Kiss Them Goodbye by Stella Cameron Page B

love with only hours ago?
    “How are you feelin’?”
    Fortunately, the blush she was working on could be mistaken for reaction to the heat. “Terrific. How about you?” Liar. Hopeless pretty much covered what she felt.
    Spike looked at the ground. His hair was short, but very thick and the sun glinted on the ends it had bleached. “I’ve felt better, Vivian,” he said. “Too much on my mind, I reckon.”
    Disappointment tightened her skin. “Don’t let me keep you,” she said. A woman could hope and she had hoped he’d say something to steady her.
    “Too much getting in the way of the only thing I want to think about.” He met her eyes again, very directly, and her spirits rose, she couldn’t stop them when Spike looked at her as if he couldn’t get enough of…looking at her. “I’m not having much luck keeping my thoughts on track. Seems someone’s been messin’ with my mind.”
    “Funny you should say that.” It didn’t take so much to resurrect her natural courage. “My own mind’s been messy lately. The difference between you and me is I could come to like it that way.”
    He leaned forward to spread his fingers on the white enameled table and braced his weight on tanned forearms corded with tight muscle and sprinkled with hair bleached by the same sun that got his hair, but darker than you’d expect at the root, dark like the hair on his body.
    Vivian stroked Boa in her basket and tried to settle down.
    She wasn’t right for him, Spike thought, any more than he was right for her, but he sure wanted it to be otherwise. “I understand Bonine was over to ask more questions,” he said. He couldn’t manage clever conversation right now but neither could he wave and walk on. “He went to St. Cécil’s first.”
    She kept her head bowed over the dog. “Madge told me.” Vivian’s hair slid forward, smooth and black, to frame her pale face. “She didn’t tell me what the detective wanted, though.”
    The cool yellow dress she wore was belted at the waist. It was hard to keep his eyes off her body.
    “It’s hot for Boa,” he said to give himself some breathing room. “Wait right there.”
    Vivian didn’t try to stop him from leaving her to go back into the shop. She’d have to be a fool not to know it was too soon for anything but sex to be causing the minefield between them, the one they’d already shownthey were foolhardy enough to cross. So far they hadn’t stepped on any explosives, but if they kept wading through that field something was going to get tripped.
    “Emergency supplies, Boa.”
    Spike returned and Vivian did her best to ignore the women who sat inside by the window pretending, pathetically, not to stare.
    Spike poured water from a plastic glass into a saucer and put it on the table. Apparently he’d decided he was irresistible to dogs, even small, feisty dogs who weren’t keen on men.
    A Land Rover pulled into the shade of a dogwood tree at the edge of the sidewalk and right in front of All Tarted Up. The dark-haired man who got out, jangling keys in his palm, was the type who got noticed.
    “Hi, Marc,” Spike said. “How you holding up?”
    The man shook his head slowly but gave a wide smile when he said, “The final months are the hardest.”
    Spike introduced Vivian to Marc Girard, Dr. Reb’s tanned, black-eyed husband. “He pretends he’s working out there at Clouds End,” Spike said. “Bein’ an architect. Doodling more likely.”
    “And taking care of Reb,” Marc said. “Time to take that woman home. I don’t like her walking around in this heat.” He lost the smile and studied Vivian. “I heard what happened at Rosebank yesterday—and about that ass Bonine. I’m sorry for your trouble. Let us know if we can do anything.” He clapped a hand on Spike’s shoulder and went into the shop.
    Spike watched Marc go, then he scratched Boa’s head and carefully lifted her little body from the basket.
    “Spike! Watch out.”
    The man took no notice