John could not have agreed more. He slipped his fingers around one of Molly’s bare arms (how could her skin be so satiny?) and said, “Yes, that’s probably a good idea.”
“Oh,” Molly murmured weakly. “No, it’s fine. I’m all right—”
“You’re not all right, honey.” Meschelle Davies, whose articles in The Gazette rarely treated law enforcement fairly, gave the librarian a little push. “You go on with the sheriff. You look a little flushed.”
“Oh, well,” Molly said. “Okay, then, I guess.”
John swore he would never grouse about his treatment in one of Ms. Davies’s articles again.
The librarian allowed him to lead her along the beach path back to the hotel’s open-air dining room, with its tropical plantation décor and large, gently swinging ceiling fans. She held her high-heeled shoes and sparkling evening bag in her hands, and seemed much less chatty than at any other time he’d ever encountered her. She must, he told himself, truly be dehydrated. This happened often to those who were new to the Florida Keys. A combination of the heat and humidity, coupled with alcohol consumption, occasionally caused them to become ill. It was a very good thing he’d come along and rescued her.
Her silence, however, lasted only until they reached a booth inside the hotel restaurant and he guided her onto its soft black leather, then slid in beside her and ordered two large ice waters from a conscientious server. That’s when she lifted her face and asked, her dark eyes seemingly even larger than ever in the mysterious flame of the hurricane lamp on their tabletop, “Did you really mean what you said out there? You’re going to donate all that money you won to the baby?”
“Well, of course,” he said, surprised that she’d doubt him. “And to her mother, as well. I’d make a pretty sorry public officer if I said it in front of all those people and didn’t mean it.”
“It’s just . . .” She drew a circle in the condensation on the side of the water glass that had been placed in front of her. “I thought you were going to arrest her. The baby’s mother, I mean. You said the other day—”
John stirred uncomfortably in his seat, remembering their initial meeting, when he’d sat in that tiny chair beside her desk. “I know. And it’s still a criminal offense to abandon a newborn, unless it’s in a state-appointed safe haven. But my investigation so far has given me reason to believe that the mother of Baby Aphrodite was probably not the person who did the actual abandoning—”
“I knew it!” Molly leaned forward to wrap her ruby red lips around the paper straw inside her water glass. Damned if he couldn’t stop thinking about other things he’d like to see those red lips wrapped around. What was wrong with him? He was an elected official and here he was, with a member of the public—a librarian, no less!—and all he could think about was sex. “The leader of the Sunshine Kids, right? Dylan Dakota? Fingerprint analysis proved it?”
All thoughts of those red lips around any body part of his evaporated. John felt a not-unfamiliar spurt of irritation. Dylan Dakota? How on earth did she know about him? What was it with this woman? Librarian or not, had she been faking dehydration the entire time?
Because suddenly she looked not only perfectly alert, even cool, in what should have been a very romantic setting, but extremely curious, even feline. Dylan Dakota? How was he ever going to make love to this woman if all she ever wanted to talk about was his mortal enemy?
Not that he wanted to make love to her! Not at all. Because he was a professional and so was she and they were at a professional function and he was in uniform and he’d just rescued her (maybe) and he’d given up on romantic relationships because they never worked out.
Or had he?
But damn! Suddenly she did not seem at all flustered or faint. She seemed to be in perfect possession of her faculties.
“I mean, this Dylan Dakota person sounds like a very bad guy,” she said, in a deceptively innocent tone, after swallowing some more water.
Deceptively innocent to some people. But not to Sheriff John Hartwell.
“Are you even dehydrated?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Molly said. “Why? Do I not seem dehydrated to you?”
“No.”
She shrugged, her smooth bare shoulders luminous in the candlelight. “I don’t think I am, either. But you know what I do think?”
This, he said to himself, is a very dangerous conversation. “What?”
“I think you’re an excellent cornhole player.”
John frowned. “Now you’re only sucking up to me, probably because you want to hear more inside information about the case, which I can assure you I am not going to give you.” She removed her lips from the straw to make a soft noise of indignant protest, which a part of him found incredibly sexy, but another part of him worried was only an act to gain more information. “Where did you even hear that stuff about Dylan Dakota? Wait, let me guess. Meschelle Davies.”
She had the grace to look affronted. “I’m sorry, but did you miss the fact that I am a librarian? I have access to a vast network of resources. Vast. But I feel that as the person who found Baby Aphrodite and saved her life, I have the right to know everything involving her case.”
“You do not,” he said irritably, aware that he felt irritable only because she looked extremely attractive in the candlelight, and was also morally, although not legally, correct, “You do not.”
“I do. How are your dance lessons going?”
“What?”
“Dance lessons. With Katie, your daughter?”
Belatedly, he remembered another demoralizing moment in their relationship, which so far seemed to consist of almost nothing but demoralizing moments.
“Not so great,” he said. “It turns out I only need to know a very specific dance for the performance. A very specific dance that goes to a very specific song by a very specific performer you might have heard of—Beyoncé?”
Molly’s red lips pressed inward, as if she was trying to keep herself from smiling. “I’ve heard of her. What very specific song of hers are you dancing to?”
“‘Single Ladies.’” He tried not to show how uncomfortable the dance made him, although he enjoyed the song. “I’d never heard of it.”
Molly’s lips curled into a smile. “You’re not exactly the target demographic. Do you want me to help you learn it?”
He was surprised. “You know the dance to ‘Single Ladies’?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had people ask me to teach them in my capacity as a librarian. The ‘Single Ladies’ dance is the least of it. Come here.”
The next thing he knew, she’d slid from the booth and taken hold of both his hands. Then she was gently pulling him from his own seat and toward the center of the room. He let her, because the feel of her skin on his was so magical, and also because there was no one else in the room except a few servers, and they were paying no attention to the librarian teaching the bumble-footed sheriff to dance. They were bustling around, putting glassware away. All of the party guests were outside on the now night-darkened beach, drinking and laughing in the red-orange glow of the tiki torches.
“Stand up tall like this,” Molly commanded, and put her hands on his shoulders to straighten them. When she stood close to him, he could smell the fresh flowery shampoo she used on her shiny dark hair, and something else—something fruity. It took him a minute to recognize it. It was the key lime–coconut signature scent the Lazy Parrot inn housekeepers sprayed everywhere. It must have sunk deep into all of Molly Montgomery’s belongings by now.
He’d never smelled anything as intoxicating.
“Now put your feet about shoulders’ width apart,” she said, inserting her foot, still bare, between his feet and giving them both a dainty little kick until he widened his stance. “That’s it. Now put this hand on your hip—no, this hand—”
He did as she asked, looking down at her bent head, her narrow brows furrowed with concentration, and wondered how they ever could have argued when she was so adorable.
“Perfect. Now put your other hand in the air, like this—” She manipulated his left arm so it bent at the elbow. “Remember when you sang ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ with Katie? You two sang that together, right?”
“I did.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Well, your arm should look a little like that.”
She stepped back to observe her handiwork, and John didn’t even care how ridiculous he might appear to whoever might happen to come strolling in from the beach. Randy Jamison or even Pete could walk by and laugh all they wanted. John had Molly Montgomery all to himself, and right now, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more.
“Good,” she said, after giving him a critical once over. “That looks good. Though it might help if you could maybe . . . loosen up a little.”
“Loosen up?” He glanced down at himself. He felt plenty loose. “How do you mean?”
“Well, you just look kind of . . . tight. The whole point of this dance is to have fun, and you look like you’re on the way to the guillotine.”