Page 13 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

Penny, watching Bill's face fall even though he tried to hide it, smiled at her lead singer. "Nah, G, you just got back to this dude. I'm not gonna steal you away from him tonight. There's usually some dudes at the warehouse district who will help a lil' tiny lady like myself move heavy stuff, and I can do any Fits recruiting on the drive, if I need to."

"Is that safe?" Ashley asked worriedly. "Texting and driving?"

"I've got a good voice to text thing set up," Penny promised. "Oh, but let me give you my number so you can text about how many volunteers we might need."

She took Ashley's phone, putting her number in as Gwen, dryly, said, "Or I could wrangle the Fits, if we need them. I'll be right here and able to get the word from the horse's mouth." She nodded at Ashley.

Bill muttered, "Bear's mouth," which made Gwen laugh and, from the sudden sharp movement, made Ashley kick him under the table. He looked credibly injured, although he was about six and a half feet tall and Penny wasn't sure anything less than a bulldozer hitting him in the shins could hurt him.

"Well, now you've got my number anyway," she said, giving Ashley's phone back. "If it turns out everybody's a total idiot, you can call me and we'll run away to Peru together."

"Do we have to wait for everybody to prove they're idiots, or could we just make a break for it?" Ashley scooted out of the booth when Penny, laughing, nudged her.

"You could just leave it all up to your cousins while we ran," she suggested. "But if we're gonna, you should tell me now so I don't have to drive to Denver first."

"You'd have to drive to Denver anyway," Gwen pointed out. "You can't get a flight to Peru from Renaissance."

"Then I wouldn't have to wait for Ashley to drive there, too! We could just go together!"

"I can't," Ashley said regretfully. "I can't even just drive with you tonight. We're supposed to be crazy busy for the rest of the night."

"Well, next time," Penny said, and meant it. "I'll be back by eleven tomorrow morning, maybe a bit earlier. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," she said to the three of them in general, and headed out to Denver with Ashley Torben's warm voice and the memory of her leaning presence fresh in her mind. It kept her company on the whole long drive.

Drivingthree hours back and forth to Denver in a day was one thing, Penny decided the next morning as she pulled back into the Thunder Bear Pub parking lot. But she and Gwen had drivenfromDenver the previous afternoon, too, so she'd spent about ten out of the past twenty-four hours in a car, and that was a bit much. Her butt was numb. Her toes were cold. She'd slept well the previous night, but she also wanted a long nap and a massage. Alternately, anything to get the blood flowing would be good.

Just as she parked, just as she had that thought, Ashley Torben walked out of the pub, talking on her phone. Penny's heart thumped and she gave a breathy little laugh. Yeah, that would get the blood flowing for sure. She'd never seen Ashleydressed up: the pub manager wore jeans and a bulky sweater right now, one that looked like it had maybe been hand-knit. Her hair was in a ponytail again, a fluffy dark golden mass that haloed around her head. She spoke with animation, her free hand waving in the air and her expression going irritated and amused by the moment. She hung up as Penny got out of the van, said something to the sky, then squinted toward Penny before a wide smile split her face and she called, "You're back! Was the drive okay?"

"Yup, but I need to do about a hundred squats because my ass is like a wood block right now. Laurie—Laurie? Was it Laurie who said he'd clean up the parking lot? He's done a good job." When Penny had left the night before, there'd been snow packed to ice all over the parking lot, and small banks of snow everywhere. Now it was scraped down to the asphalt, with— "Are those space heaters?"

There were about twenty of them, all remarkably large and all spaced evenly around the parking lot, with long extension cords running back to the pub. Ashley, wryly exasperated, said, "They are. He apparently borrowed them from Faire folk who use them in the spring and fall when the weather starts to get cold. His logic was that if he aimed them at the parking lot, any ice melt would dry up instead of re-freezing. I'm pretty sure it's a terrible waste of electricity, but it's also working, and since I don't want to be liable if anybody slips on ice tonight, I don't have a better idea."

"They'll be perfect for keeping the tents warm, too. How are you holding up with the unexpected additions to the schedule?" Penny hauled the back of the van open and gestured inside as Ashley came around to look. The guys at the warehouse had helped her load hundreds of square feet worth of festival tents into the van, and now she had every intention of letting Ashley'slarge cousins do all the heavy lifting of unloading it. "Think this will do?"

"I have no idea," Ashley said, mystified. "I've never seen festival tents lying down before."

"Really." Penny grinned. "I'll have to lie down in one with you."

A blush ran up Ashley's jaw and she cast Penny a startled glance. Penny, grinning even more widely, said, "Sorry. Sorry? We are doing the flirting thing, aren't we? Or was that leaning over me last night thing just messing with me?"

"No," Ashley said, still obviously startled. "No, I wasn't messing with you. Not if you meant it about liking my voice."

"Oh, I meant it."

A little smile crept over the tall woman's mouth. "So, yes. Yes, we're doing the flirting thing."

"That's the best news I've heard in at least a month, and let me tell you, this past month has had a lot of good news." Penny let herself lean toward Ashley a little, feeling the other woman's warmth, then gave a huge sigh. "Now that we've got the flirting thing established, I'm afraid we might have to put it aside until we've got this whole event of yours?—"

"Not mine!" Ashley objected strenuously, which made Penny laugh.

"Yeah, true, not yours. Okay, until we've got this whole event of Laurie's dealt with. It's actually going to go fine, you know that, right?" She glanced up—so very far up—at Ashley's slightly tense expression, and bumped her hip against hers. "Honestly, it's going to be fine. The other event venue people have most of the staff they need lined up, you said in text last night that you were able to call a few of your own people in for overtime, and the Fits will show up to work crowd control and keep parking and accessibility under control. It's going to be fine."

"You know, Gwen did this to Bill, too. Swept in and fixed everything when it was going to hell for him."

"Please." Penny sniffed. "I did atonof that fixing."

Ashley smiled again, tentatively. "Yeah. What's that about? Is it the Sixty Pix's secret super power? You can turn any disaster into a hit concert? Hey!" Her voice lifted suddenly and she waved some of her cousins down. "Come be useful! This van needs unloading!"

One of them—a dude, but most of them seemed to be—waved from the other side of the parking lot, indicating he'd heard and they'd be there in a minute. Ashley turned to lean against the inside floor of the van a little and mumbled, "Sorry, I interrupted whatever you were going to say."

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