LITMIR.BIZ

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She suddenly looked much more like the girl he’d known, which didn’t make him feel one bit better.

      She even sat down on the swing, setting it in motion with a kick and wiggling to make herself more comfortable while she waited for him to open the house.

      “This is wonderful,” she murmured.

      She liked the place. Damn, why did that hurt so much?

      “I want to see the inside. If it’s as perfect as the outside, then I think I’ve found where I want to live.”

      “You’re making a mistake…”

      “No, I’m not,” she said, rising from the swing and staring down at him from three steps above. “Stop telling me what I want and what I don’t, Mick. I would have thought you’d learned a long time ago that I don’t take well to that kind of thing.”

      He stiffened. Like he’d needed a reminder of how she’d reacted when he’d tried to insist she didn’t really want to move out to L.A. That her future was with him.

      The anger in her voice and condemnation in her eyes was the last straw. He didn’t protest as she looked at the house. As predicted, she loved it. She really went crazy over the rec room with the amazing TV setup. Caroline was ready to move full speed ahead and sign a lease on the spare suite of rooms.

      So be it.

      An hour later, after she’d signed the papers and paid the full four weeks’ rent in advance, he watched her pull away from his office without a backwards glance.

      “You made your bed, babe. Now you can lie in it.”

      He just couldn’t wait to see what she said when she found out that bed was in his house.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “SO, TELL ME ABOUT this Caro Lamb.”

      Great. Just the person Mick didn’t want to talk about. And just the person he didn’t want to talk about her with—his mother—who’d beelined for his table at Ed’s Café the minute she’d entered. So much for his nice, quiet Friday morning breakfast. “Her name’s Caroline. And there’s nothing to tell.”

      His mother sniffed, knowing better. Mick watched, amused, while the very predictable Marnie Winchester picked up a napkin, wiped off the seat and made a harrumphing sound as crumbs floated to the floor. She sat across from him, keeping her purse in her lap, hands folded neatly on top of it. He knew darn well she’d ask the waitress to wipe off the table before she ate a thing.

      “Sophie seems to think you knew her before.”

      Sophie, you’re a dead woman.

      He merely shrugged, neither confirming nor denying, hoping his mother had lost that whole mind-reading ability once her kids were out of the house. But he doubted it.

      “Well?” she persisted, not at all put off by his signals.

      She’d been relentless about Caroline since the afternoon when they’d bumped into her coming out of his house. She’d been there baking him a nice homemade pie. Why? Because his mother was convinced he hadn’t eaten a decent meal or a good wholesome home-cooked treat since leaving home ten years ago.

      “I’ve told you, she’s a producer with the TV show,” he said.

      “The TV show?” Tina Laudermilk, who was sitting at the next booth listening to every word they said, turned around and gave Mick a good-morning smile. “I hear they’ve started to arrive.”

      From behind him, Mick heard a man’s voice. “I saw a bunch of trucks at the inn yesterday when I was making my deliveries.” It was Earl Donovan, the UPS guy, and an aspiring actor who’d been following the TV show goings-on with avid interest.

      Earl and Tina began a conversation right over Mick’s and his mother’s heads, talking back and forth as if the other booth was not between them. “I stopped by the trailer and picked up the paperwork to be an extra.”

      “Is it true they’re going to do scenes here?” Tina asked.

      Ed, the owner and cook, popped his head up from behind the half wall separating the kitchen and the counter. “Yep. And they’re paying me, too.”

      “Better save the money for future food poisoning claims,” Mick muttered.

      Judging by the way his mother’s lips twitched, she’d heard.

      “I saw the director fellow in the drug store yesterday,” Tina said. She made a gooey-eyed face that told Mick what she’d thought of the man. “And did you hear the host is going to be Joshua Charmagne, from that cop show? What a dream.”

      The whole thing was more like a nightmare to Mick.

      “He’s a flamer.” This from Donnie Jordan, a truck driver who ran diesel throughout the state. He swiveled on his stool and jumped into the conversation. “No real man wears purple shirts like he did.”

      “He’s no such thing,” Tina retorted. “He was a gentleman detective and back then in Miami men did wear purple shirts and white suits. I bet he doesn’t wear purple shirts in real life.”

      Donnie was not convinced. “Nope. Probably wears those rainbow ones to show his pride.”

      Before Tina could launch herself across the table to tackle Donnie for casting doubts on the manhood of her favorite has-been TV star, Mick figured he’d make his getaway.

      “Check, please!” Mick hoped to pay his tab and escape while his mother was distracted by the conversation that had erupted around them. That was typical. Everywhere he went these days, the topic of conversation surrounded Killing Time in a Small Town.

      His mother wasn’t distracted. “She was very pretty.”

      “Who?”

      She just smirked. Yeah, she still had that mind-reading thing going on. Caroline hadn’t left his thoughts for a minute.

      And his mother was right. Caroline was beyond pretty. She was damned beautiful. Thank God there was no way she’d really move in with him when she arrived for her month-long stay. “Was she? I didn’t notice.” He dropped his napkin onto his plate, trying to make eye contact with the waitress as he feigned indifference.

      He should have known better. “Who are you, and what have you done with my son?” She reached over and put her hand on his forehead, like she used to whenever he tried to fake sickness to get out of going to school.

      “Am I feverish?”

      “Delirious.”

      His mother’s droll tone made him laugh and drop the pretense. “Okay, yes, she was very pretty. But not my type.”

      “Is there such a thing?” This came not from his piercing-eyed mother, but from Deedee Packalotte, his regular waitress.

      Deedee had been trying to rekindle an affair with him for years. Not that an affair was what he’d call the three or four afternoons they’d shared in her parents’ basement, back when he’d been delivering papers and she’d been a teenager going to beauty school. She’d dropped out. Which would be pretty obvious to anyone who took one good look at her hair.

      No, he and Deedee had had more like a Mrs. Robinson thing. She’d been the older woman—though only by four years—who’d taught him how to last longer than sixty-five seconds in the sack. Or, rather, on top of the washing machine, or the nearest flat surface they could find in the basement. He wondered if Deedee would be surprised to know he’d once gone sixty-five minutes. Not counting the foreplay.

      “I’ll have coffee.” His mother frowned at Deedee for interrupting. “And, dear, would you get a rag and touch up this table?”

      God love her.

      Mick used her distraction to firm his resolve against talking about Caroline to his mother. His sister had been bad enough. It was hard to keep

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