It was raining. Lightly, but enough that she’d need a raincoat. She’d just turned back to get one when her phone rang.
“Bird!” Godiva sho
uted into the phone over a background of clattering noises. She always talked on speakerphone, as she was convinced that cell phones held next to your head scrambled your brains. “Doris and I will be there in five to pick you up.”
“Thank you,” Bird said gratefully. She loved watching the rain—and California needed it—but she wasn’t fond of biking in it, and her friends knew it.
She was about to hang up when Godiva yelled, “Bird!”
Startled, Bird nearly dropped the phone. “Yes?”
“What are you wearing?” Godiva demanded.
“I—I—”
“If you are wearing those butt-saggy sweatpants and that gray hoodie that’s older than God, you can damn well change before we get there.”
“Godiva,” Bird said, exasperated, “does it matter what I wear?”
“That pretty pink silk shirt. Looks great on you.”
“But that’s my dressy—”
“It’s high time you wear something you like!”
“Godiva—”
“I saw the way that hunk o’ burning love looked at you!” Godiva whistled a few bars of the Elvis Presley song, then cackled so loudly Bird had to hold the phone away from her ear.
“He won’t show up,” Bird started.
“We’re almost at the turnoff toward your street. Better be changed, or I’ll sic Doris on you. Remember, she wrangles high schoolers for a living,” Godiva warned. “She’s turning onto Estella Street right now . . .”
Bird laughed, giving in. “Okay.”
When the car pulled up, Bird was in a pink blouse over the teal floaty pants her daughter had given her a few months ago at their first Christmas together, which Bird adored but had never dared to wear.
Godiva opened her window, eyed her suspiciously, then grinned. “You look hot!”
Bird thanked her, a little doubtfully, and buckled her seatbelt, hoping it would compress the butterflies in her stomach.
When they arrived at the bakery, Linette, the owner, greeted them with platters of pastries in her hands.
“You got pages for us today?” Doris asked her.
“I do!” Linette replied. “I’ve given up on the young adult novel. Everyone says there has to be some sort of gladiator contest, and you know me and the sight of blood. No way can I write about it! So I thought, what’s the least bloody thing? Romance!”
Bird’s mind flashed back to her meeting with Mikhail Long. It certainly wasn’t a romance, but it had sparked romantic feelings in her. And there’d been blood, albeit fake, all over her. She smiled to herself as the other members began to arrive, greet each other, help themselves to coffee and pastries, and rustle about getting out printed pages or cueing up tablets.
Bird mostly loved this group, though some members could be somewhat spiky. And then there was . . .
Bill Champlain walked in, tall and paunchy, a fedora parked at an angle over his thinning blond combover. He was, as usual, talking on his cell phone. “Shut up, Mindy. I said the child support check is in the mail. Stop hassling me—I have a writing group to run.”
Bird had never met Mindy, his ex-wife, but she felt sorry for her. Not to mention for their child.
Bill threw the phone into his Serapian briefcase and set it down ostentatiously, with the logo turned out so no one could escape seeing it. “Everybody here?”
When his eyes met hers, Bird forced herself to greet him with the same smile she gave everyone else. It was the Baker Street Writers’ Group, not the Exclusive Group of People Bird Likes.