LITMIR.BIZ

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evening, the temperature was still too sweltering to eat anything heavy, but it was no trouble to put together bruschetta and some spicy grilled shrimp for the serious part of the meal. The shrimp took some fussing. First seeding and slicing the hot chilies. Then slicing the two tall stalks of lemongrass. Then she had to grate the fresh ginger, crush the garlic, chop the cilantro and mix it with warmed honey and olive oil.

      He’d probably hate it, she thought. Men tended to hate anything gourmet or fancy, but as far as Violet was concerned, that was yet another of the thrilling benefits to being divorced. She could cook fancy and wild all she liked—and garlic-up any dish to the nth degree—and who’d ever care?

      She’d have belted out a rock-and-roll song, off-key and at the top of her lungs, if it wouldn’t risk waking her visitor. She’d deal with him. But right now she was just seeping in some relaxation, and satisfaction. She’d kicked some real butt in the last hour, finished up the week’s bookkeeping, made up four arrangements for birthday orders and fetched a van full of pots and containers from town. Even without the bee sting, it was a lot to do for a woman who was supposed to be a flutter-brained blonde, but then, when no one was watching she had no reason to be on her guard.

      Her sisters thought she was afraid of getting hurt again because of Simpson. The truth was that her ex-husband had turned out to be a twerp, but she never held that against the other half of the species. She wasn’t trying to avoid men. She was trying to help men avoid her—and for three years she’d been doing a great job at it, if she said so herself.

      She was still humming when the telephone rang—naturally!—just when she was trying to coat the shrimp with the gooey mixture. She cocked the receiver between her ear and shoulder. “Darlene! Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to call you back…and yes, you told me he was a Leo. Okay. Try a fritatta with flowers. Flowers, like the marigolds I sold you the other day, remember? I’m telling you, those marigolds are the best aphrodisiac…and you wear that peach gauze blouse tonight…uh-huh…uh-huh…”

      Once Darlene Webster had been taken care of, she washed her hands and started stabbing the coated shrimp on skewers. Immediately the phone rang again. It was Georgia from the neighborhood euchre group. “Of course I can have it here, what’s the difference? We’ll just have it at your house next time. Hope the new carpet looks terrific.”

      After that Jim White called, who wanted to know if he could borrow her black plastic layer. And then Boobla called, who wanted to know if there was any chance Violet could hire her friend Kari for the summer, because Kari couldn’t find a job and they worked really well together. Boobla could talk the leaves off a tree. Violet finally had to interrupt. “Okay, okay, hon. I’ve got enough work to take on one more part-timer, but I can’t promise anything until I’ve met her. Bring her over Monday morning, all right?”

      She’d just hung up, thinking it was a wonder she wasn’t hoarse from the amount of time she got trapped talking on the phone, when she suddenly turned and spotted Cameron in the door.

      Her self-confidence skidded downhill like a sled with no brake.

      It was so unfair. Cameron had been in a coma-quality nap; she knew he had, so you’d think he’d have woken up still sleepy. And he yawned from the doorway, but she still felt his eyes on her face like sharp, bright lasers. Interested. Scoping out the territory from her disheveled braid to her bare feet.

      “You’re a hell of a busy woman,” he said. His tone was almost accusing, as if she’d misled him into thinking she was too scatterbrained to maintain any kind of serious, busy life.

      “I’m sorry if the phone woke you. It’s been hell coming back to the town where I grew up, because everyone knows me.” She added quickly, “Are you hungry? All I have to do is pop the shrimp on the grill and I’m ready—”

      “I’ll do it, so you can stay off that hurt foot.”

      Whenever she woke up from a nap, she had cheek creases and bed hair and a crab’s mood until she got going again. He seemed to wake up just as full of hell and awareness as when he’d dropped off. There was no way she could like a man with that kind of personality flaw. Worse yet, he proved himself to be one of those easygoing guys, the kind who rolled with the punches and tended to fit in whatever kind of gathering they walked into. He started her grill before she could—and the barbecue was one that could make her mother swear; it never lit unless you begged it desperately. Then he found her silverware drawer and set the table without asking. Granted, it wasn’t challenging to find anyone’s silverware drawer, but for a man to make himself useful without praising him every thirty seconds? It was spooky.

      There had to be a catch.

      “What do you usually drink for dinner? Wine, water, what?”

      “You can have wine if you want. I know I’ve got a couple open bottles on the second shelf—not fancy quality, but okay. For myself, though, this day has been too much of a blinger to do wine.”

      He grinned. The smile transformed his face, whipped off five years and made her think what a hellion he must have been as a little boy. “So you’d like to drink…?”

      “Long Island iced tea,” she said primly.

      He burst out laughing. “I got it now. Cut straight to the hard stuff.”

      “It’s been an exhausting day,” she defended.

      “You’re not kidding.”

      The phone rang yet again—it was just another call, nothing that affected life or death—so after that she turned down the volume and let the answering machine pick up. She wasn’t ready to fix the sun and the moon, but she was prepared to concentrate on the lavender deal.

      Still, the instant they sat down to dinner, it was obvious they wouldn’t be talking business for a bit longer. “You haven’t eaten in days?” she inquired tactfully.

      “Not real food. Not food someone’s actually taken the time to make from scratch.” It was impossible to eat her spicy shrimp without licking one’s fingers. But when he licked his, he also met her eyes. “Would you marry me?”

      She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

      “Actually, I never say it. I figured out, from a very short, very bad marriage years ago, that I’m too footloose to be the marrying kind. But I’m more than willing to make an exception for you.”

      “Well, thanks so much,” she said kindly, “but I’d only say yes to my worst enemy, and I don’t know you well enough to be sure you could ever get on that list.”

      He’d clearly been teasing, but now he hesitated, his eyes narrowing speculatively. He even stopped eating—for fifteen seconds at least. “That’s an interesting thing to say. You think you’d be so hard to be married to?”

      “I don’t think. I know.” She hadn’t meant to sidetrack down a serious road. It was his fault. Once he’d implied that he wasn’t in the marriage market, she instinctively seemed to relax more. Now, though, she steered quickly back to lighter teasing. “Never mind that. The point is that you might want to be careful making rash offers like that, at least until you know the woman a little better.”

      “Normally, yeah. But in your case I know everything I need to know. I haven’t had food like this since…hell. Maybe since never. Where the hell did you learn to cook?”

      “My mom. Most of her family was French, and she loved to putter in the kitchen, let all three of us girls putter with her. My one older sister is downright fabulous. Give Daisy a grain of salt, and I swear she can make something of it. Me, though…I just like to mess around with food.”

      “Well, I can cook okay. I even like to—when I’ve got a kitchen to play around in. But at my best, I never came up with dishes like this.”

      That was enough compliments. The cats were circling, which he didn’t seem to mind. She’d never fed them from the table, but that didn’t mean anything. Telling a cat not to do something was like waving a

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