Then she levered her head up very, very slowly. And stared at him again.
Word certainly does travel fast in small towns, he thought dryly.
“You would probably be Mr.McCord,” she said, sounding somewhat subdued.
“I am indeed Mr.McCord,” he agreed pleasantly. Sorry that she was subdued.
Her aplomb stuttered for a millisecond as she stared at him and decided how one addresses a movie star, or whatever he was now. Moments like this had never stopped being odd for him. He was exactly the same person now as he was two minutes ago.
“Well, it’s an honor, Mr.McCord.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” he said smoothly.
Another funny little silence went by. He suspected this woman was thrown for the first time in her practical, efficient life.
“I can’t say I watched your show,” she blurted finally, as if confessing a crime. It was a blend of apology and defensiveness. “Blood Brothers, was it?”
“Not everybody did. Not even my own mother.” Then again, his mother had died when he was ten.
But she relaxed visibly, as if she’d been excused from a breach in etiquette.
She got brisk again. “As luck would have it, we’ve got one room left. Real pretty and has a view of the peak.”
“Sounds perfect.” He didn’t ask what peak.
“Has its own bathroom.”
“Always a plus.” He could predict right now what the soap smelled like here. He had a manly sandalwood-scented or something or other in his overnight bag. Which he might have to use to scrub the potpourri scent out of his hair.
“Right next to the honeymoon suite.”
“That’ll do just fine.” As long as he wasn’tinthe honeymoon suite. He’d enjoyed an unbroken streak of remaining out of honeymoon suites for most of his adult life and that was the way he liked it.
“We do get a lot of young couples in love here,” she added proudly.
“It does make the world go round.” The “L” word. Probably the only four-letter word J. T. had never willingly uttered in his life, at least to a woman.
She smiled at him. “No smoking, no hijinks, and breakfast buffet is served in the lounge from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. If you need anything you can just call the front desk. My name is Rosemary.”
“Just out of curiosity, if a person had hijinks in mind, where in Hellcat Canyon would he go?”
She licked a finger and swiped a bright pink flyer from a little stack on the counter and handed it to him.
It was a calendar.
“If you’re up for a spot of gambling, there’s bingo at St.Anne’s Church tonight. Open Mic at the Misty Cat Cavern later this week. And if there’s a sale on produce at Rumpole’s Grocery, sometimes things get pretty competitive—you might see someone thrown down over the last zucchini. If you want to drive twenty or thirty miles in either direction, you’ll find some casinos and wineries. But here in town, at least this week, you might have to use your imagination.”
“Oh, I neverstopusing it,” he assured her, on a purr.
“Honey, if you could see inside mine right now.” She winked, and handed over his room key and reached for the ringing phone at the same time.
Britt’s summer evening routine was basically her morning routine in reverse: she burst into the house, peeled off her sweaty diner clothes, hopped in the shower, sang at least one song in there, then threw on clean shorts and a tank, eschewing a bra. She paid a quick visit to all her little plant invalids lined up on a baker’s rack—this week she had a sad tomato plant, an anemic basil, an African violet that had been languishing at the grocery store, and a coleus left out on the curb downtown when someone had moved. She couldn’t help it: When she saw a sad plant, she took pity on it and brought it home, loved it and coached back into health, and then gave it away to anyone she thought could use a little cheering up and probably wouldn’t kill it.
She pinched a leaf here, squirted some plant food in there. “You’re all doinggreat,” she praised.
And then she and Phillip, her cat, strolled out onto her big porch. She skirted a little obstacle course comprising an old wooden chair she’d salvaged and dragged home to scrape and repaint and a thrift-store ottoman she’d just retufted to get to her big lounge chair. She and Phillip liked to savor the cooling evening air and enjoy the familiar evening sounds—crickets tuning up, Jet getting in his last barks at what was probably a falling leaf before he got brought inside, and her neighbor Mrs.Morrison’s radio tuned to a religious program. Mrs.Morrison was ninety-two and as vigorous as someone thirty years younger, apart from her bedtime, which was any minute, and all the impromptu naps she took during the day. She lived alone, which was how she liked it, and was as immovable on the subject as the big old redwood tree in her backyard. But her son and daughter were up on alternating weekends, and Britt kept an eye on her, too.
And vice versa.
