Page 14 of Cognac Secrets
She was a natural redhead, but hadn’t gone completely gray, yet. She had white streaked around her face and she tended to keep that part of her hair braided. Her hair waslong. Like almost to her knees long, and I didn’t know how she did it. When my hair had been that long, I’d hated it. Had constantly been sitting on it by accident. When I’d finally had enough of it, I’d cut it myself.
Oh, the absoluteasswhoopin’ I’d gotten fromthatlittle incident…
I digress…
“You’ll never guess what I just sold,” I said, grinning from ear to ear, barely able to hold in my excitement.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The Hecate statue.”
“Oh, one of the bigger replicas?” she asked mildly. We didn’t sell those too terribly often, either – they were like three hundred dollars, but no, that’s not what I meant.
I shook my head and she eventually looked up at me from where she was fussing in her silk tote bag. She cocked her head and then perked up, crying, “No!”
I nodded emphatically and she whirled, looking at the life-sized bronze statue with the bowl in her hands that held all our chunks of labradorite for sale.
“Finally!” she cried, and I laughed. The statue was a fixture in the shop. Tourists took pictures with her, but shedidtake up a lot of room. Still, with her nearly six-thousand-dollar price tag, she “wasn’t moving any time soon,” as Rowan liked to say – except now she would be.
A woman with more money than sense had just come in and run her black AmEx and the sale had gone through. I had all her information here, and now it was on to the next problem.
“How are we going to get her out of here?” I asked.
Rowan’s face fell.
“Shit,” she swore softly. “Guess I’d better get on the horn and find a delivery company.”
“On a Sunday? Good luck with that,” I said, laughing.
“Right,” she said with an eye roll. “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about you opening early. I want that story.”
“Hey, if I hadn’t,” I said, “I maybe never would have made that sale.”
“The universe provides, my darling girl!” she called over her shoulder as she breezed into the back and I smiled warmly.
She was right about that. Of course that did make my thoughts drift back to the unlikely biker who’d latched on to me last night. I had a fleeting thought about the card in my pocket…
I was distracted from much more than just a fleeting thought by another round of customers entering the small shop – a gaggle of giggling teenage girls who had likely watchedThe Craftone too many times. Now it was just a question of keeping an eye on them from helping themselves to any five-finger discounts like in the movie.
I mean, it would beverydumb of them for a multitude of reasons, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first, nor the last time, I was sure.
* * *
“I can’t believe you,”True said, aghast on the other end of the line. “I know, I know. It was probably really dumb, but, True, you should have seen him,” I said and I sighed out. “He was hurting so bad and he really was drunk. You know me – I’m a pretty good judge of character and I wouldn’t have stayed if I thought I was in any kind of real danger. He was just another human in pain. Not a biker, not an accountant, not a – a – a – I think he was a soldier at one point.”
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“The tattoos,” I answered immediately. “You know the type.”
“What? Served four years in whatever branch of the military and it’s like their whole personality now?” she asked.
“No, the other type.”
“Oh, the served and saw some shit andnevertalks about it type but has the wounds, PTSD, and tattoos, but you’d never know it until the clothes come off?”
“Yeah, that one,” I said.
“Yeah, no – I don’t really know that type except for what you’ve told me. Girl, you know I live vicariously through you. Your war stories are the closest I want to get to sex and dating. No, thank you.”
