Sweet Talkin' Guy. Colleen Collins

to be impulsive again, to jump into life and experience it fully before society’s rules, her family’s expectations and G.D.’s “constructive criticism” stifled every such whim.

      Daphne tapped her glass against his drink. “To not judging books by their covers.”

      “BELLE’S ROOM,” Daphne said, reading the brass plaque on the door of the second-floor room at the inn. “And what is this saying underneath? ‘Never fold a good hand’?”

      Andy swiped his card in the lock. The room hadn’t been ready when he’d checked in, so he hadn’t seen it yet. He hoped all that frilly, lacy, bleeding-heart crap was confined to that historical parlor downstairs. Otherwise, a guy could OD on froufrou if he stayed here too long.

      “This room is named after Belle Bulette,” he said, “one of the ladies of the evening who worked here from around 1891 until that fatal gas leak in 1895—the one that took all the shady ladies’ lives.”

      “All of them?”

      “Even a judge, they say, who’d been having a late-night drink with the madam.”

      With a click, the door opened. “Besides being a working girl, Belle was also a sharpshooter and gambler. She took men’s money both at the gambling tables and in the bedroom.” Andy gestured for Daphne to enter.

      “Enterprising woman,” Daphne murmured, stepping inside. She stopped abruptly. “Oh, excuse us!”

      “What?” Andy looked over Daphne’s shoulder.

      She paused, then gestured toward the smoky mirror that covered the wall behind the brass four-poster bed. “I could have sworn I saw the reflection of…” Her voice trailed off as she shifted her gaze to the bay window seat across the room.

      “What is it?”

      “A woman,” Daphne whispered. A chill washed over her. “Sitting on that ledge, taking a sip from a flask.”

      Late-afternoon light filtered through the gauzy curtains on the bay windows. Andy glanced back at the mirror. Thanks to its hazy tint and the minimal light in the room, his and Daphne’s features were indecipherable. All he could really see was the color of their hair. Hers, dark, almost black in this muted light. His, red. Reminded him of what his granddad had always said before a game of checkers. Smoke before fire.

      Daphne glanced at Andy. “She seemed so real…then nothing…”

      “There’s hardly any light,” Andy said, searching the wall. “Easy to imagine things.” He flicked a switch. An overhead electric chandelier came to life, infusing the room with a bright glow. He looked around. The brass bed was big, and he didn’t know if he’d ever seen a chandelier in a bedroom, but everything else was sedate, tasteful. Didn’t smack of froufrou. A guy could breathe in this room, relax.

      “Except I’m not one to imagine things,” Daphne murmured. “I pretty much call it as I see it.” She frowned. “You’re not going to smoke in here, are you?”

      He held a pack of cigarettes he’d just extracted from his pullover pocket. “Uh, let me think about it.” He looked briefly up, then back down. “Yes.” He popped the filter-tip into his mouth.

      “There’s a No Smoking sign downstairs.”

      “Good place for it.” He struck a match and drew it to the tip of his cigarette. The scent of sulfur stung the air.

      Daphne snatched the cigarette from his lips. “No.”

      He shook out the match. “Hey, who invited whom to this room?”

      “You want me to turn you in? Keep the room for myself?”

      He gave a double take. “You can’t do that—”

      “Watch me.”

      He was watching all right. Watching that dare-me glint in her eyes. The imperial tilt of her chin.

      The lady was a handful.

      Fortunately, he knew how to handle handfuls.

      “Sure,” he said, ambling over to the love seat—looks like he called that one. Hopefully, the aspirin was close by. “Go ahead and report me. I’ll say you broke in and tried to steal my room. After that little gimme-a-room-or-else routine you pulled at the front desk earlier, I have a feeling they’ll buy my story over yours in, oh, the space of a heartbeat?” He sat down and stretched out his legs.

      She watched him through slitted eyes. “You wouldn’t say that.”

      “You watch me.” He stroked his fingers over plush velvet. “I believe the cops call it breaking and entering. The news of your alleged crime would be on the Internet faster than a giga-minute. Reporters would be flocking here like adrenaline-crazed swallows to Capistrano.”

      “Aren’t you taking this a bit too far? Adrenaline-crazed birds, good grief.” With a sanctimonious sigh, she lobbed the cigarette back to him. “Go ahead, die of lung cancer.”

      “Cheery sort, aren’t you?” Eyeing a wicker trash can, he dunked the cig in one smooth toss. “But I’ll spare you the secondhand smoke. Believe it or not, I can be a gentleman.”