I want a cold drink and I want you with me while I have it. And we need to get some things straight between us—or I think so.”
She thought so, too, but didn’t pretend to herself that she’d like the result. “If you’re sure you want to do that, I am, too.”
Spike was more than sure he wanted to snatch at least this opportunity to be alone with Vivian. He was long past the age of buying a girl a soda and expecting nothing more than conversation and his own sexual frustration.
It would have to do.
Homer kept a spare key in one of the pots of flowers that hung from the eaves all around the store. This was one time when the idea didn’t irritate Spike.
He opened up and put a hand at Vivian’s waist to usher her inside.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice while she backed up against his hand. “It feels strange in here. You aren’t supposed to be inside stores when they’re closed.”
It didn’t feel out of place to slide his hand around her and splay his fingers to span her ribs. She stood so close he felt the warmth of her body.
“I didn’t know your shop was so big,” she said and her voice sounded real small. “Why do all the freestanding displays look weird just because there isn’t much light? They aren’t scary in daylight.”
He didn’t think what he was doing until his mouth touched her hair. He whispered in her ear, “Things we aren’t used to. The ordinary becomes mysterious when the context is out of whack.” They stood still like that, he with his hand at her side and his mouth close to her ear—and the sensation of her bare arm against his chest, Vivian soft and angling her head to bring her face closer to his.
Spike needed his legendary willpower to stop him from kissing her ear, her cheek, and turning her in his arms, and letting things go wherever they might.
Her white tank top didn’t reach her waist and the skin he touched there felt forbidden—and wonderful.
A deep breath expanded her chest and she walked away from him into the store. For an instant he felt cold at the loss of her, but he gathered his wits quickly enough and followed inside, closing and locking the door behind him. Wendy slept deeply and Homer had a history of being hard to rouse. The chances that he and Vivian would be interrupted were more than remote.
Spike hadn’t inherited Homer’s tendency to slip easily into oblivion. He slept only a fraction beneath consciousness and awoke with eyes wide open as if he’d been alert all the time. That was usually a good thing but forgetting he’d pointed a gun at Vivian tonight wouldn’t happen anytime soon.
“A person could do all their grocery shopping in here,” she said, her eyes evidently adjusted to the gloom. “That’s great. I bet you do a great business.”
“Fair. The big grocery stores are our competition but there isn’t one of those too close. The business with the folks who live along the bayou is a plus. So are the houseboats. The sandwich and ice cream bar is a little gold mine. Hey, c’mon and sit down.”
Each time Spike got close to her, Vivian struggled against touching him. His torso shone slightly in the semidarkness and she saw that the hair on his chest was surprisingly dark. Muscular and hard, what she could see of his body made her feel cheated out of what she couldn’t see. He walked away on bare feet.
Did he sleep naked?
Did he leap up and into a pair of jeans—and nothing else—if he had to? His hand at her side, where he had gripped her naked skin, had excited her almost as if he’d pressed between her legs. The flare of sensation she’d felt had given her an instant’s fear that she would disgrace herself by climaxing right then, standing beside him. She had responded to men before, but not like this.
He stood beside a shiny wooden table with two chairs, one of about five tables of various shapes and sizes. She sat in the chair he pulled out for her and looked up at him where he stood over her.
So serious. So many questions in eyes gone to navy-blue in the surreal cast of light. “What do you like?” he asked, leaving her and going to a refrigerated case. “We carry about everything.”
“What’s in those glasses? The pink stuff.”
“Strawberry Smush. My dad’s specialty. Started out as something he made for Wendy, then he tried a few in here and they’re popular. Like to taste one?”
“Yes, please,” she said and smiled at the way he slung bottled water between his fingers and held the pink thing in the same hand while he got napkins for both of them, and a spoon for Vivian.
When he put everything on the table, she giggled. “Do you feel like you’re in the Gingerbread House?”
“No…Yes, tonight I feel like that,” he said. “Left alone with the goodies.”
He must mean the food and drinks. No, he didn’t, he didn’t do subtlety too well, but he was letting her know he liked being here with her.
Chapter 8
Spike sat down beside Vivian and unscrewed the cap from his water. With every move he felt self-conscious. He felt her eyes on him, and he’d have to be dead not to know there was a good-size spark between them just waiting to be ignited.
Neither of them said a word until Spike couldn’t stand it anymore and asked, “How about a sandwich?”
Vivian caught up her spoon and dipped it into the Smush, a concoction that resembled a strawberry mousse. She let that spoonful dissolve, almost with a popping sensation, in her mouth. “Can I have a rain check on the sandwich until after I finish this? Maybe I’ll be hungrier for one then. This pops in your mouth. Like it’s carbonated.”
“Made with 7-Up. The sandwich is yours anytime you want it. Just got in a fresh supply of boudin rouge—best sausage in the world and not available on every street corner.”
Vivian giggled and wrinkled her nose as the next spoonful of Strawberry Smush went down. Then she put her spoon in the saucer beneath the thick, dimple-glass parfait glass and anchored her hands between her knees.
Spike swallowed more water and waited.
“I don’t know what came over me this evening,” Vivian said. “This morning. Unless it was you.”
He wiped any hint of a smile from his face. “I can be an overbearing man…Why would you come here because I’m overbearing? Not that you said that was it, only I do know about my faults and—”
“You’re right. You can be overbearing but only when you think it’s for the best. At least, that’s how I see it so far. You have to think I’ve lost my mind. Apart from last night, we’ve met maybe half a dozen times and drunk a cup of coffee together—seems like I’m takin’ a lot for granted.”
“Nine times and I saw you the last time you visited your uncle at Rosebank and you went into Toussaint—three times,” he told her. “Had coffee together twice and walked along the bayou when I met you comin’ out of church that Sunday. I liked that. Only thing wrong was that I wanted to hold your hand and I couldn’t. Then I wanted to kiss you, and I sure as hell couldn’t.”
“You
