Free The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series) by Julie Smith

Marte.”
    “I hate the Verti Marte.”
    “Royal Street Grocery, then. I don’t care where you order from. You’re a big girl, why don’t you act like it?”
    “Will that be all, Mommy dearest?”
    “‘Torian, that’ll be enough. I’ll be home late.”
    By the time she left to meet Charles, she needed a drink in the worst kind of way. They had a couple of beers at a bar Charles knew, a neighborhood joint that frankly gave Lise the creeps, then they decided to go out to the West End and get some boiled seafood.
    Over dinner, she told him about Wilson.
    “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’m gonna go out to Old Metairie and break both his legs.”
    “Oh, Charles, don’t be silly.”
    “He can’t talk to you that way.”
    She didn’t answer, wondering what the alternative was.
    He upended his beer and stood. “Let’s go. I’ll drop you off, then I’m gon’ go do it.”
    “Charles, you’re such a gentle man. You’re not going to do that.”
    “Bullshit. I’m sick of this crap. I’m gon’ go break his legs--”
    She hated it when he started posing. He would no more break Wilson’s legs than those of his twelve-year-old dog, Buzzy, but let him get a few beers in him and he more or less went crazy.
    “Baby. Could you sit down?”
    “Lise, you keep whinin’ and whinin’ about that sonofabitch, and I’m goddamn sick of hearin’ it. Le’s go!”
    “Hey! You’re making a scene.”
    “I’ll pick you up later,” he said, and started toward the door.
    “What about the bill?” She hated herself. She’d have loved to let him go, pay it herself, and take a taxi home. But she didn’t have the money.
    “Oh, yeah.” He turned around, threw down some bills, and started once again for the door.
    She got up and followed, fuming.
    When they were in the car, he gathered her in a bear hug and stuck his face in hers, nuzzling, breathing beer fumes.
    “Let me go.” She beat on his shoulder blades. “Goddammit, let me go.” She could have killed him.
    He unwrapped her, and she saw that he was laughing. “Had you goin’, didn’t I?”
    She was too astonished to answer.
    He took her chin in his hand. “Baby, I just wanted to get you alone, that’s all. I wouldn’t hurt a fly, you know that.”
    “Why couldn’t you have just said, ‘Lise, baby, I want to be alone with you.’ Wouldn’t that have been more romantic?”
    “Nah. You liked it this way.”
    “I did not, Charles. I assure you I did not.”
    “Oh, listen to Miss Priss.” He spoke in an old-maidish falsetto: “I did not, Charles. I assure you I did not.”
    She turned and stared out the window. “‘Take me home.”
    He grabbed her elbow and turned her toward him, pulling her against his body. He stuck his tongue in her mouth and she opened her lips against his, forgetting everything except the taste of him, the gentle velvet of his mouth.
    When he finally started the car, she kept a hand on his thigh, cursing bucket seats, wishing she could lean her body against his.
    She thought they were driving to his house, but he stopped at the same bar she hadn’t liked in the first place. “What are we doing?”
    “Let’s have a nightcap.”
    “I have to get home, Charles. I have a kid, remember?”
    “Come on, just one.”
    He ordered a Rusty Nail, and so, more or less in self- defense, did she. Then he ordered another.
    “Charles, come on. I’ve got to go home.”
    He said, “God, you’re beautiful,” and leaned toward her. They kissed in the bar, unmindful of who saw, and then they had another Rusty Nail.
    Finally, he took her home, it being far too late to go to his house by then, and she thought she heard noise from Torian’s room.
    “‘Torian? What are you doing?”
    “Just talking. Sheila’s sleeping over.”
    Lise opened the door. Sheila was on the floor in a sleeping bag, candles burned on Torian’s dresser, and the room reeked of cigarette smoke.
    “You’ve been smoking again.”
    She crossed to the window