Page 34 of This Time Around (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #3)

As she made her way down the ladder, she felt her ankle wobble. She was almost to the bottom and tried to jump the rest of the way, but two hands grabbed her shoulders and steadied her.

“Careful there, Albatross!”

Wade’s voice was as familiar as his hands on her arms, though neither gave her chills the way Jack did.

But it was good to have him here now, especially since it meant she hadn’t fallen the last twelve inches to the ground.

As her feet touched the floor, she pulled the boom box to her chest and turned to face her friend.

“Thanks,” she said. “I probably need a spotter if I’m going to keep using that ladder.”

“You probably need a neon pink Members Only jacket and some Aqua Net hairspray.”

“What? Oh, you mean the boom box?”

Wade slid a finger over the cassette buttons and gave a low whistle. “That thing is vintage. Were you planning to stand outside someone’s window blasting a Peter Gabriel song?”

Allie laughed and brushed a dust bunny off her shirt. “You’re not too far off the mark, actually.”

“Oh yeah? Wait, don’t tell me—you’re heading to Jack’s house so you can serenade him with the song you danced to at your high school prom.”

“No. I’m taking it out on the back deck to try a new strategy for getting rid of the damn woodpeckers.”

Wade quirked an eyebrow. “My idea was more romantic.”

“I don’t need romance right now.” She fiddled with the buttons on the tape deck. “I need the woodpeckers to stop making holes in the house.”

“Maybe when you’re done, I can borrow that sometime.”

“What for?” Allie started down the hall, slowing so he could fall into step beside her. He did, and they stomped down the stairs together.

“Skye told me this story last night about the guy who broke her heart in high school,” Wade said. “Dumped her right in the middle of a slow dance to some Coldplay song. I thought it might be cool to surprise her sometime, maybe show up with a corsage and ask her to finish the dance with me.”

Allie glanced over to see him grinning like a love-drunk teenager. She couldn’t help but feel happy for him, even though her own romance was a little less mushy at the moment.

It was almost noon, and she still hadn’t heard a peep from Jack.

“I think the slow dance sounds cute,” she said. “Cheesy, but cute.”

“Good cheesy or just cheesy cheesy?”

The thought of Jack and cheese made her think of last night’s wine and cracker party, along with everything that happened afterward.

She found herself smiling for real, so she flashed it at Wade as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned right.

“Good cheesy. I take it you’re here to see Skye? ”

“Yeah, she’s just getting ready,” he said. “We’re going to brunch someplace in the Pearl District. Then we’re checking out an exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.”

“The last time I heard you sound this excited was when you bought that silly gold Corvette.”

“It’s not a Corvette, it’s a Jaguar.” Wade looked pained. “And it’s not gold, it’s Spacedust—a custom color—so it was worth the excitement.”

“And is Skye?”

“If you must know, my excitement about Skye makes the Jag excitement seem like one of those party favors that you blow and the little paper thing comes out flat and just flops around.” He frowned. “I think I might have lost something in that metaphor.”

Allie stopped at the door to the back deck and studied her friend. “Wow. You’re not kidding, are you? You’ve got it bad.”

He shook his head and held up his hand. “As God is my witness, I think I’m in love.”

“Holy shit.”

He grinned. “I know, right?”

She shook her head, trying to get a handle on this. “You’ve known her less than twenty-four hours.”

“When you know, you just know.”

The sincerity in his voice made her heart swell. For him, for Skye, for love in general. Crazy or not, Wade was sincere. She couldn’t help but be happy for him.

When Allie and Wade had dated, they’d never just known , not even when they’d gotten engaged. It had seemed like a reasonable next step—two attractive, well-educated young adults with lawyer parents and the same ideas about how life should unfold. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“I’m happy for you,” Allie said. “Really, I am.”

Wade grinned. “Thank you.”

“Now let’s go scare some damn woodpeckers.”

“Right.”

She pushed the door open, half expecting him to retreat back into the house, but he followed her outside instead.

The air was crisp and a little muggy, and the smell of damp leaves swirled thick in the air.

Birds chattered around them, but the cheerful twittering had ceased to sound cheerful to Allie.

Several birds sat scattered through a nearby oak tree, and Allie glared at them, wondering which of the little assholes was responsible for the latest round of destruction to her grandma’s house.

She set the boom box on the picnic table and switched it on.

“So explain to me what you’re doing,” Wade said. “How is a vintage ghetto-blaster going to get rid of woodpeckers?”

