Open Season

by Linda Howard

  “Here?” Puzzled, Daisy tried to think of anyone in Hillsboro who even remotely qualified as a beauty consultant. “Who? Has someone new moved into town?”

  “Well, no.” Aunt Jo cleared her throat. “We thought Todd Lawrence would do nicely.”

  “Todd Lawrence?” Daisy gaped at them. “Aunt Jo, just because a man’s gay doesn’t mean he qualifies as a beauty consultant Besides, I don’t know if Todd is ‘out.’ I’d hate to upset him by asking, if he isn’t” Todd Lawrence was several years older than she, at least in his early forties, and a very dignified, reserved man. He had left Hillsboro when he was in his early twenties and, according to his doting widowed mother, did quite well for himself on Broadway, but since she never had any newspaper clippings or articles to show mentioning his name, everyone thought it was probably a mother’s fond bias that led her to think he was so successful. Todd had returned to Hillsboro some fifteen years later, to take care of his mother during her last year of life, and since her death had lived quietly and alone in the old Victorian house on the edge of town.

  “Oh, he’s ‘out,’ ” Evelyn replied. “For goodness’ sake, he opened an antique and decorator store in Huntsville. And how many straight men know what color mauve is? At Easter, Todd told me how good I look in mauve; remember, that’s what color my dress was this year? And he said it in front of several people. So he’s out.”

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Jo said doubtfully. “Mauve isn’t really a good test. What if a man’s wife has had him looking at paint chips? He might know what mauve is. Now, puce would be a real test. Ask Todd about puce.”

  “I’m not asking him about puce!”

  “Well, other than asking him outright if he’s out, I don’t see how else you’re going to do it.”

  Daisy rubbed her forehead. “We’re getting off track. Even if Todd is gay—”

  “He is,” both sisters said confidently.

  “Okay, he is. That still doesn’t mean he knows anything about makeup!”

  “He was on Broadway, of course he knows about makeup. Everyone in the shows wears makeup, gay or not. Besides, I’ve already called him,” Evelyn said.

  Daisy groaned.

  “Now, don’t take on,” her mother admonished. “He was as nice as he could be, and said of course he’d help you. Just give him a call when you’re ready.”

  “I can’t do it,” Daisy said, shaking her head.

  “Take another look in the mirror,” Aunt Jo suggested.

  Reluctantly Daisy turned her head to look in the mirror over the gas log fireplace. What she saw made her wince, and she surrendered without even another twinge of conscience. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

  “Do it now,” Evelyn urged.

  FIVE

  Daisy’s insides jittered nonstop. Setting up an appointment with Todd Lawrence had been nerve-racking, even though he was just as nice as her mother had said. Not only was she still worried he was offended—though if he was, he hid it very well—but there was something so humiliating about having to ask for help in something as simple as applying a little bit of makeup. What had she done wrong? She knew she wasn’t stupid, but was she so basically inept at this sort of thing that she was doomed to failure from the start? She could hear the jokes now: Daisy Minor get a husband? Hah-hah; she can’t even put on mascara.

  And did she really want a man who couldn’t see the real her, just as she was, but who needed a layer of gloss before he even noticed her?

  Well, yes. She’d tried the “real her” way and gained exactly nothing. Zippo. If she had to gloss herself in order to get what she wanted—namely, a family—then she would gloss as brightly as needed.

  Her new awareness of how dowdy she was almost paralyzed her as she was getting ready for work. For once, she hadn’t laid out her clothing the night before, and now she stood in front of the closet staring at the selection of boring skirts and blouses and dresses. She couldn’t bear wearing those, not one more time. She dithered until, for the first time in her life, she ran the very real risk of being late to work. Finally she grabbed a pair of black slacks and pulled them on. She had never before worn pants to work, but that was because of her own stodginess, not any rule by the town council. This was yet another break with her old way of life, and her heart hammered in a combination of fear and excitement. She didn’t have any stylish tops, of course, just her regular, boring white blouses, but she put one on and tucked the hem into the waistband of her slacks, then buckled the belt and slipped her feet into black loafers.

  She didn’t dare look in the mirror to check the result, just grabbed her purse and ran downstairs.

  Aunt Jo raised her eyebrows when she saw her, but didn’t say anything.

  “Well?” Daisy demanded, even more nervous under that silent regard.

  Evelyn came out of the kitchen and stared at her daughter. “Nice,” she finally said, nodding her head. “Different. And the pants show the shape of your butt.”

  Ohmigod; now she wouldn’t be able to turn her back to anyone all day long. Aghast, she swiftly checked her watch. There was no time to go change clothes. “Why did you have to say that?” she moaned.

  Evelyn smiled. “It’s okay, honey. If I remember correctly, men are partial to butts. See if you can remember to priss when you walk.”

  “Priss,” Daisy repeated numbly, still unable to take in that her mother—her mother!—thought it was a good thing for her to show the shape of her butt.

  “You know. . . back and forth.” To demonstrate, her mother strolled across the room, her hips swaying in a gentle rhythm that drew attention to her own rear end. The movement was so astonishingly sexy that Daisy was shocked. Her mother? Her intellectual, unsophisticated mother?

