Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

he decided. No way had glitter eye shadow or ruby red nail polish ever touched that woman’s person. His money was still on the string bikini.

Strangely, though, it was the uncomfortable one to which his gaze kept straying. Why, he couldn’t imagine. But there was something about her…maybe even something kind of familiar….

His cell phone rang then, scattering his thoughts. He pulled it from his pocket and saw Susannah’s number, so he flipped it open.

“Hey, Suz,” he said as he settled the photograph back on the mantel.

“All settled in?” she asked without preamble.

“As settled as I can be.”

“You don’t sound very settled. Is the house awful?”

“No,” he replied quickly. “It’s actually kind of nice. In a Bohemian, girly-girl, organic, sophisticated, aesthete, academic kind of way.”

There was a slight pause at the other end, then, “Yeah, okay, whatever. Look, I just wanted to let you know that Silk Purse is loving the bluegrass here at the farm and cavorting about with glee. Jason’s already got her back in her routine, so all is well there. Denny and Faye told me to invite you to dinner tonight, so come whenever you’re ready and you can check everything out.”

“Sounds good.”

She started to give him directions, but he told her to stop until he could locate a pencil and paper. He moved to a credenza in the corner of the room and opened drawers until he found both in one, alongside an address book, a roll of stamps, and a sketchpad upon which someone had sketched a design of overlapping, amorphous shapes.

Quickly, he jotted down Susannah’s instructions and folded his phone closed. Then, unable to help himself, he withdrew the sketchpad and flipped through it. There were other designs on other pages, some of them similar to the glass pieces in the house. So his hostess wasn’t just a collector of art, he thought. She was also a creator. These were doubtless her own pieces decorating the place.

Although he would have thought he’d have pretty conventional taste when it came to art—not that he ever gave that any thought—he liked his hostess’s work. He liked the way the colors blended and melded, and he liked how something as fragile as glass could look so powerful and audacious.

She was definitely an interesting person, his hostess. It was too bad he’d have to return to California without ever making her acquaintance.

Four

BREE’S APARTMENT WAS BARELY A MILE AWAY FROM Lulu’s house, but where Lulu lived on a quiet, tree-lined, seldom-traveled little byway, Bree lived right on Bardstown Road, at the very hub of Highlands action, above a bar—nightclub was just too uppity a term for Deke’s—whose claim to fame was launching local bands. As a result, rarely did an evening at Bree’s pass without the steady accompaniment of thumpa-thumpa-thumpa from the drums of whoever was the featured act below. By Monday night, Lulu had been slammed by the all-girl punk ensemble WMD (Women of Mass Destruction), twanged by the southern fried rock band Finger Pickin’ Good, and rapped by the hip-hop group Da Streetz. Never let it be said that Deke’s taste in music was anything but eclectic. Needless to say, her sleep every night had been cluttered by raucous dreams, everything from the banjo-picking mutant in Deliverance to overweening low-riders to marauding giant tampons.

But Monday night, thankfully, Lulu lucked out, because the band shooting into orbit that night was a jazzy combo called Smuuth, which, Bree told her, was supposed to be pronounced “smooth,” but no one got that and used the short u sound instead, making them, well, Smuth.

Smuth, however, was indeed a very smooth band, so there was hope for pleasant dreams this evening. In fact, Smuth was so smooth that the two women decided to brush their hair, tuck their T-shirts into their jeans—Lulu’s was white, Bree’s was yellow—slip their bare feet into their sandals and go down to enjoy them live. They took their usual seats at the bar and ordered their usual beer, greeting and/or waving at all the regulars. As always, the television above the bar was turned on with the volume lowered, tuned to a local channel that was, at the moment, airing a network cop show. So Lulu and Bree did what they usually did on such nights out—those when Bree wasn’t pulling a bartending shift at the bar in the Ambassador Hotel—and enjoyed the music, chatted with friends, and danced on the few occasions when the mood took them.

Until the local news came on as Lulu took the first sip of her recently refreshed beer, and her attention was suddenly snagged by a face that flashed by on the screen above the bar.

“Hey!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself, pointing up at the television set.

“What?” Bree replied, surprise mingling with alarm on her face at Lulu’s tone. “What’s wrong?” She turned to look at the TV, too, but by then the image had switched over to one of the news anchors, so she turned to look at Lulu again, her expression now puzzled.

“That guy,” Lulu said, pointing more adamantly at the TV screen.

“Who? Scott Reynolds? What about him? Besides the fact that his hair, as always, looks fabulous?”

“No, not him. The other guy that was up there a second ago.”

“Sorry, Lu. Missed him. Who was it?”

Lulu shook her head slowly, as if that might negate what she’d just seen. Impossible, she thought. There was no way she could have seen the guy from the realty office Friday afternoon on the local news. He’d just made such a big impression on her subconscious that she was seeing him in places he couldn’t possibly be. After all, hadn’t he crept into her thoughts more than once over the weekend? And not just because she’d been reflecting on what a big jerk he was, either. In fact, that hadn’t been one of her reflections about him at all, since most of her reflections about him