South. He grinned at his own little joke, but the pressure didn’t ease. They might as well be locked in a lovers’ embrace for the connection he felt to her—maybe not quite that, but just thinking about it was its own prize.
“You are gorgeous, y’know,” Vivian said, turning to face him again. “Look at you.” She looked at him and he found he was short of breath. No woman had ever looked at him quite that way, studying his face minutely, spending extra time on his mouth until she leaned a little closer and her own lips parted. “And I like you, that’s a good reason to come see you.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” he told her. “But don’t let that stop you.”
She smiled, a quirky smile, and inclined her head to take in his body. He was grateful he remained what Madge Pollard, Cyrus’s bright-eyed assistant, called lean and mean—only with enough bulk to make a girl weak at the knees. “Do you lift weights?” Vivian asked. “Live on some sort of chemicals with Gatorade chasers? I don’t think chests just come like that.”
He controlled an urge to sweep her on top of the table and sit with his chair pushed back, making sure he hadn’t missed anything about her—or as little as he could do that with her clothes on. “I do a lot of physical work,” he told her and shrugged. “And I like to run. Oh, what the hell, I might as well fess up to it all. We’ve got an old Nautilus at the station and I love that thing.”
“Worth every second,” she said, her voice somewhat lower. She pointed an index finger at him, made circles with it, looked into his eyes, back at his chest, and slowly set her fingertip on one of his pecs. Vivian poked, quite definitely poked, and made an “ooh” shape with her mouth. “You’ve been eating your spinach.”
He sent up thanks that she managed to keep things light enough to stop him from inviting her to join him anywhere, as long as he was inside her.
“Your face got to me the first time I saw it,” Spike said, and Vivian saw a wicked glitter in his eyes. So this was to be tit for tat. “You’ve got cheekbones that don’t quit and your eyes aren’t just green, they’re green-green and when you close them, you’ve got more black eyelashes than one woman should have. They curve against your face, and flicker because you’re always thinking about something. And your skin is so white. Black hair and white skin. Is your skin the same all over?”
Her eyes flashed at him. “That’s a secret.”
“I like secrets. They turn me on. Sometimes I can’t quit until I find them out.”
Her left hand rested on the table and he covered it with his right. She was cool, almost too cool. Their eyes met and she smiled at him, a conspiratorial smile. Spike turned up the corners of his mouth and made himself keep on looking at her, but something had changed in him and he couldn’t afford that change. He wasn’t going to be able to put Vivian Patin out of his mind easily. At this moment he doubted he would ever forget the way she looked at him now.
He could not have a woman in his life—other than casually. He already knew it didn’t work. Vivian wasn’t the kind of woman a man tried to get close to—with no strings attached.
She turned her hand over beneath his so that their palms touched and their fingertips rested together. He played back and forth, softly, and saw her shiver again but not, he thought, out of fear or because she was cold—not this time.
“This may not be the best timing,” he said, “but what happened with the fire your father died in?”
She nodded and bent low enough over their joined hands to ensure her face wasn’t visible. “Chez Charlotte—that was my parents’ restaurant. Burned to the ground. The fire started in the kitchens and that’s where my father was found.”
Spike knew he must listen quietly and not try to prompt her with his own questions.
She kept her face down but curled her fingers into his palm and made light rubbing motions that tickled vaguely. “My dad was a calm man—unless he lost his temper, and he did do that regularly. But he was alone there. Something I don’t get, and neither does Mama. All alone and cooking. They say he must have been and that he probably set the stove on fire.”
Spike picked up her hand and held it between both of his. Her fingers were long but disappeared inside his own. “What did the local experts decide?”
“Accident,” she said.
“You don’t sound as if you believe that.”
“No. And less now with Louis’s death. Poor man. We have to find what was taken from his briefcase. He became marked by it, whatever it is, I’m sure of that.”
”We,” Spike felt mean but it had to be said. “This is a job for the professionals, Vivian. I won’t be one of them, you already know that. And Errol Bonine and his squad won’t allow you to interfere. They’ll do the askin’ and tell you no more than they have to.”
“He—Bonine asked me questions for two hours.”
“I know. I was in the house, remember? What kind of questions did he ask?” He shouldn’t interfere but didn’t feel any remorse.
“Dumb questions. And the same ones over and over—when he wasn’t resting his eyes. Where was I from? Why would I want to live at Rosebank? Was I in some sort of trouble in New Orleans? Why aren’t I married? Was I ever married? Don’t I like men?”
“Ass,” Spike said with feeling. How Errol had risen as far as he had would always be a mystery—maybe. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s doing what he thinks he’s supposed to do, only he’s forgotten most of what that is. You just keep calm and don’t let him rile you.”
Vivian decided that Deputy Sheriff Spike Devol didn’t know exactly what, or who, he was dealing with yet. He’d learn in time. If Vivian had her way, he’d learn everything there was to learn about her. She took a forgotten breath and felt a wash of hopelessness. Spike might be interested in an affair, a short, hot affair, but nothing more unless she was mistaken. That wouldn’t be enough for her—tantalizing as it seemed.
“What kind of record does Detective Bonine have?” she asked. “For solving crimes, I mean?”
“Lousy, but that doesn’t seem to cramp his style. I’m talking out of school but I’d say the detective lives very well for what I know he earns and the possibility is that not solving some cases pays well. I don’t know if your case falls into that category, but don’t expect any speedy answers. It’s likely to drag on, then fade away.”
“I’ve got to find the connection between my father’s death and what happened yesterday. Uncle Guy only changed his will almost literally on his deathbed. Dad died a few weeks after Uncle Guy. The insurance wasn’t nearly enough and my mother took a terrible financial hit. And that was on top of being brokenhearted over Dad’s death.”
“Stinking luck,” Spike said.
“As things stand we don’t have any choice but to make Rosebank work. There’s enough money to creep along for a while and nothing more. We can’t really continue with the renovations until we’re more solvent again. We have to move so slowly when we need to go fast.”
She drummed her fingers and he wondered if she was deciding whether to go on.
“In Uncle Guy’s will there was
