Allie didn't have to ask what was wrong, Michael told her as soon as she opened the door.
"I caught Brian fucking one of the guys at the construction site."
He didn't sound angry; he sounded weary, and that was a thousand times worse.
"Oh, sweetie." She grabbed the strap of the duffel bag hanging from his shoulder, dragged him over the threshold, and wrapped as much of him as possible in a hug. "I'll call Auntie Jane."
She was mostly kidding. Calling in the aunties for a cheating boyfriend was like calling in a nuclear strike on the asshat who'd parked diagonally across two spots at the mall. This didn't mean she wouldn't call them if Michael wanted her to.
He laughed a little, like she'd hoped he would, and if it sounded like he was laughing to keep from crying, well, that was okay, too. They'd take that next step when they weren't standing in an open doorway. Anger had probably got him packed and to the airport and onto the plane where he'd had nothing to do for a couple of hours but think about how his life had fallen apart. "Let's leave the aunties out of this; you know how they overreact."
"They salt the earth because they care. Come on." Unwrapping herself only as far as necessary, she tugged him a little farther into the store and locked the door behind him. "Upstairs. I made cake."
"Magic cake?" He sounded about twelve-or as much like a twelve year old as a man who'd topped out at six foot five and then put on the muscle bulk to match could sound.
"Is there any other kind?"
Arm around his waist, she steered him through the store and past the mirror...
"Is that...?"
"Don't even look, Michael, trust me."
... and up the stairs and into the apartment where she stepped back and took a good long look at him. He wore a shirt and blazer over jeans and work boots, the uniform for an architect visiting the site, and he'd obviously been in them since early Friday morning. His hazel eyes were shadowed, there were flecks of dried blood in the corner of his lower lip where he'd chewed off a bit of dried skin, and dark stubble buried curves where his dimples were hidden. Michael had always shown his heart on his face.
"Fuck the aunties. I'm going to kill him myself."
"Allie... it's just..." The duffel bag slid to the floor and he dropped into one of the kitchen chairs like his strings had been cut. "Just don't.You know what Brian's like. Hell, I know what Brian's like."
"I thought he'd changed."
"Yeah. Me, too."
It had been Brian's idea that Michael take the job with his father's firm, allowing them to finish their internship together. Brian's idea that they live together in Vancouver. Although he hadn't stopped fucking around the first year after he and Michael had hooked up, Allie knew for a fact that the last year the three of them had been at Carleton, Brian had actually managed monogamy. Not without temptation and not without a few alcohol-fueled rants about having been neutered, but he'd kept it in his pants.
She should never have let that charm fade.
She should have given him a different one as a going away present. One that came with consequences.
"I thought you said there'd be cake?"
"Yeah, I did." Allie bent to kiss the top his head, although given his height she didn't bend far, then pulled the cake out of the fridge and sliced off a hefty wedge. Filling the largest glass in the cabinet with milk, she set them on the table in front of him and slid into the next chair, tucking a bare foot up under her.
"You're not eating?" He frowned at her red boxers and over them the worn and armless remnant of one of David's old high school football jerseys. "You were in bed."
"One, not yet." Tugging at the frayed hem of the jersey, she was just glad it wasn't his; under the circumstances, just a bit creepy. "Two, it wouldn't have mattered. And three, if I'm going to eat cake at two in the morning I might as well apply it directly to my ass. Eat."
The left dimple made half an appearance. "You sound like your mother."
"Could be worse." Frowning, she watched him stuff a huge forkful of cake into his mouth. "Did you eat supper?"
"It's worse."
Reaching out, she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "Just answer the question."
"I had something at the airport. And I bought a sandwich on the plane. Two actually."
"Good." If he could still eat, he wasn't completely broken. So far there'd been nothing in Michael's life so terrible it had killed his appetite. Except, if anything, this should...
"Because I was expecting it."
Allie blinked. Not at Michael knowing what she was thinking before she got there herself, they'd been able to do that to each other since they were kids, but at the actual words. After a moment, she managed a quiet, "Why?" her reaction waiting on his answer.
"It was too perfect, wasn't it?"
With his stupid perfect life and his stupid perfect boyfriend.
