Free Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston Page B

buckets. Good thing her jacket had a hood, she thought, because her umbrella had gone missing days earlier. She suspected Bob.
    With a sigh, she packed up her stuff and got ready to head home for a nice, quiet evening spent figuring out how to get a full-grown horse out of the bathtub—and the apartment—without alerting the neighborhood.
    Standing in the doorway, watching a curtain of water sheeting off the sloped roof, Kelley briefly contemplated sleeping in the theater that night. What with the stormy weather and the no doubt stormier roommate…
    Coward .
    Squaring her shoulders, she yanked up her hood and stepped out into the sleeting rain. Instantly it felt as if she was running underwater. She could barely see through the downpour; ducking her head, she darted into the side walkway, where the eaves of the Avalon offered a scant bit of protection. As she glanced up from the puddles, Kelley halted, startled by the sight of a figure perched on an old wooden crate and peering through the grimy leaded-glass window that looked into one of the theater’s rooms. Her dressing room.
    Where I just spent the last fifteen minutes standing wrapped in a towel!
    Kelley stifled a gasp with one fist while her other hand went to the overstuffed bag hanging from her shoulder, with her can of mace buried somewhere deep inside. She tried to back away as silently as she could, but the figure stiffened, as if he had heard her sneakered feet over the rattling sound of the rain on the trash cans. Kelley turned to make a run for it back toward the stage door. Somehow the man made it off the crate and was blocking her way before she had taken a step.
    How could anyone move that fast? she thought.
    Then she looked into his eyes, and every other thought melted away.
    Handsome Stranger .
    His face was exactly as she remembered—from both the park and her midrehearsal dream. This time his gaze flashed not with compassion or sympathy, but with danger. His beautiful mouth was drawn into a thin, tense line.
    His expression put Kelley on guard.
    “Well if it isn’t the FTD florist,” she said, tilting her chin up defiantly. “What are you doing here?”
    “Looking for you.”
    Three words that made her heart hammer painfully in her chest. Kelley had to stop herself from backing up a step. This was not exactly how she had wanted to run into Handsome Stranger again. This felt dangerous.
    “What were you doing in the park after dark last night?” he asked, his tone sharp.
    Anger took hold of Kelley. “What makes you think I was in the park after dark?”
    “I know you were. I know you stayed there after I left you in the garden, and I know you found…something.” He was watching her very closely. “I need to know where it is. Tell me. Now.”
    “Get lost.”
    “Excuse me?” He blinked, startled. The blankness of his expression made him seem suddenly boyish, and Kelley realized that he couldn’t be that much older than she was, maybeeighteen or nineteen—not that his age necessarily made him less threatening.
    But Kelley had been raised by a fiery Irish aunt. She enunciated each word as she repeated, “Get. Lost.”
    Handsome Stranger looked confused, as if he’d never had someone tell him to take a hike before. “You don’t understand. I need to know what you found. It’s for your own good—you need to trust me.”
    “Trust you? You’re lurking in an alley, for God’s sake. You obviously followed me here from somewhere, and you were looking in my dressing-room window when I was getting changed! I don’t think ‘trust’ is the issue here!”
    “I wasn’t watching you get changed.”
    “Sure you weren’t.”
    At least he had the good grace to blush, Kelley thought.
    “All I saw was you leaving the room. I wanted to see if you were alone so I could talk to you.”
    “Right!” Kelley scoffed. “So you could ‘talk’ to me?”
    In truth, he’d looked startled enough by her accusation that Kelley was inclined to believe