  “But not too much,” Aunt Jo advised. “Or it’ll look like two pigs fighting to get out of a sack.”

  That was all she could take. With a mumbled excuse about being late for work, Daisy fled.

  She had barely got the key in the lock of the employees’ door when a white car drove up behind her and Chief Russo got out. He might not be at the top of her list of people she didn’t want to see that day, she thought in exasperation, but he was close. She tried to shift to the side so he couldn’t see her butt, not that he was looking anyway. He was scowling as he strode up to her. “You’re late.”

  Daisy checked her watch. It was twelve seconds to nine o’clock. “I’m right on time.”

  “You’re always about half an hour early. Today, you aren’t. Therefore you’re late.”

  “How do you know what time I get to work?” she asked, feeling flushed and harassed. Just once she was almost late, and that would be the one day someone was waiting for her arrive. Besides, he was standing too close, crowding her again in that annoying way of his, as if he were trying to intimidate her with his size. Maybe it was working, since she felt flushed and harassed. She tried to squeeze closer to the door.

  “The lights in the library are always on when I drive past.”

  Meaning she was always—well, almost always—at work before he was. She barely refrained from smirking and instead, with an effort, assumed her librarian’s expression and tone. “May I help you with something, Chief?”

  “Yeah,” he said in that brusque Yankee way. “I tried to get into the on-line library last night, but it wouldn’t open. You wrote down the wrong password or something.”

  Why was it always the woman’s fault? she wondered, mentally raising her eyes to heaven. “If the page won’t display, then you probably need to upgrade your browser.”

  He stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language.

  “Your browser,” she repeated. “How old is your system?”

  He shrugged. “Two or three years.”

  “Have you upgraded at all since you bought it?” She knew the answer even before she asked the question. She would love to leave him to figure it out on his own, but good manners and a lifetime of being helpful prodded her conscience. She was a librarian; it
was her duty to help him with the virtual library. “Do you have a laptop or a desktop?” She bet on the laptop. He was the impatient sort who would want to move his computer around to where it was most convenient for him.

  “Laptop.”

  She awarded herself two points. “If you’ll bring it by, I’ll show you how to upgrade. If you have enough memory, of course.” Let him decide if she was talking about his brain or his computer.

  From the way his eyes narrowed, he must have suspected the former, but he let it pass. “It’s in the car.” He strode back to the city-owned Crown Victoria and got the laptop out of the front passenger seat, carrying it easily in one hand.

  She unlocked the employees’ entrance and turned to take the laptop. “You can pick it up at lunch,” she said.

  He retained possession of the machine. “Can’t you do it now?”

  “I intend to, but it’ll take a few minutes.”

  “How many is a few?”

  Her heart sinking, she realized he intended to wait. “Don’t you have to go to work?”

  He indicated the pager on his belt. “I’m always at work. How many is a few?” he repeated.

  Damn modern electronics, she thought resentfully. The last thing she wanted was to have him hovering. “It depends.” She tried to think how long might be too long. “Forty-five minutes or an hour.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Double damn. Her only consolation was that updating the browser wouldn’t take nearly that long; then he’d be on his way.

  “Fine. Meet me at the front door.” She stepped inside and almost hit him in the nose with the door as he stepped forward. He slapped his free hand up just in time to stop it.

  “I’ll come in this way,” he said, glaring at her.

  Daisy squared her shoulders. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She thought that should have been obvious. She pointed to the sign on the door, just inches from his nose. “This is the employees’ entrance. You aren’t an employee.”

  “I’m a city employee.”

  “You aren’t a library employee, and that’s what counts.”

  “Hell, lady, what’s it going to hurt?” he asked impatiently.

  More points on the bad side. His demerits were rivaling the score of an NBA game. “No. Go to the front door.”

  Her stubborn expression must have finally registered. He eyed her, as if considering simply bullying his way past her, but with a muttered curse he turned on his heel and stormed around to the front of the building.

  She was left standing there with her eyes as big as saucers. He’d said the F word. She was fairly certain that was what she’d heard. She’d heard it before, of course; one couldn’t watch many movies these days without hearing it. She’d also gone to college, where young people tried to impress each other with how cool and sophisticated they were by using all the foul words they knew; she’d even said it herself. But Hillsboro was a small southern town, and it was still considered ill-mannered for men to use such language in front of women. Women who wouldn’t turn a hair at hearing anything from their husbands or boyfriends in private would poker up like Queen Victoria if it were said in public. And to say such a thing to a woman you didn’t know well was a total no-no, indicative of a total lack of manners and respect—

  A thunderous banging on the front door interrupted her indignant reverie; the beast was already at the door. Muttering to herself, she hurried through the darkened library to unlock the front door.

  “What took you so long?” he snapped as he stepped inside.

  “I was frozen in shock by your language,” she coolly replied, taking the laptop from him and carrying it to the library’s on-line computer, turning on lights as she went.

  He muttered something again, but this time, thankfully, she couldn’t tell what it was. She wasn’t as lucky with his next sentence. “You’re a little young to have a stick up your ass like the blue-hairs in this town.”

