She was melting.
“Cat got your tongue?” He was laughing at her. He also seemed to fill his jeans a little more tightly than before.
She really should stop looking down there. “I’m not sweet. I hate sweet. Patooey.” She scrunched her nose in disgust. “Sweet sucks the big one.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
Oh my God. Spontaneous combustion really did exist if the heat of her face was any indication. And the way his gaze seemed to turn to melted chocolate, oh my goodness. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Freudian slip?”
When in doubt, huff. She crossed her arms, tapped her foot on the wooden porch, and blew out a really big puff of irritated air. But the rising temperature on the porch was doing pleasant things inside her body. “I think we were originally talking about you, not me.”
“We were talking about you coming over here to watch Buffy.” He arched one brow, hot eyes lingering on her breasts. “The answer is still no.”
Darn. She sought something else to keep him from closing his door on her. “We were done with that subject and had moved on to whether or not you’re a serial killer.”
“Didn’t we discuss this yesterday?”
So what? “You never really answered.”
“Do you think I’m actually going to tell you? What if you’re my next victim? That would be like warning you.”
She’d really like to be his next victim. She tapped her foot a little harder. “I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe I’m a serial killer?” His lids did a slow blink, as if he scanned her body all the way down. Then up again. “Or that you’re my next victim?”
Even the tops of her thighs felt steamy now. She cocked her head to one side. “I don’t believe any of the gossip. I bet you’re every bit as angelic as your name, and that there’s not a mean, demented bone in your body. You’re clearly misunderstood and misjudged. And I bet whatever happened with Mary Alice Turner wasn’t even your fault.”
He took an extraordinary amount of time to digest her opinion. And she knew she’d said something terribly wrong. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tensed, muscles rippled in his cheeks.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Ms. Jones, I’m not a nice guy. I’m a total dickhead when it comes to manners. I can’t be bothered. So, if you’re wondering exactly what that means, let me make myself clear. I don’t invite strange females over to watch Buffy. I don’t return lasagna bakeware. And I don’t give a damn what my neighbor thinks about me.”
He closed the door in her face.
Okay. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned Mary Alice Turner quite so soon in the relationship. But she’d wanted to let him know she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. And of course, she’d harbored a burning curiosity about the story since Patsy had mentioned the girl’s name.
Well, there was always tomorrow. Then she’d wait until he mentioned Mary Alice.
* * * * *
The slap of her sandals on the porch steps died away. Nick leaned against the door and drew in a deep breath. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said he’d just finished a 10-K run.
She was one brick short of a full load, or something just this side of insane. Worse, she had that trait common to all women; she didn’t take no for an answer. Even being downright rude hadn’t flashed a bright red stop sign in her face. He was going to have to bar the windows and nail the door shut to keep her out.
She wanted something. Screw Buffy. Screw baked lasagna. She wanted a piece of him. He could feel it, taste it, smell it. Like her bubblegum scent. Sweet. Innocent. Irresistible.
He’d wanted to touch her, feel the heat of her, skim his thumb over her peaked nipple, slide his hands beneath her short denim skirt. Like a fresh canvas, he could repaint his life through her eyes. Expunge his mistakes.
Did she even have a clue how seductive that idea was?
Probably. He’d learned the hard way to avoid women who sucked up big-time, telling you how misjudged and unappreciated you were. Sobbing women with an agenda and a finger on your Achilles’ heel.
Damn, he was such a fricking idiot.
Because he’d wanted to tell her everything about Mary Alice. Closing the door in her face had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Chapter Four
Another day, another pocketful of tips. Let’s see, how many mistakes had she made today? Bobbie stared sightlessly into the front window of Bushman’s Clothiers and did a mental tick off. She’d dropped the pancakes in an attempt to emulate Mavis’s amazing stacking ability. She’d given a trucker twenty in change instead of a dollar. He’d been so darn sweet about insisting she’d made a mistake, even when she’d argued with him.
Mavis had tapped her temple. “Now I know how those accountants misplaced four billion in unrecorded expenses at that telecom giant.”
