Unlikely (3 page)

“Did he really take her back?” Ryan asked, amazed that some parents could be so cold. No matter how out of hand he and his brother Cameron had acted—and as two boys with a single mom, it had sometimes gotten really out of hand—he couldn’t fathom his mother doing anything that heartless.

She nodded, and a single tear dripped from her small upturned nose. “I ran to my room crying when I heard my father’s station wagon drive off. I never saw Daisy again. When that woman put Sasha in that chute today, I could just imagine how lost Daisy must have felt being separated from me and not ever knowing why.”

Ryan’s heart went out to her. All at once, he realized that the bravado, the crazy hair, and even the outsized earrings were probably nothing more than a hard outer shell to protect the softhearted woman underneath. He put aside his attraction to her for the moment. Ryan wanted nothing more than to soothe the past hurts she must have suffered.

He leaned over the car’s center console, pulled the sunglasses gently from her face, and wiped the tears from her soft gray eyes with his
thumb forgoing another tissue. Before he could properly weigh his options, or consider her response, he closed the distance between them and kissed her—gently at first on her tear-stained cheek, then brushed her lips with his. Ryan told himself he did it because it was the best way he could think of to make her feel better. However, his soothing intentions quickly escalated into something else. Her lips were softer than he’d imagined. His hand slipped from her face to her breast, so temptingly on offer, covered only by the thin fabric of her shirt.

Sophie didn’t respond to his kiss at first. It took a few seconds to realize that Ryan was kissing her. Any thoughts of dogs or lingering feelings of sadness fled, and she realized that his lips felt even better than they looked. When his tongue ran against the seam of her lips, she opened for him almost without thinking. He tasted like mint and wanting. She stopped being hesitant, and responded with ardor. It felt good to be kissed like this. She moved to clutch his shirtfront for support, but instead smoothed her hand against it, entranced with the hard chest underneath the once crisp shirt. When his hand stroked her breast, her breath caught in her chest, releasing in a slow hiss.

Reluctantly, it seemed, Ryan pulled away. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Sophie felt awkward, overwhelmed by the response he’d evoked in her. Her encounters with the opposite sex were usually far less emotional. Looking at his now rumpled shirt and his stained pants covered with dog hair, lint, urine, and God knows what else, she couldn’t help herself and laughed. Once she started, she couldn’t stop her giggling.

Ryan sat back in his seat, a chuckle or two escaping his sensual but masculine lips.

“This has been nothing if not a crazy morning,” she said, trying to quell her laughter.

“Do you want to get coffee, something to eat? I missed my breakfast meeting in Burbank and I’m starving.”

Sophie’s guard came back up, cloaking her like armor. Both the tears and laughter cleared from her face and the cool mask of indifference she usually wore came over her countenance. “You should eat. I should go,” she said. She pulled the door handle and stepped out into the bright sunshine. The hot Valley sun did little to cool her overheated body.

Ryan pushed open his door quickly and looked at her over the top of the car. “I know we don’t exactly know each other. I don’t even know your name, Sunflower, but something clicked between us this morning. I think we should—”

“I’m sorry, but you’re not my type.” The words rushed from her lips. Sophie unlocked her car door. She’d made the mistake of letting her guard down, and everything had gone too far. She needed to get out of there quickly before she did anything else completely out of character. And she really was sorry. But she had a rule against dating tight-assed suits, no matter how well they filled out that proverbial suit, and she wasn’t going to break her number one tenet. The two of them were a train wreck waiting to happen. She was a smart girl, and smart girls avoided train wrecks. “I have to go,” she threw over her shoulder as she slid into her car. She started the Beetle and made a quick U-turn on Ventura before she could fall into the depths of his blue eyes and change her mind.

Two days later, Ryan Becker got up from his high-backed, leather office chair and stretched. His hand-tailored shirt strained against his biceps and outlined his deeply muscled back. He looked out his window toward the mountains that surrounded Malibu. It was an unusually clear day in Los Angeles
—neither fog nor smog marred the endless blue skies. He had a fine view of the pleasure piers, the water, and the topography surrounding the area. But neither his long morning meeting in Burbank nor the view could distract him from thinking about the woman with the bright yellow hair. He was one hundred percent sure she’d had the same jolt of awareness he did.

Driving back from Burbank to Venice, across the Ventura and Hollywood freeways, then down the San Diego freeway, he couldn’t help looking for her car today as he had every moment on the road for the past two mornings and evenings. Every Volkswagen Beetle caught his distracted eye, the yellow ones made his heart beat a rapid tattoo, and the convertibles made him break out in a sweat. He scrutinized every personalized license plate
looking for her unique brand of humor. In a city of almost four million, and a metropolitan area of about ten million, he knew the chances of seeing her ever again were about one in, well, ten million. Still, looking out on the blue horizon, he couldn’t help hoping.

Sophie’s small house had always seemed like a cozy and welcoming artists’ retreat. Suddenly it felt as empty as a funeral parlor, too big and eerily quiet. The house was modest by Los Angeles McMansion standards, but the post-World War II tract house was her pride and joy. Just the simple fact that she’d bought it with her own money gave her a heady sense of accomplishment that no put down from her family could take away.

