few minutes. Then…I was wondering…could I take you to dinner?”

I gulped. “Oh, gosh, that’s not necessary…”

He put a hand on my arm. More sparks, oh how I loved those sparks. “I know it’s not necessary. I want to.” Then he dropped his hand, looking at it as if he didn’t know how it had gotten there. “I mean, if you want to go, um, out with me.”

Mahlen O’Connor just asked me out! I wanted to run and hide; I wanted to shriek in delight and hop up and down. I settled for an awkward stammer. “Er, sure, okay, yeah.”

He beamed, and it was like the sun came out all over again. “Great! So, uh, do you want to just come with me, or…?”

“I have to close up here, and then I can meet you at—where are we going?” It was a short walk to downtown from here, I could probably get there in fifteen minutes or less.

“I don’t know! What do you like? Italian? There’s a great place down by the water, Columbus House, we could go there.”

I paused, thinking about which bus lines went to the waterfront, and what their schedules might be, and how long it would take to get there if one came right away, versus how long it would take if the city’s buses operated in the more usual way…

Mahlen mistook my hesitation. “Or Asian! There’s an amazing Thai place just next door to Columbus House—”

“No, it’s not that,” I hurried to reassure him. “I don’t have a car, and the waterfront is pretty far.”

“Oh. Oh!” He thought a moment. “Well, let me just come back and pick you up, then. My client is only about ten minutes from here, if traffic is light. Then we can figure out where to eat on the way.”

“Sure. I can do everything I need in twenty minutes.”

“Great!” He gave me his adorable smile again, and turned toward the door. “See you soon!”

“Don’t forget the print.”

He turned around and smacked himself in the forehead with his open palm. “Ahh!” Then he gathered up the print and headed out—or would have, if they door hadn’t been locked.

“Here, let me help you,” I said, giggling as I walked to the door with my set of keys.

By the time he’d finally left, I was relaxed again, still laughing a bit as I thought about it all. He was at least as nervous as I was. But we were going out!

What a strange day it had been… As I set the register to going through its end-of-day calculations and shutdown routine, I let my mind drift, trying to somehow take it all in. I thought back to my afternoon coffee with Emma Foster, and the strange story she told me, the even stranger request she’d made of me. Four boyfriends?? Look how dorky I was with even one guy who I’d had a crush on for a year! There was literally no way on this ever-loving green earth that I could handle such a thing.

I shook my head, smiling. She’d seemed so disappointed. As if there had ever been a chance I’d say yes. And I did like her…maybe I should call her for another coffee date, eventually. After I saw where this thing with Mahlen was going…if it was going anywhere at all, beyond just a thank-you dinner from a grateful client.

I hoped this collector of his took his art down to Hollywood in his private plane and did whatever amazing thing he was going to do with it with whatever bigwigs he was going to do it with, and the bigwigs discovered Mahlen and he hit it big—in whatever way old-fashioned artists hit it big in Hollywood, in this digital age. But he was so talented, so creative; surely they’d find a place for him somewhere. His gifts were wasted here in the city, hanging on coffee shop walls, selling for twenty and thirty bucks if he was lucky.

I had just shut down all the computers and the few printers we left on all day and was switching off the lights when there was a knock on the door. I grabbed my coat and purse and went to join Mahlen.

He ushered me into his car—an old ramshackle Toyota that smelled of paints and turpentine—and headed toward the waterfront. “How did it go?” I asked him, once he’d maneuvered out of the print shop’s neighborhood and onto a wide, fast-moving throughway.

“Oh, fine. Sorry I’m a bit late—he wanted to unwrap your careful packaging and see the actual print. Can you believe it?” He grinned over at me a moment. “We put it all back together just as you had it, don’t worry.”

“Not at all! I figure if he’s taking it on even a private plane, it should be protected.”

“Yep.”

Then we were awkwardly silent again for a minute. Oh jeez what if we don’t have anything to talk about at dinner, I suddenly fretted. What was I thinking? Probably I should have gone home and gone to bed early after all. Monique was right. I’d just been so sick, and now I was flooding my system with adrenaline and endorphins?

“Well, here we are,” Mahlen said, breaking into my spiral of self-doubt. He was pulling the car into a tall parking structure. “I figure we can just put the car here, and then walk around and see what looks good.”

