Page 103

Epilogue

Toni took a figure off the shelf above her. Water Girl, the tag said. The porcelain woman’s bare breasts were certainly the first thing most would notice, but Toni couldn’t help looking at the jugs of water she carried. She looked so sad. Were the jugs heavy? Did they symbolize the burdens she carried through life?

The door’s bell prompted her to put the figurine back on the shelf. She was just about to turn toward the register when two hands slipped around her, cupping her breasts.

“They remind me of yours,” Lawrence said. “Perfectly formed to fill my hands—”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what they were formed to do.”

In answer, he slipped one hand down the front of her shirt, right inside her bra. A hardened nipple below his thumb betrayed her. “You can’t—”

“Oh,” he whispered, moving her hair to the side, “but I can.”

Knowing how much she loved when he grazed his fangs against her skin, he did that now as if to prove his point. Working with him was going to be impossible. She had agreed to stay at the shop for as long as it took for Birdie and Uncle Jim to find a suitable replacement. Until then, Lawrence had vowed to spend every free minute here in the shop, distracting her.

“Someone could come. Birdie could—”

“That’s what the bell is for.”

He massaged and taunted her, kissing her neck and bringing her to the edge almost instantaneously.

“Lawrence . . .”

“Mmmm. Toni . . .”

The bell jingled then, an abrupt end to an interlude that had barely begun.

She turned as a customer passed behind them.

“Good morning,” Toni called out, now face-to-face with her vampire boyfriend.

“Good morning,” he said, his brief kiss barely enough.

“I wasn’t talking to—”

His kiss silenced her.

“We’ll never get anything done working together,” she warned.

Sometimes she thought she could see the faintest traces of a dimple when he smiled. “Good.”

Shaking her head, she turned back toward the figurine. “I don’t even remember this one,” she said. “There are so many things in here I’ve never seen. Every nook and cranny is filled with one oddity or another.

“What are you thinking?”

She studied Lawrence’s face. “What if that journal is somewhere in here?”

He picked up the figurine. “Perhaps. There are certainly enough trinkets that it could be hidden.” He turned the Water Girl around in his hands. “But I do think we’d have found it by now after turning the place upside down. Twice. Unless there’s a new place to look.”

“I asked Birdie that very question this morning.”

“And what did she say?”

Toni lowered her voice on account of the customer. “She congratulated me again on the new venture and said, ‘Even if Lawrence is a vampire, I do like him.’”

“Good to hear.” He put the figurine back on the shelf. “But what did she say about the journal?”

“Oh, right. She said we’ve looked everywhere already.”