  To her credit, she didn’t falter. “Manners have nothing to do with age, and everything to do with upbringing.” She set the laptop down and swiftly began hooking it up to the power source and telephone outlet.

  It took him a minute. “Are you insulting my mother?” he finally growled.

  “I don’t know, am I? Or are you simply ignoring what she taught you?”

  “Shit!” he said explosively, then blew out a deep breath. “Okay, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget I’m living in Mayberry.”

  If they were so boring and restrictive, maybe he should think about going back to wherever he came from, she thought resentfully, but kept her thoughts to herself before the situation developed into a full-fledged argument. “Apology accepted,” she forced herself to say, though she could have used a more gracious tone if she had really, really tried. She sat down and went on-line, then typed in the browser’s web address and waited until the site was found and the page displayed. Then she clicked on the update bar, and let technology handle the rest.

  “That’s it?” he asked, watching the little timer.

  “That’s it. You should do this regularly, at least every six months.”

  “You’re good at this.”

  “I’ve had to do it a lot since we got the virtual library,” she said wryly.

  He sat down beside her; too close, of course. She inched her chair away. “You know your way around computers.”

  “Not really. I know how to do this, but I had to learn. I can find my way around on the Web, I can hook up a system and load programs, but I’m not a computer geek or anything.”

  “City hall isn’t even on-line. Water bills and payroll are computerized, but that’s it.”

  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as he watched the screen, as if he could hurry the process.

  “The police department is, though, isn’t it? Aren’t you hooked up with all those police networks?”

  He grunted. “Yeah. One line, one computer.” He looked disgusted.

  “Hillsboro is a small town,” she pointed out. “The budget isn’t very big. On the other hand, our crime rate is low.” She paused, suddenly unsure. “Isn’t it?”

  “Low enough. There hasn’t been a murder in the city limits since I’ve been here. We have the usual burglaries and assaults, drunk driving, domestic troubles.”

  She would have loved to ask him who was having domestic trouble, but bit her tongue. He just might tell her, and then she’d tell her mother and Aunt Jo, and feel bad about gossiping.

  Had he moved closer? She hadn’t seen him do so, but she could feel his body heat, and smell him. What was it about men that made them smell different from women? Testosterone? More body hair? It wasn’t an unpleasant smell; in fact, it was tantalizing. But it was different, as if he were an alien species. And he was definitely too darn close.

  She had had enough. “You’re crowding me,” she pointed out, very politely.

  Without moving, he glanced down; their chairs were separated by at least an inch. “I’m not touching you,” he said just as politely.

  “I didn’t say you were touching me; I said you’re too close.”

  He rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh, but hitched his chair another inch away. “Is this some other weird southern rule?”

  “You’re in law enforcement; you’re supposed to have studied body language. Isn’t that how you intimidate suspects, by invading their personal space?”

  “No, I generally use a nine millimeter for intimidation purposes. Not much chance of missing the signal that way.”

  Oh, and wasn’t that macho? He was such a typical man, bragging about the size of his weapon. She barely refrained from rolling her eyes, but he’d just done that and she didn’t want to be a copycat.

  A typical man . . . The conversation last night with her mother and Aunt Jo echoed in her mind, and a thought tickled her, but she pushed it away. No, she didn’t want to get into that kind of discussion with him. She just wanted his browser to finish upgrading so he
would go away—

  “Do you know what color mauve is?” she blurted, the words leaping from her tongue before she could stop them.

  The effect on him was almost electric. He jerked back, eyeing her as if she had suddenly sprouted fangs and tentacles. “What makes you ask?” he said warily.

  “I just want to know.” She paused. “Well, do you?”

  “What makes you think I’d know?”

  “I don’t. I’m just asking.”

  “It sounds like one of those tests women use to find out if a man’s gay or not. Why don’t you just ask, if you’re interested?”

  “I’m not,” she said, appalled that he might think she was. “It’s just that someone else—never mind.” She was blushing. She knew she was; her face felt hot. She stared very hard at the computer screen, trying to will the thing to go faster.

  He scrubbed a rough hand over his short hair. “Pink,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Pink. Mauve is a fancy word for pink, right? I heard it often enough when my ex-wife was picking out stuff for our apartment, but it looked pink to me.”

  My goodness, Aunt Jo was right about mauve; it was no longer a definitive test. Wasn’t that interesting? She couldn’t wait to tell them.

  “Puce,” she said, and nearly smacked herself in the head. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone?

  “What?” He acted as if he’d never heard the word before.

  “Puce. What color is puce?”

  “Spell it.”

  “P-u-c-e.”

  This time he scrubbed his hand over his face. “This is a trick question, right?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Puce. Who in hell would name a color ‘puce’? It sounds like ‘puke,’ and nobody would want something colored like puke.”

  “Puce is a very pretty color,” she said.

  He gave her a disbelieving look. “If you say so.”

  “Do you know what color it is, or not?”

  “Hell, no, I don’t know what color puce is,” he barked. “I know real colors; I know blue and green and red, things like that. Puce, my ass. You just made that up.”