It was his voice, slow and easy, like whiskey and smoke.
Godiva’s brain froze.
Her body took over.
Before anyone could move, her fingers closed on the tray of pastries, and she hurled them straight at him.
He sidestepped neatly. Of course he did. With a minimum of effort, because his life had depended on avoiding far more dangerous things charging him.
Pastries splattered against the door.
“Food fight!” one of the teenagers at the next table howled.
A second later the air was full of flying pastries.
Godiva had half a second of sanity to be appalled at what she’d done, then sheer fury burned away every other thought as he started toward her, hands out wide.
“Shirl,” he began.
“There is no ‘Shirl’, you pettifogging pillock!” she yelled, backing away and looking for something else to throw. Ah! Her half-drunk coffee would do the trick. “She punched her ticket more half a century ago. Thanks to you.”
Toss!
Splash!
Of course he dodged neatly, leaving the brown liquid to drip down the wall. “Shirl—sorry, Godiva. Just give me a chance to—”
“A chance to what, you stenchiferous wight,” she yelled, and when she saw her friends staring like a bunch of frozen statuary, she turned to the teens. “Get ‘im, boys. That crottled potsniffer is . . . trying to take my virtue!”
The teens enthusiastically began picking up the splattered bits of pastry around them. Rigo, damn him, neatly dodged a bombardment of glutinous bits, his expression midway between laughter and exasperation. “Hey, that pony left the barn sixty years ago—”
His slight Texas drawl threw her right back to the first time they met, when she was eighteen, far away in distance and time. The memory was so vivid it made her almost giddy for one second, then the sheer effrontery of him tracking her down after all these years caught up.
That betraying snake was here!
Sheer rage swept away all sense. “Duncebucket!”
“I just want a chance to talk to you—”
“Snitchweasel!”
“—beginning with an apology—”
“Apology? APOLOGY??? Sixty years too late, buckaroo. You know where you can shove your apology, you slimy scuzzwaffle? I’d say shove it where the sun don’t shine but your head’s already wedged right up tight . . .” To her absolute horror, she heard her own accent creeping back in—more than half a century after she had thoroughly eradicated it, along with the miserable identity of Shirley Temple Lamas.
At least the teens had driven him away from the door at last. She darted past, and made it outside.
She’d promised herself before most of those in the bakery were even born that she’d never waste a single tear on man. She leaned against the door, breathing hard. Blinking hard. Then became aware of something parked right in front of her that the dusty street had probably never seen before: a silver, glistening Rolls Royce Phantom II, in perfect condition. Several men stood about, staring at it, mouths open.
A vivid memory rose, lying side by side with Rigo on a broken-down cart in the hot Texas night, dreaming of the things they could never have. They couldn’t even afford the nickel for one of the magazines with pictures of fancy people in their fancy houses and cars and clothes, but somebody had left one behind at the diner where she worked, and they’d pored over it together.
She could still hear his whiskey and steel voice promising, “Someday I’m gonna git me one of them Rolls-Royce Phantoms.”
Obviously he’d chosen to keep that promise, even if he broke every other promise.
Not that she gave a flying pickle.
Her hand scrabbled behind her for the door latch to the bakery. She yanked the door open just enough to grab some of the slime that had splattered along the edge, then she shut it again. With a twinge of regret for the downfall of what had been an exquisite lemon custard, she flung it at the windshield of the evidence of her worst nightmare come true.