Page 25 of Tangled Up In You

When she reached the grass, she took off her shoes and walked a good twenty feet before she stopped in the middle of the meadow.

He impulsively grabbed a blanket from the back of his car. It was late summer, but here in the mountains, he'd learned to be prepared for anything. Though a starry night with a beautiful woman hadn't been on his radar until just this minute.

He walked over to join Molly. Her head was tilted up, her gaze on the sky.

"You need a better view," he told her as he spread the blanket on the ground. "There's only one real way to see the stars, and that's on your back."

She smiled at him. "Is that a line?"

"No. But is it a good one?" he asked lightly

"Well, it worked on me." She sat down on the blanket and then stretched out on her back.

He sat down next to her, but he was far more interested in looking at her than at the sky. Her face was beautiful in the moonlight, with her big eyes and wide smile. She had a face that made it impossible to look away from her.

"Do you know any of the constellations?" she asked.

He forced himself to look up at the sky. "Nope," he said.

"I think that's the Big Dipper. It looks like a kite to me."

"I don't see it."

"Really? It's right there." She pointed to the sky.

"You realize that I have no idea where you're pointing," he said dryly.

She turned her head to look at him. "You can't see the kite?"

"No, but I'll take your word for it."

She smiled, then looked back at the stars. "It is a beautiful sky," she said with a sigh. "I can't remember the last time I saw so many stars. It was probably the last time I was in Whisper Lake."

"Why were you here for just a couple of years?" He'd heard some bits and pieces of her history over dinner, but not enough to give him a complete picture.

"My mother was—is—" she corrected, "a wanderer. She could never stay anywhere for long. Something always went wrong, and then we'd leave. She brought me to Whisper Lake when I was fifteen. She'd gotten fired from a job in LA and her boyfriend had cheated on her, so it was time to make a change. A friend of hers offered her a job at a dance studio here, and she took it."

"So, your mom was a dancer."

"A dancer, a singer, an actress. Anything that put her on stage. But dancing was her first passion. She studied ballet from the age of three. And then she moved on to other styles. She eventually ended up on Broadway when she was eighteen. That's where she met my dad. They only dated long enough to accidentally get pregnant," she added with a dry note in her voice. "He left before I was born. Then we moved to LA, where my aunt helped take care of me while my mom worked. But once I got into elementary school, my mom started moving around. She'd go wherever the job was, and I went with her."

"Was she successful?"

"In the sense that we didn't starve, yes. But neither jobs nor money lasted a long time, not that I was completely aware of that when I was young. My mom would convince me that whatever move we were making was going to be exciting and wonderful and filled with possibilities."

"And did that always happen?"

"No. But then it was time to move again, so the dream started over."

"Your father was never in the picture?"

"No. I've never talked to him or heard from him."

"He should have been supporting you."

"He was a musician, and I don't think he made a lot of money. Are you bored yet? I'm probably oversharing."

"You're not."

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