“Whatever you feel like,” he said.
“I feel like Sunny Side Up.” She cursed, then set the bag on the bench beside the door, went to her heels, and started taking things out of it. Wallet, keys, tablet, bottles of over-the-counter pain relievers, an e-reader, gum, lipsticks, a pair of leather gloves. He stared, fascinated. “But you ate there yesterday.”
He frowned. “How do you know that?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I could smell the gravy.”
“I can eat there again,” he said.
“Good, because it’s close to Eye Candy and we’re running late. Aha!”
She pulled a pair of starlet sunglasses from the bottom of the bag and started jamming the contents back in while he shrugged into his jacket. She unwound a thick, soft, purple scarf from the old-fashioned hat rack and wrapped it around her throat, then added a denim jacket to the ensemble before finishing with her puffy down coat. With the sunglasses she looked remote, untouchable.
Not at all like Queen Maud, or the woman who’d propositioned him the night before, yet somehow exactly like the kind of woman who’d proposition her body man.
“What?” she said as she led him through the house to the garage.
He’d thought he was keeping this pretty under control, but maybe not. The conversation at the Block hadn’t covered who to tell about incidents. Was Cady on the need-to-know list? Was Chris?
He’d told Hawthorn. Good enough for now. He jabbed the button to open the garage door and said the first thing that came to mind. “Why do your breasts look bigger?”
She laughed. She unzipped her jacket and reached into her bra, holding up what looked like a really flexible gel pad. He gaped at it, then overcorrected to avoid hitting one of the big evergreens lining the driveway. “There are my boobs, the very small ones God gave me. These are my backup boobs. They give me the cleavage God didn’t.”
Fascinated, he handled one. It was warm to the touch and had the consistency of a thin piece of raw chicken. “Why do you wear them?”
“It’s part of my image. My label believes boobs, as well as my voice, sell albums, songs, concert tickets, and merch.”
“And you’re wearing them today because…?”
“Interviews where photographs will be taken require the backup boobs.”
“Okay,” he said, as if it made sense.
“Come on,” she said, tucking the gel pad back into her bra. “That can’t be the weirdest thing you’ve heard in your line of work.”
He turned right out of the community’s pompous gates and headed back into Lancaster. “Are we including unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics? Then no. It’s top five on the list of weirdest things I’ve heard from people who don’t talk to their toasters.”
“Well,” she said lightly, and turned to stare out the window at the barren fields. “Sorry for the false advertising.”
He processed that, remembering the reality comment when she stumbled out of bed a few hours earlier. Did men go to bed with Queen Maud and gripe about waking up with Cady? “I wasn’t complaining,” he said after a couple of miles.
She turned to look at him, all big sunglasses and red lips, still swollen from his kiss.
“I wasn’t. We were…” He paused, not sure what to say to someone so clearly out of his league. “It was really good.”
Her lips curved into a smile, one he could tell reached her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
At the diner she got the chicken fried steak and fries, and ate two thirds of the platter. Aside from a couple of glances, and every cook in the kitchen peering through the window at her, no one approached her. He stopped her when she pulled out her wallet at the end of the meal.
“I’ve got it this time.”
“Are you getting reimbursed for your expenses?”
He laughed as he thumbed through his cash and dropped a couple of bills on the table.
“Apparently not,” she said. At least she could find her own naiveté amusing.
“I have no idea how this works,” he said. He zipped up his jacket and shrugged to release the tail from his gun. “Maybe I’m supposed to submit expenses? Hawthorn didn’t say one way or the other.”
“It’s easier for me to just pay,” she said. She picked up the money and offered it back to him. “It’s a tax deduction for me. I think.”
He looked at her. This wasn’t a date, but something about her buying his meals raised his hackles. “It’s business.”
Her cheeks turned a shade of pink that went nicely with the thick purple scarf. “Mostly business.”
Keeping his emotions locked down, not getting attached to people who might leave, which was everyone except his fellow cops, was his specialty. But the sore twinge in his chest when she said it was an old, familiar hurt. Don’t get your hopes up. There’s nothing to hope for here.
He took the money back, folded the bills, and tucked them away. She left the same amount on the table. “Ready?”