Free Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead Page B

off to one side, his body twisting in its unimaginative sheath of polo shirt and salmon-colored pants. His feet, trying to flee, had run afoul of the tree roots, and he had stumbled badly, catching a trunk with both hands. She knew from long experience that taking jokes was not Winn’s strong suit, but still she was unprepared for the intensity of the response that crossed his face: first a very brief flash of something odd, like fear but also like despair, and then, once he had steadied himself, pure rage.
    “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
    “Come on, Winnifred, just a little prank. You didn’t die.”
    He examined the palm of his left hand and held it out for her to see. It was pink and scratched. Tiny white curls of skin stood up like grated cheese. “This is the last thing I need.”
    “Good thing you’re not a lefty.” Earlier, Celeste had sensed she was getting too far ahead of the game and had come out for a walk to sober up. She was glad, too, because now she could be confident she wasn’t slurring her words.
    His face resolved into a grim smile. “How much have you had to drink?”
    “Just the right amount,” she said. She hoped the medically smoothed forehead she wore like a helmet would keep her from betraying the sting of his question. “What are you doing out here, skulking around?”
    “I wasn’t skulking . You’re not the only one who can take a walk. It is my property, after all.”
    His discomfort intrigued her. Instinct, honed by years of field experience, had rendered her unable to resist sniffing along a trail of male bad behavior once she caught the scent, and she studied him, increasingly certain that, underneath his bluster, something was off. Winn scowled, backed up against his tree. What had he been looking at in the first place? He moved to block her view, but she leaned around him and caught sight of the girls out in their bathing suits, soaking up the last of the sun like three mismatched lizards. “Enjoying the view, Winnifred?” she said lightly. There were worse things than being a Peeping Tom.
    He gritted his teeth. “I was taking a walk. I heard a noise, and I went to see what it was. I was about to go up and say hello to the girls when you decided to give me a heart attack. I didn’t realize you were taking a break between cocktail hours to sneak around.”
    “No need to get huffy with me , 007,” she said. He would never dare pick on her drinking with Biddy around, but as they faced each other out in the trees, his dignity ruptured and his adrenaline still running high, they were caught up in a primal energy. She thought he was equally likely to strike her or kiss her. He had kissed her once before, supposedly by accident, and he was attractive in his way, in good shape for his age and with a symmetrical, serious, news anchor sort of face and nice gray temples. But then again she had a thing for repressed men (hello, husbands one, two, and four), and she had a thing for men just starting to go gray (three and four), and she had a thing for forbidden men (three, oh lord, three), and, truth be told, she flirted with Winn sometimes for no more substantial reason than that she liked to keep things lively. She had stolen husband number three in the first place—he had been a charismatic trial lawyer, married, and the authoritarian, despised, partnership-withholding boss ofhusband number two—and then that little tramp, that child with the long, long legs and the horse face, her best friend’s daughter, had gone and stolen him, and off they’d flown to Bolivia.
    But Winn was such a square. That was why he and Biddy worked. Ogling through the pine trees was probably the great sin of his life. “I wasn’t sneaking,” she said. “I was walking, just like you.” She attempted a saucy smirk, feeling a curious deadness in the parts of her face that had been injected into submission. “So, which is it?” she asked.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Is it