He was probably coming with a date.
And no.
My heart did not just prick at that thought.
Absolutely not.
Really, it didn’t.
(Drat it, it did.)
Bowie’s lips twitched then he took in the rest of the occupants in the room.
“People are showing,” he announced.
“Cool, Dad,” Gage said, but didn’t move.
“Harvey and Beth showed ten minutes ago,” Bowie continued.
“Right, forgot to tell you guys when I got up here,” Sully shared, he then needlessly rectified that. “Harv and Beth are here.”
Bowie let out a beleaguered sigh before he concluded, “And right now, they’re down there, facing the onslaught, when no one used to show on time, but now everyone is showing on time. And they’re doing it pissed at me because I banned phones and they all wanted to ask Genny for a selfie that they could put on Instagram. Now, does anyone in here want to help me, Matt, Harvey and Beth run interference with the seventy people that are right now strolling through the front door making a beeline to Genny? Or do you all wanna party up here and leave her to the wolves?”
“On it!” Gage decreed, rolling off the bed.
Sully pushed off immediately too.
And of course they did.
They were good guys.
Like Bowie.
The best.
Also, in a swish of sequins, a noise that I found one of the top five sounds of all time, not to mention with the grace of an athlete, Sasha dropped to a hip and swung her legs over the side of the bed, putting her feet decked in ropy gold high-heeled sandals on the floor.
I was wearing a pair of sleek, pointed-toe, death-defying-heeled, white leather mules.
It’d taken me three hours of combing through seventeen websites to find them.
But as was my wont when I had something I desired, I put the time needed into the endeavor, and I got it.
My shoes were, obviously…everything.
“Coming?” Sasha asked as she moved by me.
“Be right down,” I replied, reaching for my peachy-pink lip stain which was almost a neutral, but not quite because…understated with jewelry and makeup, the outfit packed an even bigger punch.
“Cannot wait to see this Judge guy,” she said as she and the boys moved to the door to follow Bowie out. “I’ve been to the store like…a bazillion times to try to catch a glimpse. He’s elusive.”
“I saw him a couple of days ago having breakfast at Zeke’s,” Sul said.
“Ohmigod, why didn’t you say?” Sasha cried.
Their voices were fading down the hall, and I was putting an unnecessary layer of stain on my lips, since I’d already applied the first one and it was called stain for a reason.
I was doing this allowing myself a moment to feel the fact that the truth of it was…
I did not want to go down there.
No matter what I said, I did not want to see Judge.
Why?
Especially when I was looking this fabulous?
Because I’d let him in.
I’d shared things with him I wasn’t even admitting to myself.
In fact, when I’d shared these things, I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth, because I hadn’t allowed myself to consciously think of them.
The double why…
As in, why did I do this?
I did it because he was handsome, and he was funny, and he was flirty, and he didn’t take any of my shit.
I did it also because he had warm brown eyes I could stare into for days and an easy smile that made me feel that ease, down deep, a place he shouldn’t be when I barely knew him.
But the last thing I needed was some hookup with one of Bowie’s employees that was never going to last, making future nights like tonight awkward for everybody.
Specifically, Mom and Bowie.
They needed no awkwardness.
They needed no troubles.
They needed smooth sailing.
Because after the downright rotten, heinous, traitorous shit Uncle Corey put them through, they’d earned it.
And they deserved it.
So far, it seemed, so good.
We all got along, even Matt dug Bowie, and Matt was a loner. Sometimes you just never knew with him. But he openly liked Bowie.
Also, Dad and Bowie got on with each other. They weren’t best buds, but they could share space amicably. Which was useful, since Mom and Dad were still the best of friends and none of us wanted one of those ugly situations where they had to share us between them so we never got to have both of them together.
All of us together.
Dad hadn’t come up for tonight, which would just be weird, but he’d been around the entirety of Christmas and it’d all been good.
Last, Mom and Bowie were just…happy.
Pretty much all my life I’d seen Mom that way (and I didn’t think too long about that).
But I got the impression from the boys and Bowie (not to mention Harvey, Bowie’s best friend) that wasn’t de rigueur with Duncan “Bowie” Holloway.
He was a great guy. Outside of my dad, the best.
I was glad he finally had that happiness.
At the same time, it haunted me.
So no, I didn’t need any entanglements with the resident player at River Rain Outdoor Stores Corporate Headquarters. Even if he did something cute, like run a program for kids to get them out into nature.
But Duncan had these parties every year, and he liked throwing them. I could tell by the way Mom shared how he’d been prepping for it, refreshing the evergreen boughs of their Christmas decorations, cooking with Bettina, their housekeeper, lugging in trays and boxes of catering and decorating stuff.
Hell, I’d done a walkthrough before I’d come up to start getting ready and the place was decked out.
The motif was pinecones, cream candles, copious strings of miniature LED lights threaded through winter greenery, and juniper-colored cloth napkins (Bowie was a famous environmentalist, even the glasses for beer were real glass, definitely not a paper napkin or a piece of plastic in sight).
Still, it was Bowie’s brand of festive, and it said a lot about him that he’d have the seventy employees he employed in his Arizona stores into his own home for a big bash on New Year’s, doing this every New Year’s Eve.
It was very Bowie.
And I couldn’t hide in my (and Sasha’s) bedroom because a handsome man who’d probably brought a fresh-faced, bubbly mountain girl as a date was downstairs.
I had to get down there.
My stain had dried, and I looked amazing, so I had no further excuses not to be down there.
So I slicked on the gloss over the stain, dropped the tube in my evening bag embossed with swoops of pearls (and I did have my phone, I went nowhere without it), and I threw one more glance at myself in the mirror.
Divine.
I headed out.
In a fairy tale, he would have been at the foot of the stairs, catching my eye the moment I appeared at the top of them and staring at me while I drifted down as if he was having difficulties not falling at my feet the minute I cleared the last step.
Up until a couple of years ago, I could convincingly make the argument my entire life was a fairy tale.
But I’d learned.
No life was a fairy tale.
I descended the stairs and cleared the growing crowd in Bowie’s massive entryway with its crowning mezzanine and hit the great room.
I then wasted no time going to one of the two bars Bowie had set up that had a bartender who could make mixed drinks and pour chilled glasses of champagne and craft beer from a tap (there were hammered copper tubs stationed around the space filled with bottles of beer, if you preferred, as well as small blue bottles of a local company’s sparkling water, so if you liked, you could also help yourself).