Sleeping Beauty (8 page)

"So, what's the story on the parts?" he asked

David as he slid out of the booth and reached for his wallet.

The other man had turned to watch Anne leave. When he turned back, there was an expression in his eyes that Neill couldn't read— an odd kind of watchfulness and something that might have been a question.

"It...may take a while," he said slowly. "Tarts for Indian motorcycles aren't all that common. I have a couple of sources. One of them thinks he'll be able to lay his hands on what you need, but it could be a few days before he knows for sure."

"A few days?" Neill looked over his shoulder and out the big windows at the street. Mayberry, he thought, watching an ancient blue pickup rattle past. I've landed in Mayberry.

"Is that a problem?" David asked. "Do you need to get somewhere in a hurry?"

Anne had asked him the same thing, Neill remembered.

"No." He shook his head slowly. "No, I was more or less killing time." He didn't have to stay, he reminded himself. All it would take was a phone call and he could have a car sent to get him. His brother was in Chicago, just a few hours away. If he had any trouble arranging a car, Tony could probably be persuaded to come to his rescue. A few hours—tomorrow at the latest—and he could be on his way. He didn't have to stay.

"It's no problem," he heard himself say. "I guess I can kill time here as well as anywhere."

"You had lunch with the hunk?" Lisa dropped the length of purple velvet ribbon she'd just picked up and stared at Anne in shock. "You actually had lunch with him?"

"At Luanne's," Anne confirmed, trying to look casual.

The two of them were sitting in Lisa's studio, which was a small storefront wedged between Betty's Best Bet for Hair and the newspaper office. She could have worked out of the little house she'd rented when she moved back to Loving, but she'd decided that if she was going to turn her knack for decorative hats and accessories into a business, she should have a place in which to do business. She used the narrow sliver of a shop as a studio, working regular business hours, and though she didn't run it as a retail business, the door was usually open, and several times a day she could count on someone wandering in to see what new flight of fancy she was concocting.

She liked the company, she'd said when Anne asked her how she could work with someone watching her, talking to her, marveling over the fact that there were people who would pay good money for a hat they weren't even going to wear. Now and again someone brought in some item they'd found in the attic or stored away in a cupboard—plastic fruit, flocked artificial flowers, pine cones glued together to form some barely recognizable animal. Lisa cheerfully accepted all donations, finding a place for them on the filled to overflowing shelving that lined three sides of the studio. Ribbons, laces, old prescription bottles filled with beads, baskets of feathers, stacks of vintage fabric and ancient canning jars full of buttons jostled each other in cheerful chaos, but, despite the lack of anything resembling organization, Lisa could usually lay her hands on any particular item.

The colorful clutter was so typically Lisa, Anne thought. Tonight the other woman was wearing jeans so old that the holes in the knees had nothing to do with fashion and a billowy silk shirt that swirled with mad splashes of color. Her feet were bare, revealing scarlet toenails. Her bright red hair was caught up on top of her head in a careless bun that was held in place with a yellow pencil. Big gold hoops hung from her ears, and a pair of blue rhinestone trimmed reading glasses were perched on the end of her nose. She looked like a cross between a gypsy and a school teacher. In the trim jeans and plain white shirt she'd changed into after work, Anne felt like a sepia-toned photo next to a film done in living Technicolor processing.

"You want to run that by me again?'' Lisa asked, peering at her over the top of her glasses.

"I had lunch with the hunk from the gas station." A grin spoiled her attempt to look blasé. "I was squeezing cantaloupes at Bill's, and he came up behind me and said I should try sniffing the stem end to find a ripe one."

"A hunk who knows produce. Wow." Lisa looked suitably impressed. "So you sniffed a couple of melons together and then just went off to lunch with him?"

"Actually, I gave up on the melon," Anne said. Not even to Lisa would she admit that, standing there, with Neill Devlin's impossibly blue eyes on her, she would have been hard pressed to remember what a melon was.

