LITMIR.BIZ

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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 could have tried,” she said and turned her face away, amazed at her own boldness.

      Spike got a fresh taste of arousal. At this rate he’d have a permanent zipper mark on his Pride of the 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

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