It certainly wasn’t Bobbie’s fault that someone had put a twenty in the ones slot. Or was it?
All in all, it had been a good day. She still had a job, and she’d made more in tips than she had on payroll. Maybe it was learning all her customers’ names. Maybe it was the too-tight uniform or the number of times she’d bent over to rescue something she’d dropped only to feel appreciative eyes caress her rear.
Mavis had explained it thus, “Your butt’s a seven-day wonder. Next week, your tips’ll be cut in half. I guarantee it.”
Whatever. As long as they liked her.
And she liked Cottonmouth.
Just looking at the display in Harry Bushman’s front window made her yearn for long ago, hot summer days at the beach. Bobbie plucked at the sticky material of her uniform, fanning her chest. Neither the crack in the glass nor the yellow flip-flops and the pink polka dot beach umbrella that had seen too many seasons sitting in the front window could dampen her fond memories.
Movement flashed beyond the glass. Harry had a customer. Wonderful. Bobbie shaded her eyes against the late afternoon sun bouncing off the glass. Harry helped a chic woman with a big hat, sunglasses, and an expensively cut suit. Considering the profusion of polyester on Harry’s racks, it was a sure bet she hadn’t purchased her ensemble from Bushman’s. Harry, hands beating the air like hummingbird wings, hovered around the woman.
Poor Harry. The woman simply walked away while his hands fluttered ineffectually. Then she stopped, stared, maybe even glared at the front window, though Bobbie couldn’t tell for sure with the oversized sunglasses masking her eyes. She half turned and said something to Harry over her shoulder. Probably wondered who the maniac woman in the limp waitress uniform was.
Busted. However, the last time she’d checked, looking in store windows wasn’t a crime. Besides, this was her town now.
The door opened. The woman descended to the sidewalk, a small, neatly folded Bushman’s Clothiers bag tucked beneath her arm. What on earth could that woman have bought from Harry?
Bobbie did a critical once-over of Ms. Cottonmouth Society Lady. Long, lustrous blonde hair flowed from beneath the hat. It looked like real blonde hair, probably the texture of silk, like something out of a romance novel. Romance heroines never dyed their hair. The pink tones of the costly suit complemented her high, rouged cheekbones. Her stomach made barely a ripple against the knit skirt, and gravity didn’t exist as far as her butt was concerned. That delicate skirt should have shown every flaw, every modicum of flab, every wrinkle in her skin. My God, she didn’t even have VPL—the dreaded visible panty line. The best Bobbie could hope for were crow’s feet behind those massive sunglasses.
The sunglasses came off. Oh my God. Bobbie should have recognized her worst nightmare. This was Cookie Beaumont in all her absolute perfection. Far better than the picture in Warren’s high school yearbook. White chocolate mousse with real whipped cream. Standing next to her in nylon machine-washable waitress getup, Bobbie felt like tapioca pudding past the freshness date.
The Cookie Monster even smelled good as she moved to within a foot of Bobbie. Some
thing subtle and exotic, like passion fruit or maybe passion flowers. Definitely something with the word passion in it.
So much for Bobbie’s hopes that Warren’s love would be a greeter at some discount department store.
Bile threatened to force its way past the constriction in Bobbie’s throat. If she wasn’t careful, she’d throw up on the Cookie Monster’s pale pink, high-heeled slippers. Not just every day shoes, but more like slippers. Like something Cinderella would have worn. Bobbie’s tennies, with their dark smudges of pancake syrup, assured that no man was going to get his nose anywhere near her feet.
I hate you, Warren. I hate you more than anyone I’ve ever hated in my whole life.
Not that Bobbie had ever hated anyone before.
What made the situation worse was that there was no doubt in her mind that Cookie Beaumont knew exactly who she was. And from the look on the woman’s face, Warren had probably told her every revealing, humiliating detail of their lives. Even the sex stuff.
Sweat trickling down her back in the hot sun, Bobbie shuddered. Of course, the Cookie Monster’s skin merely glowed through a fine sheen of perspiration. That was the essence of it. Bobbie sweated. Cookie Beaumont perspired. Delicately.
“I know who you are.”
