Utterly Charming by Kristine Grayson Page A

interior, and hoped it was long enough for the microbus. If not, she’d have to go back to the office. Who did they make these short garages for anyway? People who drove Le Cars?
    She got back into the microbus and pulled it into the garage. Then she took the keys and her purse and exited. As she had promised, she didn’t scan the interior, didn’t know much more about Sancho than she had before, except that he liked Hershey’s Kisses, and kept most of the wrappers on the floor.
    It took two tugs to pull the garage door down and a bit of work to get the padlock in the place. Then she was done. The cab was waiting for her at the mouth of the driveway, and she took it back to her office.
    For a while, she closed her eyes and rested. Then, when she felt the swerves that meant the cab had gotten on the bridges over the river, she opened her eyes, expecting to see a darker twilight because of the smoke. Instead the sky to the west was a brilliant pink with no hint of smoke at all. For a moment she stared at it, wondering how all that smoke cleared out of the air. It must have been windier than she realized. That, and the authorities must have gotten the fires under control quicker than they thought they would.
    The cab driver let her off in front of the building, and she climbed the three flights to her office. The corridor was dark; everyone had gone home. As she unlocked her office door, she heard the phone ringing. Without thinking, she sprinted across the floor and answered. As she picked up the receiver, she realized she should have let the service get the call.
    “Nora?”
    It took her a moment to recognize the voice. “Max? How did it go with Blackstone?”
    “Buy me a drink,” Max said. “No. Buy me fifteen drinks and pour me into a cab. I really don’t want to go home.”
    That bad. It had been that bad. It had to have been, if Max was worried about it. She swallowed. “All right. Where?”
    “Grady’s.”
    Grady’s. It had been a favorite Portland escape when she and Max were attending the University of Oregon Law School. They would drive north with a dozen other cars filled with law school students from Eugene and spend the weekend drinking and studying and studying and drinking.
    Sometimes she missed those days. Especially after days like today.
    She grabbed her purse and drove to the bar, which was in a section of Portland she usually didn’t go to alone.
    Fortunately there was a parking spot in Grady’s lot. She went inside. The bar hadn’t changed at all. It was just as seedy as it had been a few years ago, with its name painted over the previous bar’s name in a metallic gold. The windows were filthy, and the air inside was so blue with smoke—of the legal and illegal varieties—that for a moment, she thought she was back in Beaverton. The bar was full, and for the first time, she felt old. Everyone inside had to be at least twenty-one, but they all seemed carefree. She could barely remember feeling like that.
    It wasn’t hard to spot Max. He sat alone in what had been Law Student Row, still wearing his three-piece pinstripe. He looked as trim as ever, almost dapper, with a red breast pocket handkerchief that matched his red silk tie. His blond hair had an expensive angle cut. Since she’d last saw him, he had grown a thin mustache, probably in an attempt to look older, but which really made him look like he belonged in a bad World War II movie.
    She pulled up a chair, and he grinned at her. His smile didn’t have the power that Blackstone’s did, but it did make her realize how much she had missed Max. He was good-looking in a mild mannered sort of way, which she actually had trouble seeing after looking at the stunner who was Blackstone.
    More than that, though, Max had a charisma that made him good at what he did. Everyone wanted to be his friend. Women hung on him. Yet Max had always had time for Nora, had, in fact, always made time for Nora. Sometimes she thought he flirted with her, and