Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

T here were hundreds of people at the charity event already, and somehow, through all the noise and the irregular lighting and crowds, Ashley still heard Penny's laugh through it all. She turned that direction, looking for the petite redhead, and found her in the first glance.

Her mate looked a little confused and overwhelmed and uncertain. All of those things, and also incredibly beautiful. A smile crashed across Ashley's face and she pushed through the crowd, going the wrong way until she broke through at Penny's side and grabbed her hands, beaming at her. "Oh my God, look at you! Where did you—you got this from Karina down in the Looking Glass shop. Look at you!"

Penny brushed a nervous hand down the gown and nodded. "She was so nice. I rented it, I could never afford it, but it's so pretty…?" She glanced up at Ashley like she actually needed the reassurance.

Ashley spluttered. "Gorgeous. Perfect. Incredible. Beautiful. Look at you!" she said again.

The gown didn't, actually, clash with Penny's hair. In fact, it couldn't have been more suited to Penny's red hair and golden undertones if Karina had made it for her on purpose. It had an autumn motif, an uncountable number of individual soft embroidered leaves trimmed with gold and copper and layered on top of each other in playful lines, like they'd really been caught from a falling tree. There were glimpses of still-rich summer green, and hints of clear autumn yellow, and it all flowed like the wind was catching it even when the air was still. It clung to her curves without overwhelming her, and she'd had her jaw-length hair done in short Vikings-style braids that skimmed the sides of her head and gave the top of her hair height. But they weren't smooth: they were wild and ragged, woven with leaves and twigs, until the drummer looked like she'd stepped out of an autumn windstorm.

"You look like a dryad," Ashley said joyfully. "Like a wood sprite who's just daring a woodcutter to chop down her trees! Oh my God, no wonder Laurie told me I had to get dressed up. I should have done better than this, though, this is just, like… me , but Ren Faire."

"You're an elf princess," Penny blurted disbelievingly. "You look like an actual real life elf princess. I don't know why your ears aren't pointed. If this is just you, then you must be made completely of magic."

We are, Ashley's bear said happily. You should tell her.

Ashley almost wanted to, but the middle of a party was just about the worst place she could think to do that. She shook her head, still beaming stupidly at Penny. "No, I'm just me. This isn't anything new or special."

"It's new and special for me to see you in it!"

"Oh, well." Her smile got even dumber, if that was possible. "Okay, I guess when you put it that way. Penny, you must have spent all afternoon getting ready for this. You're incredible. I don't even care if the whole thing is a terrible disaster now."

Penny laughed. "Yes, you do. But yes, I did, and yes, I am, so let's go enjoy it and make sure it's not a terrible disaster and show off our efforts, okay? Gwen's over there talking to Maggie Ross, who is even taller than you are. How many women have you met who are taller than you are?"

"Um." Ashley let Penny take her hand and draw her across the increasingly-crowded venue while she thought about that. "In the grand scheme of things, hardly any, I guess. I can think of quite a few right now but there obviously aren't nearly as many of them as there are women who are shorter than me. Oh gosh." Ashley stopped dead several feet from the professional wrestler, so suddenly and completely that Penny sort of bounced at the end of her arm and sprang back to Ashley's side.

"I told you she was tall," Penny whispered with a kind of triumph.

It was true. Maggie Ross was at least four inches taller than Ashley, even though Ashley was still wearing the thick-soled clogs she'd had on at work. The professional wrestler towered above everybody in the room except Ashley's cousin Bill, who, with his pompadour, almost matched her height. She was so blonde her hair, worn in a loose braid down her back, was nearly white, and her pale skin was pink from cold where her long, hippie-style fringed leather coat didn't protect her from the winter air. She didn't dress anything like what Ashley imagined a professional wrestler would. All her clothes had a definite hippie vibe, and were pastels and soft fabrics that looked comfortable and lovely.

But above and beyond all that, Maggie Ross was a shifter . And so was the slight, wolfish man at her side who gazed up at her with absolute adoration. Ashley sort of recognized him: Conri Lyell, the head of the All-Arena Entertainment group. He was clearly a predator, probably a wolf, from the lean look of him, but Maggie…

Ashley had absolutely no idea what she was, except whatever it was, was huge. She didn't feel like a polar bear or any other arctic predator Ashley could think of, but the female shifter's presence was so enormous that Ashley couldn't imagine Maggie was anything but a predator. She could knock somebody down just by looking at them!

Maggie turned her head to meet Ashley's eyes with her own cool blue gaze, and the ruff on her bear's neck stood straight up. Do we fight ?

The answer to that was obviously no. Ashley was still having a hard time telling herself , never mind her bear , that, when Maggie Ross grinned, a huge bright welcoming smile, and winked at Ashley. "You must be another Torben," she said over the heads of almost everybody standing between them, including her own husband. "Apparently you're the only family that grows them life-sized around here."

A huge rush of tension fizzled out of Ashley in a breath, and when Maggie just basically reached out above everybody else's head to shake her hand, Ashley took it. "Hi. Yes, I'm Ashley Torben, and this is my—friend—Penny. It's great to meet you, Ms. Ross."

"Maggie," the other tall woman said cheerfully. "This is my husband Conri. We understand you came to the rescue when the original event venue burned down, so thank you. I was looking forward to this. Swans are a pet project of mine."

There was no way this woman, six foot eight in heels, was a swan part of the time. That, Ashley thought, would be absolutely terrifying. "I really didn't do anything. It was my cousin Laurie's idea, and then Penny had everything to make it work. She's the one who saved the day."

Maggie stepped through the crowd effortlessly to find Penny and offer her a hand, too. "Well, thanks to you, then. You…" Her incredibly pale eyebrows drew down as she examined Penny, who was literally fifteen inches shorter than she was. "We, ah, we don't run in the same circles, do we? Mile high club sorts of things?"

