My Only Vice. Elizabeth Bevarly

in Northaven.” He pointed to the investigative report before adding, “And look at this. She doesn’t even have a mortgage on Kabloom. When she bought it two years ago, she paid for it in full, to the tune of a hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars. Cash.”

      “That doesn’t make her a criminal, Ed,” Sam pointed out. But even he was starting to feel a little niggle of suspicion at the back of his brain. What Ed had discovered about Rosie was a little odd.

      “Maybe not,” the other man conceded with clear reluctance. He pointed to the investigative report. “But this sure isn’t the report of a person who has nothing to hide.”

      “Maybe she’s an heiress,” Sam said. Not that he believed it for a minute. The last thing Rosie acted or seemed like was a person from a monied, privileged background. “She never had to work or live anywhere other than with Mommy and Daddy Warbucks, who took care of everything for her.”

      “That still doesn’t explain why she doesn’t have any birth records,” Ed said. “Or why she never turned up anywhere before now.”

      Sam sighed heavily. As much as he hated to admit it, the information in the report, if accurate, certainly roused his curiosity. It was odd that there was no record of Rosie’s existence anywhere prior to her coming to Northaven. But it certainly didn’t mean she was selling drugs. Or that she was committing any crimes, for that matter. There was still enough of the Boston vice cop lingering within him to think that maybe, just maybe, she deserved another look.

      Maybe he should verify the information from WeFindEm.com himself, if for no other reason than to make sure the Web site wasn’t peddling erroneous background checks to people like Ed who might use them to feed their erroneous assumptions. There was a good chance WeFindEm.com had made a mistake in reporting Rosie’s vital statistics. And Rosie deserved to have any misinformation about herself that was floating around out there erased. She was part of what was good and decent in Northaven. She was part of what needed protecting. Sam wouldn’t be doing his job if he just let this thing go as it stood.

      And damned if that wasn’t the finest bit of rationalizing he’d ever concocted for sticking his nose into someplace where it didn’t belong.

      He gazed at Ed levelly as he folded the report in half, then quarters, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “All right, Ed. I’ll look into it. Just promise me that, from here on out, you’ll stay out of it.”

      “Until you need me to coordinate on an investigation,” the other man said.

      Sam nodded reluctantly. “All right.”

      With any luck at all, though, it would never get that far.

      3

      THE MORNING FOLLOWING her sexual encounter of the baguette kind with Sam in Alice’s studio, Rosie was in her not-yet-open flower shop, still thinking about him. In fact, she hadn’t really stopped thinking about him during the past twenty-four hours. He might have drifted from her conscious into her subconscious from time to time—something she’d realized when she sat down to eat her dinner of bagel and Polish sausage, which she’d for sure never fixed for dinner before—but he’d always been present in her brain in some form. And his form was usually naked and sweaty when he’d been present in her brain. And he hadn’t been present in just her brain, but he’d also been present in her heart. And also a couple of other body parts—at least, figuratively speaking—that she’d as soon not dwell on right now.

      She sighed and brushed a hand down the front of her embroidered, dark green peasant shirt and faded blue jeans to dislodge a few remnants of dirt, but mostly all she dislodged was the shirt—over one shoulder, something it had a habit of doing thanks to its deeply scooped neckline. The spilled dirt was another by-product of thoughts about Sam, since being preoccupied was what Rosie had been doing when she pulled a big bag of potting soil off a shelf without realizing it was open—until she’d dumped a good bit of it down the front of her clothes. Pulling her shirttail from her jeans, she shook the rest of the dirt out, not bothering to tuck the garment in again when she was done.

      Oh, hang it. She wouldn’t be opening for another two hours, so she had time to run to her apartment upstairs and change, once she had everything in the store set to go. All that was left to do—other than sweeping up what was left of the dirt—was to brew up and sample a new aphrodisiac tea she had blended for a client.

      And, it went without saying, to think about Sam.

      What was weird was that, as Rosie swept, she found herself thinking about him less in the hot, naked sex sense and more in the quiet, candlelit dinner sense. In fact, she found herself pondering the pros and cons of asking him out. Loaf of French bread aside, there had just been something about the way he’d looked at her in Alice’s studio yesterday that made her think maybe, possibly, he felt steam ballooning around them, too, but was just trying to pretend he didn’t.

      Though why he would pretend something like that if he was feeling the steam was a mystery. Rosie thought she’d made clear her interest in him a long time ago. Why would a man deliberately avoid a woman who was interested in him and capable of putting a loaf of French bread in his pocket? That didn’t make any sense.

      Okay, so that was one con about asking him out—even if he did like her, he still might turn her down on account of that mysterious pretending the steam didn’t exist thing. Pro, however, she was pretty sure he did like her. Con, on the other hand, if he turned her down, things between them might end up being even more awkward than they already were, and it might make for discomfort whenever their paths crossed again. And Northaven being a small town, their paths did cross fairly regularly.

      Another con was that, since gossip was a popular pastime in Northaven, everyone in town would hear about the incident, and then everyone would know Rosie was jonesing for Sam. Not that she’d ever been bothered by gossip, but having it known publicly that she had tried unsuccessfully to enter the dating arena, everyone in town would suddenly want to fix her up with whatever single man they could find. Nephews. Cousins. Plumbers. Accountants. Plumbers’ cousins. Plumbers’ cousins’ nephews. Plumbers’ cousins’ nephews’ accountants.

      In a word, oog.

      Putting aside the cons, since they seemed to be piling up, Rosie considered the pros instead. Pro, if Sam agreed to go out with her, there might be some smokin’ sex at the end of the evening.

      Well, there you go, she thought. Pros win, hands down. Next time she saw Sam, she’d figure out some way to work an invitation to dinner or a movie—or, you know, smokin’ sex—into the conversation.

      When she finished sweeping, Rosie brewed up a batch of her new aphrodisiac tea. For convenience’s sake, she used the teapot in the front of the shop she always kept filled with regular herbal tea for her customers, so that they could help themselves as they browsed or placed their orders. As she waited for the tea to steep, she pushed all thoughts of Sam out of her brain. It was essential that she not be thinking about him when she drank the tea, to ensure it worked the way it was supposed to. Thinking about Sam just naturally turned her on. He was a walking, talking aphrodisiac unto himself.

      After removing the muslin pouch full of herbs from the infusion, Rosie squeezed out the last few drops and set the bag aside. Then she filled one of an assortment of earthenware mugs on the shelf beside the teapot and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply and smiling at the hint of cinnamon she’d added this time to give the added benefit of freshening breath. After blowing gently on the concoction, she took an experimental sip.

      The taste was better than the batch she’d mixed up yesterday, thanks to the cinnamon, and she couldn’t taste the kava kava now at all. But reducing the amount of kava kava might have also weakened the power of the recipe, so she’d doubled up on the damiana this time. Still, she knew she’d have to finish the entire cup and wait anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes before she could be certain of its full effect.

      She was consuming the last swallow when the bell on the front door announced the arrival of a customer, even though the store’s Open-Closed sign was flipped over to the Closed position, and the