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Flirting with Disaster

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2019
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Then again, he still wasn’t sure he had a read on Isabelle West yet. He wouldn’t say she was mean, exactly. But as for feral...well, there was something a little wild about her. Something unfiltered. She said what she meant and wasn’t coy about her moods.

Jill, waving away Tom’s praise for her food, sent them out the door with warnings about ice on the steps. The woman was truly an amazing cook, not to mention a damn good pastry chef. He’d have to find one of her cookbooks and have Jill sign it for his sister. Wendy adored cooking. And she was terrible at it. But Tom liked to make her happy, so he went to her place once a month for a pleasant, polite evening with Mom and Dad and Wendy’s husband and kids, and he ate her awful dinners without complaint. Cookbooks hadn’t helped in the past, but maybe Jill’s would be the right fit.

“You’ve got Jill wrapped around your finger,” Isabelle said, the words warm instead of accusing.

“You have that turned around. I’d die for that woman.”

Isabelle’s laugh rang loud and pure into the night as they walked down the driveway to the road. “She’s easy to love.”

“But she likes living alone?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe nobody is worthy of her. Or maybe love isn’t all that great.”

He shot her a look, but she was staring straight ahead, her small smile lit by the snow. “And which one is it for you?” he asked.

“Oh, me? I love living alone. And love definitely isn’t all that great.”

He’d heard that kind of sentiment before, but never with such good cheer. “I’d say that’s cynical, but you sound happy about it.”

She finally looked at him. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?”

“Yes.”

“No wife or kids? Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?”

His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. “No. But I travel quite a bit.”

“A woman in every port?”

“Not quite,” he said with a grin. “But you make Mammoth and Casper and Cheyenne sound more promising than they are.”

“Exotic locales. Exciting adventures. Femme fatales.”

“I see you’ve been spying on me.”

She nodded, still more reserved with him than she was with Jill. “Well, I don’t travel, but I’m not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.”

Tom tripped over a snowdrift and nearly fell flat on his face. Isabelle laughed as he dusted snow off his knee.

So much for her reserve. “If you said that to shock me, it worked,” he said.

“I said it because it’s true.” She grinned over her shoulder as she kept moving. “Try to keep up.”

He had a feeling she didn’t mean walking, but he hurried to catch up all the same. Silence fell over them as Tom tried to come up with a question that wasn’t “So what kind of porn do you like?” but his brain was stuck on the topic, so he kept his mouth shut.

Still, the silence was nice on a night like this. Their boots crunched in the dry snow, and there was the occasional thump of snow falling off tree branches, but other than that, it was only the black sky and white stars and their breath turning the air pale around them. And this very odd woman smiling at her own thoughts.

When they reached her driveway, her smile disappeared, and she shot him an arch look.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said in answer to her irritation.

She shook her head but didn’t argue when he started up the driveway with her.

“This is a gorgeous place,” he said. “I keep thinking I’d love to live outside town, but I’m not sure I want to deal with commuting in winter.”

“We get snowed in a few times a year, so I’m lucky I never have to be anywhere. And Jill always has food. I have had to strap on snowshoes on occasion to make it to her place, but it’s worth the trouble.”

“Clearly. She should open a restaurant.”

“I think she likes the solitude more than she lets on. She sold her last restaurant for a bundle, and her cookbooks sell nicely. People still love cookbooks, apparently, even in this age of ebooks and internet recipes. It’s the pictures, I think.”

“And you? You must be a pretty great artist. Jackson is hardly a cheap place to live.”

“I do all right.” She didn’t elaborate. She was clearly more comfortable telling him about Jill than speaking about herself.

“I read some stories about the judge,” she said as they trudged up the steepest part of her drive. “Do you really think he’s in danger?”

“Obviously, we take any threats seriously, but these guys associate with some groups that have strong feelings about the federal government. And they already killed two troopers.”

“I know.”

“Better safe than sorry. And the judge is isolated out here. You should be careful. I mean it.”

She nodded and stopped at the foot of her steps. “Okay. I guess I should thank you for walking me home, then.”

“You should, but I’m not sure you will.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say something gracious like ‘Just doing my job, ma’am’?”

“I would, but you didn’t actually thank me yet,” he reminded her.

“I guess I didn’t.” She smiled before she jogged up the porch steps. “Have a nice walk home, Marshal.”

Tom rolled his eyes when she opened her door. “You didn’t lock the door?”

“Oh.” She paused halfway in and winced. “I meant to, but I’m not in the habit.”

Tom shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want to piss you off, but could I take a quick look around before I leave?”

“Is this a ploy to come in for a nightcap?”

“No.”

“Peek at my etchings?”

He kept his mouth flat.

“Find out more about that internet porn?”
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