I cinch my lips shut a moment. “Then my Uncle Vinnie stepped in to save the questionable day. He thought of my name—part ode to David Bowie, part sheer imagination of his three-year-old granddaughter. He gave me my walking papers, and Bowie Binx is very much alive and well and seated before you. I have the documentation to prove it. He gave me Wanda and strict instructions to get to Canada. Wanda had other plans.”
His chest doubles in size with his next breath as he takes it all in.
His brows meet in the middle. “How do you communicate?”
I think on this a moment. It’s as if I’ve shed my skin before him. Shep knows more intimate details about me than he would have if I had taken off all my clothes.
“Our code word for my safety is meow. Opal and Tilly taught me how to cross-stitch last month, and I made a small pillow with the word on it. Tilly mailed it for me when she went to Canada for the weekend. He doesn’t know where I am, but he knows I’m safe.”
His lips curve into a brief smile. “I’m glad. If you need help mailing anything, I’ll volunteer.”
“And are you also volunteering to turn my life into one of your crime novels? Am I going to pick up the next bestseller by S.J. Wexler and find a character by the name of Zoey Zinx?”
He tips his head back and inspects me from that cocky angle.
“No. But you might find a Laurie Sphinx.”
“Shep.” I swat him with one of the throw pillows from the couch.
“I’m kidding.” He settles his gaze on me once again. “Thank you for sharing all of that with me, Bowie. I appreciate it.”
A thick moment of silence slices by.
Shep is a handsome man, intelligent, just the right amount of cocky to make me pay attention.
How I wish I wasn’t attracted to him.
How I wish things could be different for us in so many ways. But I’m damaged goods. A felon on the run. He shouldn’t be having this conversation with me. Heck, he shouldn’t be having this pizza with me.
We wrap it up and he walks me out.
“Bowie”—he says and I pause before hitting the stairs—“do me a favor, would you?”
“What’s that?” I look up at him while I drink down the body heat radiating from him.
He leans in a notch, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me.
My heart thumps wildly, my adrenaline skyrockets to unsafe levels, and suddenly it feels as if I could pass out.
He inches his lips closer to mine. “If you’re ever about to take off in the night, I don’t want you to leave without saying goodbye.”
I swallow hard and nod. “You bet. Goodnight, Shep.”
“Goodnight, Bowie.”
I head back to my tiny cabin and surf the internet as unchaste thoughts of Shep Wexler filter through my mind. I can’t help it. He’s gorgeous and I’m lonely. It’s too bad he’s bad at math or he’d be here keeping my lips company with his.
I stumble upon one of my sister’s social media sites and see a picture that chills me to the bone. It’s a picture of my father in his orange prison garb holding a sign that reads free Stella Santini. Below that is a link to an article and I click into it, reading at lightning speed and groaning all the while.
“Oh God,” I whimper as I carefully close my laptop.
My father thinks I’ve been kidnapped by what’s left of the Fazio family in retribution for that little wire tap-dance he pulled off.
Worse yet? He believes the Morettis are willing to pay a mighty fine ransom to have their way with my body—my soon-to-be dead body.
And the absolute worst—he’s put a bounty out on me.
My father wants me found alive, and he’s willing to pay a cool million to whoever brings me home safe.
Home where? Prison?
I have to put a stop to this.
I have to speak with my father.
Chapter 7
I forgot to ask Shep about Hilary last night. Specifically about the fact she came sniffing around the café yesterday afternoon and he took off to an undisclosed location with her. Not that it’s any of my beeswax. But let’s be frank—or Bowie, or Stella to be exact—I’ve been known to buzz around a hive or two I had no business sticking my stinger in.
It’s the very next day after the gab session Shep and I had at his place, the café just had its usual breakfast crowd, and now the usual lunch crowd is slowly meandering in. But it’s safe to say I’ve been more than a little distracted. The food or the customers aren’t at the forefront of my mind—it’s Shep.
He’s seated in the back with his laptop and coffee, and I’ve been eyeing him for the last hour straight as if he were about to rob the place—not because he looks suspicious, but because the company he chooses to entertain this afternoon looks suspicious.
Hilary Campbell strutted in like she owned the place in a pale blue dress that looked more like a nightie, and she swung her hips all the way to his table. She’s been jabbering away since the second she landed across from him and hasn’t come up for air yet.
And being the vindictive manager that I am, I’ve given both Thea and Flo strict orders not to tend to that table. All of the unhappy tension in the room belongs to me.
Hilary didn’t even have the decency to reciprocate my quasi-warm greeting when she waltzed in like a woman on an ovarian-based mission. I don’t see why I should make this a comfortable experience for her.
Opal waves at me with the paw of the tiny sweet kitten in her hand, a white tabby with faint gray stripes named Princess.
“What kind of Italian food are you thinking?” She lifts an overdrawn brow my way. Opal is overdrawn in just about every capacity
