Wade quickly sprang away from her, managing to put space between them before a tall, big-boned woman strode into the bathroom with an almost regal air. They'd never been introduced but Lorelei immediately recognized Mayor Honoria Black.
"Hey, Mayor Black.” Lorelei strategically placed herself in front of the tenting of Wade's pants. "What's happening?"
Lorelei might have been invisible for all the attention the mayor paid her.
"Wade?" The mayor’s tone was sharp. "What are you doing in the ladies' room?"
"I, uh. . ." Wade stammered like the good, rule-abiding man he was, too much of a goody-two-shoes to think on his feet.
"There was a palmetto bug in here," Lorelei interjected. "This man was kind enough to kill it for me."
Honoria Black's eyes narrowed. "I don't see a palmetto bug."
"Not now you don't," Lorelei said. "You couldn't have missed it before. I'm surprised you didn't hear me scream when I spotted it. It was as big as a mouse, almost too monstrous to flush down the toilet."
"That's strange considering we have the building regularly sprayed."
Lorelei widened her eyes. "You should think about switching exterminators."
"Maybe you should, Mayor Black," Wade added weakly, then executed a sort of bow. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really should be. . . somewhere else."
After he left the ladies' room, Lorelei smiled dazzlingly at the mayor before following Wade into the hallway. She caught up to him in about ten steps. He kept on walking, not looking at her.
"So I was wrong," Lorelei said. "How was I supposed to know somebody would come into the ladies' room?"
"It's a public restroom, Lorelei, not a bedroom," he said through gritted teeth.
"Don't tell me you're angry," Lorelei said.
"Oh, no. I like getting caught necking in the ladies’ room by my boss."
"She doesn't know we were necking. She thinks you were in there executing a palmetto bug."
"Like that was a believable story," he said.
"So what if it wasn't?"
He let out a short, disbelieving snort. "That was the mayor. She has the power to fire me."
"She can't fire you if she didn't see anything. Thanks to my smudge-proof lipstick, you don't even have any evidence on your face."
He shook his head and finally stopped walking. They were alone in the hall, which seemed cavernous.
"You don't get it. I'm a father. I have responsibilities. I have a reputation to withhold. I can't be ducking inside restrooms to neck with twenty-one-year olds."
Lorelei's temper spiked. "My age isn't the issue."
"It might not be if you acted it."
Because his words held some truth, Lorelei's temper deflated. "Okay, maybe I asked for that. Look at it from my point of view. If you'd see me after hours, I wouldn't have to come around here during the day."
He blew out a breath, and she sensed he was weakening.
"See me tonight, Wade," she pleaded. "Please."
"I can't. I'm taking the girls out of town for the weekend to visit their grandparents in Tallahassee."
"Are you leaving tonight?"
"Tomorrow morning," he said, but it sounded like a reluctant admission. "Don't ask. I can't see you tonight, either."
"Why not?"
"Mary Kate and Ashley, for starters. Even if I wanted to take you out, I couldn't get a babysitter. Nobody who's ever babysat for them will do it again. You saw what happened with the last one."
"M.K. and Ash aren't bad kids. They're just mischievous," Lorelei said.
"Tell that to the director of their preschool," Wade muttered, "but I have a feeling she won't listen."
The sigh in his voice and the tight line of his lips alerted Lorelei that wasn't an idle comment. "What do you mean by that, Wade? Are the girls having problems at preschool?"
His sigh was audible. "That's why I'm late. I'd barely dropped them off this morning when I got a call on my cell phone from the assistant director. They'd gotten into the finger paints and were painting the other kids."
"That's what the blue spot on your chin was," Lorelei commented.
"I drove back over there and helped the teacher clean up. It hardly mattered. The director wasn't in today but I have an appointment with her Monday morning. I think she's going to kick them out."
"Screw her, then." Lorelei read disapproval on his face and felt compelled to restate her objection. "I mean, who needs her?"