“Sounds perfect to me.”

Since it was a Monday night, the garage was sparsely filled, so we found a spot and were on the sidewalk in no time at all. “Columbus House is just there,” he said, pointing across the street. “If you want to look at the menu?”

“Sure.” How did he know I’d never been there before?

Well, the menu looked great, but… “Can you, um, afford this?” I asked.

“Grace, did I not just sell a huge print to a collector who is taking my art to Hollywood on his private plane first thing tomorrow morning?”

I chuckled. “Well, yeah, but how much do you sell prints for? That’s the only thing you know for sure about all this.”

He patted his pocket, still grinning. “Enough to not only buy you anything you want on this menu, but to do it all over again tomorrow night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Come on.” He offered his arm, tentatively; I reached up and took it, and let him usher me inside, secretly thrilling at the implication of his words. He wants to buy me dinner night after night?!

Ours is a casual city, thank goodness; the hip young woman at the check-in podium didn’t even glance at our jeans and sweatshirts before showing us to a lovely little table with a view of the sparkling harbor just outside. Nor did the waiter turn up his nose at us.

Mahlen ordered a bottle of wine from a wine list he didn’t even let me look at, but not before determining that I like red wine better than white. I was going to draw the line at letting him order my dinner too, but apparently he was modern enough that he didn’t feel like he needed to go there.

The wine arrived, and I ordered scallops on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes; Mahlen ordered lamb shanks. And the wine was delicious, and somehow all my nerves just fell away. We talked easily, as if we’d known each other for years. Well, we’d been acquainted a whole year, I supposed; but we’d never had a real conversation before, not like this. I learned that he’d moved to the city five years ago after growing up in a small town in the eastern part of the state; that he’d always been an artist but was only now trying to make an actual living at it (and doing about as well as I’d guessed: barely); and that he’d never been married but had come close once, to his high school sweetheart.

He learned things about me too: that I’d grown up in the city and could not believe how much it had grown in recent years; that I had ambitions of becoming a writer but hadn’t managed to produce much more than bad poetry and some fanfic that I was no-way, no-how showing to anyone; that I had never even had a particularly serious boyfriend, because I always seemed to sabotage things when I got panicked, though I’d been working very hard on trying to change that about myself.

He did not learn that I’d been to a wild costume party last week where I had met a very strange woman who had told me a very strange story. I was more and more trying to tell myself that none of that had really happened…because, how could it have?

(Though I still had no explanation for what had really happened last week.)

But more than the conversations…I just felt so close to Mahlen. The words we said were less than half of what was being communicated. As we talked, his eyes held mine, and I read approval, even desire. Our hands touched often across the tiny table; each time, I felt that little spark of delight, and schemed how to ‘accidentally’ touch him again. I felt a warmth in my belly that I’d never felt with a man before. There was just something so right about this guy.

I tried not to think about what I would do at the end of the evening. He would likely offer to drive me home…and I didn’t want to decide what to do about that until I absolutely had to. I wanted to stay at this table forever, suspended in this delicious liminal space where anything was possible and nothing was committed.

The waiter had just left after taking our dessert orders when a voice behind us said, “Mahlen? Is that you?”

We both turned to look. Two just plain gorgeous guys stood there: tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed, tawny-skinned, oh my goodness. Why was I even noticing other guys? But these two…they were spectacular. And they looked uncannily alike.

“The evil twins!” Mahlen cried, getting up with a huge grin and giving each guy a hug.

Ah, twins, of course. That explained the whole…identical thing.

He turned to me, still smiling broadly, with an arm around each brother. “Grace, this is Jorge and Javier, my two best friends in the whole world. Guys, this is Grace.”

“Pleased to meet you.” One of the brothers—was he slightly taller than the other?—reached out a hand to shake mine. I took it, and felt another spark of attraction.

Oh great. Now somehow my lust-response had been turned up to eleven, and I was reacting to every good-looking guy like I was some kind of starving nympho. “Nice to meet you, um,” I managed, stumbling when I realized I didn’t know which name to call him by.

“Jorge!” He laughed. “I’m the cute one.”

