And you can feel the love and affection between these two people. It comes to me that perhaps this is one reason that Kavanaugh's designs are so charged with feminine power. So self-confident.
Hawkins leaves with his loudly protesting daughter, and a moment later, Kavanaugh dashes off to retrieve yet another sketch. I can hear the excitement in her voice as she shows it to me. It's vintage Kavanaugh – rhinestone ornamentation, diva-red leather, the vamp encrusted with beadwork. It has a low comma heel, set back, and it's fun and sexy and flashy. It makes me think of speakeasies and Prohibition, and women showing their knees for the first time in thousands of years.
"I call it 'Rose,'" she explains, with a smile that dazzles. "It's an homage, something a little personal. Isn't it beautiful?"
I agree. I think I'll suggest to my partner that she buy a pair and we sign up for jitterbug lessons.
Every woman should own a pair of Lili Kavanaugh shoes. Every woman needs a little elegance, fun, and romance in her life.
*
"So." Lili rolled over on the bed, against Matt's warm, bare body. "What do you think of it?"
Outside the wind whistled and the surf, under the onslaught of a September squall, pounded along the shore. She let the magazine fall to the hardwood floor with a thump.
"I think it's pretty damn good," Matt answered lazily, twirling a lock of her hair around his fingers.
Lili snuggled closer against him. "I wish it had been longer."
"It was long enough. The photos of the shoes are great."
"I'm a little jealous. He seemed more enamored of you than me." She glanced at Matt, his face shadowed in the low light of the bedside lamp.
An edge, the journalist had said. He'd hit it right on, and maybe it was because Matt was still active in security, teaching seminars a few times a year, and consulting on local jobs from time to time. If he sometimes seemed out of place in fashion circles, he probably seemed even more out of place at security seminars – the ex-bodyguard who now ran a shoe business for his wife.
Lili hesitated, then said, "I don't think he needed to mention that dark places rubbish."
"The guy had a good eye," Matt said after a moment. "I don't know that I'd describe what happened as film noir, but to somebody who wasn't there, I guess it might sound like The Maltese Falcon."
She went quiet, studying his handsome face. He rarely talked about the night Joey Mancuso died, and they'd both mostly put it behind them. Lili had no doubts Matt was happy, satisfied with his life, and utterly crazy about his wife and kids – but sometimes, she sensed he still brooded about what had happened and the man he'd killed.
They'd never learned if Joey Mancuso had set them up that night. Tony Graziano, the only one who knew for certain, had died of a heart attack before ever going to trial. He'd never talked. Lili knew Matt was certain Joey had betrayed them, but she held on to the belief that he hadn't – once a die-hard romantic, always a die-hard romantic.
The surviving gunman, just a flunky, had gotten life with no parole. The sentence satisfied both Manny Mendoza, who'd since married and gone to work for his uncle's construction company, and Dal and Jodie Farrell. Dal and Jodie had a little boy, and while Dal had lingering difficulties with fine motor coordination, he hadn't let it slow him down. He'd gone back to school and now worked as a teacher for children with disabilities. Even after five years, they all kept in touch.
Smiling, determined to banish the suddenly somber tone, Lili poked his hard belly. "You looked simply ravishing, darling, with the diaper over your shoulder and holding Alec. That was a really sexy picture."
Matt grinned down at her. "And the shot of you against the deck railing in the wind wasn't half-bad, either."
"I looked like the cat that swallowed the canary," she murmured, fluttering her lashes playfully against his skin.
He laughed. "You looked like a woman who'd just had fast, hot sex in the john because her horny husband lost his mind when he saw you in that get-up. Christ, how'd they get that dress to stay on you anyway? Glue?"
"Tape." She couldn't help smiling back, or going a little warm as she remembered how he'd cornered her in the bathroom, flipped the wispy fabric of her loaner Versace gown upward and, in less than ten minutes, left her breathless and sloe-eyed with satisfaction. She'd tidied up and put herself back together, but the photographer had grinned knowingly, anyway. "Nursing does wonders for the cleavage, doesn't it?"
"I liked that line about Tarzan." His fingers stroked lower on her bottom. "You make me want to beat my chest and howl."
"Not too loud," she said archly. "Meg and Alec are finally asleep. We probably have … oh, forty minutes before he starts howling."
Matt shifted, rolling her to her back. "Then I'll just howl real quietly, right here." He kissed her ear, and it made her shiver with a delicious anticipation as he'd known it would.
She tightened her arms around him as he lowered his head, her love for him sweeping through her, powerful and strong. Smiling, she whispered, "Gotcha again, G-man."
"Yeah." He grinned. "Be gentle with me."
Lili was still laughing when he kissed her.
* * * *
HER BODYGUARD Page 32
