Believe It or Not (2 page)

Her eyebrow quirked. “You own the male strip club?”

He sighed. “It’s not a strip club; it’s a bar. We just happen to have male exotic dancers a few nights a week.”

“I know all about it,” Violet said, giving him an appraising look. “Moonbeam wasn’t pleased when you started bringing in the strippers. She’s
really
not pleased you want to take over her studio space to bring in
more
strippers.”

“Are you going to lecture me about my exploitation of the alpha body? Because if you are, can I at least put my hands down first? My arms are getting tired.”

She was studying him in earnest now, her eyes flitting over his features with something he might have mistaken for interest if she hadn’t just been on the brink of beating him to death. He decided to study her as well, taking in the long, dark hair, the sternness of her features, the eyes that weren’t amber at all, but the most remarkable, breathtaking shade of violet.

“Your eyes are amazing,” he said without thinking, then wanted to kick himself.

She widened them in surprise and bit her lower lip. “Thank you. That’s how I got my name.” She cleared her throat, softening her voice a little. “You can put your hands down. Did you say Moonbeam gave you a key?”

“We have keys to each other’s shops so we can use them in case of emergencies.”

“How did you know about Moonbeam’s accident?”

“Moonbeam had an accident?”

Violet frowned. “What emergency were you talking about?”

“The mice,” he said, nodding at their cage. “No one was here to feed the mice.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “I didn’t even think of that. Thank you. That was nice of you.”

Drew took another step forward, genuinely worried about Moonbeam now. “Is your mom okay? What happened?”

“She fell down some stairs, but she’ll be fine. She’s in surgery right now.”

He watched her bite her bottom lip again, more worried than she seemed to be letting on. Should he offer a hug? No, definitely not. He’d only just met her, and she’d assume he was just trying to cop a feel. Not an unappealing thought by any means, but probably not the best move, with Buddha sitting there poised for bludgeoning.

“She’s not, um, having someone do this surgery at home, is she?” Drew asked.

Violet smiled a little at that. “Believe me, she’d be sprawled on the kitchen counter with a vision-seeker using shamanic cosmology to cure her broken pelvis if she had her way. I managed to convince her maybe an orthopedic surgeon was a better option.”

“I can’t believe she went for it.”

“Yeah, well, I struck a deal with her.”

There was an edge to her voice, something that made Drew wonder if she’d been forced to sell her soul to a pagan deity. Knowing Moonbeam, it was possible. “A deal?”

Violet sighed. “I’m going to fill in for Moonbeam until she’s back on her feet again. I talked to my employer, and they’re going to let me work from here for a month or two so I can help keep Mom’s business running while she recovers.”

“Your employer,” he repeated, assessing her in earnest now. Her hair was straight and glossy, and he wondered what it would feel like to slide his fingers through it. “What do you do? Besides the psychic thing, I mean.”

“I’m an accountant. In Portland. Portland,
Maine
,” she clarified.

“You moved from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine?” He laughed. “Didn’t want to hassle with learning to spell a new city?”

She flushed a little, but her eyes were still friendly. Guarded, but friendly. “Portland, Oregon, is 3,198 miles from Portland, Maine—one of the longest distances between two cities in the continental United States. I wanted space. Something new. Something…” She paused, her eyes flitting past the tie-dyed scarves, the glass jars of incense, the crystal ball on the corner table. “Something
normal
,” she finished.

“Normal,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

Drew nodded, wondering whether she always bit her lower lip this much. His thoughts veered a little there as he considered how that lip would feel between his teeth as he nibbled softly, then traced his tongue over—

“But you’re here now,” he said, interrupting himself before he got too carried away. “Filling in for your psychic mother. You don’t look like a psychic.”

She straightened sharply. He took a step back, wondering if she’d reach for Buddha again.

Instead, she folded her arms over her chest. “What does a psychic look like?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” he said. “I’m sure you’re a very good psychic.”