Penny's eyebrows flew up. "Um! No! I don't think so! It's a very nice offer but you're married and I'm dating Ashley here!"

The tall shifter blinked, then burst out laughing. "Right, yes, sorry. Excuse me. Don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, it's really nice to meet you, and seriously, thanks for rescuing this event. Thanks. Usually we go to all these boring business meetings for stuff Conri does. This is much more my speed."

"Yes," Conri said from somewhere behind her, "you have such a difficult time lying on the beach while I sit around in stuffy buildings trying to get people to agree to non-exorbitant rates for hotels and arenas."

"He's lying," Maggie said in a terrible sotto voce. "I can put on SunBlock Ten Thousand and still burn if I lie on a beach for more than ninety seconds. Stick around," she added. "There's supposed to be a visiting swan later tonight. Tame, apparently." She winked at Ashley again, and went back to meeting-and-greeting the crowd around them.

Penny clutched Ashley's arm and dragged her far enough away to not be overheard. "Did she just proposition both of us? She kept winking at you and what was that about the mile high club!"

Ashley stared toward the wrestler for a few more seconds, then shook her head. She was now almost certain the woman was a swan shifter, and out loud, said, "No, she couldn't have been. Swans are monogamous. So are wolves, for that matter."

"What?"

"Uh. Nothing. No, I don't think she was propositioning you, but…" Ashley trailed off, gazing down at Penny in confusion, then shrugged it off. "No, I don't have any idea what that was about. Unless you actually fly a lot?"

Penny snorted. "We don't even have a tour bus , never mind a tour plane . We drive around in a 1970s van like a bunch of Scoobies."

"Yeah, then I don't know. Never mind," Ashley said firmly. "I have to be in and out to check the pub for emergencies, but I've still got a few minutes here. Should we check out what they've done with the place?"

"Ah, yes." Penny dropped into a soothing nature-documentarian-type voice as they wandered around the tents. "Here we have Holidayus Erroneous, where two or more young people are making a drunken holiday decision they'll be regretting in the morning. Over there you'll see the less-common Partyous Pooperous, who disapproves of anyone having fun at a holiday gathering. But here we have the extraordinarily common yet much-beloved…" She went on, sometimes drowned out by Ashley's giggling, and leaned on Ashley as they stopped to watch a group of young women in elaborate Renaissance Faire garb dancing. A number of young men joined them, and Ashley suddenly gave a braying laugh.

"Oh, no. They're nine ladies dancing and ten lords a-leaping. Count them."

"I can't, they won't hold still!" Penny laughed, though, as she realized Ashley was right. "Please tell me they're not going to have six geese a-laying around here. Oh my god, though, they do have the drummers and the pipers. I thought they were flautists!"

Ashley, in as severe a tone as she could manage, said, "If you're going to flautist, go to the bathroom," then giggled proudly at herself as Penny first gave her a look much more severe than her tone had been, then dissolved into her own giggles.

"So what I've learned on this important first date?—"

"Second, or I can't bring you to the family reunion on Tuesday?—"

"This important second date is that you have a juvenile sense of humor. Which is excellent, because I've long suspected myself of being a twelve year old at heart. I wouldn't have thought it of you, though. You're so tall and elegant."

"Tall people can't be twelve at heart?" Ashley asked, amused.

"Well, when you say it like that it sounds ridiculous, but from down here in the trenches where I'm the height of the average twelve year old girl, it seems more like I should be and you shouldn't, right?"

"See," Ashley said wryly, "that's one of the things that actually sucks about being tall. They figure you're older and therefore more mature than you are. Maybe I never really got to revel in my inner tweenage idiot."

Penny made a show of looking for Ashley's cousins. "With those two around?"

Ashley grimaced dramatically. "Yeah, okay, fair, you called that one. Sometime I'll tell you about the Disneyland Incident."

A slow grin stretched across Penny's face. "Now is sometime."

Ashley laughed and shook her head. "No. I'm still in the 'trying to make a good impression' stages here."

"Excuse me, I have to go talk to a man about a water barrel." Penny headed toward Laurie until Ashley collared her and pulled her back. The petite drummer's eyes widened a bit and went dark with an intent interest that took Ashley's breath away. She hadn't exactly meant to get all raar and pushy, but it appeared Penny might like that kind of thing. She was warm and soft and had pulled herself right up against Ashley, all at once, murmuring, "Or not," breathlessly. "Seems like you might have something better in mind."

Take our mate to your den right now, Ashley's bear said enthusiastically. She wants to go to the den right now!

It was hard to argue with that. Ashley couldn't think of much better to do with her time, either, except the fact that she was very much still at work and had just spent the afternoon yelling at her cousins for blowing off their shifts. So all she could really risk right then was ducking her head toward Penny's and whispering, "I've got a whole list."

To her surprise, Penny threw her head back and laughed unexpectedly. "Of course you do. A list. I bet you've got an actual list somewhere, too, don't you? You're so organized."

Embarrassed laughter crawled through Ashley. "I don't have an actual list…"

"Okay, no, no, you've probably got a hundred neatly filed bookmarks under a private tab in your phone, and a checkbox to go through and try the things that look most intriguing." Penny's eyebrows rose challengingly. "Am I wrong?"

Ashley, blushing furiously, said, "I'm not going to dignify that with an answer."

"I cannot wait to earn your phone password," Penny said gleefully. "You're wonderful."

Still blushing, but suddenly almost wistful, Ashley said, "Am I?"

Penny gave her an incredulous look, then, still smiling but no longer laughing, threaded her hands up into Ashley's hair and pulled her down for a kiss.