“I’m hoping to scare them away with loud music.”

“This is really your best idea?”

“No,” she muttered as she began to turn the dial. “My best idea was the fake owls, but the little assholes just pecked holes in their faces.”

“Ouch.”

“Then I tried pinwheels. And streamers.”

“I thought it was looking rather festively tacky around here.”

Allie glared. “It’s time to step things up a little.”

She cranked up the volume on the boom box. There was a clatter of static, followed by the high-decibel blare of a DJ’s voice.

“You’re listening to Portland Sex Radio, and today we’re going to be talking about polyamory, the Portland orgy scene, and the six kinds of orgasms you should be having right now.”

Allie smacked her hand on the volume lever and glanced at the neighboring houses. No sign of anyone stirring at the sound of high-decibel porn, but it wasn’t worth taking chances. She spun the dial to change the station.

“Hey,” Wade protested. “I wanted to hear that.”

“Get the podcast,” she muttered, still flipping for a new station.

“So, speaking of orgasms,” Wade said, “I hear you and Jack brought the party home last night.”

Allie ignored him and glanced back up into the oak tree.

The birds that had dotted the branches were beginning to collect on the deck railing, their chirping more ferocious now.

A few new feathery bastards swooped in and landed on the fence.

Sparrows, maybe, or some sort of jay. Maybe not woodpeckers, but what the hell did Allie know?

She should probably get a bird identification book.

She settled on a station broadcasting something pop-y with a tinny beat.

Was that a Justin Bieber song? She wasn’t sure, but she cranked it up anyway, then turned to Wade.

He was apparently still waiting for her response to his question about Jack and orgasms, which she had no intention of answering directly.

“I take it Skye told you about our conversation this morning?” she said.

“What? No, she didn’t utter a peep.” Grinning, he folded his arms over his chest. “She told me last night that you and Jack had the cats handled, which I took to mean he was here with you. I filled in the blanks as soon as I saw your just-got-laid grin.”

“Great,” Allie muttered, glancing at the porch rail. A dozen more birds had gathered, little speckled brown and tan ones. They cheeped and chattered in time with the music, one of them pausing long enough to raise its tail and poop on her grandma’s prized rose bush.

Allie sighed and spun the radio dial again. She found some classical music—Beethoven? That should do it—and turned up the volume a little.

“So what did Skye say about me?” he asked.

Pleased he’d moved on from wanting to discuss Jack, Allie dropped her hand from the boom box and regarded him with a stern look. “I’m not sharing private girl talk with you, Wade. If she didn’t spill the dirt on my date, I’m certainly not telling you anything she might’ve told me in confidence.”

“Fair enough,” he answered. “At least tell me if she’s even a tiny fraction as into me as I’m into her. Which is actually saying a lot, because I’m really fucking into this girl.”

Wade’s normal cocky-cool was gone, replaced by something much more vulnerable. The chatter of birds around him gave the whole scene a hopeful, Disney tone. Allie sighed, always a sucker for fairytales.

“Yeah,” she said. “She’s into you. Really into you. And that’s all I’m going to tell you, so stop pestering me.”

“Yes!” Wade gave an awkward fist-pump and an out-of-character foot shuffle. A handful of birds startled behind him, fluttering up in a burst of feathers and squawking.

“Do that again,” Allie said. “You’re scaring the birds.”

“I’ll pass. But maybe you should try some different music. I think they’re kind of enjoying this stuff.”

Allie glanced around. True enough, the feathered rats had multiplied. Fat little blue ones and a couple redheaded ones she thought might be cardinals. She spun the dial again, settling on something that sounded like Frank Sinatra.

“So,” Wade said. “Did you have a chance to look through any of the materials I brought you yesterday? The legal stuff about found goods?”

Allie nodded and shot a quick glance at the house. No sign of Skye. Still, she wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation. She would have almost preferred talking about Jack.

“Yeah, I skimmed through it this morning,” she said. “Thanks for digging that up.”

“You’re welcome. You sure you’re not willing to tell me what you found?”

Allie hesitated. She thought about some of the passages she’d read this morning in the packet of information he’d given her.

Her single year of law school had done nothing to prepare her for the sea of legal jargon she’d read in the text of ORS 98.

352 and ORS 98.376 and a gazillion other Oregon Revised Statutes pertaining to lost, unclaimed, and abandoned property.