She even had dulcet tones. Chocolate probably melted in that mouth. Okay, so it melted quite well in Bobbie’s mouth, too, but then it went straight to her hips. Cookie Beaumont didn’t wear chocolate on her hips. She wore pink knit.
Her feet cemented to the sidewalk, Bobbie couldn’t run. The most she could manage was a wrinkling of her nose, as if she smelled something bad.
“If you try to mess with my plans,” Cookie trilled, “I’ll make sure Warren doesn’t give you a dime in the divorce.”
Warren hadn’t signed a single legal paper yet. He’d only made promises. But if Cookie wanted Warren to break those promises...
Say something. Anything. Tell her to go...bleep herself.
But Bobbie’s lips wouldn’t part. She couldn’t even turn her stiff neck to give the horrible woman a menacing look as she passed. All she could do was stand there as the Cookie Monster’s heels clacked down the sidewalk. In the window’s reflection, a beautiful black Jaguar XK8 enveloped the pink suit and hat, then glided out of the parking space.
From inside, mute witness to the mortifying event, Harry stared, slack-jawed, as if he’d just seen Joan Crawford bushwhack her unsuspecting cousin in Harriet Craig. As far as master manipulators went, the Cookie Monster ranked right up there.
It was deplorable, shameful, idiotic. Bobbie had botched the all-important first battle with her enemy. The Cookie Monster had stormed the beach and dug in.
But it was only a minor battle, just a skirmish. The war was yet to be won.
Bobbie’s tennies felt glued to the sidewalk. It took a whole five minutes to loosen her frozen, shocked muscles. It also took that long to pry her lips apart.
The first word that came out was a heartfelt “Bitch.”
Oh my God. She was developing a potty mouth. And she enjoyed it. Nothing kept her down for long, not since she’d become Bobbie rather than Roberta. The Cookie Monster might have fancy clothes and a disgustingly firm bottom, but she was also a first class bitch. And that’s where Bobbie had her beat. No one had ever called her a bitch.
She’d survived her first two days at The Cooked Goose, two encounters with a serial killer, and her first battle with Cookie Beaumont. Survival was the key word.
Bobbie hopped the step down to street level and crossed the intersection devoid of traffic. Her tired feet just might make it the few blocks to Mrs. Porter’s cottage.
“Hey, come here.”
From amid a weed patch covering the concrete pad of Beau’s Garage, a grizzled old man waved his arm. Sweat stained the armpits of his blue work shirt. He spat tobacco juice at an offending weed. Ewwe. The darn thing shriveled like the toes of the Wicked Witch’s sister after Dorothy’s house fell on her.
Bobbie looked from left to right. She was the only one on the street.
She pointed to her chest and mouthed, “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
She crossed the last few feet to the weather-beaten gas pump, then stopped at a distance guaranteeing safety from any potential streams of juice. “Yes?”
“I just wanted to warn you that woman’s a viper.”
Well, here was someone she could see eye-to-eye with. Upon closer examination, he wasn’t quite as old as she’d first thought. It was the gray, grizzly sprouts of beard that made him look somewhere in his sixties rather than his fifties. Nor did he smell as bad as the sweat stains indicated.
“You mean Cookie Beaumont?” she said to spur him on. Goodness, the people in this town loved to gossip. Before her first week was out, she’d know who had done what to whom over the past fifty years.
“I’m talking about that conniving woman you work for.” He rolled his eyes as if he’d encountered an imbecile.
“Mavis Morgan?”
“That’s the one.”
“Why?”
He scratched behind his ear. “You ask her about it.”
The mangled spines of the overhang barely shaded her eyes from the sun as she looked at him and murmured with exceeding politeness, “Might I at least tell her whom I heard it from?”
“Name’s Beau. I own this garage.” Duh. His much-washed blue shirt had his name emblazoned over the pocket. “Your car need a tune-up?”
“Actually, it’s new.”
“One of those foreign jobs?”
Somehow a Bug seemed as American as apple pie. “It’s a VW.”
“Well, you gotta be sure to do an oil change every three thousand miles even on those German cars. Can’t let a good engine rot, ya know.”