She had put in a lot of the sweat equity to fix up the house herself, from painting the outside a pleasing butter yellow, to sanding decades’ worth of grime and varnish from the narrow oak plank floors. When she was bored or restless, working on some aspect of the house usually took her mind off whatever was bothering her.

But no matter how hard she tried, over the last couple of days, she couldn’t shake Sasha from her mind—nor, if she were being honest with herself, could she get images of Ryan’s handsome face and gentle nature out of her head. She tried watching TV, but even her usual critique of others’ makeup work bored her after a few minutes.

Sophie passed the slightly warped bathroom mirror on her way to the small second bedroom she used as a den. She peered at her distorted reflection in the funky flea market mirror and imagined herself with a nose ring. She had never given that or a tongue piercing much thought, but maybe it was time to reconsider. Instead of going the body mutilation route, she opened a new pack of hair dye and turned her yellow hair purple.

Well, that was one hour down, she thought. She sat down in her hippie era white leather office chair and powered up her MacBook. Scrolling and clicking through headlines on several news websites could not hold her concentration either. Against her better judgment, she found herself Googling the City of Los Angeles Animal Services. When the site came up, she clicked on the East Valley shelter and looked at the dogs that were coming up for adoption. On the third page, there was a picture of Sasha, looking wide-eyed and silly, along with her particulars and the day she would be up for adoption—which, Sophie realized glancing at the calendar on her desk, was tomorrow. The city made found dogs available after only four days. She hoped it had been enough time to find Sasha’s true owner.

Sophie found herself in her backyard kicking at the ground stakes
, assessing the strength of her fence. She was seriously considering adopting the dog. She didn’t know if taking another living being into her home was selfish or impulsive, but she picked up the cordless phone and placed a call to her older sister Selena to hash out her thoughts. Selie was not as great a sounding board as her best friend Holly Prentice, but she knew Sophie’s history with animals better than anyone.

“Hey, sis,” Sophie said. Her sister Selie was the older, beautiful, and now happily married one in the family. Their parents loved to gloat about her. She’d done all the right things
—finished college at Berkeley, gotten an MBA at UCLA’s Anderson school, gone into marketing at Warner Bros. studio, and had a perfectly timed baby. She had achieved the nearly impossible; she had it all. Now she was the vice president of marketing, the perfect mom, and the perfect wife. She lived in a beautiful house just around the corner from their parents. Sophie was sure she heard the clink of her sister’s ever-present pearls against the plastic of the receiver. In her mind’s eye, Selie was perfectly outfitted in Lilly Pulitzer.

“I’m so glad you called,” Selie said.

That was a new one, Sophie thought. She and Selena only talked sporadically even though they lived less than twenty miles apart. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’ll get to that later,” she said, evasively. “What’s up with you?”

“I’m thinking about getting a dog.”

“Mmmm,” Selie said, non-committal.

Sophie told her sister the whole story about finding the dog on the freeway, carefully excising Ryan from the tale.

Selie, always the voice of reason, weighed in without hesitation. “Do you think you can handle a dog with your schedule? What will he do when you’re on set for those twelve
-hour days?”

“I figure I can hire a dog walker or sitter or ask a neighbor or something. There are a lot of days when I’m off, especially during the spring hiatus or in the winter when productions are slowing down.”

“I don’t know, Sophie. You should think hard on that one,” Selie said, her tone going from friendly to preachy. “Being a new mother now, I’m realizing how much responsibility another life is.” Sophie was glad videophones had never taken off and her sister couldn’t see the eye rolling or the gagging motions she was making with her hands and mouth. She would always be the little sister and look up to Selie, but she found her to be a little too self-righteous and patronizing at times. Unfortunately, this was one of those times. She would have to work out her uncertain feelings about Ryan on her own. Her sister would probably push them down the aisle once she found out a ‘suit’ was interested in her.

Rather than start those same sibling arguments all over again, Sophie decided to let her behavior pass. See, she had maturity. “Thanks,” she said a little too unconvincingly. “I’ll take your advice into consideration, sis. What’s the other thing you wanted to talk about?”

Selie paused for a long time. “Well…Daddy is scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award from the bar association and I think we should have a reception with all of his friends and colleagues at the house.”

“We?” Sophie laughed, unable to hide her incredulity. Her parents never missed a chance to express their disappointment at her life and career choices. “I don’t think they envision me being co-host of a party for another of Daddy’s endless honors. Besides, my Norma Kamali is at the cleaners.”

Selie sighed, the old hurts resurfacing. “It was just a thought, Sophie. I think you and the ’rents need to bury whatever hatchet you guys have between you—or however that metaphor goes.”

“I know,” Sophie said, closing her eyes and trying to draw on some reserve of inner calm. “You’re right. We’re all getting a little too old for this. I’m never going to finish college, and they’re never going to have the perfect younger daughter they wanted. The sooner we all settle on that, the better.” She paused to clear her thoughts. “Let me think about it. Maybe I can play the perfect daughter for one night. So,” she said, abruptly changing the subject back to her original reason for calling. “Do you think I should get Sasha?”

