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“Oh!” When the silhouette of a tall woman in a dress and funky horns growing up from her head appeared between a pair of bushes, I began to reverse through the doorway and back inside the building. “I-I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was out here. I’ll just… I’ll go.”
I started to turn away, prepared to leave her to her privacy, the doors already closing behind me, when I heard, “No, wait!” in a surprisingly deep, very non-female voice.
CHAPTER SIX
Hold the phone.
I glanced back, blinking at the door as it slid shut, because hearing a man’s voice from a clearly feminine costume caught me off guard.
He sounded distressed though, so I shrugged off my surprise and pushed the door open again.
“Hello?” I called. “Everything okay?”
“No.” He started toward me. “Do you happen to have a light?”
“Oh. No, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling bad because I couldn’t help him in his time of nicotine need. “But I don’t smoke.”
“No, I mean…” He let out an amused sound. “I need an actual light. Like a flashlight. My stupid high heels were killing me, so I took them off for a minute, only to lose track of them completely.” His silhouette shifted as if he were turning in a circle and eyeing the ground. The light flooding into the courtyard from the door I held open was the only thing around to provide any kind of illumination. “I found a light switch for the garden,” he added, dejected. “But either it was the wrong switch or the bulb must be broken. I can’t see a damn thing out here.”
The moment struck me as so entertaining, I found myself cupping my hand to my ear. “What’s that, I hear? A fair damsel in distress?” Jumping into a classic Power Ranger pose, I stretched out one leg and bent the other while flinging up my arms in combat mode. “Never fear. The yellow Power Ranger is here!”
The man whirled back to me, the skirt of his dress rustling around his legs until his tall horns or whatever they were pointed archly in my direction. “You’re way too amused by this,” he said, his voice dry and clearly unimpressed.
I snorted out a laugh before I cringed. “Sorry. Couldn’t help it. I mean, can you blame me? It’s not every day I come across a Cinderella in drag, looking for her—I mean, his—lost slippers.”
“Maleficent,” he corrected, still lacking all humor. “I’m supposed to be Maleficent.” He pointed to the distinctly Maleficent-shaped horns on his head and then the flipped-up collar of his cape as if that explained everything, which, hmm, actually yeah, it did make total sense now that he mentioned it. Huh. Why hadn’t I caught onto that before?
Probably be
cause stumbling across a dude in a dress at my company’s Halloween party had discombobulated me completely. It wasn’t exactly a norm for this place.
“Oh. Well, in that case.” I straightened and took a step in reverse as if to leave. “Sorry, but we Power Rangers are dedicated to protecting good and fighting evil. It goes against my moral code to aid and abet a supernatural villain.” Spotting a doorstop just inside the doorway, I bent and tucked it into place to prop the door open and let the light continue to spill out before I straightened. “Which is why I fear we must keep our ungodly alliance a total secret.”
He stared at me quietly for a moment as I joined him in the garden to help him search. Then he murmured, “Thank you for your generous assistance, Yellow. In return, I suppose I can refrain from casting an evil curse upon you and your offspring for all eternity.”
Startled that he’d decided to roll with my weird silliness after seemingly so stubbornly against it at first, I grinned inside my mask. I couldn’t tell who this guy was at all in the dark, but I decided I liked him. With a jaunty bow of appreciation, I said, “I thank you, kind sir—er, I mean, Mistress—Mister?—of All Evil.”
He stared at me a moment before he said, “You said you had a light?”
“Uh…” Okay, I guess we were returning to all-business again. My eyebrows crinkled as I winced. “No. Sorry. But I’ll help you look in the dark. Should we, I don’t know, retrace your steps or something? What color are the shoes?”
“Black.”
Of course. Damn Maleficent couldn’t have decked herself in a glow-in-the-dark white pump, now could she, er, could he?
“Right.” I blew out a breath. “Where was the last place you remember having them?”
“This way,” he answered, turning back toward the bushes.
I followed the swish of his skirt deeper into the garden, where the path grew narrower, squeezing us intimately closer together and farther away from the light of the open doorway. A half-moon from above and the muted glow of streetlights from the parking lot helped me make out the basic form of his silhouette, but that was about it.
The night was cool, but a light sweat sprouted on my brow. It didn’t matter at all that he was decked out in a dress and searching for his high heels; I was all too aware of how very male he was. The breadth of his shoulders, the confident masculine way he moved, even the way he tilted his head, searching the ground, screamed man. It was kind of hypnotizing, really.
“I took them off when I sat down by the Marcella statue,” he explained.
Marcella statue?
I slowed to a stop, stunned to hear that name spoken aloud after so many years. Nostalgia tore through my veins, making my nose burn and eyes water.
