Page 21 of Feverburn

Kaylee finally looked away from her parked car.“Thank you! It’s freakingamazing!”

My vision tunneled to thenakedfaerie with the faintest auburn triangle between her legs. I sighed, realizing he got it right, and I’d have to stare at it. He picked up his cup with my number, shooting me a meaningful glance behind Kaylee’s back as he left. I clenched my thighs together, hoping to taper the dull ache, knowing he would haunt me the rest of the day.

Chapter Nine

I strolled into All Booked Up, clutching a cup with Rosie’s number. I was a floating head barely contained to reality. I was so close to kissing her. I could feel her breath on my lips as her sexy little body swayed towards me, eagerly wanting to connect. Kaylee needed to stop interrupting us. I had to get Rosie to my cabin or away from our businesses for fucksakes.

“Hey, Carsyboy,”Viviane’s small voice quaked.

“Hey Viv, how are you?”

Her joints snapped and popped as she exited her faded burgundy armchair. She was five foot nothing, with all her white hair expertly curled and teased into a rounded little puff on her head. Ribbon blue eyes gleamed around well-earned wrinkles, and the skin under her chin wiggled when she talked. She always looked like a little gnome queen wearing layers of cardigans and sweaters that she knit herself in shades of brown, olive, and sometimes dark purple if she feltextrasnazzy. She never wore shoes but often wore thick socks with lace and beads sewn around the ankles. She had to wear high heels for decades when she worked at thebank, and now, indefiance, she lived barefoot.

I adored the shit out of her.

Viv was like my faerie godmother I had known my entire life. Our relationship was a good mix of wholesome andmischievous. She baked me cookies growing up, then started putting weed in them as I got older. I helped her at the bookstore with random repair projects and lifting heavy boxes.

She was unhinged with awickedsense of humor and anexcellentsounding board for me because she never revealed my secrets to anyone, not even Bear. Plus, she was the only 87-year-old I knew who was still mobile, let alonesleepingwith a Glock under her quilted pillow.

I walked around the counter and squatted to give her a gentle hug.“Oh, you’re never going to believe this shit,”she said, drawing back and putting on her glasses. Today, they were small ones that looked like the octagonal wire things you used to dye Easter eggs.

“What?”

“Boyd came in last night,”she tucked her chin, letting me prepare for the gossip. Officer Boyd was a cop in town who hit on anything with a pair of tits, even though he was married. He was worse than Dane. Completely creeptastic.

“And?”

“He was looking for a book on…”she fiddled with the mousepad on her laptop.

“How to cure chlamydia naturally?”I joked, making a dry laughescapeher while she squinted at the screen.

“The history of coffee,”she looked at me over her glasses.

“Hmm, it is almost like he is prepping for a coffee shop run by women to open in town.”

“Exactly, what a nitwit. I’ve met Kaylee. Beautiful, sweet little thing. Funny as allhell. She said a friend was coming to help her. Rose, I believe.”

“Rosie,” I corrected.

Her drawn-on eyebrows lifted in two denim lines on her forehead.“Rosie, well then, it sounds like you’ve met our new budding barista?”

“Yeah, to put it lightly. She’s living above my store, and I’ve been painting the mural alongside her setting up the shop.”

Viv gasped, loving thesalaciousinformation. Leaning in, she whispered,“Is she pretty?”

“Gorgeous. Smart. Feisty, too.”

She pulled off her glasses.“That is thebestnews I’ve heard all year. When are you taking her out?”

“I can’t!”I rage-whispered in frustration.

“Why not?”

“I’m cursed, you know that. I don’t want to ruin her reputation. Everyone is going to tell her I’m the grump who is going todestroyher life. And what if I do? Kaylee is her friend and now her business partner. What if we don’t work out? It would make it awkward for Rosie. She’d still have to live above my store and work across the street from me. We all know Harley is going to wife up Kaylee. If it didn’t work out, we’d still run into each other often.”

“Who cares? I dated my husband’s cousin before I got to him. We turned out fine.”

“But that was wartime, and everything was afree-for-all. You were dancing with a different sailor every night!”

---