Carolina Moon

kept nibbling, and her eyes were sharp enough to pin even a clever butterfly like Faith. “He’s a grown man, and you’re a beautiful woman. Why shouldn’t you be attracted to each other? I know my boy has sex.”
    Well, Faith thought, there you have it. “But you’d prefer he didn’t have it with me.”
    “Now, I don’t believe I said any such thing.” She selected another cookie, held it out to Faith. “We’re private here, Faith, and both of us women. That means we know just how to draw a man into doing what we want him to, at least most of the time. You got a wild streak. I don’t mind that. Could be I’d pictured some other kind of woman for my Wade, but he pictures you. I love him, so I want for him what he wants for himself. That appears to be you.”
    “It’s not like that between us, Mrs. Mooney.”
    The formal title amused Boots. If she wasn’t mistaken, the use of it meant Faith was intimidated. “Isn’t it? You keep coming back to him, don’t you? Ever ask yourself why? No,” she said, lifting a finger tipped with pearly pink polish. “Maybe you should just think about that. I want you to know I’ve got an affection for you, always have. That surprises you?”
    Stupefied her. “Yes. I suppose.”
    “It shouldn’t. You’re a smart and clever young woman, and haven’t had it as easy as some like to think. I like you fine, Faith. But if you hurt my Wade this time around, why, I’ll just have to snap that lovely neck of yours like a twig, that’s all.”
    “Well.” Faith bit into the cookie, narrowed her eyes. “That clears everything up.”
    Suddenly Boots’s face was soft again and her eyes mild and dreamy as always. She let out a light, trilling laugh, and to Faith’s confusion wrapped her in a hug, kissed her cheek.
    “I do like you.” With her thumb, she wiped the imprint of her lipstick from Faith’s cheek. “Now, you sit down and eat your cookie till you feel a little better. Since I’m feeling just fine, I believe I’ll go out and buy something else. There’s nothing like shopping, is there?” she added as she pranced out the door.
    “Jesus.” Speechless, Faith sat down. And ate her cookie.
    Tory kept busy, but saw Faith go out ten minutes later. Just as she saw Cade come in, his aunt Rosie in tow, during the first lull of the afternoon.
    It was impossible not to recognize Rosie Sikes LaRue Decater Smith. At sixty-four, the woman made just as much of a statement as she had at her debutante ball, when she’d shocked society by doing an exuberant barefoot jitterbug on the tennis court of the country club. She’d married Henry LaRue, of the Savannah LaRues, when she’d been seventeen, and lost him to Korea before their first anniversary.
    She’d grieved for six months, then had opted to play the merry widow, flaunted a hot-blooded affair with a struggling artist, and suspected Communist, whom she’d married for the hell of it at twenty. She and the artist both espoused free love and held what many considered orgies at their estate on Jekyll Island.
    She buried husband number two there after nineteen tumultuous years, when he tumbled from a third-story window after spending the evening with a bottle of Napoleon brandy and a twenty-three-year-old model.
    Some said foul play was involved, but nothing had been proved.
    At the ripe age of fifty-eight, she married a longtime admirer, more out of pity than love. He died two years later, on their second anniversary, after being gored and partially devoured by a rogue lion during their second honeymoon trip to Africa.
    Burying three husbands, and an untold number of lovers, hadn’t dimmed Rosie’s style. She wore a wig, at least Tory assumed it was a wig, of platinum blond, a flowing floor-length dress striped like a red-and-white awning, and enough jewelry to topple a lesser woman.
    Tory spotted the gleam of diamonds among the plastic beads.
    “Toys!” she said in her rusty squeak of a voice and rubbed her hands together. “Stand back, boy. I’m in a shopping mood.”
    She made a beeline for the display of blown-glass paperweights and began tucking them into the crook of her arm.
    Torn between amusement and alarm, Tory hurried over. “May I help you with those, Miss Rosie?”
    “Need six of them. The prettiest six.”
    “Yes, of course. Ah, for gifts?”
    “Gifts, hell. For me.” She clanked glass carelessly together and made Tory’s heart stop.
    “Why don’t I put these up on the counter for