"I can't believe you didn't call to let me know." Lisa gave her a reproachful look. "I could have wandered into Luanne's accidentally on purpose and gotten a good look at the guy."

"It was lunch, not a spectator sport," Anne said, caught off guard by a twinge of irritation.

"But he's so spectate-able," Lisa purred, and the irritation vanished in a laugh.

"DeDe Carmichael certainly thought so." Anne selected a jelly bean from the glass bowl that sat on the table counter between them and popped it into her mouth.

"Did she do the eye thing?" Lisa tilted her head back and did a creditable imitation of DeDe's sultry look.

"And the hip thing." Anne slid off her stool and fell into a semi-slouch, one hip cocked forward.

"Yeah, that's the one." Lisa nodded and reached for the ribbon she'd dropped. "I don't know where she got the idea that she looks sexy when she does that. I think she looks like an arthritic camel."

Anne shook her head "No camel would wear that much makeup."

"A camel wouldn't need that much makeup."

They looked at each other and started to giggle.

"Nothing like a little old-fashioned cattiness to work up an appetite," Lisa said, scooping up half a dozen jelly beans. "So, what's the hunk doing still in town? And does he have a name?"

"His name's Neill, and apparently his motorcycle is pretty old. I don't know what's wrong with it, but David's going to have to track down parts." Anne leaned forward to select a grape-flavored jelly bean. She bit it carefully in half before continuing. "He's staying at The Blue Dahlia."

"If s pretty much that or sleep in a ditch." Lisa began pleating the purple velvet ribbon, basting each pleat flat with silk thread before moving on to the next. "So what's he like on closer acquaintance?"

What was he like? Anne hesitated over the answer. She could hardly say that he was the most attractive man she'd ever met, or that, when he looked at her, she felt a funny shivery sensation run up her spine. Lisa was bound to jump to the wrong conclusions if she said either of those things. She would probably jump to them anyway, but there was no sense in helping her get there.

"He's...nice," she said finally, then laughed at the disgusted look the other woman shot her. "Okay, he has a great smile and impossibly blue eyes, and he's really sexy, if you like the tall, lean, broad-shouldered type."

"Is there a living, breathing female who doesn't like that type?"

"Probably not. But he's also nice, and he has a good sense of humor. We laughed a lot. He's a good storyteller. Oh, and he's a writer," she added, remembering. Frowning a little, she nibbled the other half of her jelly bean. "I don't think he's terribly successful at it, because he seemed uncomfortable when it came up, like he didn't want to talk about it. And usually, when a man has a successful career, he can't wait to tell you about it."

"Or tell you a few lies about it," Lisa agreed. "So, how long is he going to be in town?"

"I have no idea." Anne wasn't in the least fooled by the casual tone of the question. "And, before you ask, I don't know if I'll be seeing him again, either. He didn't say anything about it."

Of course, she hadn't given him a chance to, the way she'd rushed away from the table. But he probably wouldn't have mentioned seeing her again even if she hadn't left so abruptly, Anne told herself. She wasn't exactly the kind of woman that Neill Devlin was going to be desperate to see again. Not that she wasn't reasonably attractive in a wholesome sort of way, but a man like that was going to be looking for something more than a short, slightly too curvy dishwater blonde with a friendly smile and better than average legs. With an unconscious sigh, she selected another purple jelly bean and bit it in half.

Lisa had been watching the expressions flit across Anne's face and following her thought process with reasonable accuracy. Like Neill, she'd never known anyone whose emotions were so easily read. Or who underrated themselves so completely.

"So why don't you go by the motel and see him?" she suggested casually, keeping her eyes on the ribbon.

"I can't do that," Anne said, startled. "I don't want him to think I'm..."

"Interested?" Lisa lifted an eyebrow. "You think he'll be offended?"

"Yes. No. How should I know what he'd be?" she demanded crossly. '1 don't even know the man."

"And you probably won't get to know him if you don't let him know you're interested."

