Pink Neon Dreams (14 page)

“So
you came back the next day to Pink Neon?”

Daniel
shook his head. “No. I followed you to the supermarket, trailed you, and tailed
you home.
 
I sat over in the park for a
few minutes and I knew right then I wanted you to be innocent.
 
In the morning, yeah, I headed for your
shop.”

She
remembered. “And you asked me to sing.
 
That’s why.
 
Is
Down To
The
Water
really
one of your favorite songs?”

“
Si, querida
,” he said. “Are you angry I
followed you?”

Under
any other circumstances, she’d be furious, but Cecily shook her head. “I’m
not.
 
You were doing your job and if you
hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here now, so how can I be?”

“I’m
glad.” His voice wasn’t much more than a breath between them.

Reality
shadowed some of her happiness. “It’s going to get harder before we get this
thing resolved, isn’t it?”

“Probably,”
he replied. “When you said you had questions, you meant it, huh?”

Cecily
traced his cheek with two fingers. “Uh-huh, I did, but I’m done for now.”

“Are
you?” He sounded interested.

“Oh,
yeah,” she said. “I have to get up and open Pink Neon in a couple of hours.”

Daniel
squinted at the bedside alarm clock. “When do you open? Nine?”

She
laughed. “You ought to know better than that.
 
You were my first customer.
 
I
open at eight.”

“Then
you’ve got time for me to take you out to breakfast.”

Pleasure
crept over her at his invitation.
 
It’d
been a long time since she enjoyed small things so much. “I’d like that, a
lot.”

“Good,”
he replied. “Then you’d better get dressed or I might come up with another idea
I like better.”

His
grin left no doubt what the other option might be so Cecily climbed out of bed
before she yielded to temptation.
 
As she
showered, then dressed for the day, she couldn’t stop smiling—or marveling he’d
managed to convince her of his sincerity.

They breakfasted at a little café
downtown, a classic old-fashioned restaurant with vintage fixtures.
 
Cecily nibbled sausage patties and
whole-wheat toast, watching with awe as Daniel ate a full meal with two eggs,
over easy, hash browns, bacon, and biscuits and gravy.
 
He ate with apparent relish and since he’d
come clean with Cecily, she thought she saw a new ease in his movements.
 
His shoulders relaxed in a natural pose and
some of the tautness she’d noticed in him was absent for the moment.
 
They’d driven their separate vehicles so she
could open the store on time and he could check out of his crappy motel.

“Are you coming to Pink Neon
after you dump your stuff at the house?” she asked.

Daniel shrugged and mopped up the
last of his egg yolk with toast. “Do you want me to?”

The look he sent across the table
turned her insides into mush and heated up her girl parts.
 
“I like having you around,” she said.

“Then I’ll come, but I don’t want
to drive off business.
 
I doubt I fit the
profile for your average boutique customer.”

“You don’t,” she said with blunt
honesty. “But you make nice eye candy.”

 
Pink flushed his face despite his complexion
and he grinned. “Do I?” He sounded pleased.

“Yeah,” she said. “You do, but
I’ve got dibs on you so all they can do is look.”

“Look but not touch?”

She smiled back and her foot
shifted under the table to stroke his leg. “That’s right, sugar. You
understand.”

 
When they parted, he kissed her long and deep as if he headed far
away.
 
Cecily liked it, tasting the
lingering flavor of coffee on his breath, and she held onto him a few more
moments.
 
People passing on the sidewalk
paused to look but most smiled. She waved as she got into her GTO. “Don’t make
me call you, you hear!”

“I’ll be there,
querida
.”

In the driver’s seat, she fired
the engine and kicked up the sound on the stereo.
 
Cecily backed out as the Pointer Sisters
began to sing and just for Daniel, she sang along.
 
Then she made her way through the morning
traffic to Pink Neon.
 
She parked
farthest from the front entrance to leave the prime parking open for customers
and unlocked the door.
 
Once inside, she
glanced around to make sure everything remained in order.
 
A few things were jumbled so she put them in
place and turned the window placard around at the stroke of eight.
 

Cecily stared out the window and
reflected. Everything shifted from her pre-opening jitters.
 
She’d opened Saturday as a single woman
trying to make a new path but on Monday morning, she walked in here with a
lover, a man she craved like chocolate and wanted to keep.
 
His revelations might’ve sunk their new
relationship but instead, once she accepted what he said as truth and
understood, it somehow strengthened it.
 
She’d known him for two days, almost to the hour and yet Cecily believed
she knew him down to his bones.

I
don’t know where we’re going from here, but I’m ready to take the ride.

When the shop bell chimed, she
glanced up and smiled at her first customer of the day.
 
“Hi,” she said. “Is there anything I can help
you find?”

“Oh, I just want to look
around.
 
My sister-in-law said you had
some nice things,” the woman said. “I collect angels.”

“I’ve got some lovely ones, over
this way,” Cecily said and her day began.

Although she lacked as many
customers as she’d had on Saturday, business stayed steady.
 
She sold two angels to the lady who collected
them, a boxed tea set and pot imported from England to an older gentleman,
Victorian styled greeting cards to a woman dressed for the golf course, and potpourri
to a twenty-something blonde dressed in a long calico dress complete with
sunbonnet.
 
Two sisters from Iowa bought
a pair of the funky hats, and a man who told her he’d just retired purchased two
of the coffee mugs.