"I do. If she tells me they can't come back, I'll be in one heck of a child-care bind."
"Then fight her." Lorelei put her hands on her hips. "She can't treat a pair of three-year-olds like juvenile delinquents."
Wade rubbed his forehead. "Unfortunately, she can. This wouldn't be the first preschool that has kicked them out."
"But M.K. and Ash are wonderful little girls."
He smiled at her with a tenderness she felt clean through to the center of her being. "I happen to agree. Unhappily, we seem to hold the minority opinion."
"Then we'll convince them to see things our way." Lorelei gained steam as her conviction took hold. "No way will we let some preschool big shot diss M.K. and Ash."
"What do you mean by we?" Wade asked slowly.
"You and me," she said with heat. "When you meet with the director Monday morning, I'm coming with you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Grady fed another quarter into the parking meter outside the downtown Seahaven pub where he and Tori had eaten overstuffed roast beef sandwiches and washed them down with ale.
Tori nodded at a nearby sign stating the hours of enforcement for the meters as between nine a.m. and six p.m.
"Do you really think a cop would have ticketed you in the next ten minutes?" she asked when he rejoined her.
"No." He slung an arm around her shoulders and drew her delicious warmth against his body. "It just wouldn't be right not to pay."
"Good answer," she said, and he grinned at her.
She'd been asking him questions all night, not the multiple-choice variety like she had at the carnival, but every other kind imaginable.
"Do you always do the right thing?" she asked as he steered her toward the center of town.
"I try to," he said.
"You never told me whether you recycled everything or just glass and newspapers," she said, referring to a conversation she'd tried to start at dinner.
"You never told me why you dropped by City Hall yesterday," he said as casually as he could, voicing the question that had been nagging at him for days.
Her eyebrows rose. "You know about that?"
"I heard you had a meeting with the mayor."
"It wasn't a meeting," Tori said readily. "It was an interview. I thought she had a job opening. It turned out she'd already filled the position."
He felt his body relax and realized he'd been holding himself rigidly as he waited for her reply. Just as he'd hoped, she had a logical explanation. It seemed even more plausible because he knew she'd been searching for a job.
"It's just as well," he said. "You don't want to work at City Hall anyway."
"I don't? Why not?"
He wanted to tell her about the whole sordid mess and his role in trying to clean it up, but he couldn't. Not with the FBI warning him they needed his complete secrecy.
"It's not a good place to be," he said evasively, then nodded at their surroundings. "Now downtown Seahaven, that's a different story."
With architectural accents like dormer windows and steep rooftops on buildings that had been around for a hundred years, downtown Seahaven quietly seeped into the soul.
Crosswalk pavers and park benches in a beautiful redwood graced the street, improvements that the previous administration had approved. A red-and-white pole, reminiscent of bygone days, marked the front of an old-fashioned barber shop. A bakery store window embossed with cursive white letters proclaimed the place Baked Treasures.
The restaurants and bars along the quiet streets seemed full bu
t not packed, with traffic steady but not heavy.
"I'd only been in Seahaven once before I moved here,” Tori said. "My family drove through town when I was a little girl. Years later I still remembered it. My parents, though, they don't understand the allure."
"Did anyone besides your parents object to the move?" he asked, trying to sound casual.
"What do you mean?"
"That was a clumsy way of asking if you left some man behind."
"Yeah, I did. My former fiancé. He wasn't crushed about me leaving, if that's what you're asking."
He found he didn't like the notion of Tori engaged. "What happened?"
"Nothing, really. That was the problem. Sumner — that's his name — is a nice guy. There just wasn’t any spark in our relationship. We started going out and drifted along on inertia. I didn't want to live the rest of my life in Sarasota with a guy I liked but didn't love."
She grew silent, then asked. "How about you? Has there been any special woman in your life?"
"Not really. The women I date always seem to want something from me." He hadn't meant to state his conviction so baldly, but something about Tori inspired confidences.
