One-Off (2 page)

We stopped on the street as a huge crowd of tourists set up a roadblock to ogle the exodus from the Capitol. Presumably, the chance to spot a favorite congressional member was too great to miss.

“Don’t they ever put in a full day?” Dallas eyed the stream of people leaving the building.

“I’d settle for one vote at this point. Forget an eight hour day, just vote to pass something,” I retorted. Dallas and I weren’t the only cynics in this town, but as newswomen, we were also realists.

“Let’s push through.” Dallas began elbowing her way through the crowd. She looked more like she was participating in a roller derby rather than just trying to part the horde. It was the best way otherwise—

“Oh, my God! That’s Dallas Knight. Honey, look who it is. Let’s get a picture.”

Otherwise someone will recognize Dallas, and she’d be stuck taking pictures with every person on this street. She wasn’t an actress, merely a news anchor, but that didn’t matter to people anymore. If she was on television, she was someone they had to get a picture with. The fact that she looked gorgeous with her long golden brown hair and those big green eyes that could mesmerize and instantly take a person’s measure didn’t help her ability to blend either.

Dallas, in a hurry and late as usual, didn’t even blink at the exclamation. She kept moving. I grabbed onto her purse strap to stay connected and let her five-foot nine-inch advantage pull my shorter five-three form through the mob. The tux shop was around the corner a few doors down. I didn’t risk looking back to see if the pack was following us. If we made it around the bend quickly enough, a television news anchor wasn’t enough of a draw to pull people off their path just for a quick pic.

“We ditched them, I think.” Dallas glanced over her shoulder. “Should have worn my hat and sunglasses.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that fools everyone.”

“Sarcastic little twit,” she muttered with a smile and turned to face me at the shop’s entrance. “You will try to get into the spirit of this wedding, won’t you, Skye? For me?”

What was the wedding spirit? Being happy to pay exorbitant prices for a venue, food, cake, flowers, and live winged creatures to fly away as some symbolic gesture of everlasting love or something equally nauseating? Wetting my pants because I’d get to wear a pretty dress I’d never want to wear again? Losing my mind in an effort to keep my best friend calm amid all the stresses that popped with the planning and her family on her big day?

I nodded stupidly because I liked Dallas as vehemently as I hated weddings. “Whatever you need.”

She looped her arm around me as we pushed into the tux shop. Colin was meeting us here. I wasn’t quite sure why we were already at the tux buying stage, but not wanting to sound like a moron, I went with it. Her eyes roamed over the shop’s interior and caught on the mirror behind the sales desk. She straightened a lock of hair that didn’t need straightening, which made me notice the wind ravaged left side of my hair. I combed my fingers through the reddish brown strands that came to a stop at mid-neck in a wedge bob style. I tucked the offending side behind my ear, noting that my roots, the ones that showed my natural dark red color, were starting to show at the temple. I’d need to get a color touchup soon and remember not to tuck my hair behind my ears until I did. I hastily pushed the strands back in place.

“Did I tell you Colin’s cousin arrived last night?”

My eyebrows rose. “The best man cousin?”

“Yep, only that doesn’t quite fit.” She gave a final cursory check in the mirror and made one more unnecessary hair tweak.

“What doesn’t fit?”

“You know the cousin I told you he spent his summers with and roomed with in college; the one that’s his best friend?” She waited for my nod. “It’s a she.”

“What?” My jaw edged open. “His best man’s a woman?”

“Can you believe it? I tried to talk him out of it. Offered to have her as one of my bridesmaids so she could be in a pretty dress instead, but no, he wants her standing up there with him.”

Her green eyes studied every section of my multicolored hazels for a reaction. She’d told me several times that she wished she had my eyes. They weren’t that unusual. Lots of people had interesting hazel color mixes, but she liked mine with the dark blue ring surrounding ocean blue irises streaked with green the color of grass that brushed up onto a narrow loop of mocha brown around my pupils. Depending on what I wore, the blue or green might stand out more, but for the most part, they looked nondescript. She had a distinctive eye color that people commented on, yet she wanted my eyes. That’s fine. I wanted her sleek honey brown hair because it was always taken seriously. Try having red hair and not being called “Ginger” before the end of every day.

“Weird, right?” she prompted after her examination didn’t produce a response from me.