At least she'd got the stupid boyfriend right.
"No. It wasn't too perfect. It was exactly as perfect as you deserve."
His mouth twisted. "Apparently."
"Oh, sweetie, that's not what I meant!" It was easier to hold him with him sitting down. Arms wrapped around him, head tucked into the curve of her throat, she rested her cheek on the top of his head and murmured, "Brian's an ass, he doesn't deserve you. And you deserve better."
"But I still want him."
"Yeah. I know."
After a long moment, he sighed. "I need a shower."
"I didn't want to mention it."
Both sofas opened into queen-sized beds. Allie didn't bother setting up either of them. Michael was one of the most tactile people she knew and when he was hurting, he needed touch.
Emerging from the bathroom clean and shaved, chestnut hair damp and curling slightly over his ears, he glanced over at the sofas and then at Allie standing in the bedroom door.
"It's a big bed," she said softly.
A little of the tension went out of his shoulders and he almost smiled. "Promise to keep your hands to yourself?"
"Nope."
They'd shared a bed, or certain variations of the word bed, off and on since they were five. There'd been a few rocky months in their teens before Allie had been convinced he really wasn't interested...
"Can't you just close your eyes and pretend I'm a guy?"
"Can you close your eyes and pretend I'm a girl?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Why would I?"
... but in the end she settled for having as much of him as she could. Charlie thought she was a little too fond of self-flagellation, but the comfort they took from each other outweighed the unrequited bits. Usually. And maybe Charlie wasn't entirely wrong.
She wondered if it hurt more that he'd caught Brian with another guy. If maybe a girl would have hurt less. Michael might not be interested, but Brian was as firmly in the enthusiastically nondiscriminating camp as any Gale. One very cold February night after Brian had essentially moved into their student apartment, the heat had gone off and the three of them had shared a bed. Allie and Brian had held a silent and speculative conversation, then placed Michael definitively between them.
Head on Michael's shoulder, his arm a warm, familiar weight against her back, she inhaled the scent of clean skin and fabric softener from his worn T-shirt and murmured, "What did Brian say?"
"When? Oh..." A disdainful snort in the darkness. "He didn't see me. I saw him, went back to the apartment, packed some shit, and left."
"So you didn't give him a chance to explain?"
"Explain what? That he was just standing there between the trailer and the crane minding his own business when some guy in a hard hat threw himself on his dick a few dozen times?"
"It's just..." Strange? Weird? Unlikely? None of the above, given that he'd been caught in the act. "What did you do with your phone?"
"Left it at the condo."
"I wonder why he hasn't called me."
"He's afraid of your reaction."
"Smarter than he looks."
"Obviously."
She spread her fingers out over his heart, feeling it beat through muscle and bone. Feeling the ragged edges of the break rubbing against each other.
"Allie?" Something in his voice suggested she wasn't going to be happy about the question.
"Yeah?"
"What drawer are Gran's sex toys in?"
She couldn't see him grinning in the dark, but she knew the dimples had reappeared. "Shut up!"
"Two more?"
He shrugged as he stripped out of his camouflage, using the movement to work the knots out of his shoulders.
"That's all of them, then. This would be the one thing in millennia they've agreed on." Heavy brows drew in. "Perhaps I should have had you deal with them as they emerged."
He'd spent thirteen years dealing with the horrors drawn to his boss' power-creatures that crawled and walked and flew out of nightmare, creatures that didn't belong in this world however Human they looked-and this was the first time he'd ever heard him sound unsure. Whatever was coming had him rattled. Off his game. "If I knew what we were all waiting for..."
"You know what you need to.You know what you always have. And you know I depend on you. If this creature gets loose in the world, I will be in mortal danger." The dark eyes narrowed. "You need to kill it. They're watching for me now, they'll be watching for me when it arrives, but they don't know about you. That's why you couldn't deal with them as they emerged. If they find out about you..." He spread blunt-fingered hands, rings glittering under the fluorescent light. "Capture. Torture. Eventually, you'll tell them where I am. Best to keep a low profile."
"Best for both of us from the sounds of it."
"Of course."
"What about after it's dead? What will they do then?"