At the rate she’d been driving, she wouldn’t be reaching three thousand miles for at least three years.
“I don’t sell gas any more,” Beau went on, “but I still do oil changes. Better than anyone you’ll find up the highway. Those wet-behind-the-ears punks have been known to leave screw drivers in the fan belt. They don’t love cars the way a man should. It’s those damned electronics, confuses the hell out of ’em.”
He smiled then, a big toothy grin that showcased two rows of straight white teeth. She gaped. How on earth did he have white teeth in such excellent condition when he chewed tobacco? Was that possible?
“It’s that whitening crap you put in little trays and stick in your mouth for twenty minutes,” he said, correctly reading her slack-jawed look. “Ex-wife makes me use it every day or she won’t kiss me. And she sends me off to the dentist twice a year to get ’em cleaned. I’m on her dental plan seeing as how I don’t have one of my own over here.”
“Well, that’s very nice of her.” Being an ex-wife and all. Warren could pay for his own darn dental insurance. And he could dream about kissing her again. Not in this lifetime. All she really wanted was a chance to turn her back on him when he came begging. Vindictive, yes, but oh so satisfying.
“Which reminds me”—Beau stroked his chin—“I better shave just in case she shows up for sex tonight. Hasn’t been around in...oh...three or four days. Starts to get a little cranky if she doesn’t get it often enough. But you’re a woman, you know all about that kind of thing.”
Bobbie knew all about a woman’s needs, about not having them met on a consistent basis. But this didn’t seem like a proper discussion to be having at the corner of Main and Pine Streets with a stranger, and after Beau had just called her boss a viper.
“Well, thanks for warning me about Mavis. I’ll be sure to ask her about it.”
“You watch out for her, else she’ll stab your eyes right out of your head. Just like she did me.”
Oh-Kay. Bobbie sidled two steps towards Pine Street. “I better be going now.”
He raised a finger at her. “And come to think of it, better watch out for that bitch Cookie, too. Mavis’ll stab you, but at least you’ll see it coming. Cookie, she�
��ll turn your own family against you and make you think you deserved what you got.”
Now that was the Cookie Monster she knew. What did the woman want from Warren? Certainly not money, if her expensive suit meant anything. And it most definitely couldn’t be the sex.
Could it? Ewwe.
* * * * *
He should stop answering the doorbell. She was the only one who ever rang it. Yesterday, he hadn’t quite recognized the sound. This time, however, he knew. He opened the door anyway. Today she was carrying a stainless bowl of...pasta salad.
Shit. He liked pasta salad. And if it was anything like her lasagna, he didn’t stand a chance.
“I’ve already had dinner,” Nick told her, while enumerating to himself all the reasons he shouldn’t invite her in. She’d just been dumped. She was needy. She was no spring chicken, had probably gotten ousted for a younger model. She was also excessively chipper. He didn’t trust chipper.
Bobbie held out the bowl like a religious offering. “You can eat it tomorrow.”
He held onto the door with one hand, ready for the slam. She was pushy, and he didn’t trust pushy either. “Lady, what does it take to get rid of you? Permanently.”
He expected a serial killer comment. Instead, she seemed to take him seriously, pulling her lower lip between her teeth and chewing, giving the matter her considerable brain power. Christ, the idea was for him to chew the lipstick off her mouth. And damn, he wanted to. Badly.
“Well, I’ll get off your porch this time. If you promise to go to the Accordion Festival with me in a couple of weeks.”
He laughed. Lasagna, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, pasta salad, and now the Right Honorable Mayor Wylie Meade’s Accordion Festival, which was supposed to cover the budget shortfall caused by his erection, of the Taj Ma’Wylie, that is.
Damn, a Freudian slip. He shouldn’t be considering erections and Bobbie Jones in the same thought. “Don’t think so.”
“But they’ll be having polka dances and stuff. Don’t you love watching the polka? Haven’t you ever seen Lawrence Welk do it on PBS? He was the most marvelous dancer.”
She's Gotta Be Mine (A sexy, funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 1) (Cottonmouth Series) Page 6