“Hey!” said the other brother—Javier. “Just ’cause you’re the artistic one doesn’t mean you’re cuter.” He stepped forward and took my hand as well. At least this time I was braced for the impact. “I’d argue that financial success is a good look on a man.”

I glanced at Mahlen to see how he was taking this all—in two minutes, these dudes had flirted harder with me than he had all year (well, before tonight, anyway). But he was just laughing along with them. Enjoying their impact on me.

Too weird.

Javier’s mention of financial success made me look at them both more carefully. Indeed, even in the dim light of the restaurant, I could see that Javier was dressed expensively. It wasn’t a suit; more like business casual, but every piece fit him like it had been tailor-made. Jorge, on the other hand, was in loose-fitting cargo pants and an aged T-shirt—so aged that I couldn’t read whatever band name had once been printed on it. Over the tee was a plaid flannel shirt that didn’t do much to disguise his powerful shoulders.

“Hey, sit down for a minute,” Mahlen said, grabbing a couple of chairs from an empty table next to us.

“We can’t,” said Javier, as Jorge sat.

“Sure we can,” Jorge said, stretching his long legs out in front of himself. “We won’t stay long, though; we just finished dinner and promised Mom we’d come by and help her with some things around the house.”

“This late at night?” I asked.

Javier shrugged and sat down too. “Just a light bulb, but it’s twenty feet up in her entryway and she’s scared of going up on a ladder.”

“And she’s scared of the dark. So…”

“So the mighty twins to the rescue.”

“Wow, that’s very sweet,” I said.

Jorge gave me a brilliant smile. “So yeah, Javier’s right: we can’t stay long. Just long enough to interrupt our good friend Mahlen’s date.”

I almost automatically protested It isn’t a date when I remembered that, yeah, actually, it was a date. It had even been called the actual word. So I just smiled enigmatically back at the twins. At least I hoped it was enigmatic.

The waiter arrived with our desserts—crème brulee for me and a dish of chocolate ice cream with a maraschino cherry on top for Mahlen. “Er, would the gentlemen like to order something as well?” he asked, clearly thrown by our surprise extra guests.

“Nah, we’re full—we just ate in the other section over there,” Jorge said, pointing. “Thanks though.”

“Of course.”

After the waiter left, I picked up my spoon and tapped on the crisp shell of the brulee. Perfect. I tapped harder, cracking the crust, and took a bite. “Mmmmmmm,” I sighed. “Oh, this is a good one.”

When I opened my eyes again (and when did I close them?), all three men were sort of gaping at me.

Mahlen recovered first, and took a bite of his ice cream. “Yes, this place knows its desserts.”

“So you got the simplest thing on the menu?” Jorge teased him.

“It wasn’t even on the menu,” Mahlen admitted. “I’m not really one for the fancy stuff.”

“And yet he’s eating here,” Javier observed, then turned to me. “So, tell us all about yourself, young lady. What makes you think you should date our Mahlen?”

“Dude!” Mahlen yelped, before I could even respond. I knew Javier was teasing—I could see the glimmer in his eyes—but I had no idea what would be a good witty riposte. I’m terrible at that kind of thing. I always come up with something clever three days later. “You guys, I think I can hear your mom calling from here,” Mahlen went on. “Don’t you think you ought to be going now?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” I told him, and then the perfect response came to me. I turned to Javier and said, “I think I should date your Mahlen because he’s a perfect gentleman and doesn’t ask me impertinent questions.” I gave both twins a sassy grin, and added, “Besides, he’s cute as a button. And I think I hear your mom calling too.”

“Ohh, I’m wounded, mortally wounded!” Javier clutched his chest dramatically, then rolled his eyes over to look at his brother. “Georgie, dude, let’s away.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Jorge was already on his feet. He yanked his brother up out of his chair, then gave us both a brilliant smile. “Well, good luck, both of you.”

“Thanks,” Mahlen said, and I nodded.

They left without further drama. Mahlen and I looked at each other across the table, and then both simultaneously busted out laughing.

“God, I’m sorry about that,” he said, when we’d recovered.

I shook my head. “No, I meant it: it’s all right. I liked them.” I took another delicious spoonful of my crème brulee. “I’m glad they’re gone, though.”

Mahlen’s smile was now a slow smolder. “Me too.”