She looked away. “Right. Well, I just came in to grab Mom’s appointment book and assess the space. I’m thinking if I move a desk in over there, I can do my accounting work during the daytime over in that corner of the shop and keep the psychic thing contained over here with the sofas.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, feeling half the blood leave his brain as she moved past him, her hair brushing his bare arm as she strode toward the back of the shop. “Let me know if you need help moving furniture or anything.”

He turned and watched her bend down to flip a latch on the teak cupboard at the back of the shop. Drew reminded himself a gentleman wouldn’t stare at her ass.

Then he remembered he wasn’t a gentleman. It was an amazing ass, round and full and—

“Are you staring at my ass?” Violet asked without turning.

“You psychics ruin all the fun,” Drew answered, not feeling particularly embarrassed.

“There’s a mirror in the cupboard. I can see you staring.”

She grabbed the appointment book and stood up. Her gaze froze on the cupboard door and she got a funny, faraway smile. “I made this dent when I was eight,” she said, running her thumb over the gouge in the wood. “I threw a serpent mandala because I didn’t want to go to Iyengar class.”

“You too?”

Violet dropped her hands to her side and looked at him again. Tucking the book under her arm, she offered her hand to shake. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Drew.”

“Likewise, Violet,” he said as he engulfed her hand with his. She met his eyes then, and something warm and electric sparked between them.

Violet pulled her hand back and studied him for a moment. Then she shook her head. “A male strip club, huh?”

He sighed. “A bar. A bar that routinely hosts shows for male exotic dancers.”

“Right.” She shook her head again and tucked her hand into the pocket of her leather jacket. “I’ll let Moonbeam know you were taking care of Zen and Qi. She’ll appreciate that.”

“Her what?”

“The mice. Their names are Zen and Qi.”

“Oh. Of course. Well I wouldn’t be too sure about Moonbeam appreciating the help. She’s not overly fond of me or my business.”

Violet smiled. “What’s not to love about scantily clad men writhing around on stage?”

“Exactly!” Drew said with more enthusiasm than he meant. Violet gave a knowing look, and Drew started to assure her he was perfectly straight. Then he decided against it. Nothing screams “closeted homosexual” like announcing to a strange woman that you aren’t gay.

Drew cleared his throat. “Hey, if you’re not doing anything tomorrow night, we’ve got a special performance at the club. The Men of Texas. They’re supposed to be pretty good. There’s an extra cover charge, but I could put your name on the guest list if you want to check it out.”

Violet looked startled. “Not really my scene.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe that’s a reason to do it.”

“You like butt rock?”

“Pardon me?”

“Not a proposition. Or a medical condition. Butt rock, you know? Hair metal, glam rock, eighties power ballads, MTV, fist-pumping power chords?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Drew grinned and began to pound a drumbeat on the countertop. Feeling Violet watching him, he launched into the chorus of the Scorpions’ “No One Like You.”

He half expected her to roll her eyes or walk away, but she laughed. “Butt rock, huh?”

He stopped drumming and looked at her.
God, she’s beautiful.

“We can call it glam rock if
butt
isn’t a common part of your vocabulary.”

“What makes you think
butt
isn’t a common part of my vocabulary?”

“You know, I’m not sure this is a topic for a first conversation.”

She rolled her eyes. “
Butt
is totally a part of my vocabulary.”

“I’m sure it is. Anyway, butt rock… er,
glam
rock
… is the best kind of music for male entertainers. The beat’s perfect, and the music tends to appeal to women in our target demographic.”

“You don’t say.”

Drew grinned. “So you want to stop by tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

“How about if I put your name on the list, just in case?”

“Okay.” She nodded. “Thank you. I’d better get back to the hospital for visiting hours.”

She started to move toward the door, but her heel caught on the frayed edge of the Oriental rug. She toppled forward, and Drew grabbed her without thinking.

“Oh,” she gasped, looking up at him. Their eyes locked, and Drew was suddenly very conscious of the thinness of her sweater, the heat of the room, the flash of light in her eyes. In that moment, he would have preferred removing the skin from his forearm with a carrot peeler to taking his hands off her.

He let go of her and took a step back. “There you go,” he said, offering an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You take care.”

