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“You come up with a better idea.”
Van wasn’t much help in finding the right man for Cyn. Why he was resisting, Mary hadn’t a clue. She had tried asking, of course, but she got either no answer or ones that made no sense to her.
For a man so certain he wanted to shed all his entanglements, he sure was taking on new ones. Who would have thought he’d get so wrapped up in a pregnant dog and her lovesick swain?
Most people let their dogs whelp in a drawer, or an old packing carton. Mind you, a drawer or carton would have to be on the gargantuan side for Guinevere. But if she must have a whelping box, wouldn’t ordinary plywood have done the trick? Obviously not.
“Hand me the guard rail,” he ordered.
Funny how, the minute a man takes a hammer or saw into his hand, he turns into a surgeon whose work is too important for him to consider fetching and carrying and selecting his own tools and parts. “This piece of wood? What’s it for?”
He grunted. Funny, men had to make a sound like that when they had tools in their hands too.
“Guinevere is big,” Van deigned to explain, as though this was news, “and the pups will be tiny. Some may be darn near microscopic, more like miniatures of Lancelot’s size. Either way, they can huddle under this rail so they’re close to Mom, but Guinevere can roll over without any risk of accidentally squashing the little ones.”
“That’s brilliant. How did you come up with that idea?”
“Oh, I didn’t. I’ve just — ” He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze, as though he couldn’t be caught doing something embarrassing if he wasn’t looking at the person catching him at it. “I’ve just been reading up on puppies and things.”
Mary’s heart did a back flip. Sometimes Van was too sweet for words. “You’re really taking this seriously, aren’t you?”
“No,” he protested.
Mary wanted to stroke his cheek, but settled for what she knew was a ridiculously sappy smile. She must snap out of it and drag Van off to see a singer. Cyn and finding her a husband mattered too. “Can putting the rest of this box together wait?”
“Isupposeso.Butwhydon’tyoujustgoaheadand check the singer guy out?”
“After the last fiasco, I’m not giving you an out on this. It’s sink or swim together.”
Vangrinned.“Nosinking.Noswimming.We’llkeep this candidate out of the pool.”
“I don’t need your promise. That can’t possibly happen a second time. Now come on. Buzz Cauldron has a show starting tonight at the nightclub at Bow Street and Coor. He’s there this afternoon, setting things up.”
“I’m not dressed for a nightclub, even in the afternoon,” Van protested. “I’m not dressed for anything, except building a whelping box.” He caressed the smooth wood.
Mary grabbed his stroking hand and tugged. “We’ll swing by your place so you can change. You’re not getting into anything starched, though.”
Van frowned at that. “Oh, all right,” he finally said. “But you drive. I’m making some carvings for this box, and I can rough one in on our way.”
“Oh, no you don’t. The first pothole I hit, there goes the carving knife through your thumb and here comes a fountain of blood all over my car.” Mary shuddered. Okay, she was a lot more worried about his thumb than her car.
“Don’t hit a pothole.”
Mary plucked the carving knife out of Van’s hands and locked it into the trunk before they set off.
When they arrived at the nightclub, Mary parked near the door. The club was a sad and worn establishment,ascreaturesofthenightoftenlookinharsh daylight.
“We’re looking for Buzz Cauldron,” Van told the ripped T-shirt sprawled on a worn tufted leather bench at the door.
TheT-shirttookitstimeanswering,butfinallymuttered, “Lounge.”
In the center of the lounge, a blitzkrieg of lights banishedeveryshadowfromthestageandspreadto the red and gold and black leather in the surrounding tables and upholstered chairs. At night, slightly off-center spotlights would undoubtedly flatter an aging lounge lizard. Even now, in the bleak reality of afternoon, Buzz Cauldron had plenty of sex appeal and raunchy machismo. If you went for that type.
He did seem more — What? Raw? Elemental? Studly? — than she would have expected Cyn to go for. But Cyn hadn’t exactly said she went for the guy. His name had come up, in one of those twists and turns a good conversation takes, and she’d said she rather regretted turning the man down so emphatically when he’d asked her out a few years ago.
It made a kind of sense. Cyn wasn’t exactly the most predictable person in the world, except that, if you tried to stuff her into a mold, it was completely predictable she’d bust out of it.
Mary spotted a good vantage point to examine the crooner, and she tugged Van into the shadows there, just beyond the reach of the blazing floodlights.