During a mid-morning lull, Cecily
pulled out her laptop from underneath the counter and booted it up.
 
She checked emails for her brand new address
and answered one from Nia.
 
On impulse,
she dialed Daniel’s number, but he didn’t pick up the call. She hung up when
forwarded to voice mail.
 
They’d
exchanged numbers over breakfast.
 
Curious, Cecily typed in his name into her favorite search engine and
came up with a few mentions of her lover.
 
Among other things, he’d been awarded the Medal for Meritorious Service
for saving a man’s life after a mugging near one of the Kansas City area
casinos and an FBI Star for being injured in the line of duty.
 

Then she gave into temptation and
looked up the details of Willard’s death.
 
Within minutes, Cecily wished she hadn’t.
 
The lurid image of his body lying on the
front steps of the mansion she’d called home disturbed her and the spreading
dark pool beneath him made her sick.
 
She
skimmed several print reports and watched a WGN online news story.
 
Scenes of the house, of her ex-husband’s
ransacked study and open safe, upset her more.
 
When she read there were no suspects named but ‘Bradford’s former spouse
remains a person of interest’, Cecily shivered and her breakfast soured in her
stomach.
 
The son of a bitch is gonna get me from beyond the grave if I don’t
watch out.
 
I’m glad Daniel’s on my side
‘
cause
otherwise I’m starting to get the feeling the
law wants to screw me.

In an effort to shake off her
unpleasant feelings, she tried Daniel again, but he didn’t answer.
 
Cecily dialed Nia, even though she’d be at
work at the salon, and her cousin answered.

“Hey, what’s up, girl?”

“Second day of business at Pink
Neon,” Cecily said with a light bravado she didn’t feel. “I thought I’d just
touch base and see how things are going up in Chi town.”

“Things are going,” Nia replied.
“Hang on a second, let me put my customer under the dryer and then we’ll talk a
minute.”

Cecily waited and then Nia said,
breathless, “Hey, you alone?”

“Yeah, I am right now. Why?”

“You may be in a deep load of
shit, honey.”

Her stomach rolled.
“Over Willard?”

“That’s right.
 
How’d you know?”

“It wasn’t a lucky guess,” Cecily
said. “Let’s just say I heard I’m named a person of interest.”

“Yeah, you are. Maybe you need a
lawyer.”

“Maybe but I think it’d just make
me look guilty. I’m not.”

“Shit, you don’t need to tell
me.
 
I know you’re not.
 
If you’ve been in a mood to kill him, he’d have
died years ago,” Nia said. “I gotta go, but watch your back.
 
How’s your man?”

A little of her earlier buoyant
mood returned. “He’s fucking awesome.”

“Good. Well, you hang onto him if
he’s that good, you hear? And keep me posted, okay?”

“‘Kay.”

Customers trailed in at an
increasing pace as the morning headed toward noon.
 
Three hours after she opened, Cecily hadn’t
heard from Daniel and she alternated between worry and irritation.
 
Just after she sold an Asian painted parasol
and a feather boa to a sassy redhead, Cecily’s cell rang and she answered it.
“Hello!”

“It’s me.” She’d have known who
it was without the caller ID.

“I tried to call you, but you
didn’t answer.”

“I’m sorry, babe. I got tied up
on the phone.” His voice lacked the light tone he’d used at breakfast and she
sighed. “Was it work-related?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way over.
 
I’ll fill you in later, when we’re alone.
 
My stuff’s at your place.
Everything
going all right at the store?”

“It’s good,” she said and added,
“I miss you.”

“Really?”
His voice became brighter.
“First time anyone’s missed me in years. I’ll see you in a few.”

Daniel ended the call before she
could say anything else.
 
Distracted, she
waited on customers and kept one eye on the traffic, watching for a black Ford
sedan.
 
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel
parked outside the door and strode in.
 
She adored the way he moved, but she didn’t like the frown on his face
or the wrinkle across his forehead.
 
Since no customers were present, Cecily met him and he opened his arms
wide.
 
She stepped into their circle and
he hugged her.
 

I’ve
got it bad, real bad.
 
I feel safe just ‘
cause
he showed up and his body against mine gets me
hot.
 
He smells fine, too and I want him.

“You look like something’s
wrong,” she said after he kissed her hard enough to make her breathless for
more than a minute.

 
“The situation is under control,” he said,
cryptic but serious as a foreclosure. “We’ll talk about it tonight,
querida,
but not now.
 
You’ve got customers on the way inside.”

Four women climbed out of an SUV
and headed for the entrance with purpose.
 
As they came inside, two more cars pulled into the lot.
 
Daniel retreated behind the counter and
without asking
permission,
he opened her laptop and
turned it back on.
 
When Cecily snuck a
glance or two, she noticed he read the Kansas City newspaper.
 
Maybe I
don’t have any reason to worry, none at all.

But her intuition screamed like a
fire alarm or a banshee.

Chapter
Nine

At the café, Daniel turned his
damn phone on so he could put Cecily’s number in the memory and like an
idiot,
he didn’t turn it back off.
 
His idea had been to make it possible for her
to call him but instead, he fielded a call from his supervisor before he made
it to the Strip.
 
He almost didn’t answer
it, but he wasn’t quite ready to flush a decade with the FBI down the toilet.

“Padilla.”