Free A Touch of Gold by Joyce Lavene, Jim Page A

the missing cask.
    “I appreciated all your help yesterday. I’m sorry about what happened when Shayla got there,” I blurted out. “It’s not that I didn’t want you to stay. But you and Shayla in the same room—”
    “Yeah. I know.” He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “I take it she wasn’t looking for anything?”
    “She didn’t say.”
    He stopped walking as we reached the Duck Shoppes parking lot. “Just there for girl talk?”
    “Yeah, I guess.” I scuffed the toe of my sneaker on the sandy pavement. “She wanted to examine my chakra.” Was he pumping me for information about her?
    He nodded. “I understand. Shayla is Shayla. No one is quite like her. She’s a force of nature.”
    “Yeah.” Now I felt lame for saying anything. “Well, I should go. Where are you headed?”
    “I actually have some business at town hall. Something about a new permit that restaurants need.” He looked away as a school bus passed us. “So, how about tonight? No chakras. We’ll see if we can find the wine and drink some of it. What do you think?”
    With thousands of tiny zings of pleasure racing through me, I answered, “Sure. What time?”
     
     
    I danced up the stairs to the town hall with him, hoping I wasn’t talking too much and wondering why what I felt for him made me feel like such a kid. A thirty-six-year-old kid, I reminded myself, sobering as we reached the town clerk’s office.
    Nancy Boidyn, Duck’s town clerk, looked up from her typing and gave a little screech before she leapt to her feet and hugged me. “Dae! It’s so good to see you! Oh my God, I’ve been so worried since I heard what happened. I couldn’t believe it. You were so lucky that you weren’t hurt any worse.”
    I hugged her back. Kevin kind of wandered away to look out the window at the Currituck Sound that flanked the boardwalk.
    “Do you need anything? Should you be working?” Nancy fluttered around me with compassion. “Sit down. You probably shouldn’t be on your feet.”
    “I’m fine, really. I’m going to check some email while you help Kevin with his permit. Is there coffee?”
    Nancy fussed and put coffee in my seashell-shaped cup. She made coffee for Kevin too. I closed the door to my office and leaned against it as they started talking about filling out his permit.
    Was I reading too much into Kevin asking me to dinner by myself? He’d invited me to dinner and asked for my help looking for the wine again, but did that make it a romantic overture? I’d had dinner at the Blue Whale a dozen times since it opened.
    But not alone with him.
    That was true, although I felt silly even thinking it. Usually there was a crowd of us when we had dinner at the inn because Kevin wanted to try out some new dessert or sauce. He loved to cook.
    I need something new to wear.
    Okay. Maybe I didn’t need something new to wear, but I wanted something new. Was there anything wrong with hoping he might see me as a force of nature someday as he did Shayla?
    It might take a new dress and shoes, and maybe something different with my hair. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have him look at me in a new light.
    I had hundreds of emails, of course. Most of them were well-wishers hoping I was recovering. Some were trash that I deleted. Some, like the one for the mayor’s conference we would be hosting in Duck right after the first of the year, had to be answered.
    I could hear Kevin talking to Nancy at first. Then it grew quiet in the outer office. He probably had finished up and left. The knock on the door startled me, and my finger slipped over a key, causing T’s to go running across the page.
    “See you later,” Kevin said with a smile. “I hope we can get those gloves off of you tonight.”
    I swallowed hard and nodded. “See you later.”
    Nancy’s face replaced his at the door, but all I could hear was his voice saying he wanted to get my gloves off. There was something sexy in the way he said it.
    “. . .