“It could be worse, though,” she pointed out. “I could be the bad kind of crazy.”
His laugh sent a thrill straight through her, and just for a moment it seemed possible—probable, even—that everything would work out okay.
It had to.
Chapter 2
“Ooh. It’s space pirates!”
The most interesting woman he’d met in years pointed through the glass top of the pinball game. “Look, there’s the spaceship, and there’s the captain and his first officer in a gun battle.”
Her skinny body folded over the tight belt of her trench coat. Her fedora sat at the crown of her head, affixed at a rakish angle over a coil of upswept hair. She wore silk stockings with tall heels, but this costume—which would have been conservative on a London businesswoman waiting for the train—looked like a dare. As though she wore it to announce to the world that with this woman, they ought to expect the unexpected.
It was something of a miracle that he’d accepted her invitation to join her in the first place. Allie Fredericks was the sort of person Winston usually made space around when their paths crossed—the sort he’d expect to encounter headlining an off-Broadway production of the type his daughter, Bea, sent him to see, or being profiled in one of the Humans of New York stories she liked to send him. How the other half lives, she’d tag the articles when she shared them. Or, A little humanity to brighten your day.
What she meant was these were people with big lives and big stories.
Bea wasn’t wrong: it had been a very long time since Winston let himself be drawn to a woman with a story. Decades.
Until Allie had grabbed hold of his lapels and pulled him on top of her, he’d forgotten how exciting they could be. How marvelous it had been, in the beginning, with Bea’s mother, Rosemary.
“Pirates are so cool.” Allie glanced up from the pinball glass, smiling. “Yar.”
He smiled back, because she seemed to require it. “This will work, then?”
“I think so.” She slumped against the wall in the shadows and poked out a finger to depress the paddle button. “Do you think they can see me?”
Winston stood in the player’s position before the pinball table. He had a clear view of the whole of the room they’d just come from: the bar stretching twenty feet in front of him, and past it the table where they’d been sitting and his own reflection in the mirrored wall. Even if the couple glanced behind them in the mirror, they wouldn’t be able to see Allie reflected there. She was obscured by the shadows.
“No. You’re well-concealed.”
“What are they doing now?”
The woman, still standing, had resumed her conversation. Her body blocked her companion’s from Winston’s view.
“Talking. She’s turned away.”
“Good.”
She crossed her arms, her gaze on her shoes. The red polished tips of her stocking-covered toenails peeked through the holes at the toes. She was a small woman. Interesting to look at, but not beautiful.
Painfully, hopelessly his type.
“I liked that show,” she said.
“What show?”
“The space pirates. Firefly. Did you see it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You should. It’s got all the good stuff—cowboys and justice and space prostitution and lots of bad decisions.” She captured a loose strand of hair at her neck and twirled it around her finger. “There was a movie, too. Serenity.”
“I’ll make the effort, then.”
“You should.”
“I will.”