Tribute

store.”
    “Our little hole in the wall,” Penny said. “Oh now, look, we’re going to be late. Why do you let me talk so much, Rod?”
    “I have no idea.” "Y’all change your mind about the game, we’ll make sure you get a seat at a table. Cilla, they’d just love to have you, too,” Penny called out as Rod pulled her down to the car. “I’m going to have Daddy bring those pictures over for you to look at.”
    “Thank you. Nice to meet you.”
    “Ford! You bring Cilla over for dinner sometime.”
    “In the car, Penny.”
    “I’m getting, I’m getting. You hear?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Ford called back. “Win a bundle.”
    “I’m feeling lucky !” Penny shouted as Rod zipped into reverse, then zoomed on down the road.
    Cilla said, "Wow.”
    “I know. It’s like being lightly brushed by the edge of a hurricane. Leaves you a little surprised and dazed, and sure that much more and you’d be flat on your ass.”
    “You look a lot like your father, who is very handsome, by the way. But your mother? She’s dazzling.”
    “She is, as her own father likes to say, a corker.”
    “Corker.” Cilla laughed as they walked into the house. With a polite burp, Spock trotted in with them. “Well, I like her, and I tend to eye mothers suspiciously. Speaking of corks. Where’s the champagne?”
    “Spare fridge, mudroom.”
    “I’ll get that, you get the pizza.”
    Moments later, she came back into the kitchen with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a puzzled frown. “Ford, what are you doing with all that paint?”
    “The what?” He looked over from setting the oven. “Oh that. There’s a zillion gallons of primer, a zillion of exterior red, and a slightly lesser amount of exterior white, for trim.”
    As her heart did a slow somersault, she set the bottle on the counter. “You bought the barn paint.”
    “I don’t believe in jinxes. I do believe in positive thinking, which is just really hope anyway.”
    Everything inside her shifted, settled. Opened. She stepped to him, laid a hand on his cheek, laid her lips on his. Warm as velvet, tender as a wish, the kiss flowed. Even when he shifted so she pressed back against the counter, it stayed slow and silky, deep and dreamy.
    When their lips parted, she sighed, then rested her cheek against his in a gesture of simple affection she gave to very few. “Ford.” She drew back, sighed again. “My head’s too full of Steve to meet your requirements for sex tonight.”
    “Ah. Well.” He trailed a fingertip up her arm. “Realistically, they’re more loose guidelines than strict requirements.”
    She laughed, caressed his cheek once more. “They’re good requirements. I’d like to stick to them.”
    “Got no one to blame but myself.” He stepped around her to slide the pizza into the oven.
    “So we’ll eat bad pizza, get a little buzzed on champagne and not have sex.”
    Ford shook his head as he removed the foil and the cage on the bottle. “Almost my favorite thing to do with a beautiful woman.”
    “I don’t fall for guys. It’s a policy,” she said when he paused and glanced over at her. “Considering the influence of inherited traits—and the track record of my grandmother and mother in that area—I’ve taken a pass. Steve was an exception, and that just showed how it can go. So I don’t fall for guys. But I seem to be falling for you.”
    The cork exploded out of the bottle as he stared at her. “Does that scare you?”
    “No.” He cleared his throat. “A little. A moderate amount.”
    “I thought it might because it’s got me jumpy. So I figured heads-up.”
    “I appreciate it. Do you have, like, a definition for the term ‘fall for’?” God, she thought as she looked at him. Oh my God, she was a goner. “Why don’t you get the glasses? I think we could both use a drink.”
    SHE HIRED PAINTERS, and had some of the crew haul the paint to the barn. She talked to the cops, and made a deal with a local body shop to paint the door of her truck. Whenever she caught sight of the white van, she had no qualms about shooting up her middle finger.
    No evidence, the cops said. Nothing to place Hennessy at the scene on the night Steve was attacked. No way to prove he decorated her truck with hate.
    So she’d wait him out, Cilla decided. And if he made another move, she’d be ready.
    Meanwhile, Steve had been bumped down to a regular room, and his mother had hopped back on her broomstick to head west.
    Dripping sweat from