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

room, across the cozy front porch and down the flower-lined walk, ignoring Rufus’s petitions for her to come back. She braved a look at the house and saw him standing on the front porch watching her, one arm braced against a column, still holding his coffee in the other hand. The lights inside the house fairly glowed behind him, bathing him in an otherworldly amber light. Any sane, smart woman would be on that porch with him, looping one arm through his, curling the other around his waist, pulling him close in a way that told him she never planned to let him go.

Bree turned the key in the ignition. She threw the car into gear. And then, with only one quick look back, she sped away.

Seventeen

WHEN COLE TOLD LULU HE WANTED TO GO DO something fun, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. Not that he hadn’t been to artsy functions before, but this one was a little weird, even by southern California standards.

He looked at the four…Well, he supposed artists would be the right word, since they were four people and Lulu had told Cole this was an art gallery. But at the moment, he was hard-pressed to be able to actually identify them as people. Certainly, he wasn’t able to tell what any of their genders were, even though they were all stark naked. In fact, the only way he knew there were four people on the platform in a corner of the tiny darkened gallery was because each was painted a different color. A different Day-Glo color. None of which complemented the others. One was sort of pink. One was kind of orange. The third was in the green family—barely. And although Cole had never actually seen the color puce before, he was pretty sure that was what the last color was. Up ’til now, though, he’d always thought the existence of puce was one of those urban legends whose validity nobody could prove.

Their bodies, however, complemented each other very well. In fact, they complemented each other so well that Cole was keeping one eye on the door at all times, just in case the vice squad raided the place.

Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so weird by southern California standards—he was pretty sure he’d seen something almost just like this on Venice Beach once where all the bodybuilders worked out—but it was still definitely weird.

“It’s performance art,” Lulu said softly beside him, evidently sensing his, ah…bewilderment? Yeah, that was it. Bewilderment was a much better word for what he was actually feeling. “The human body and its natural movements as an art form,” she continued.

Okay, that he could see. Not in this particular performance piece, since what they were doing wasn’t what he would call natural, on account of it had to be painful to keep your legs in that position for any length of time, but he could see it elsewhere. In fact, he’d been seeing Lulu’s body and its natural movements as an art form ever since she’d opened the door at Bree’s apartment. The way she looked tonight…

Well. Let him just say that, had Michelangelo been around today, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would be all Lulu, all the time. As would be the walls of the Sistine Chapel. And the floors of the Sistine Chapel. And the nave, apse, and transept, too. Never let it be said that Cole Early hadn’t paid attention in his Art History 101 class. And had the Sistine Chapel been painted to look like Lulu, he would have changed his major pronto.

She just looked so beautiful. He’d thought she was pretty the first time he saw her. And all the other times, too. But with the addition of a little color and a little sparkle, Lulu Flannery came alive. Tonight, she looked as colorful and vivacious as the house she called home. And since leaving the party, she’d begun to act more colorful and vivacious, too. The moment he’d suggested they leave the reception, the color had come back to her features, and her smile had become less strained. As they’d driven to the art exhibit she’d told him she wanted to see, she’d gradually warmed up even more. But it was only once they entered the funky little gallery housed in what she’d told him was an old fire station on Main Street, that Lulu had really come alive.

Surrounded by the art and artists that made up her world, Lulu was clearly in her element. He’d actually felt her physically relax as they entered the darkened room, and she seemed to genuinely breathe more easily in this rarefied air. It was funny, because the atmosphere had had the opposite effect on Cole. While he considered himself a chameleon in many ways and could make himself at least look at home in just about any environment, this one eluded him.

It wasn’t that Lulu’s friends and colleagues were unwelcoming. On the contrary, whenever she’d introduced him to someone, they’d been warm, friendly, and open. None had pestered him about his trainer status, either, even though many knew who he was. He ought to feel more comfortable here than he had in any number of other situations this week. But the whole creative vibe was one that made him a little nervous. That artistic types could create something that was often transcendently beautiful out of virtually nothing was just getting too close to the whole Meeting His Maker thing.

Funny, though, how he didn’t feel that way when he was around Lulu. Maybe because she was a maker he’d gotten to know beforehand. And maybe because she was a maker he wanted to get to know better.

“You don’t like it, do you?” she asked now, her disappointment in his pedestrianism clear.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sure it’s brilliant. It’s just not my thing.”

She made an Oh, well gesture with her shoulders. “That’s okay.