She blinked, then nodded. “Thank you. You, too.”

He watched her walk away, deliberately not staring at her ass.

By the time Violet got back to the hospital, Moonbeam was beginning to come out of anesthesia. She already had a cluster of visitors waiting outside to see her as soon as the nurse allowed it.

“Did they say how she’s doing?” Violet asked Butterfly, whose pale curls were exploding from beneath an orange turban. The rest of her was covered from head to toe in tie-dye, and her tattered Birkenstocks were a concession to the hospital’s footwear requirement. A tarot-card reader herself, Butterfly had been Moonbeam’s best friend since Violet was still in diapers—organic cloth ones, of course. Though Violet had never known her father, she’d grown up with the love of two distinct, albeit odd, parents in her life. Butterfly was like a second mother to her.

“They aren’t really telling us much,” Butterfly said, looking worried. “None of us are technically family, you know, and there are all these rules now about privacy.”

“Let me go see if I can find someone, okay?” Violet said. She watched the frown lines grow shallower on Butterfly’s forehead and felt better for being able to help.

Violet walked past the nurses’ station, halfway expecting someone to stop her. No one did. She kept walking down a tiled corridor, not entirely sure what she was looking for, but fairly certain it would be clad in a white lab coat.

She didn’t have to look long. As she rounded another corner, she ran smack-dab into exactly such a specimen. Her breath came whooshing out in an unladylike
oof
as she collided with a male body that was—of course—dressed in a perfectly starched lab coat.

He caught her by the shoulders, holding her upright to keep her from toppling over. Violet gasped, more stunned to be grabbed by strange men twice in an hour than she was by the shock of impact. She was still tingling from the feel of Drew’s hands on her shoulders, a little baffled by her response to him, since his enthusiasm about male exotic dancers made her pretty sure he was gay.

She looked up at the doctor and smiled. He smiled back.

Not
gay
, Violet decided.

The doctor peered down at her and released her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

She looked up into a pair of warm, brown eyes the color of Cadbury milk-chocolate eggs.

“Can I help you find something?” he asked, his eyes filled with concern, rather than creamy fondant.

“I was just looking for someone who could tell me how my mother is doing.”

“Who’s your mother?”

“Moonbeam… er, Lily McGinn.”

The doctor offered a weak smile and pulled off a surgical cap to reveal a thatch of thinning, caramel-colored hair with a slight bald patch. “Of course. You look just like her. She’s a spirited one, isn’t she?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

He laughed and extended a hand. Violet shook it, trying not to be creeped out by the purple gloves she sincerely hoped were clean. He seemed very nice, and surely doctors washed their hands regularly.

“I’m Dr. Chris Abbott, your mother’s orthopedic surgeon,” he said as he pumped her hand with a little too much enthusiasm. He released it then, and smiled again. “The surgery went great. Have you gone back to see her yet?”

“Well, no. The nurses said she’s still coming out of the anesthesia.”

“Come on,” he said as he touched her shoulder and steered her down another corridor. “You might as well be there when Moonbeam wakes up.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He led her back to a room where Moonbeam lay blinking on a hospital bed, wrapped up in bandages with an IV snaking into her arm. As Violet approached, Moonbeam opened her eyes and smiled weakly.

“Hi, honey,” Moonbeam whispered, her throat scratchy from the anesthesia. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine, but I’m not the one who just got carved up. No offense, Dr. Abbott,” she amended quickly, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“Call me Chris, please,” he said, winking at Violet. “Hey, Moonbeam, how are you feeling?”

She smiled. “Snowy.”

Dr. Abbott gave Violet a conspiratorial smile. “Morphine. She seems to like it.”

“I’m sure she does.”

Moonbeam yawned, then shut her eyes again. “I’m just going to take another nap, okay?”

“Whatever you want, Mom. I picked up your appointment book. Looks like you’ve got Mrs. Rivers at six p.m. Anything special I should know?”

But Moonbeam was already fast asleep.

