“I’m not pigeon-holing you. If you worked for me, when would you have time to write Priscilla Lange romance novels and Jack Mullally thrillers?”
I stood very, very still.
“I’m a big Mullally fan, Larue.”
My lips didn’t move even as the words came out.
“How did you know?”
“It’d be cool I could tell you I noticed patterns and cadence between your pen name work and We Pluck the Cord. But that isn’t my expertise. It’s because you have every single one of their books on your bookshelves in your living room, Lange then Mullally, chronological, before you get into the other books you keep, which are kept alphabetically by author. And those are mostly literary, with a good deal of mystery and very little romance or thrillers, because, I figure, you keep those in your office. And, the obvious clue, they’re both very successful and very famous for the fact the true name of their author remains entirely anonymous.”
He was right.
I kept those genres of books in my office.
And he was right.
No one knew who Priscilla and Jack were.
Because they were me.
“But I wasn’t sure,” he kept going, “until you just said, ‘read my books,’ plural.”
Damn.
I’d slipped.
“It’s been fifteen years and not a single person has figured that out,” I informed him.
“My guess is, not many people who don’t know have been in your living room.”
His guess was correct.
All of his guesses were.
I turned my head to the wall that led to the living room as my mind changed my afternoon’s course to rearranging my bookshelves.
“I haven’t told the kids. I won’t.” I looked back at him as he spoke. “That’s yours. And I’m down with giving you a second job if you want one. But how ’bout I get in your pants first? If we can survive stalkers, murderers, teenagers, bro boys, and we’re as great together in bed as I think we’ll be, we can add working together to that catalog and see if it’s a fit.”
Okay, now that I had him…
“Can I ask why you won’t even kiss me?” I whispered.
“Think about it,” he whispered back.
If…we’re as great together in bed as I think we’ll be.
Cade Bohannan was full of surprises.
I smiled.
His gaze homed in on my smile and darkened.
Yes.
He definitely should not kiss me.
“Heads up,” he said to my mouth. “I’m a good kisser and I bet you taste great.”
“You’re also cocky.”
He tore his attention from my lips and looked into my eyes. “No, I’m not. I know because I was voted best kisser in high school.”
I clicked my tongue and studied the ceiling, but I was still smiling.
When I looked back to him, I saw his beard was too.
A knock came at the door.
“Yo,” Bohannan called.
Jace swung in, just his upper body, hand on the knob, eyes glued to his father.
Studiously.
That needle bomb exploded at my back again.
Because he looked spooked.
“Dad, can we talk?” he asked.
Jace still didn’t look at me as his father walked to him and they disappeared from the door.
Twenty-Five
Somethin’ for Nothin’
On the brick wall at the side of Aromacobana, there was an extraordinary mural painted around the words Northern Exposure, which included the image of a bear with a rifle shooting a hunter, a plethora of distinctively green straws floating down an otherwise crystal-clear river, the sun obliterated by the smoke of a logging mill smokestack. This was all complemented with a dozen tie-dyed peace signs scattered about just in case anyone missed the overall bent behind the message.
The inside of the café was a carefully curated cornucopia of antique, vintage and repurposed furniture, including the pastry case, espresso bar, cash counter and everything behind it that contained the guts of the business: shelves, industrial mixers, ovens and espresso machine.
I was waiting for Celeste. We were having an after-school coffee before we went home to start dinner for ourselves and men who would, sometime along the line, and that time would be when I was in my own bed, be eating leftovers.
I was also distracting myself from the fact that, when Bohannan and Jace disappeared, so did Jess, and they disappeared.
Including the fact that for the first time, Bohannan didn’t reply to my text within fifteen minutes.
He didn’t reply at all.
And the text read, Is everything okay?
So the fact he didn’t reply to that made it even worse.
I was sucking an iced latte out of a paper cup that had a straw made from avocado pits, sitting in a thick-armed, low-backed, wine-colored upholstered chair that had to have been built in the fifties, watching the door for Celeste and trying to pretend I wasn’t famous.
This didn’t work, as it never did.
People were staring at me, and eventually, as it goes, one got up the gumption to approach.
She was very pretty. She was also young, perhaps three or four years older than Celeste. She had an exceptionally well-crafted balayage. Her anti-contouring contouring was inspired. Both of which seemed somewhat at odds, and somewhat not, with her T-shirt that proclaimed Make Love Then Make More Love.
“Heya!” she greeted.
“Hi there,” I replied on my patented Delphine Larue Welcoming but Not Too Welcoming Smile.
The welcoming part welcomed.
She got closer on a hop slide: one foot the hop, the other foot she left behind then dragged over, toes never leaving the floor, this reminiscent of the dance stylings of Gene Kelly, and her face was set to GRIN!
“Ohmigod. We were all like…waiting for you to…show…and here you…are.”
If the Gene Kelly move didn’t herald it, added with the balayage and makeup chops, the way she spoke did.
This was a former cheerleader.
And there was something so charming about her, even in my current troubled mood, I felt a little cheered.
“Yes,” I agreed, because there I was.
She leaned slightly closer to me setting her face to SAD! like it was necessary for an entirety of crowded bleachers to read it.
I didn’t know what she did for a living, but her emotive projection was spot on. She’d excel onstage.
“It was so, so nice that you tried to help with Alice.”
“I’m sure the town would have pulled together a collection eventually,” I remarked.
She swayed back and her face said SURPRISED!
“I didn’t even think about that!”
“’Scuse, please,” someone said, and Ms. Kelly was swept aside. “You. Yeah you.” Kimmy of the Christmas attire was standing there, confirming she was talking to me when she was staring down at me, I was staring up at her, and so she couldn’t be talking to anyone else.
Incidentally, she was again in Christmas attire, a T-shirt that was Santa’s coat with black belt and gold buckle and some thick white fuzz around the neck, down the front and ringing the hem. This was under a cardigan that had a line of tree ornaments stitched into the pattern of the knit across the chest, upper sleeves, and although I couldn’t see it, I was assuming all the way around the back.