"After?" The older man snorted. "After, they'll very likely try to kill you, but with no reason to hide, you can pick them out of the sky as they come in for the attack."
"Provided they attack one at a time."
"Which they will. As I said, they don't agree on much and, furthermore, with only a single shot to base their assessment on, there's no way they'll anticipate how dangerous you are. After, they'll be furious and you can take advantage of that lack of finesse."
True. Checking that his M24 rested secure against the padded lining of the case, he frowned. It sounded reasonable-for those definitions of reasonable that referred to the more important part of how he made a living-but there seemed to be more variables every time they talked. For the first time in a long time, he wondered if he did know what he needed to.
Brian called at 8:10 just as Allie eased the ancient Beetle onto Deerfoot Trail heading for the airport. Eased because one of Gran's charms appeared to be a NASCAR derivative and maintaining a speed less than 20K over the 100 KPH limit proved to be taxing. Fortunately, Saturday morning traffic was sparse compared to the usual commuter tangles so, after glancing down to see the call display, Allie picked up the phone.
"Is he there?" Brian sounded wrecked.
She'd left Michael communing with the coffeemaker, eyes squinted nearly shut, hair sticking up in at least three different directions. He'd slept through the dragons' flyby-probably for the best-but had hopefully regained enough consciousness to understand her instructions for opening the store.
"Allie, please. Is Michael with you?"
He deserved to know that much.
"Yes," she told him. And hung up.
"Hi, you must be Joe. I'm Michael, a friend of Allie's. She's gone to pick Charlie up at the airport, but she should be back by eleven unless Charlie convinces her to stop by a grocery store, which would not be a bad idea since there's a significant lack of crap in that apartment. But not a big surprise since Gale girls don't trust anything they haven't baked themselves. Which reminds me, I ate the last of the rhubarb pie for breakfast, so you're in the clear with Aunt Ruth's charm, and in case no one's warned you, pancakes are sneaky because they can pour the batter in pretty much any pattern they want. Generally, they're pretty harmless, but stick to toast and eggs if you pissed one of them off. And butter the toast yourself. Oh, and Allie says you're in charge."
He had a place here. The prickle of panic evoked by the stranger at the door stopped running up and down his back. Joe looked down at the enormous hand engulfing his and then up, way up into a friendly smile and shadowed fox eyes. "How the fuck tall are you?" he demanded, wondering if this Michael had a touch of the blood.
"Uh... six five. Ish."
"Ish?" Who actually said ish? "And could you maybe let go of my hand, then?"
"Sorry."
"It's all right; seems I can still use it." He flexed the fingers just to be sure. "So, when did you arrive?" Charlie and Roland he remembered, but Allie hadn't said anything about Michael.
"Late last night."
Front door unlocked, Joe turned the sign, and decided to be amused by how much the big man had to shorten his stride to walk beside him to the counter.
"So, uh... you're a leprechaun?"
"Oh, she told you that, did she?" She might as well have hung a sign around the big guy's neck saying I trust him, so you can. Conscious of Michael's continuing stare, Joe sighed. "Go ahead and say it."
"I don't..."
"Yeah.You do. Let's get it over with and move on. I'm a little tall for a leprechaun."
Broad shoulders rose and fell; the grin was damned near blinding. "Not from where I'm standing."
Joe spent a moment thinking of punching the guy in the nuts, considered the consequences, and pulled a ten from the cashbox. "If I'm in charge, you're going for coffee."
"I don't..."
"Next door."
"Okay, then."
He sold a yoyo to a kid on a skateboard while Michael was gone and was entering it in the ledger when he got back.
"The old guy next door? Kenny Shoji? He can tell exactly what kind of coffee you like. Pretty cool, eh?" The big red mugs looked small in his hands although they regained their size when he set them on the counter. "He said it makes more sense to use these than to keep wasting paper, that we should bring them back when we're done, and that if I'm staying for any length of time, he's going to get some crap coffee in so that we can abuse it without causing him pain."