“It sometimes takes a while for people to really come out of the anesthesia,” Dr. Abbott offered. “Really though, she’s doing well. You’re welcome to go tell her fan club out there that you got to see her. She should be back to herself in another thirty minutes or so, and I’ll have the nurse come tell you which room she’ll be in.”

Violet looked up at him, noticing for the first time the pleasant crinkles around his eyes. He was cute in that wholesome, enriched-wheat-bread sort of way. Very stable. Very nice. Very
normal
.

Normal had been in short supply for most of Violet’s early life, so she smiled.

“Thank you, Dr. Abbott. I really appreciate it.”

“Chris.”

“Chris,” she agreed, broadening her smile. “My mother is lucky to have you.”

***

That evening, Violet got to work setting up her temporary accounting practice in one corner of Moonbeam’s shop. She’d dragged a small desk out of the storage area and arranged her laptop and desk calendar and her pencil case with all the number-two pencils perfectly sharpened and aligned.

She could hear the faint sound of music from the other side of the wall, and wondered if Drew was still working. Not that she was interested. Not that
he
was interested. If her hunch was right, he was batting for the other team.

Still, her ears strained to pick up the sound of his voice, or at the very least, the notes of the song. Def Leppard, she realized. Something off the
Pyromania
album, maybe. “Photograph”—that was it. She hummed along with it as she clambered up onto the desk with a hammer in one hand.

She was standing there studying the wall when she heard a voice behind her.

“I don’t usually see Moonbeam up on the desk. Is that a special psychic technique they only practice on the East Coast?”

She spun around, startled less by Drew’s voice than by the electric blue of his eyes. His hair was as rumpled as it had been earlier, standing up in dark spikes that looked like someone had rubbed his head on the carpet. She couldn’t tell if it was a hairstyle or a lack of one. Either way, there was something oddly endearing about it.

Stop
staring, Violet.

She realized he was still waiting for an answer, and considered making something up to suggest a correlation between increased elevation and enhanced psychic powers. Instead, she shrugged and held up the hammer.

“If I’m going to be running my accounting office out of this place for a little while, I want it to look professional,” she said. “I took down one of the tapestries so I can mount a nice framed landscape photo.”

“Anyone ever tell you standing on a desk in stilettos is a bad idea?”

“No.”

He sauntered toward her. “Allow me, then. Standing on a desk in stilettos is a bad idea. Get down before you end up in the hospital with Moonbeam and I end up playing the psychic for you both.”

She started to protest—not just the fact that he was telling her what to do, but the notion she was “playing” at anything. But before she could say a word, the hammer slipped from her grip and landed on her toe.

“Ow!” she yelped and lifted her foot.

Bad
idea
, she thought as she began to topple in her ridiculously high boots.

She didn’t even see Drew move. It was like he just lifted his arms and she fell right into them. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt his hands grip her rib cage, the back of her knees. She looked up and found her herself nose to nose with him, his arms snug around her body, his breath ruffling her hair. He smelled like warm cotton and cherry Coke and something else she couldn’t name that made her heart clench.

His eyes held hers, and she watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “Standing on a desk in stilettos on only one foot… even worse idea.”

“Duly noted.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

“Does your foot hurt?”

“What?”

“Your foot,” he said, his arms still tight around her. “You dropped the hammer on it. That tends to smart a little.”

“Oh. Right.” Violet bit her lip. “I think it’s fine.”

His eyes were still fixed on hers, and Violet shivered. “Okay then,” he said. “I’m going to put you down now.”

Violet felt a flutter of disappointment, then did a mental eye roll at how dumb that was. He lowered her safely to the ground and took a step back.

Then he bent to pick up the hammer.

“Where do you want it?” he asked.

“What?”

“The painting, not the hammer.” He grinned. “That was almost the punch line to a really filthy joke.”

She blinked, trying to come up with something witty to say, something to show she wasn’t completely discombobulated by his nearness.

Way
to
play
it
cool, Violet.

“Never mind,” he said. “Hang on, let me grab my drill. Also not a filthy joke, for the record.”