“Actually, it kinda makes me like him more.”

Her hand came out and grasped my arm, worry etched on her face. “What do you mean, more? I thought you really liked him?”

“Simmer down.” I realized I’d have to be more obvious that I was joking when talking about anything to do with this wedding. Weddings must act as a comedy jammer on brides-to-be. “I like him fine. He’s no you, but he’ll do in a pinch.”

She giggled and I sighed with relief. At least she hadn’t lost all sense of humor now that she was getting married. “Come on, let’s see if they’re here.”

“Is she going to be in a tux, too?”

Her hands spread out. “I’m trying to contain this whole thing. No reason she can’t wear a dress and stand beside him.”

“It’s his wedding, too,” I reminded her. Dallas was the kind of person who’d planned every second of her wedding day in her head over and over, right down to a groom who does every little thing she says. She and I would have hated each other in high school.

We were led to a private room where Colin was being helped out of a jacket he’d tried on. His broad shoulders spread across half a wall of clothing racks. As co-anchor on Dallas’s weekly newsmagazine show, his face was as gorgeous as hers, his light blue eyes as distinctive as her green, his short black hair as luscious as her long brown, but those shoulders were his most recognizable attribute.

Beside him stood a trim woman with long yellow blond hair. Yellow, not honey, not wheat, not champagne, yellow as butter, and where Colin’s broad shoulders were his focus, this woman’s frizzy curls that reached to mid-back were as conspicuous as a neon blinking light. Think flattened tumbleweed. No one in this conservatively clad, appearance minded town would walk around with hair that crazy wild. I think I loved it.

“Hi, baby,” Dallas cooed from beside me, taking the two steps down into the showroom and practically vaulting into his arms. Their engagement was still a new thing. I didn’t expect her to stop gushing any time soon.

“There’s my babe.” His arms came around her and several seconds of slurpy kisses could be heard, even from across the room and even when I was humming a metal rock tune to myself. Did I mention I’m single? As such, I have an inborn right to be sickened by the sight of a couple in love.

I’d almost forgotten about the woman with the glorious hair until she cleared her throat, pulling her cousin’s attention back so introductions could be made. Dallas didn’t wait for Colin. She leaned down and swept the woman into a hug, saying how nice it was to meet her. I had to hand it to Dallas. As perturbed as she might be that Colin was ruining her picture perfect wedding with his nontraditional choice of best person, she wouldn’t let that get in the way of welcoming his favorite cousin. She must already be in wedding bliss mode.

I allowed one last negative thought about weddings in general before sucking it up and descending the stairs to join the happy group in their joyous festivity planning. As they turned to face me, the smile I’d almost convinced myself was real slid off my face. Cornflower blue eyes pinned me to my spot. Not even that fabulous hair could detract my attention from those colorful peepers. These should be the eyes that Dallas wanted. That anyone who had eyes should want. Forget the apple blossom cheeks, shapely jaw, elegant neck, and full lips, her eyes had the kind of color intensity that absolutely no one could turn away from.

Even as much as I wanted to.

“Ainsley Baird, meet our former executive producer, Skye MacKinnon,” Colin introduced us, and those amazing blue eyes went from welcoming to suspicious in a flash.

“Still living, I see,” Ainsley said in a smooth accent that was as attractive as her eyes and hair and face and lips. GAH! That accent! Soft and musical, gentle with consonants and vowels stretched almost to breaking. I hated that accent. Hated it because I loved it so much.

“Still bitchy, I see.” Okay, so maybe my reply was bitchy, too, but I didn’t need the attitude on the back of the astonishing news that I’d be participating—nay, the MOH—in a church wedding that would be photographed.

We both turned to our respective best friends. She, with a litany of words dipped heavily in Scottish brogue, and I, with seething facial expressions that told them we were in no way going through with this.

“Catch me up here.” Nice guy Colin looked first to bitchy, then to giddy, then to me.

Dallas, her elation filtering her ability to read my irritation, shrugged at him, then looked at me for an explanation. I turned away then back just to make sure Ainsley wasn’t a figment of my anticipated wedding horror. But no. She was real and here again, somehow, when she was supposed to be in Scotland, never darkening my continent again. I thought we’d agreed to that. The one and only thing we seemed to agree on.