Seemed that Michael was also a triple/triple man. And it seemed that coffee shop Kenny trusted him on sight. Joe, however, still had trouble trusting anyone so tall. At least a dozen members of the NBA and four MLB pitchers were half bloods, so it wasn't like the Courts didn't have a presence in the MidRealm. He slid the ledger back under the counter. "How long are you staying, then?"
Just like that, the shadows in Michael's eyes won; darkening the hazel, banishing the grin. "I don't know."
In spite of his suspicion, Joe felt like he'd kicked a puppy. A big, half-grown, annoying puppy that he'd best stay on the right side of, not only because of the size of his teeth but because Allie was clearly holding the end of his leash. Sighing, he scraped at a smudge on the counter with a ragged fingernail. "So why'd you need sanctuary, then? And don't even try to lie to me about it."
"Because you're a leprechaun?"
"No, because any idiot can see you'd be crap at it."
Seemed for a moment like Michael wasn't going to answer, then he shrugged. "I caught my partner fucking around on me.You?"
So he'd caught that it went both ways. The big guy wasn't stupid for all the air was probably right thin up near his head. "I got my life threatened by an attitude case with a gun and loaded Blessed rounds."
Looking thoughtful, Michael took a long swallow of coffee. Set the mug back on the counter and said, "True death, eh? Well, that puts infidelity in perspective.Your life sucks worse than mine."
Joe saluted that insight with his own mug, then kicked the second stool over. "You know you're fucking covered in charms, right? And they're not all hers."
"You can see them?" Michael asked, sitting down. "Sorry, stupid question. Of course you can, given who you are." Glancing down at a tanned forearm that screamed don't even fucking think about it to anyone with the sight, he twisted it so the muscle rolled beneath the skin. "Some of them are Charlie's, a couple are Aunt Mary's-that's Allie's mother-at least one is her cousin Katie's, and there's one of David's. Her brother," he added when Joe raised a brow.
"No aunties?"
"They try, but Allie always catches them. Her gran actually managed to keep one in place for almost a week once, but that was only because she drew it just before my dad dragged me off to Ottawa with him. Allie hit the roof when I got home and she found it."
"Little possessive is she, then?" Joe murmured watching the charms on the backs of his own hands catch the light.
"A little." His smile flashed bright and unconcerned about being possessed. "But she's not controlling, and the aunties are. Can be," he amended. Frowned. "Are."
"But you've family of your own?"
"Sort of." Michael took a long swallow of coffee. "Well, yeah. But my parents are politicians-back room, not elected-and they never have much time for anything that doesn't impact at the federal level. First day of kindergarten when the au pair was late, Allie took me home with her and I pretty much stayed. She's got no sisters and that's kind of an anomaly in her family." He shot Joe a knowing look. "I think that's why she collects strays."
"I'm no stray!"
"If you say so, but you're a long way from home."
As much as he wanted to, Joe couldn't argue with that.
Charlie's reflection was wearing a cowboy hat as she passed the mirror on her way into the store, but that, Allie noted, seemed to be the only embellishment. Her reflection stood tied to a stake surrounded by bones split for their marrow.
"Yeah. Dragons. I know," she sighed as she followed her cousin.
"You must be Joe."
Eyes wide, Joe managed to sweep his gaze from the blue hair to the lilac Docs and settle somewhere in between by the time Charlie stopped across the counter from him.
"I'm Charlie. Don't let her..." A toss of her head, toward Allie. "... boss you around."
Ginger brows drew in. "But she's my boss."
"Well, you're screwed, then." She turned and charged between the first set of shelves. "Michael!"
"Charles!"
Allie rounded the shelves in time to see Michael heave Charlie off her feet, secure her with one arm, and reach out to stop an ancient wire spinner stuffed with old Maclean's magazines from toppling over. Moving up next to the counter, she leaned over and beckoned Joe closer. "Charlie can mark you with a song, so if she gets out her guitar, watch where the music is going."
"You people are scary in a group," Joe snorted. "You know that, right?"
"Yes." Allie smiled. "But this isn't a group."
"Say the word," Charlie growled as Michael put her down, "and Brian'll have the theme music to 'Mr. Dressup' on permanent earworm."
"Let it go, Charlie."
"Right." She reached up and cupped his face in her hands. "Revenge served cold. Got it.You know where I am when the time comes."