He retreated to the storage area between their shared space and returned a few seconds later with a cordless drill, a packet of drywall anchors, a couple of silver hooks, and some screws. “Let’s get this thing mounted. Here, you can keep the hammer.”

She started to protest, but really, he seemed to know what he was doing. Besides, did she want to climb back up on the desk? She sighed and stepped aside while Drew set his keys and cell phone on the shop counter and stepped up onto the desk with maddening ease. He looked down and nodded at the frame leaned up against the wall. “That’s a nice photo.”

“Thanks. It’s Mount Hood.”

“I know.”

“Studies have shown artwork in offices and waiting areas has a calming effect on people, with eighty-four percent of study participants preferring landscape or nature scenes.”

He gave her an odd look, and Violet felt like a dork. “I like statistics,” she said. “And data.”

“I like mountains. Can you hand me the photo?”

She stooped down and picked up the frame and offered it to him. “Thank you for doing this. Really, I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem.”

He got to work fiddling with a device Violet couldn’t quite identify. As if reading her thoughts, he smiled down at her. “If you’d like to make a crack about the guy who works with male strippers using a stud finder, now would be the time.”

“Pardon me?”

He held up the gadget. “Stud finder. It’s how I know where to screw. You can make a crack about that, too, if you like.”

“I’ll pass,” Violet said as primly as possible, trying not to stare at his hands.

On the counter beside her, his cell phone buzzed.

“Can you see who that is?” he asked with a couple screws between his teeth. “What’s it say on the screen?”

Violet peered down at the iPhone. “Sam?”

“My partner. I’ll call back. Give me another screw?”

This time, she forced herself not to blush. He had a partner. Of course. Named Sam. Clearly Drew was not an option. Not that she’d ever considered him to be. Not in a million years.

No, she had more pressing issues to deal with. Nursing her mother back to health. Keeping her accounting practice and Moonbeam’s business afloat. Figuring out how to be a fake psychic. Typical stuff.

“One more screw, please?”

Violet bit her lip and handed him one, determined not to notice the way her hand tingled when he touched her.

***

The next evening, Violet was ready to jump out of her skin.

Preparing to do a fake psychic reading would be hard enough without worrying about her mother’s health. But from the moment Moonbeam had come out of anesthesia the night before, she’d been a handful not only for Violet, but for every member of the medical staff.

Could she have some medical marijuana?

No.

What about burning sage in the room?

No, definitely not. Her neighbor was on an oxygen tank.

Watsu would really help the healing process; did they have a swimming pool on-site?

No.

It went on like that all evening, and eventually, Violet began to notice the nurse eyeing the cords snaking out of the wall. Violet could see the wheels turning in the nurse’s head:
one
good
tug, and it could all stop…

You had to hand it to Moonbeam, though. She was spirited. Just like Dr. Abbott had said. Dr. Abbott, with his warm chocolate eyes and thinning caramel hair. And yes, his slightly vanilla personality. Nothing wrong with that. If Violet wasn’t mistaken, he’d looked down the front of her blouse at least twice while adjusting Moonbeam’s IV pole. He was interested in her, at least a little. She could do worse than a doctor, assuming he wasn’t married with a wife and one-point-two kids at home.

So now here she sat in Moonbeam’s shop, cozy in the chair that still held the shape of Moonbeam’s rump. She had five minutes before her first psychic reading. What the hell was she going to do?

Next door, Violet could hear the faint hum of some obscure ’80s hit. She tried to tune it out, but found herself lured by an odd wave of nostalgia as she recalled the crackly speakers and gym-sock smell of a middle school dance. One of the few Moonbeam had allowed her to attend.

Whitesnake
, she thought. That was the band. The song was called “Trouble.”

Focus, Violet. This isn’t helping.

An astrological chart. She could do that. She could waste at least ten minutes of the appointment printing one off on the computer and talking to the woman about her birth sign. That was good, right?

But it wasn’t enough. Violet was going to have to make something up. She sighed, feeling a sense of dread snake up her spine as the little bell tinkled on the door, signaling Mrs. Rivers’s arrival.