“Who?” her sister asked. Sophie sighed. Why was it so hard for anyone in her family to focus on
her
problems for more than a minute? It was all too easy for them to dismiss anything that concerned her as frivolous.

“The dog, Selie. That’s our nickname for her.”

“Our? Yours and whose?” Selie said, fully attentive now that her curiosity was piqued. Sophie wanted to kick herself in the ass for that unintentional slip.

“No one, really. There was just a guy who helped me out when I caught her on the freeway,” Sophie said doing her best to minimize Ryan’s role and avoid any awkward questions.

“Is this guy single?” Selie asked, very much back into the conversation.

“Yes, I think he’s single, but he’s a suit. And you know I don’t do suits.”

“Mmmm.” Selie packed a lot into her mmmms. “That’s too bad. A nice normal boyfriend could do you some good. Anyway, I can’t make that doggy decision for you,” her sister said, displaying the wisdom of age, or at least the wisdom of being a few years older than Sophie. “But I do know that you can put ‘first rights’ on the dog, so you can be the first to adopt her if you decide to.”

“What are first rights?”

Selie explained the procedure that guaranteed the dog would go to the person who brought her in. Almost decided, Sophie ended that call and placed another call to the animal shelter. With a little trepidation, she forked over her credit card information and paid ten dollars for the right to be able to adopt Sasha when she became available first thing Monday morning.

Ryan had completed his pro and con lists, neatly printed on a thick yellow legal pad, Saturday night. The reasons for bringing Sasha home outnumbered the reasons against. He was getting the dog, and that was that. He had called the shelter and knew Sasha would be available for adoption first thing Monday morning. Ryan would be there bright and early to make sure he was first.

“I’m getting a dog,” Ryan announced to his mother and brother at Sunday brunch.

He was the last to arrive to the busy upscale eatery on Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks’s restaurant row. His brother had a large mug of steaming coffee, likely his second, and his mother, tap water, per usual. He ordered decaffeinated tea.

“That’s cool,” Cameron said, clapping him on the shoulder. His mother didn’t look as thrilled. “I think you need a wife, not a dog. Someone to take care of you, not something to take care of.”

“Mom, it’s not like I’m not trying,” Ryan said, casting a sidelong glance at his brother. Cameron shrugged almost imperceptibly, looking happy not to be the brother under scrutiny for once. Cameron was two years older than Ryan and already had one divorce under his belt. His mother had given his brother a reprieve for a little while. Instead she nagged Ryan every chance she got about finding a suitable mate.

The waitress came. He and Cameron ordered eggs
—his with turkey bacon and micro greens, his brother’s with sausage, bacon, potatoes, and toast. His mother ordered whole-wheat toast, dry. When their waitress took their orders to the kitchen, he shook his head.

“Mom, aren’t you hungry? You could have had eggs or pancakes or French toast.”

“Ryan, the toast is just fine with me. The food here is too rich for my blood.”

“Cam and I always pay when we all go out. You know that.”

“It doesn’t make me any more comfortable wasting money like this. I could make the two of you eggs for less than a couple of dollars. I’d even throw in the coffee for free,” she said. She patted him on the arm. “At least you can afford it,” she said, barely concealing a smile. Ryan knew his mother was proud of his and his brother’s accomplishments—Cameron had joined the LAPD after high school and had recently made lieutenant two in the vice unit.

But their mother was loathe to give up the frugal way she’d learned to live as a single mother to two boys who could have eaten her out of house and home without her careful budgeting and planning. The unexpected loss of their father’s pension and death benefits had made her even more frugal.

Ryan had a huge soft spot for his mom and wanted to please her. She’d sacrificed so much for them, he thought it was their duty to give her what she wanted. That was the only reason he could think of later—when he was kicking himself—for what he said next. “I met someone.”

His mother stopped fiddling with the straw in her ice water, her faded blue eyes
, sharp with intelligence, focused keenly on him.

“Where did you meet her?”

He told them the tale of rescuing the dog on the freeway and explained that was the dog he was adopting first thing the next morning. And then he mentioned Sunflower, how she bravely rescued the dog with no thought about her personal safety, how she skipped work to take the dog to the veterinarian. Her confession of her childhood pain and the kiss they shared, he kept to himself. It was something he liked to savor in the darkness of the night, in his bed, alone.

Cameron looked up from his eggs for a moment. “What does she do?”

“She’s a makeup artist for television,” he said.

“Cool,” his suddenly monosyllabic brother responded.

His mom, distracted from her normal grumbling, ate her toast and even helped herself to butter and some of his eggs without comment on the cost. “So what’s her name? What does she look like? When are you going to bring her by?”

Cameron smirked. “It’s never too soon to give her that grandchild she’s always talking about. Marisol and I certainly failed her there.”

Ryan ducked his head, embarrassed. “Um, well, about that… ”