"Thank you."
"Could be worse. If you were straight, you'd have been stuck with Allie, and it's not like she's all about commitment."
He grinned. "When was the last time you slept in a bed?"
"I can't remember, but I was in Halifax."
Allie caught his eye and nodded.
"Okay, then." Bending, he scooped her up and tossed her over his shoulder. "Bedtime."
"Hey! There's a whole bunch of eight track tapes up here." She grabbed one off the shelf and tossed it into Allie's hands as she passed. "Hang onto that for me."
"It's the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack."
"Or not." Falling forward, head pillowed on her arms, she stared down Michael's back as they exited the store. "Your ass looks amazing from this angle."
Michael's response got lost in the sound of his boots on the stairs.
"I sold a yoyo while you were gone," Joe said at last.
"Well, what do you think?" Allie asked as Michael wandered around the half-completed loft, poking at pipes and wiring. Like most of the Gale boys, he'd spent summers working construction for her Uncle Neil. Unlike most of the Gale boys, he'd actually enjoyed it and the experience had ultimately shifted his interest in art into architecture. Allie figured the renovation would keep him from dwelling on Brian's betrayal.
Brushing dirt off his hands, he returned to her side. "The plumbing and electrical's all in. If I finish the build, and you hire the retailer's people to install fixtures and counters and carpet and shit-under my supervision-this place could be livable in about a week. Maybe less."
"Carpet?"
"We run linoleum across that end, kitchen and bathroom. Put down a good, hard-wearing Berber in the remaining space." Arms folded, he looked down at her from under the edge of his hair. "It's going to take a lot of yoyos, Allie."
She smiled, reached up, and brushed his hair back. "You just make the calls and let me worry about the money."
"Allie!" Joe whirled around to face her as she came back into the store picking yet more spiderwebs off her sweater. "This person..." He waved at the tiny woman practically vibrating by the counter. "... wants to buy this painting." It was the seascape Allie'd been looking at just before Shamrocks-and-attitude had shown up.
She suppressed a grin at the way the customer just barely kept herself from snatching it out of Joe's hands. "That's great."
"Yeah, but it's..." Leaning closer, he dropped his voice. "... got a price on the back that says ten thousand dollars."
"And?"
"Ten thousand dollars? That can't be right." He waggled the painting so that Allie could see the charm sketched under the price.
The woman raised a thin hand in protest, fingers trembling slightly, the scent of linseed oil wafting up from a stain on her sleeve. "Please..."
"Why don't you let her hold it, Joe."
"But..."
"It's okay."
Still frowning, he turned back around toward the customer and barely managed to let go in time when she snatched the painting from his grip. "It's just..."
"A nice round number." Allie noted that half the woman's left eyebrow appeared to be Cadmium Yellow, and asked her, "Do you have a problem with the price?"
The woman opened her mouth, closed it again, an internal struggle clear on her face. Finally, she shook her head, gray-streaked ponytail swaying in counterpoint behind her.
"You handle the money, Joe." Her tone suggested he table any further protests until after the deal had been completed. Allie was pleased to see he'd realized it wasn't actually a suggestion. "I'll wrap it."
"It's a bank draft." The woman's voice was also thin, the audio matching the physical, and she couldn't meet Allie's gaze.
"Bank draft's fine." Two layers of brown paper with a charm sandwiched between offered more protection than the anal retentive wrapping provided by galleries and high-end auction houses. Allie'd put her wrapping up against pretty much everything but digestion by dragons. Given dragon digestion, that was a case of you pay your money, you take your chance. Given the presence of dragons in Calgary -or over Calgary, at least-that was not a rhetorical observation.
"Ten thousand dollars?" The words spilled out of Joe's mouth as the door closed and the customer sprinted out of sight. "For that piece of shite? You charmed her into thinking she wanted it!"
"First, it was Gran's charm, not mine. Second, the charm's intent was to keep just anyone from recognizing the painting, merely ensuring certain specific criteria were met. Third, it's a Turner. A study for Calais Pier. I recognized it when I was going through the box earlier. I think he was working out the motion of the waves between the packet and the pier." She twirled a finger in the air. "The circular pattern was unique for its time."
