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not in a talking mood.”
    Her face flamed. She knew what he meant. In the two reckless years she’d spent in Vegas, she’d more often than not ignored the calls from “Home,” as she had yesterday afternoon. But she never, ever ignored Wes. As a result, he knew all about the trouble she’d gotten into in those days, as well as her reasons for running to Vegas in the first place. He held the privileged position of family without all the strings she sometimes still felt were attached to her relationship with her parents. “I promise I’m all right.”
    “Just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”
    She paused, trying to read past the words into his tone. “Should there be?’
    He shook his head, the too-long strands of his light-brown hair—now shot through with threads of gray here and there—falling haphazardly across his forehead as he looked up at her. Eyes the color of broken-in denim met hers, the lines fanning out from the corners deeper than those she’d noted on Declan, but she supposed that happened when a man reached the latter half of his thirties. “Your dad mentioned a house. You didn’t tell me you were thinking about that.”
    A house. Yes, Fiona was indeed thinking about a house. What had once been her well-known itch to travel the world carried on the toes of her pointe shoes had recently settled into a simmering need for roots of the permanent kind. She understood why Wes had asked if she was doing all right, now: He’d unearthed something she hadn’t shared with him. “I was clicking around online and found a listing for a bank foreclosure north of here.”
    “And it’s in good shape?”
    “I’ll e-mail you the link later.”
    “Do that. Don’t want you sinking your savings into a piece of shit.” He glanced over at the mirror once again in time to see Declan step out of the dressing room in Victorian-era dress shirt and trousers. “Murphy was my first pick to play Count Vargas, back in auditions.”
    That surprised her. “So why didn’t you cast him originally?”
    “I…let myself be talked into Lunsford.” Wes seemed uneasy admitting to it. He was famous in the industry for never doing anything he didn’t want to. “He and Sadie Bower had good chemistry,” he said, naming Vendetta ’s lead actress, “and then his agent got involved. When the time came to choose, Murphy’s TV show back in Britain had just been picked up for a fourth series. Didn’t know until after we announced Lunsford as our Count Vargas that they’d killed off Declan’s character at the end of the third.”
    “Well, now you have your guy.”
    “Looks that way, yeah.”
    She saw Declan smile at something Marta said as he held still for her pins, noting where the Count’s costuming was too tight or too loose. Christopher Lunsford stood a couple of inches shorter than Declan, with a stockier frame, but their shoulders must have been equally broad, because the seams at the top of the sleeves hit him just right. “He’s…nice,” she offered, voice soft.
    “Oh?”
    Her fingers tightened on Wes’s muscled shoulder, hidden beneath the gray cotton thermal he’d probably found on the floor of his closet this morning. “You should know that I wasn’t exactly, um, polite when he first arrived. I didn’t know what was going on yet, but I should’ve. I’m sorry.”
    “I know what you’re like when you get cranky. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky he didn’t just turn around and fly home to Ireland.”
    She punched him.
    Wes just chuckled, and they watched Rick wander over to where Marta was adjusting Declan’s suspenders, footwear tucked under his arm, chapeau in hand and a silk necktie tossed over one shoulder. After helping Declan into a patterned waistcoat, Marta began tucking and pinning, altering the garments to fit Declan’s lean frame. Fiona leaned more of her weight into Wes’s shoulder as she watched her father bend down to help Declan don the boots while Marta slid the