Chapter One
Catastrophe has Perfect Eyes
“Have you seen a golden retriever off his leash?”
Jenna smiled. Not to brag or anything, but men loved her. They were always stopping her and asking her for the time, for the bus schedule, for recommendations for the best restaurants, or literally any question they could think of to engage her in conversation.
She had been sitting on a bench in the park for under three minutes, enjoying a tea and a bagel, when a reasonably attractive man approached her and asked her if she had seen the golden retriever.
She cast her gray eyes up at him and her cheeks went round and rosy. “I’m sorry. I haven’t.”
He looked around him for the dog, distraught written all over his face. “You don’t suppose,” he said, looking helpless and confused, “that you might be able to spare a few minutes to help me look for him?”
Jenna’s face changed. The smile was gone and instead, her face twitched in the spot just below her eye in sharp irritation. Then she warped her mouth into a deeply unimpressed frown and said, “No. I couldn’t.”
The man turned to her with agony and pleading in his eyes. “He hasn’t been missing for very long. He might just be past those trees.” He pointed.
Jenna snorted. “Then go look for him just past those trees.”
He looked at her as though she was the reason he couldn’t find his dog, if only she’d be merciful and walk with him a few steps.
“Do you have a picture of the dog?” she asked, patience fleeing from her voice as she started gulping her too-hot tea in large swallows.
“No. He just got away from me.”
“I meant on your phone.”
“My phone?” he asked looking around him like he didn’t understand how that word worked in the sentence she’d just constructed.
“You don’t have a picture of your dog on your phone?” she questioned as she shoved a quarter of a sliced bagel in her mouth.
“W-well, it’s not my dog! I never said he was my dog,” the man insisted, quite passionately.
“Fine then,” Jenna said, washing the remains of her bagel down with the last of her tea. “So it’s not your dog.”
“It’s a friend’s dog.”
“Then you’d better hurry up and find him,” she said, crumpling up the paper her bagel had been served in and shoving it in her empty disposable tea cup. She tossed them in the garbage bin next to the bench and stood up.
“You’re sure you can’t help me?” the man pleaded a second time.
“I think you should call your friend, or literally any other human being you know, and ask them for their help,” she said in a snarky tone and stepped away from him.
As she walked away, she glanced over her shoulder three times. Twice as she looked both ways before crossing the street, and once when she was a little further down the block. The man was standing exactly where she’d left him. At least, he wasn’t following her.
She shook her head. She shouldn’t have been so nice to him. She should have told him exactly what she thought, that the line about the missing dog was a cliche line child molesters used to bait children into their vehicles. It was not a reasonable pickup line, but maybe he’d have a debriefing with a friend who could explain how epically he had failed. Hopefully, that would not happen to her or any other woman again, ever.
***
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Jenna Fairchild looked very normal. As a matter of fact, she was better than normal. She had blondish hair, gray eyes, a sunny smile, and an open disposition. Not only that, but she took pride in herself and her appearance, which meant she knew how to sculpt her eyebrows properly, and how to do her hair, which was almost always done up in a high messy bun. If she wore her hair down, a hat usually crowned the top of her head. Her favorite hat was a man’s fedora that had belonged to her grandfather and that he had worn after the second world war. When her hair hung loose, it was almost down to her waist and fell in the kind of curls messy buns created.
The styles she adopted were important because Jenna always had to have something covering the crown of her head. She had a terrible secret under the curls of her messy bun, a mass that was always a little too close to her forehead to be really fashionable. Jenna only got away with it because she was so stylish otherwise with dangling earrings and a perfectly matched scarf. She was also terrifically grouchy when questioned about her bun. No one was going to ask her to change her style twice.
When she wore a hat, flirtatious men would often try to tip it. Even women would try to steal it to try it on, but Jenna had sorted this problem long ago and wore a hat pin. A pair of holes had to be pierced into the precious fedora in order to accomplish it, but it was well worth it. It had been her grandfather himself who punctured the stiff felt, gifting her a hat pin that had been owned by her grandmother.
Because her grandfather, the last of her relatives as far as she was concerned, had known her terrible secret. He had been in on it.
She had to hide the black onyx tiara that was permanently affixed to the top of her head. It was unlike any tiara any woman wore in that it had no gems, and symmetry that belonged in higher level math classes than just a collection of intricately placed triangles. It was shaped like a large black wave moving to oppose a smaller one. They seemed like they were moving toward each other, like a black beak about to snap shut, but they never moved.
When Jenna was little, she wore a headband to cover it—always in the wrong place—always too high off her head.
And she could never take it off.
Jenna had never had a real boyfriend. If she had someone that close to her, they would expect the kind of intimacy where she would have to be bareheaded. And she couldn’t be. The waves that made up the tiara were sharp on the underside and it wasn’t completely unfathomable that a man could tangle his hand in her hair and cut himself in the process. Any time a man got anywhere near such a thing, images of the man’s blood running down her forehead and between her eyes flooded her mind. In bad, accidental fantasies, he cut his finger clean off.
Jenna could not allow that, so anytime a man showed interest in her, she blew him off.
Though if she was being honest, she wasn’t overly tempted by the men that came her way. What was wrong with them was a little difficult to place. Was it that they weren’t good-looking enough? Yes, but if they had been more interesting to her, their looks would have mattered less. Jenna admitted she was picky, which was why none of her blind dates turned into anything more, and why she never met a man who made her want to let her hair down.
Waiting for the perfect man never got boring to Jenna.
In the meantime, she led a well-organized, perfectly pleasing life. She had a great apartment, cool friends, vacations, an excellent job, and a cat if that counted for anything. Everyone she knew reassured her that it didn’t. She disagreed.
Her cat’s name was Charm. She was a white long-haired fuzzy thing with deep blue eyes. People who visited Jenna’s apartment loved Charm until they tried to touch her and then the furry little monster would try to claw their faces off. Charm did not like anyone but Jenna, which made her feel like her cat’s undying love for her ought to have meant more in the estimation of others.
Besides, the cat was excellent company while she waited for the unthinkable to happen.
***
Jenna had always believed that office romances were completely out of line. Couldn’t you find anyone to date besides the guys you worked with? Sheesh! Take up a hobby! She had never seen a man who was worth breaking her rules until Armen Tagart started doing a radio show.
She heard him talking over the radio before she saw him. What was that accent? Where did he come from? Intrigued, she left her cubicle in the advertising department and hurried over to the sound booths.
Behind glass, there he was.
He was so attractive to her that even though they hadn’t yet spoken, she felt as if she were in danger. He was brown. His hair was brown like coffee beans. His eyes were brown like dark chocolate, and his skin was slightly avocado in its brownness. Altogether, he looked sweet, bitter, and healthy. The bone structure and muscle groups under all the brown didn’t disappoint.
She felt undone just looking at him, just listening to him. Like her carefully plotted life would shortly be ruined.
He glanced up from the white paper page he had been reading from and looked directly at her. His voice didn’t miss a beat in the announcement he was cheerfully making, but his eyes and his hand acknowledged her. He searched her eyes as he let his fingers slide down the length of a pencil only to flip it upside down and slide his fingers down it again. More than anything, it was a gesture showing impatience. It was the fidgety way a person moves when they’re on an important phone call, but can’t wait for it to end.
Jenna smiled.
He had white teeth. He had shaved that morning. His hands were clean and looked very much like any woman in the world wouldn’t have minded him placing one of them on the small of her back to guide her into a room.
He looked like the man who had been made just for her.
She went back to her desk with a little smile on her face.