"And that means what?"
"Back in 2006 a private telephone bidder bought Turner's Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio at a Christie's auction in New York for 35.8 million."
Joe blinked and finally managed a choked, "Dollars?"
"Dollars."
"And the yellow-eyebrow woman knew that?"
Allie nodded. "My guess is she spotted the Turner a while ago and then went looking for a buyer willing to give her part of the price up front. She's probably been panicking we were going to sell it to someone else. Or realize the actual price of what we had. Ten thousand was enough she didn't feel too guilty about not telling us how much it was worth."
"Millions. It's worth millions."
"Maybe. But, given Gran, I guarantee most of that ten thousand is profit. And..." Allie grinned. "... yellow-eyebrow woman will make enough to be able to paint for the rest of her life without worrying about starving."
"But you could have made 35.8 million!"
"No, that needs auction hysteria. But she probably was able to find a collector willing to pony up one or two million, though."
"Not the point. She'll be making it, won't she? Not you!"
"She needed it. That was one of the charm's criteria. Gran's letter said the store had become crucial to the local community." Allie watched a young couple walk by. He pushed a sleeping toddler in a stroller. She tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to get a half-grown golden retriever to heel. "When I met you, I thought she meant the community, but now I think she was working wider."
"So what, it's suddenly all, 'hey, let's be Robin Hood'?"
"Joe, we made a profit of ten thousand dollars. Get over it. We needed a bit of money. A bit of money appeared."
"You needed a bit of money, and a bit of money appeared?" Joe repeated, eyes wide, voice a little higher than usual. "That's how it works for you? For your family?"
"Essentially. We don't control it, though, that's darkside stuff. Sorcery," she added when he looked confused. "We don't force it; we just let things happen."
He sank down onto the stool. "Your life doesn't suck, you know that, right?"
She glanced out the back of the store toward the garage and Michael and frowned at the muting of familiar pain. Still, he was here, with her, maybe that was enough these days. "There should be new pie in the fridge," she said. "You interested?"
"Ten thousand dollars and pie." Joe shook his head. "Total fucking absence of suck."
"So, the Gale woman."
"Alysha," Graham muttered without looking up from his monitor. Damned spellchecker kept insisting he meant extinguished when he actually meant exsanguinated.
Dark brows drew in as Stanley Kalynchuk glared down at him. "Alysha?"
"That's her name."
"I am aware that's her name. That's all you've discovered in... what? Forty-eight hours? Our time is not limitless!" Kalynchuk slapped a copy of the paper onto the desk. "Or have you forgotten?"
Graham raised one hand off the keyboard to wave it at his publisher in a vaguely placating manner. "I'm working on the story about the suspicious cattle deaths-we need to put our spin on the speculation."
"Our spin?" The snort managed the complex trick of being both dismis sive and accepting. "What are you blaming it on?"
"Chupacabra." And didn't the spellchecker love that.
"Goat suckers?"
"They're not necessarily goat specific," Graham muttered, backspacing. "They suck the blood from livestock. Cattle are livestock."
"They're not being exsanguinated, they're being eaten."
"Potato, potahto."
"And we're too far north for chupacabra."
"Yeah, like our readers are going to care."
"And that right there is the problem in a nutshell. No one cares about scholarship anymore." Kalynchuk paced away from the desk, turned by the white board, and, unfortunately, paced back. Graham had been hoping he'd stomp all the way off to his office. "Imagine the hysteria if we printed the truth."
"We've printed the truth. No one ever believes us. No one is supposed to believe us; that's the point of the exercise."
"Control. Discredit. Hide behind the expectations of the masses." A beefy hand smacked down over a blurry picture of what was probably a raccoon in a dumpster. "Most people wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the ass."
Having half expected a bad Nicholson impression, Graham reminded himself that his boss was not a fan of popular culture
"Now..."
Even without looking up, Graham knew his boss was standing with his arms crossed. He was just that good he could hear crossed arms in the other man's voice.
"... about the Gale woman."
"Alysha. I'm seeing her tonight." In three hours, twenty-two minutes, seventeen seconds. But who was counting.
"Seeing?"