“You didn’t tell me you knew her,” Ainsley censured her cousin, but it sounded more like, “
Ya dinnae tell me ya knew’r.
”

And damn if that accent didn’t make me want to kiss her as much as it always had. As much as I didn’t want to and should be sickened by the very idea.

Two

Colin looked back and forth between us. “The better question is, how do you know her?”

“She was a squatter in my last apartment at Columbia.”

A dismissive noise flew from my mouth. “It’s called subletting.”

“From a roommate I’d chosen and liked.” Her thumb jerked in my direction. “This one didn’t even pay as much as we did.”

“Once again I’ll say that was not my fault nor my problem. Your roommate needed someone to take her spot. She paid the balance, so you had nothing to complain about.”

“Except for the constant stream of people in and out of the place.”

“Study groups,” I interpreted for Dallas.

“And the late night viewing parties,” she continued on.

“Letterman,” I justified.

“And never washing the dishes in the sink.”

“Not my dishes, and I told you that every single day,” I shot back. “Just because the roommates used my dishes and left them in the sink didn’t mean I made the mess.”

“She didn’t let me use her dishes,” she continued to talk to her cousin rather than direct her antagonistic comments at me. We’d both employed this technique with our other two roommates when we shared a tiny apartment near the Columbia University campus. Sometimes it was the only way we communicated with each other.

“One time,” I stressed the words. “I said if she was cooking haggis, she better damn well clean my pots twice so there’s no lingering smell. It was bad enough it clung to the kitchen. I didn’t want it making my mac and cheese smell like tripe.”

She turned blazing eyes to me. “Unrefined American palate.”

Dallas shot an elbow into my side as much to shut me up as to give me a knowing look. Not the right kind of knowing look. She wasn’t saying she understood my complete aversion to this woman. No, she was saying she thought this woman might be good for me. She did this a lot. If the person was a feisty female without a ring on her finger—did she have a ring? Wait. Screw that, who cared if she had a ring?—then Dallas thought she might be for me. She wasn’t like most straight women who thought the one and only other lesbian she knew would be perfect for her lesbian best friend. No, Dallas thought any woman who showed spark or gave me guff or caught my attention for more than five minutes would do. She didn’t care about the woman’s sexuality. She only cared if the woman could get me worked up because Dallas was convinced that was the only type of person who could put an end to my cynical outlook on love.

“Well, this is unexpected.” Colin used his best anchorman voice.

“Can’t wait to hear the whole story,” Dallas said to me then turned to Colin. “And what a cute accent. Baby, you didn’t tell me you had family from Ireland.”

“Scotland,” I corrected then immediately wanted to bite my tongue off. Ainsley didn’t need to know I remembered where she was from, like maybe I’d thought about her after moving out of that apartment years ago.

“Right, England.” Dallas smiled brightly.

“Scotland,” I repeated because apparently I couldn’t clamp my mouth shut.

“It’s all the same, right?”

“No. Scottish or British, not English or Irish.”

Dallas rolled her eyes at me. She was smart, especially about the things she learned for news stories, but if she hadn’t covered it, she didn’t concern herself with it. “I’m not here for a geography lesson.”

“Of course not, why would an American want a geography lesson?” Ainsley snarked, and damn me, I wanted to laugh.

Dallas wasn’t fazed by Ainsley’s snark having gotten used to mine over the years. “Are you from Edinburgh?” She smirked. “See, I know where Scotland is.”

Ainsley’s eyes widened and a smile tugged at her lips. “Glasgow originally, but I work in Edinburgh now.”

“Does that make you a Glasgower?”

“Glaswegian,” Ainsley told her.

“Glas-what now?”

“Glaswegian,” I repeated.

“Ooh, like Norwegian.”

“Except not,” the snarky Scot mumbled again.

She really hadn’t changed at all, not in the fourteen years since I’d packed my rolling suitcase and backpack—all of my worldly possessions—and left the tiny NYC apartment for my first job in broadcast journalism. She’d rolled her luggage out right behind me on her way to the U.K. where she would put her Ivy League bachelor’s degree to work at Cambridge for the first of two post graduate degrees. I never thought I’d see her again. Didn’t expect to see her again, and based on the cool reception I was getting, didn’t want to see her again.