"Do you think I want something from you?" she asked, her eyes serious, her mouth a troubled line.
He decided to make a joke of it. "Considering I'm planning to take you back to my place later, I sure hope so."
As he'd intended, she laughed. They passed a median graced with colorful impatiens, rounded a corner and saw a line of patrons about twenty deep waiting to get inside a redbrick building that housed the Seahaven movie theater.
"It looks like something out of the past," she commented.
"It's supposed to. The theater closed in the 1950s. Two brothers reopened it earlier this year. They can't compete with first-run films so they show classic stuff."
"Each month has a theme, right?"
"Uh-huh. Last month was films directed by Hitchcock. This month, it's classic Westerns."
She made a face, not sure she liked the sound of that, and squinted so she could make out the movie title on the marquis.
"Stagecoach," she read. "Never heard of it."
"You never heard of the John Ford movie that launched John Wayne to stardom? Wayne is the Ringo Kid, one of the people on a stagecoach traveling in Indian territory. That's all I'm going to say, because I don't want to ruin it for you."
"Oh, my gosh," she said and stopped walking."You're a Westerns fan."
He shifted uncomfortably. "I wouldn't say that."
"You gave the director, star and plot line of a movie I never heard of. Admit it, you're a fan."
"Maybe a little," he said.
She clapped her hands. "I just figured out why Lorelei calls you Duke. It's because you like John Wayne."
"What's your point?"
"This is priceless," Tori said. "The point is that you are such a fraud, Grady Palmer. You're not nearly as cynical as you pretend to be. Nobody who likes Westerns is."
"How do you figure?"
"A Western is the ultimate morality play," she said. "The good guys always win. I took a film class in college and the professor theorized that's the secret to their popularity. They validate our sense of right and wrong."
"I don't know about that," he muttered without much conviction.
She smiled, thinking she had him figured out.
They took their place in line behind a handsome couple who appeared to be in their fifties. The man was tall, with dark hair graying at the temples and a face that looked familiar. Almost as tall as the man, the attractive, fair-haired woman was his perfect foil.
The man nodded at Grady without smiling. "Palmer."
"Richardson," Grady replied and introduced Tori. Although Grady didn’t supply a first name for the man, Tori knew who he was. She'd seen his face on campaign flyers.
"You're Forest Richardson," she said, more of a statement than a question.
"Why, yes, he is.” The woman was clearly pleased that Tori had recognized him. "I'm Betty Richardson, his wife and unofficial campaign manager, telling you to be sure to vote for him in November."
"You don't need to say that to everyone we meet, Betty," her husband told her in a slightly embarrassed voice.
"There's nothing wrong with broadcasting that my husband is the best choice for mayor," Betty Richardson said.
"I agree.” Tori found the woman's devotion to her husband touching. "If you don't believe it, nobody will."
"Not everybody does believe it," Forest Richardson said. It wasn't difficult to tell he referred to Grady.
"You do realize that Honoria Black will ruin our city with her pro-development stance?" Betty Richardson directed her question at Grady. "If she has her way, Seahaven will be like any other coastal city. Charmless. The little things we enjoy, like this movie theater, will be no more."
She made sense. Not for the first time, Tori wondered why Grady supported Honoria Black. Tori’s initial admiration for the mayor had given way to doubt that she was the right person to guide Seahaven
She couldn't imagine Mayor Black in downtown Seahaven, enjoying the simple charms of the city.
"Tell me something, Mr. Richardson, do you like Westerns?" Tori asked.
"Love 'em. It's the only place where the good guys always win," he said before it was his turn to pay for his tickets. After he did, he nodded at them. "Palmer. Nice meeting you, Ms. Whitley."
A few minutes later, Tori and Grady took their seats in the small theater a few rows behind the Richardsons. The screen was huge, easily half again as large as the ones in standard movie theaters.
"I take it you and Forest Richardson aren't friends," Tori remarked once they were settled in their seats.