"What's the point, when he'll be leaving as soon as David gets the parts he needs to fix his bike?"

"So? Ouch, damn!" Lisa lifted her thumb to her mouth to suck at the spot where the needle had jabbed. She glared at Anne across the wounded digit, her green eyes sharp with impatience. 'Tm not suggesting that you sleep with him," she said, talking around her thumb. "I'm just suggesting that you could drop in at the motel, maybe offer to show him the sights."

"There are no sights," Anne pointed out dryly.

"Make up a few." Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, Lisa lowered her hand from her mouth. "The point is, it wouldn't hurt you to spend a couple of days in the company of an attractive man who was not born and raised within a twenty-mile radius of this town. The fact that he'll be gone soon is probably a good thing, since he won't have a chance to get boring."

Remembering the way her lunch hour had flown by, Anne found it difficult to imagine that Neill would become boring on closer acquaintance. She had an uneasy feeling that the real problem might be just the opposite.

"If you don't watch out, you're going to end up marrying Frank Miller by default," Lisa continued, frowning at her over the top of her glasses. "That's where he's headed, you know. In his methodical, dull-as-ditch-water way, Frank is courting you. Another three or four years of dating and he'll probably be ready to propose. And if you don't do something about it, you'll end up accepting just because he's there and you can't think of a good reason not to say yes."

"There's nothing wrong with Frank." Anne's protest was halfhearted. The truth was, she'd had the same thought herself.

Lisa nodded. "'Frank is a decent man, and Jack says he's a decent cop. He's also more predictable than an atomic clock, and just about as entertaining to talk to. He's the sort of worthy guy who should marry a worthy woman someday and raise lots of worthy little children who are every bit as deadly dull as he is. I'd hate to see you fall into that trap."

"Not worthy enough?" Anne asked, her smile concealing the fear she felt listening to Lisa's tart-tongued picture. It was a little too easy to picture herself standing in a neatly-decorated little house with three or four neatly-dressed little Franks lined up before her, all looking at her with the same calm expression. It was not a reassuring image. She shook her head as if to physically shake it away and decided that a change of subject was in order.

"Speaking of worthy marriages, are you and Jack going to risk an actual engagement or do the smart thing and run off to Vegas?" Lisa had told her that the two of them had been discussing marriage, and Anne had been expecting an announcement or an elopement any time. It had seemed like a reasonable question, but she regretted it when she saw hurt flit across Lisa's eyes in the instant before her expression closed up.

"Maybe neither one. I'm not sure there is an engagement" Lisa jerked a shoulder to show how little it mattered. She reached for the length of velvet ribbon, but her hands weren't quite steady, and she let them drop into her lap.

Anne looked at her uncertainly. She'd never seen Lisa look so...defeated.

"I...it's none of my business but, if you want to talk about it... Jack is my brother, but you're my best friend. If it would help to talk... If you quarreled..."

"Quarreled?" Lisa arched her brows. "You don't know your brother very well if you think it's possible to quarrel with him. He just slides away, neither agreeing or disagreeing, leaving you to either drop the subject or argue with yourself."

Anne shifted uncomfortably and tried to think of something to say. She could have pointed out that, if Jack did what Lisa was describing, maybe it was because it was the easiest way to deal with their mother, but she wasn't comfortable saying as much.

"I told him I thought he had a drinking problem,'' Lisa said abruptly.

"A..." Anne stared at her in shock. Whatever she'd thought the quarrel could have been about, it hadn't been this. "Jack doesn't have... I can't imagine why you'd think he did," she finally managed.

"My ex-husband was an alcoholic." Now that she'd gotten the words out, Lisa seemed calm. "I know the signs, and your brother has most of them."

"I haven't noticed anything unusual." Too upset to stay still, Anne slid off her stool and walked a little way away, staring at the tumble of ribbons on a shelf. "Maybe the fact that your ex had a problem is making you paranoid."