Free Killer Gourmet by G.A. McKevett Page B

special leather conditioner.”
    â€œYou fuss more with this car than you do your hair.”
    â€œYou’re darned right I do. And that’s why, until you get another car, I’m driving and you’re riding shotgun.”
    His mood sank, if possible, even lower. His pouty lower lip protruded a bit farther. “They crunched my Buick. Flat as one of your grandma’s pancakes.”
    â€œI know, sugar.”
    â€œThey killed it.”
    â€œAfter that wreck, it was already dead. They were just putting it out of its misery.”
    â€œI miss that car. I had a lot of good times in that car.”
    â€œYou ate a lot of junk food in that car. I think every taco wrapper and empty French fry bag was still on the back floorboard when we wrecked it.”
    â€œI’m never going to find a car as cool as that one was.”
    â€œYou have to at least try. Sooner or later, you’ll have to put a period to the end of your grief and move on. You’ll have to risk your heart and learn to love again.”
    He turned to her and gave her a long, searching look. “You’re messing with me, right?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    He snorted. “Well, that’s nice. I’m heartbroken and my wife laughs at me. And worse yet, she won’t even let me drive her car.”
    â€œThat’s right. She won’t. She saw what you did to yours. Let’s face it, kiddo—one of these days you’re going to actually have to break down and go car shopping. You know, spend money. Your least favorite activity.”
    â€œOh, just hush and drive.”
    â€œI can’t. Your poutiness is distracting me. Every time we go someplace—”
    â€œâ€”and you drive . . .”
    â€œYes, and I drive, you sit over there with a sour puss on, radiating your disapproval. Being the codependent, fix-everything-for-everybody sucker that I am, I can’t concentrate on my driving. So cheer up before I wreck this car, too.”
    She was surprised to hear him chuckle under his breath.
    â€œWe’d have to break out the bicycles,” he said.
    â€œYeah, right. Like that’s gonna happen.”
    At least she had put a smile on his face for a moment. Her job was done. Her destiny fulfilled. All was right with the world.
    And she had gotten off cheap. Usually, the arduous chore of lifting Dirk from the doldrums required food. And if he was in a particularly foul mood, the food had to be free. Now that they were married, and he contributed to her weekly grocery budget, it was much harder to use that as a ploy. Her food was now his food, and therefore no longer free.
    But then, as a wife, she now possessed an even more potent weapon in her arsenal.
    Sex.
    And since he was quite good at it, she didn’t exactly mind having to resort to such underhanded tactics. “Manipulation” had its advantages.
    All in all, with this new marriage contract in place, things had taken a definite turn for the better. While attempting to cheer him up, she frequently found herself feeling pretty chipper, when all was said and done.
    As she guided the red pony around the curving road that skirted San Carmelita’s gently rolling foothills, Savannah briefly found herself distracted once again by the view. To her right rose the brown, dusty, rain-starved cliffs, where only the most drought-resistant, native plants survived. Sagebrush, prickly pear cactus, and a few varieties of stalwart daisies and poppies clung to life there on those rocky slopes.
    But to her left was the town—her town—her home for many years now. White stucco houses gleamed in the late-morning sun, picturesque with their clay, Spanish tile roofs and graceful drapings of crimson bougainvillea. Statuesque palm trees bent gracefully to the onshore flow of ocean breezes, their glimmering fronds rustling like a Polynesian dancer’s grass skirt in the gentle wind.
    In the distance lay the Pacific Ocean in all its