"We're barely acquaintances. I run into him now and again," Grady said. "He knows I support Honoria."
"I like him," Tori said.
"Of course you do," Grady replied. "He's running for mayor. He puts on his best face in public."
"I don't believe it was an act," she said. "I think he seems like a genuinely good guy."
"There is no such thing."
"You're forgetting I'm on to you, Duke. You don't believe that any more than I do."
The previews flickered on, preventing further conversation. Tori had trouble concentrating on the screen. Why couldn't Grady see that Forest Richardson and not Honoria Black had the good of Seahaven at heart?
Could it be because the almighty buck was more vital to him than the good of the city? Was making a profit so important that he'd pay for the privilege? Is that what he'd been doing on that pier with Larry Schlichter?
Grady put his arm around her, drawing her close. She breathed in his now-familiar scent and snuggled against him. Again her doubts receded as she settled back to watch John Wayne do the right thing.
Later, after they'd gotten back to his apartment, she excused herself, went into his bathroom and shut the door. She sat on the closed toilet seat and took her disco ball key chain from her purse.
"Don't fail me now," she whispered to the ball. "I need to know if I should trust Grady."
She turned the ball over and read, My sources say split.
She frowned.
"Can I trust him?" she asked more directly.
It's a bad scene, the ball replied.
Again, she shook the ball.
Whatever turns you on.
That was more like it, she thought, slipping the key chain back in her purse. Grady turned her on.
She emerged from the bathroom and crossed the apartment until she stood only inches from him.
"Is everything all right?" he asked, concern for her showing in his blue eyes. "You were in there for a while."
"Everything's fine now," she said and kissed him.
He kissed her back, exactly the way she liked to be kissed. With wonder, passion and desire. The doubts fled from her another time, carried away on a tide of intense emotion.
Much later, she lay wide awake in bed, listening to the
soft sounds he made while he slept.
Other than Grady's closet love for Westerns, she hadn't uncovered any evidence today that proved she should trust him. But she would. She did.
Because she wanted to.
CHAPTER TWE NTY-SIX
Tori straightened from behind the counter, where she'd been stocking bottles of Lazenby foundation and moisturizer, and got a jolt.
Sky-blue eyes outlined by navy liner gazed at her from not more than a foot away. Their bottle-blond owner rested both her elbows on the glass countertop. Her dainty chin balanced on top of her hands.
"Hey, Tori," she said gaily, straightening to her full height, which was well shy of Tori's. "Remember me?"
"Of course," Tori said. "You're Grady's sister Lorelei. You're the one who keeps telling me I have the power."
"Right." She looked pleased that Tori had remembered not only their meeting but their telephone conversation when she'd left a message at the office for Grady. "I'm glad that power thing is working out for one of us."
"How do you know it is?"
"Because you were with Grady last night."
"He told you about it?"
Lorelei laughed. "No. On the way back from the clubs last night, I was going to stop and talk to him about something. I changed my mind when I saw you going into his place."
"So he didn't tell you that we, uh, you know?"
"Slept together? Nope. You're the one who told me that. Just now, in fact."
Tori felt her face color.
"Don't be embarrassed," Lorelei said, laughing. "I'm glad you and my brother are getting it on."
"Me, too," Tori admitted. "Did you come here to talk about him?"
"Hell, no. I came because Grady said you were good with makeup." Hers was slathered on thick, hiding her pretty face.
"Do you think you could make me look, oh, older? You know, so he can't dismiss me as some kid who doesn't know what she wants."
"So who can't dismiss you?"
Lorelei pressed her lips together, as though she'd said too much. Then she ran a hand through her seriously blond hair and answered, "Wade Morrison, that's who."
"The Tax Assessor?"
"I know he wants me, Tori, but every time we start to get busy, he brings up the age thing. As though he's old enough to be my father or something, which he definitely is not. I want him to take me seriously."
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