Three Little Words. Carrie Alexander

and she couldn’t tell if he was teasing. “That I’m a smuggler?”

      Heat shot into her face. Her cheeks must be glowing like a neon bulb. “Pardon?” she croaked, not sure that she wanted the answer. There was no way Connor should know of her nutty mental meanderings. “How…?”

      “I didn’t read your mind,” he said. “You muttered it as I was leaving.”

      “Ohhh.”

      He studied her face, awaiting an explanation. There was a glint in his eye. So he was teasing…but she was still on the spot.

      “You have to admit you looked scruffy and suspect.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really believe you were a smuggler. That was just my…” She slid a finger along the stem of the wineglass. Might as well admit it. “My crazy imagination.”

      “I guess you weren’t completely wrong. According to some, I am disreputable. But not a lawbreaker, I assure you.”

      “Don’t mind me. I make up these stories in my head—” She tilted it. “Nothing to do with you.”

      His lips compressed on a smile. “Stories?”

      “Fancies. Pure silliness. It’s nothing.”

      “And I starred as a smuggler?”

      “It was the lighthouse books,” she explained, amazed she was doing so, but that was the effect he had on her. Her usual caution had come unhinged. “I made up a scenario where you were a bear-organ smuggler looking for a drop point.” She skipped the part about him also being a libidinous ex-professor. “You were meeting a Chinese man at midnight to transfer the illegal cargo.”

      Connor laughed in disbelief. “Tess, you’ve been stuck in that library too long. The fiction has gone to your head.”

      “I know. But it’s a chicken-or-the-egg question. I’ve been exercising a wild imagination for as long as I can remember. So did I immerse myself in books because they fed it or because they created it? You see?” She lifted a shoulder. “It’s a small town. Books and fantasy were always my outlet.”

      He leaned forward. “An outlet would be having your own adventures, wouldn’t it?”

      She threw up a hand. “Oh, no. Don’t give me that load of baloney. Just because I read doesn’t mean I don’t live. I have a full and satisfying life. I am not a pathetic weenie waiting for her real life to begin—”

      “Okay, okay,” Connor said, chuckling.

      She took a breath. “Sorry. I got a little heated.”

      “I understand. I’m a writer—I’ve been treated to the same comments.”

      Then he knew that there was some truth to them, she thought. Not that she didn’t live as thoroughly as the next person—which wasn’t saying much, as the average Alouettian was as content as a cow—but occasionally there was a sense of being an observer more than a doer. She wasn’t dissatisfied, exactly. Maybe expectant. And restless…especially today.

      She looked at Connor as he lifted a pilsner glass of a golden brown ale that matched his eyes. Honestly, he was the most exciting person to walk into her life since the Alouette theater group had hired Geordie Graves to put on The Music Man and the ex-soap opera amnesiac had chosen her to play a lead role.

      Oh, dear. She was a pathetic weenie.

      Connor swallowed as he put down the glass. Around them, the crowded restaurant buzzed with conversation and laughter. To keep from staring at Connor, whose face fascinated her with its secrets and shadows, she let her gaze wander over other tables, the brick walls crowded with historic photos, a waitress passing by with an overflowing tray, hazel eyes with thick black lashes, the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar, a mouth that she wanted to kiss.

      No, what she really wanted to do was ask Connor about his profession and how he had become involved in the Roderick Strange murder case. But he’d already exhibited reluctance, and she didn’t want him to think she was judging him. Even though a part of her was, despite her best intentions.

      She sighed, wishing to be a better person.

      “We’ve established that imagination was my escape,” she said. “What about you?”

      He hesitated at the sound of silverware clinking and voices that rose and fell as if carried by waves. “Me? I was cursed with curiosity.”

      “Cursed?”

      His eyebrows lifted. “Or blessed. At the moment, I’m feeling it was a curse.” He brushed the comment away with a wry smile. “What were you escaping?”

      She blinked. “There’s that curiosity of yours.”

      “I can guess. Your parents.”

      “Sure you can guess. I already gave you a clue, back in Sonny’s room.”

      “Most people don’t call their parents ‘acceptable.’”

      “What can I say? They weren’t ideal, but they weren’t terrible. No abuse or blatant dysfunction.” Did it count as abandonment if you still had your mother?

      “But…?”

      She gave in to his probing. The man was subtle and skilled; she wanted to talk. “Well, my dad was out of the picture.” She flicked a hand as if to shoo her father away even though their contact had been sporadic at best through her growing-up years and practically nil since then. He’d never pushed for a rapprochement in all this time, and she wasn’t willing to put herself forward for another rejection. As far as Tess knew, Tony Bucek had forgotten he even had a daughter.

      “And my mother was barely functional, particularly when I was a child. She had frequent migraines—during her spells, she needed the house to be kept quiet and dark. We lived in the country, with only two neighbors. I was on my own a lot. So I developed an active imagination to keep myself amused.”

      Connor gazed at her for a long, quiet moment. Even the other tables had a lull.

      She thought he might use a platitude. Instead, he asked, “Did you have an imaginary friend?”

      She was so surprised at his whimsy, she blurted, “Rosehip Fumblethumbs,” as the waitress arrived at their table with a basket of bread and plates of salad.

      Connor asked for another beer. “There must be a reason for a name like that.”

      Tess picked the onion out of her salad with the tines of her fork, moving it to the edge of her plate. “If there was, I can’t remember. I was about four.” Her father had left home; her mother was all doom and gloom. Tess had quickly learned to walk on eggshells.

      Four years old and she’d begun to live small.

      “Rosehip Fumblethumbs did everything I wasn’t supposed to. She scratched my mother’s records, she turned up the volume. She tore down the curtains and opened every window and door. She broke things. Bounced on the bed. Yelled out loud.” Tess stopped and laughed at her own reverie.

      Connor dragged a curl of escarole through blue-cheese dressing. “Sounds like a typical kid, if you ask me.”

      “I suppose so. But Rosey did have green hair, orange freckles and fairy wings. She slept outdoors, in a bed of roses. We had tea parties under the porch.”

      “Vivid imaginings for a four year old.”

      Tess tried to remember. “Rosey developed over the years.”

      “Years?”

      “She stayed around until I was at least ten.”

      “That’s a long time. Most imaginary friends have shorter life spans.”

      “You’re an authority, are you?”

      Connor grinned. “You caught me. I’m talking out my ear.”

      “No imaginary