from Austin.”
“Cool,” Max said.
“He won Project Runway.”
He was beginning to feel like a visitor to a strange land. “I didn’t know that.” Should he know it? Was that a thing—to know fashion designers and what they’d won? He shoved his hands into his pockets and fisted them in a vain attempt to keep from exploding into full nerd and asking exactly that question.
“You don’t know what that is, do you?”
He winced. “I’m sorry, I really don’t.”
“You really don’t know anything about fashion?”
For her information, he owned a leather jacket that he thought was pretty awesome. “I guess I just know what looks good,” he offered. But the minute the words were out of his mouth, he realized how they must sound to her, and if he had any doubt, Carly’s expression confirmed it.
“That . . . costume, as you call it, is an avant-garde piece. It’s art. It’s not supposed to look good, it’s supposed to promote brand awareness and make you think. The theme of his collection is futuristic space diva.”
Max was flummoxed. He had never thought about clothes past what went with what. He couldn’t name a brand of any clothes he wore. Nope, he just put on his pants and a shirt and went to work.
“I mean, I’m not surprised,” she said with a dismissive flick of her wrist, “you’re a guy, so . . .” She glanced away.
Curiously, her tone suggested that she was repulsed by guys and at the same time, thought she was being magnanimous by naming him one. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He was a guy, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. He was a scientist—surely that counted for something. Surely he shouldn’t be expected to know fashion labels, too. “So?” he pressed her.
“And . . . no offense, but most guys don’t get fashion. At least not the ones I seem to run into.” Her gaze flicked over him, as he apparently was one she’d run into. “You should really check out Victor Allen online. He’s insanely talented.”
That was not the technically correct meaning of insane, but Max thought the better of pointing that out.
“I’m his publicist, so I wear his designs.”
Aha. Mystery solved. He wondered if that meant she had to wear that . . . art . . . all the time. If so, it was a bit of a buzzkill.
“What? What is that look?” she asked, making a whirling motion with her finger in the direction of his face.
“What look?”
“One of your brows just shot up.”
“Nope. Didn’t shoot up.”
“Yes, it did. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking just like my brother-in-law, who said that jumpsuit looked stupid, and, by the way, this from a man who is in sweats and T-shirts most of the time when I see him.”
Max laughed with surprise. “It was a jumpsuit? Wow . . . I did not have jumpsuit on my list of possibilities.”
“Okay, all right,” she said, nodding as if she’d just figured him out. “You just proved my point—you’re such a guy. I don’t expect most people to understand haute couture any more than you probably expect me to understand accounting or whatever it is you do, and yet, I can stand here and see that your eyes are really gray, and not green like I first thought, and I can also see that high fashion is art.”
“What?”
“Whew boy,” she said, as if she’d just jogged her way into this conversation. She put her hands on her hips. “That was rough.” She blew out her cheeks, looked around him and into the hall. “Okay, well, now that we covered that, I guess I should get my dog and get—”
The sound of a crash startled them. Carly jumped. “What was that?”
Max groaned. “I think it might have been a pizza.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Hazel, that better not have been you!”
On the other side of the kitchen bar he found Baxter with his head hung low, prepared to be guilty even if he hadn’t done anything wrong, and an unrepentant Hazel munching away at what was left of the pizza Max had put aside when he’d begun to suspect Carly wasn’t coming back and had begun to worry in earnest. “Seriously?” he demanded of the two of them. “How could either one of you possibly get up that high? It defies all known properties of gravity,” he said, gesturing to the counter. He dipped down, pushed Hazel away from the box, and picked up what was