Black Rose

was half loaded, and she’d stopped in the aisles to exchange greetings with four people she knew before she made it to the toy department.
    Five minutes later she was wondering if she’d need a second cart. Struggling to balance a couple of enormous boxes on top of the mound of other purchases, she turned a corner.
    And rapped smartly into another cart.
    “Sorry. I can’t seem to... oh. Hi.”
    It had been weeks since she’d seen Dr. Mitchell Carnegie, the genealogist she’d hired—more or less. There had been a few brief phone conversations, some businesslike e-mails, but only a scatter of face-to-face contacts since the night he’d come to dinner. And had ended up seeing the Harper Bride ghost.
    She considered him an interesting man and gave him top marks for not hightailing it after the experience they’d all shared the previous spring.
    He had, in her opinion, the credentials she needed, along with the spine and the open mind. Best of all he’d yet to bore her in their discussions of family lineage and the steps necessary to identifying a dead woman.
    Just now it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in the past few days, so there was a dark stubble toughening his face. His bottle-green eyes appeared both tired and harassed. His hair badly needed a trim.
    He was dressed much like the first time she’d met him, in old jeans and rolled-up shirtsleeves. Unlike hers, his basket was empty.
    “Help me,” he said in the tone of a man dangling from a cliff by a sweaty grip on a shaky limb.

    “I’m sorry?”
    “Six-year-old girl. Birthday. Desperation.”
    “Oh.” Deciding she liked that warm bourbon voice, even with panic sharpening it, Roz pursed her lips. “What’s the connection?”
    “Niece. Sister’s surprise late baby. She had the decency to have two boys before. I can handle boys.”
    “Well, is she a girly girl?”
    He made a sound, as if the limb had started to crack.
    “All right, all right.” Roz waved a hand and, abandoning her own cart, turned down the aisle. “You could’ve saved yourself some stress by just asking her mother.”
    “My sister’s pissed at me because I forgot her birthday last month.”
    “I see.”
    “Look, I forgot everything last month, including my own name a couple of times. I told you I was finishing some revisions on the book. I was on deadline. For God’s sake, she’s forty-three. One. Or possibly two.” Obviously at wit’s end, he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Doesn’t your breed stop having birthdays at forty?”
    “We may stop counting, Dr. Carnegie, but that doesn’t mean we don’t expect an appropriate gift on the occasion.”
    “Loud and clear,” he responded, watching her peruse the shelves. “And since you’re back to calling me Dr. Carnegie, I’d hazard a guess you’re on her side. I sent flowers,” he added in an aggrieved tone that had her lips twitching. “Okay, late, but I sent them. Two dozen roses, but does she cut me a break?”
    He jammed his hands into his back pockets and scowled at Malibu Barbie. “I couldn’t get back to Charlotte for Thanksgiving. Does that make me a demon from hell?”
    “It sounds like your sister loves you very much.”
    “She’ll be planning my immediate demise if I don’t get this gift today, and have it FedExed tomorrow.”

    She picked up a doll, set it down again. “Then I assume your niece’s birthday is tomorrow, and you waited until the eleventh hour to rush out and find something for her.”
    He said nothing for a moment, then laid a hand on her shoulder so that she looked over, and up at him. “Rosalind, do you want me to die?”
    “I’m afraid I wouldn’t feel responsible. But we’ll find something, then you can get it wrapped up and shoot it off.”
    “Wrapped. God almighty, it has to be wrapped?”
    “Of course it has to be wrapped. And you have to buy a nice card, something pretty and age-appropriate. Hmm. I like this.” She tapped a huge box.
    “What is it?”
    “It’s a house-building toy. See, it has all these modular pieces so you can design and redesign your own doll house, with furnishings. It comes with dolls, and a little dog. Fun, and educational. You hit on two levels.”
    “Great. Good. Wonderful. I owe you my life.”
    “Aren’t you a little out of your milieu?” she asked when he took the box off the shelf. “You live right in the city. Plenty of shops right there.”
    “That’s the problem. Too many of them. And the malls? They’re like a