Moonlight Masquerade (Edilean 8)
She scrambled out of bed and looked for her jeans as all she had on was an oversized T-shirt.
“Come down or I’ll come up,” he bellowed, “then I’ll have to fight my little cousin for you.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. Reede was anything but small. “I’m coming,” she yelled back at him.
“Well, get down here! We have work to do. And don’t bother putting on makeup. There’s no time.”
Sophie made a quick trip to the bathroom with an even quicker glance at the mirror. She was a mess! Her hair was a tangle, her eyes sleepy-looking, and she had a crease from a pillow on her cheek. She started to take the time to fix herself, but then thought, What the heck? She was too excited to fiddle with a mascara wand. Besides, this was Roan, not Reede.
Roan was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a frown of impatience. But it changed when he saw Sophie. “Good Lord! Is this what you look like when you wake up? No wonder Reede has become a blithering idiot.”
She couldn’t help laughing as his compliment was so sincere. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to smooth it. “So what’s got you in such a rush this morning?”
“I think we should open tomorrow.”
“Not possible. I have to make eight animal sculptures for some kids. They’re—”
“Yeah, everybody in town knows about that. The kids saw Jim Levenger get pinned to a tree by a wayward arrow and you rounded them up and calmed them down with potato dragons. And those poor women who suffer through working for Reede bought you some clay so you’d like Edilean and stay here and keep the doc off their backs. Seems that the more sex he gets the nicer he is, and looking at you this morning I understand perfectly.”
Under normal circumstances, Sophie would have been blushing at what Roan was saying, but his tone made her laugh. “Did the gossip wagon have any idea how I’m supposed to do eight animals and open a restaurant at the same time?”
“This is Edilean.”
“What does that mean?”
“That everybody has an opinion on everything.”
“All right,” Sophie said. “I have an opinion too. Today I make the sculptures and tomorrow I get groceries and make some soup and the next day I open a restaurant and I’m going to need some help with all of that.” She started to say something about the money that she’d need but didn’t have, but she couldn’t bring herself to mention it.
“It’s all taken care of. While you were lollygagging around in the woods yesterday and peeling potatoes, I was working.”
“Unpeeled. Makes for better animal skin.”
“Right,” he said as he opened the front door. His truck was just outside. “Here, hold this open.”
She held the door as he went to the bed of the truck and opened the tailgate.
“I brought the fifty pounds of clay and you’re going to sculpt and do some actual work at the same time.”
“But I—”
“Don’t even think of saying that you can’t do it. I teach at a university, remember? You kids do your homework while partying to three a.m.”
“I’m hardly—” Sophie began but Roan held out a box for her to take.
“Tools,” he said. “And I got a few cookbooks so we can decide what we’re going to make.” Under the back window were four huge shopping bags with the William and Mary logo on them. Beside them were three more bags and four boxes from Williams-Sonoma.
“You’ve been shopping.”
Roan gave a little grin. “Funny thing about women and shopping. I called two women I know who say they are in a . . . What is that disgusting term people use nowadays? A committed relationship. That’s it. For months they’ve been saying they can’t go out with me, but when I asked them to help me buy things, they just said, ‘When and where?’ One helped me buy books and the other one helped me choose cookware.”
“All of which you could have done by yourself.”
“But who wants to, right?” he said, and they both laughed.
The day was hectic. Roan was used to being in charge of a lot of people, so he came up with dozens of things for Sophie to do at one time. The chaos wasn’t helped by the fact that the day before he’d placed an ad in the Williamsburg newspaper.
HELP WANTED IN SANDWICH SHOP IN EDILEAN. CREATIVE, INTELLIGENT, ENTERTAINING, TALENTED, EDUCATED PERSON DESIRED. COOKING ABILITY A BONUS.