Grand Passion

muffins.”
    Max slowed the Jaguar as they drove through Harmony Cove's block-long downtown district. A woman waved at them from the entrance to the grocery store.
    Cleo waved back. “At least Mrs. Gibson doesn't look like she wants to paint a large red A on my forehead.”
    “Who's Mrs. Gibson?”
    “She owns the little bookshop on the corner.”
    Max smiled. “She's probably ordered several copies of The Mirror in anticipation of the rush.”
    “Oh, geez, Max. This is going to be awful.” Cleo fiddled nervously with the car phone.
    “Put down the phone and stop panicking.” Max slowed the Jaguar still further and turned into the grocery store parking lot.
    “What are you doing?” Cleo yelped in alarm.
    “We're going to get the worst of this over with in a hurry so you'll stop working yourself up into a lather.”
    “Max, I don't need anything at the grocery store.”
    “We'll find something.” Max slid the Jaguar neatly into one of the parking spaces and opened the door on his side.
    Cleo made no move to unfasten her seatbelt. Max walked around to her side of the car and opened the door.
    “Come on, Cleo. This isn't going to be that bad.”
    “I don't want to deal with this yet.”
    “You're going to have to deal with it sometime.”
    “I know. But I don't want to do it today,” Cleo insisted.
    “Get out of the car, Cleo,” Max said gently, “or I will peel you out of there and carry you inside the damn grocery store.”
    She looked at him with mute defiance. Max's expression was even more stubborn than her own. She knew he was right. Sooner or later she was going to have to face the people of Harmony Cove.
    “All right, let's get this over with.” Cleo unbuckled the seatbelt and exploded out of the car. She stormed past Max.
    “That's my brave Cleopatra,” Max muttered.
    Already halfway to the door, Cleo stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. She scowled when she realized that she had left Max behind in the dust.
    “I'm not going in there alone,” she said.
    “Then you'll have to slow down a bit.” Max reached her side and took her arm. “I don't run except in cases of acute emergency and this is not one of those cases.”
    “You can move fast enough when you want to,” Cleo grumbled. “I've seen you go up and down the stairs at the inn as rapidly as any of the rest of us. Max, are you sure we have to do this?”
    “I can't believe you're this nervous about it.” Max pushed open the glass door of the grocery store and shoved her gently ahead of him. “You're here for milk.”
    “We don't need milk. We get a dairy delivery twice a week at the inn,” Cleo muttered.
    “Today you need milk.”
    Cleo felt the eyes as soon as she stepped into the familiar surroundings of the store. Everyone from the stock boy to the counter clerk looked at her as if they had never seen her before in their lives. They all waved enthusiastically.
    Cleo ducked her head and hurried toward the dairy case.
    The young man stocking milk and cottage cheese smiled tentatively at her. “Hi, Ms. Robbins.”
    “Hi, Tom. How are you today?” Thankful for Max's reassuring presence, Cleo opened the glass door and yanked out a quart of skim.
    “Fine. I heard someone was pestering you on account of you wrote a book. Is that true?”
    Cleo's fingers trembled around the carton of milk. “Yes.”
    “Real sorry to hear someone's bothering you. Hope they catch him.”
    “Thank you, Tom.”
    “Say, I was, uh, wondering.” Tom cast a surreptitious look up and down the aisle and sidled closer.
    Cleo steeled herself. “What were you wondering, Tom?”
    “About the book you wrote.”
    Cleo's stomach tightened. “Yes?”
    “I, uh, I've been thinking about writing a book myself.”
    Cleo blinked. “You have?”
    Tom nodded urgently and turned a bright shade of red. “Yeah, it's science fiction, y'know?”
    “I see,” Cleo said uncertainly. “That's great. Good luck with it.”
    Tom brightened at the encouragement. “It's an alternate world story, see. There's a lot of stuff in it that's similar to our world, but the basic laws of science are different. More like magic, y'know.”
    “Uh-huh.” Cleo took a step back.
    Tom eagerly closed the space between them. “My main character is this guy from our world who finds himself stranded in this alternate world. At first he thinks he's dreaming. Then he realizes he's trapped there. He has to learn how to survive or he'll get killed.”
    “Very clever,”