Read Online Sandra Hill - [Creole] by Sweeter Savage Love - Free Book Online Page B

At least she thought they had till Cain added with mock sympathy, “I don’t think you look like a bird. Leastways, not much. Except perhaps a rooster.”
    “I’ll show her a bird when I get her alone,” Etienne promised, his eyes blazing blue fire at her.
    “What did God get when he crossed a dumb man with a rooster?”
    “Aaarrgh!” Cain and Etienne both exclaimed.
    “A really dumb rooster.”
    “Do you really think she’s working with Pope?” Cain asked Etienne then as they gathered the rest of their belongings. “I mean, she is really strange.”
    “If you think I’m strange, you ought to see how you all look from my viewpoint.”
    “Probably.” Etienne shrugged, disregarding her cynical statement. “The Secret Service uses female spies all the time, as you well know.”
    Secret Service? A spy? Okay, this has gone far enough . “Why won’t you listen to me, you lunkhead? I’m a psychologist, not a bloomin’ spy.”
    “She says she’s a doctor…a mind doctor,” Etienne told Cain scornfully. “You two should have a lot in common, both being doctors and all. Maybe she’ll let you examine her…tongue.”
    “Really?” A slack-jawed Cain addressed her. “You’re a doctor?”
    “You’re a doctor?” Harriet echoed in amazement, then added before she had a chance to think, “What are you doing with him ?”
    “He’s my best friend,” Cain said simply. “More important, what are you doing with him?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    “Don’t you remember, honey?” Etienne recalled with an obnoxious snicker. “We’re soul mates.”
    Harriet’s face heated with embarrassment. She’d been hoping he’d forgotten her words. “I take it back.”
    “You can’t take it back,” he argued childishly.
    “Yes, I can. A woman has the right to change her mind.”
    “In less than an hour?”
    “Tsk-tsk!” Cain contributed. “Will you stop? You remind me of Dreadful and Bob when they used to go at each other.”
    “Who are Dreadful and Bob?” she asked.
    “Childhood pets. A dog the size of a horse and a three-legged chicken,” Etienne told her. Then he shook his head from side to side as if he couldn’t believe he’d actually felt the need to answer her question. “You’re right, Cain. I’m wasting time. Now go get a linen sheet from the conductor. Or better yet, see if you can filch one from the linen storage area, without anyone seeing you.”
    “A sheet? Why?” Cain’s wide brow furrowed with puzzlement.
    “A shroud,” Etienne announced brightly. “For the corpse.”
    He and Cain turned as one to look at her.
    “Me?” she squeaked out.
    Etienne pulled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles out of his jacket pocket and put them on. He beamed at her, the picture of an adorable geek.
    “You know what the good thing is about men who wear glasses?” she blurted out. Harriet knew her jokes were ill-timed and inappropriate for the circumstances, but her life was falling apart, and she feared she might cry if she didn’t laugh.
    Etienne and Cain tilted their heads in question.
    “When they take them off, you know they mean business.”
    Cain frowned with confusion, but Harriet knew the moment Etienne understood her flip remark. His eyes turned a smoldering shade of dark blue.
    And Harriet wondered what he’d look like when he turned to a woman and took off his glasses, intent on business .
    Immediately composing himself, Etienne then posed next to Cain. The black man slouched his shoulders a bit in a subservient posture, gazing at Etienne, but never making direct eye contact, as if Etienne were the master, and Cain a mere slave.
    “Well, Dr. Ginny? What do you think?” Etienne inquired, a rascally glimmer in his somber eyes.
    “I think Dumb and Dumber just got even dumber.”
    He wagged an admonishing finger at her. “Madam, let me introduce myself. I am Hiram M. Frogash, mortician. And this is my mortuary assistant, Hippocrates Jones.”
    “Gawd!”
    “Our speciality is”—he