She pointed to the left, her motion hidden from anyone else because she kept her hand between us.
I reluctantly looked that way and found two of the teenagers staring openly at me. The woman with them caught my gaze and blushed. She tapped one of the girls, breaking the spell, and shooed them down the aisle.
I gave the woman a big smile. She shrugged and rolled her eyes at the girls, like what-are-you-going-to-do before she found a sweater that suddenly needed her attention.
“Well,” I said. “Looks like you’re not the only one enjoying the show.” I tucked my thumbs in the belt loops and leaned one shoulder on the doorframe. The whole closet creaked and leaned.
Lu shook her head. “Nope. This,” she waved her finger in a circle, encompassing the all of me, “ismyshow. Got that, Brogan Gauge?”
My heart hammered approval at her possessive tone. “One hundred percent.”
“So now?” she asked, eyebrows raising.
“So now I’m gonna buy some jeans.”
“Good.” She stepped back, and it took what strength and decency I had not to reach out and drag her into this wobbly little closet and show her just how much she was mine.
She nodded one more time, her gaze tracking all over me like she was taking notes on where she wanted to put her lips and teeth. I took it as the promise it was.
I pulled the curtain shut and swiftly tried on the other jeans. They buttoned and zipped. Good enough.
I got back in my clothes, shoved my feet into the tight shoes with a grunt, then opened the curtain again.
Lu was gone.
Chapter Two
Iscanned the shop, looking for my wife. Over the muddy speaker system, poor Frank Sinatra was trying to fly to the moon, and it sounded like he was doing it in a snorkel.
A flash of red hair between the shelves of kitchenware caught my eye, then Lu crouched.
Knowing her, she’d found the most valuable item in the store trapped under the waffle irons.
“No, you don’t,” I muttered. “You are not going to win this bet.”
I strode to the checkout, dropped the shirts and jeans on the end, and nodded at the old fellow. “I’ll take these. But there’s a couple other things I want too.”
He opened his mouth.
“I’m paying cash.”
He closed his mouth. Money was money, and almost no one drove down this particular abandoned stretch of Route 66 anymore. I knew. I’d been driving it for nearly a hundred years.
I shouldered my way toward the back of the store, intending to win.
“Not clothing,” I said to myself, as I did a perimeter of the shop. “Wouldn’t know the value of an old coat if it was printed on the collar. Something else. She’s already gone through the collectibles. Keeping me busy trying on clothes so she could get a step ahead. Clever.
“What wouldn’t you have checked, Lu? What would you overlook?”
I was staring at a rusted file cabinet, half a set of bent golf clubs, and an electric heater when it hit me.
I whistled my way across the store, nice and casual-like. Lu popped her head up over a stack of old tablecloths, her gaze tracking me.
I grinned and gave her a little wave.
She squinted.
I made like I was interested in a pile of postcards to buy time.