He looked up at that, a little surprised by the challenge in the question. "Dinner. Unless you need me for something else."
"No, not tonight."
"You wanted me to find out what she knows. That's all this is."
"Make sure that's all it is." Challenge had become warning although he didn't think he'd let any of his conflicted feelings show in his voice. "You do your job.You find out what you need to know, and you get out."
"You make her sound like a war zone."
Kalynchuk's lip curled. "We don't know that she isn't."
"Tight jeans, low-cut white tank top, pink ballet-wrap sweater." Sprawled out on the bed, Charlie watched Allie finish dressing and frowned. "Okay, you're clearly going for mildly sexy, given the boob and ass combo, but completely harmless. How tall is he?"
"Tall enough." Allie slid her feet into a pair of pink plaid Chucks, the only flats she had with her.
"How tall?" Charlie demanded.
"Five ten. Maybe."
"Fuck a duck, I've got boots taller than that."
"Well, if I was short like you, it wouldn't be a problem, would it?"
"I gave you that extra inch, babe. Felt sorry for the chubby thing you had going in junior high." She sat up and wrapped her arms around her bare knees. "You really like him?"
Because it was Charlie asking, Allie actually gave it some thought as she twisted her hair up and clipped it. "Yeah," she said, after a minute. "I really like him."
"You going to bang him?"
"Not tonight."
"Why not? And please don't tell me it's because Michael's here, because if you do, I'll barf, I swear."
"It has nothing to do with Michael," Allie snorted, dusting bronzer over her cheeks, blending the freckles in a bit.
Charlie's turn to think for a moment. "Weirdly, I believe you."
"Tonight's still about Gran."
"Yeah, okay, allegedly dead grandmother equals death of verbal foreplay. No pre-game show, no game."
"Fortunately, tomorrow is another day." Allie leaned down and kissed the top of Charlie's head. "I think you need more sleep."
Graham drove a four-wheel drive pickup, dark blue under the grime, with a black cab over the truck bed. "It's not very glamorous," he admitted, pulling out from the store and right into an illegal U-turn across 9th, "but it's paid for."
"It's just like home," Allie told him, braced against the movement. "My family lives twenty-two kilometers outside a bustling metropolis of about four thousand people, so pickups are the default method of transportation."
"Your grandmother left, looking for something a little more exciting?"
"She may have gone a bit wild," Allie allowed, grinning at him. "Because there's nothing more exciting than spri... cat saucers and yoyos." He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket over a white shirt with a narrow blue stripe. And on his feet...
"What are you doing?"
"Checking for cowboy boots."
"You're mocking me."
"I am." She frowned as he turned north on 1st Street, suddenly realizing why things looked so familiar. "That's interesting. We're going back along the route the cabbie used to bring me in from the airport."
Graham turned his attention off traffic long enough to shoot an incredulous look across the cab. "He drove through downtown?"
Her grin broadened at the indignation in his voice. "It's okay. I knew I was getting hosed."
"Did you report him?"
"I didn't care that much, and I got to see something more than the ex pressway. That's a win." She relaxed a little when Graham turned onto 3rd. Twice over exactly the same route would have been more than coincidence. Turned out their destination was just west of 3rd and 6th. Allie peered north up 6th as they crossed it, her attention still drawn to something in the block north of 2nd.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah, it's..." Eye widening, she noticed the name of the restaurant they were parking in front of. "Buchanan's? You own a restaurant?"
He laughed. "Happy coincidence, but it is why I came here the first time. Wanted to see what the western branch of the family was up to. Well, that and The Western Star's office isn't far."
It looked as though he'd have come around and opened the truck door for her, but Allie was out and on the sidewalk before he got the chance. "Seems like the western branch of the family is doing fairly well," she said as he joined her. The restaurant was a square brick building with large windows running along the two open sides. "Chop House and Whiskey Bar?"
"It's kind of a shrine to malt whiskey; they've got over 200 brands behind the bar. But the food's amazing, too," he added as Allie's eyebrows rose. "They're known for the best bacon cheeseburger in the city, but tonight, because it's your first dinner out in Calgary, I thought we'd go straight for the clich
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