Page 38 of Luck of the Draw

A laugh slid out of me. “That sounds awful.”

“Quite. But I’m happy they enjoyed themselves. My point, dear, is that she goes by ‘Dee,’ according to Blue. Dee for Deeandra, I assume. But if you asked River what my first name was, I wager he’d tell you ‘Dottie,’ just like her son probably knows her as Dee.”

Something settled inside of me. Because even if I never saw my Cinderella again—even if our day together was just that, a moment stolen out of time—I hadn’t wanted to believe she would lie about something so simple as her name.

“Thanks, Dottie. You’re maybe the most intuitive person I’ve ever met.”

Another glance. “It takes one to know one, Dylan. I’m very happy to know you’ll be carrying on my work at Buchanan Brewery.”

The way she said it suggested that I was taking on a more important task than overseeing a few bartenders and ensuring the customers stayed happy. She said it like what we did mattered in a way most people wouldn’t see. And from my brief time at the brewery, I knew she was right. Maybe I wasn’t making a difference here the way I’d done in the Marines, but what we did was important. People came to us for an escape. They came to us because they wanted a piece of joy. Of relaxation. Of comfort. And it was up to us to make sure they got it.

Deeandra—Dee—had wanted an escape too—just like I had. But I couldn’t help but think we’d found the potential for something more. Did I really want to walk away from that?

“You do need to talk to her,” Dottie said, giving my hand a little pat. “But not right now. We’re here, and as I told you, Stella does not take rain checks.”

I parked on the curb next to a house painted a jaunty yellow, surrounded by a white picket fence. There was an extensive wooded lot next to it, encompassed by the fence, and I felt a prickle of misgiving as I opened the door for Dottie.

“This is kind of isolated, huh?”

“Oh, yes,” Dottie said flippantly. “It’s better because the animals do sometimes scream and make a fuss.”

I’d encountered much more dangerous situations in the Marines, of course, but this was possibly the weirdest scenario I’d willingly entered into.

But when in Asheville…

“All right, let’s go.”

She led me into the woods, toward a warm glow down below. That glow proved to be a gazebo, the floor covered in a tarp. Goat Lady Stella waited inside of it, with three goats tied to one of the posts of the gazebo. One of them was straining to take a bite out of the huge canvas propped on an easel, and another was pulling toward a chicken that wandered the tarp, pecking randomly as if seeds had been thrown on it. And maybe they had been. There were a few finished paintings arranged on the floor around the gazebo—one of a cluster of chickens chowing down on what looked suspiciously like a goat’s skull, and another of three goats attacking a fourth. After that, I decided it would be best if I stopped looking.

If Tina found out about this, she was never going to let me live it down. Worse, she’d figure out a way to buy the painting or a print of it, and hang it up in the house. Probably convince our mom I was famous because I was in a painting and suggest not-so-subtly that she should show it off to anyone who came by.

Thank God I’d thought to specify that I’d only do it clothed.

Stella licked her lips as we stepped into the gazebo.

“You’re one minute late,” she said. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t show up.”

“Oh, Dylan is a man of his word,” Dottie said, patting my back. “But you must also be a woman of yours,” she added, her tone a bit sharper. “Dylan told you he wouldn’t pose nude, and we’re going to hold you to that.”

It was almost laughable that she felt the need to say it. It wasn’t like Stella could physically rip my clothes off, or heat up the gazebo to the point where it was so physically uncomfortable I took my shirt off, but it was clear she had a deep belief in Stella’s powers of persuasion.

Stella huffed, rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes, but I don’t need him to take his clothes off. I have plenty of imagination.”

“No one could doubt that,” Dottie said with a nod. “I saw the one you did of Lurch with the dancing rats.”

Stella returned the nod, as if they were sharing some great secrets available only to artists. “It was hard to get them to pose, but I threw tiny pieces of cheese all over the tarp. They went crazy for them! One of them bit Lurch’s toe, but the expression of agony only added to the effect.”

Great. She was going to feed me to the chickens, or maybe Dee’s son was right, and she was going to paint me with a goat body or a goat head. That made me smile, and I had the thought that I’d have to show him a picture of the painting if it ended up looking like he’d imagined. But there was the whole problem of me not having Dee’s number.

Except…

When had I ever let something like that stop me? I’d joined the Marines. I’d moved to Asheville just because someone had asked me to. Sure, things might not work out with Dee, but didn’t we at least owe it to ourselves to have a conversation?

I could get her number from Dottie, probably, given that she knew Dee through Blue and Sam.

“Oh yes, you will do quite nicely,” Stella said, and I registered that she’d started walking around me, surveying me like I was a cow at a 4-H fair.

“Um. Where would you like me to stand?”

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