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She was no coward, though.
And she did love Carine. She knew damned well that Carine understood that she did, and not just because Heidi had told her.
But Heidi was older and more risk-averse. She didn’t want to be left when Carine decided the water in the fishbowl that she was swimming in was getting too hot.
“Look at me in that stern way all you want,” Carine whispered as the warehouse owner drifted nearby. “You set out the nectar, and now you’re surprised the bee you lured won’t go away.”
“Can I help you find anything, Heidi?” the factory owner asked.
In an instant, Carine put on her beauty queen saleswoman smile and cute nose crinkle and looked at the woman. “Oh, she always knows what she wants. Everybody familiar with Heidi Dowd knows that.” She picked her foot up off the dolly and, bending to put her uncaged cleavage on display, gave Heidi’s fabric bolt a playful fondle. “Hmm. Squeaky. By the way, I still owe you dinner, Heidi. Or dessert, at least. Let me know when to expect you.” She drifted toward the wide-open door.
With her pulse thundering in her skull, Heidi pushed the dolly toward the marine vinyls.
The owner followed. “Was that Ginny Bennett’s daughter?”
Heidi wanted the woman to mind the business that paid her. She also knew the dangers of insulting the only local vendor of marine vinyl. “I believe her mother’s name is Ginny, yes.”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell for sure. Lord, I haven’t seen her since she was around fourteen or fifteen. That was when my son graduated from high school. They went to the same school, you see.”
Heidi scowled at the rack of pearl-tone material, bewildered by the conversation. The little cynic inside her head was waiting for the slight—theoffenseabout Carine’s character.
“She’s the only one in the family with that red hair,” the woman said. “I never could figure out who she got it from. Maybe one of her father’s folks. I don’t know. They weren’t from around here. I always thought it was so pretty.”
“I’ve always thought the same,” Heidi murmured.
“I don’t reckon she’s looking, then.”
“Looking for what?”
“A date, of course. I won’t tell my son I saw her. He’s moving back. Had a crush on her back then, but I guess they all did.”
“No,” Heidi said demurely as she compared the tones in the fabric she’d chosen with the vinyl options. “She’s not looking.”
“I didn’t know she was like that. You know.”
Automatically, Heidi turned. Her false-sweet grin was already fixed on her face, but the woman held her hands in front of her in a gesture of apology and shook her head.
“I don’t mean anything by it. More and more, I’m annoyed with how much I thought I knew about the way things are but really didn’t know much at all. Makes me so angry how uncomfortable I let myself be over things that didn’t affect me one bit.”
Heidi held her expression a few seconds longer because she needed more time to process the fact that the woman was waving a white flag at her. She’d been looking for someone to surrender to and probably surrendered a little more pride every day to shed the old stripes she didn’t want to wear anymore.
“Anyhow.” The woman clapped and let out what seemed to be a cleansing breath. “What do you need vinyl for? That stuff’s all right for diner seats, but I don’t think you’re furnishing a diner, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Heidi said, still bewildered by the unexpected turn of the conversation. “It’s for yacht benches. Exposed ones on the deck. I needed something different from what we usually use.”
“I mean, that’ll work, but it’s not gonna be colorfast out in the elements for more than a year or two. Come this way. I’ve got some stuff in the storage space you can look at. The manufacturer sent it to me by accident and decided it would cost too much to get it back. If you want some, you can have it for free. Lord, just get it out of here. Can’t hardly get back there to clean, and I know we’ve got mice trying to move in. Take it all,please, so the snakes don’t try to move in, too.”
___
“I’m starting to think you put some kind of homing device on me.” Heidi shooed away the encroaching car salesman and kept her focus on the little gray SUV parked at the end of the row.
Kalimah had made a throwaway comment about the vehicle weeks prior.
Heidi had learned that the one on the lot was the only one available within three hundred miles.
Carine snorted and hooked her arm around Heidi’s. “Silly little ditz like me? I’m not that tech-savvy. What are we shopping for, by the way?”
Heidi stopped in her tracks.
