Stella Cameron - Kiss Them Goodbye

“Probably your donut,” Jilly said without any expression at all and cracked up her clientele. “Hello, Thea,” she said to a gray-haired woman who came in and joined Doll and Wazoo. Thea cleaned and helped out around Rosebank.

Cyrus couldn’t find it in him to be amused anymore. Madge might think him oblivious to a lot of things but she was wrong. Just because he didn’t always say a whole lot didn’t mean he missed much. All the banter in the world wouldn’t cover up the growing dread he felt. Unrest stirred the air, the kind of unrest he’d had the misfortune to feel before in this town.

“You okay?” Spike murmured to him.

“Are you?”

Spike shook his head slightly.

They’d been through bad times in the past and had barely managed to deal with the murderer of four women and a man without even more loss of life. Over a year had passed since the crimes were solved and Cyrus had become complacent about peace in Toussaint. He met Spike’s gaze again and something there suggested their thoughts weren’t so different.

After Detective Bonine left the rectory, Madge had grilled Cyrus on what had been said, then she’d insisted on going to Rosebank to see if she could help Charlotte and Vivian. There could still be danger at that house. He didn’t worry so much about Madge driving deserted roads now that she had an almost new car and he made sure it was kept in tip-top condition, but it wasn’t only on lonely roads that evil struck.

“I’d better go, too,” he said, deciding to visit Rose-bank himself.

Bill finished his coffee. “Samie Machin has me looking for a house. Her husband’s overseas in special ops but he’s due on leave in a few weeks and she wants some properties to show him. I’ll stay put until I can have a word with her.”

Cyrus joined Spike to walk out—and bumped into Madge on her way in. He grinned and would have hugged her, but the gentle warning in her eyes and his own caution stopped him in time.

Madge said, “I persuaded Vivian to come into town with me. She needs a break. We’re going to sit outside. Say hi to her when you go by.”

Before Cyrus could respond, Spike left without a word. He went outside to a table where Vivian Patin was settling into a chair with her little dog peering from the top of a straw bag she settled on her lap.

“Good mornin'. Or good afternoon now, I guess. Looks like Jilly’s gettin’ overrun.”

Vivian looked up into Spike’s blue eyes. He’d come from the pastry shop and hadn’t put on his hat, probably because he had some of those old-world manners a lot of Southern men were born with.

“It’s one o’clock already,” she said, feeling inane. What exactly did you say to a man you’d almost made 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 shown they 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 of Vivian and set Boa on the table where she went straight for the water, scowling at Spike each time she paused for breath.

“Dogs don’t belong on the table.”

“My friend, Dr. Reb, taught me how dogs have less germs than people.”

“That doesn’t extend to the feet they walk through…through everything on.” She felt eyes through the window again and her spine straightened. Looking directly into Thea’s face, Vivian smiled—and Thea smiled back. The woman did her job at Rosebank enthusiastically and often mentioned how glad she was for the chance. She’d probably known Doll Hibbs for years and was used to the woman’s rude curiosity.

Behaving as if having the town’s law officer hover over her and her dog was nothing out of the ordinary could be the best way to go. Vivian waved at Thea who waved back and grinned. Wazoo waved, too, and Vivian wondered why the woman had chosen to dust her face and hair with white powder.

Boa was on her second helping of water and actually paused to lick drops from Spike’s fingers.