Pink Neon Dreams Read Online Free

from her bright red
sports car.   When she sidled into the
store, he followed at a discreet distance.
    Trained
to spot detail, well-schooled in the art of building a profile about a person
from their habits, Daniel found her tastes eclectic but pleasing.   Cecily moved with confidence through the
crowded aisles.   She selected a loaf of
crusty French bread in the bakery, a bag of salad in the produce department,
and a bag of frozen salmon fillets from the freezers.   Then she doubled back to choose a lemon.   He noticed she didn’t grab the first one,
either.   Cecily picked up several,
squeezed them and rejected them.   He counted
six before she put one in her cart, without a bag.   He pursued her to the spice and seasoning
aisles where she bought lemon pepper, Cajun blend, and a lower sodium salt
product.   In the dairy aisle, she bought
real butter, a half-gallon of low fat milk, and a package of cheesecake dessert
topped with strawberries.  
    On
the way to the front, she moved with slow deliberation.   More than once she paused to check a display
of something and in the liquor area she chose a bottle of a good, sweet red
wine.   Daniel expected her to head for
the checkouts, but she crossed the width of the store to pick out shampoo and
Moon Petal Musk bath salts.   As she bent
over to place the items in her cart, her ass lifted up and Daniel’s dick
noticed.   Focus, man, she’s under investigation and you’re the man on the
case.   Don’t get involved.   But he knew he had, right or wrong.   The woman intrigued him in a way she
shouldn’t.   Every professional bone in
his body screamed a warning, told him to pull back, but the man within couldn’t
look away, a classic moth drawn to her flame.
    I bet she’s got some city dude
holed up wherever she lives, probably someone who helped her with the
crime.   And damn me, I gotta know the
truth, one way or another. If she’s guilty, I’ll see she’s convicted and if
she’s innocent, God help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.   But I’d like to find out.
    Daniel
Padilla, the one the other agents called ‘the Glacier’, sensed a thaw in his
protective shield, a crack in the layers he’d covered his emotions and heart in.   And without remorse, he followed Cecily home.
     

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Saturday
morning dawned bright and clear.   Cecily
rose early to prepare for her grand opening.   To boost her confidence and calm her agitated nerves, she power dressed
in black designer jeans with a sleeveless pink Issey Miyake blouse.   The pleated deep rose top suited her dusky
coloring well and Cecily applied a lipstick she’d found in the same shade.   She spritzed a heavy dose of Calvin Klein’s
Eternity, enough to envelope her in a cloud of fragrance. She grabbed her keys
and headed out to the car, drove through the first fast food place she saw for
coffee and a sausage biscuit, and then drove on to Pink Neon.
    Although
she’d bought some radio ads, paid for a few television ads with the Springfield
stations, and placed a notice in both the local newspaper and the weekly
shopper, Cecily worried no one would come.   After careful consideration she’d decided not to have a ribbon cutting
or serve refreshments.   Both seemed too
overdone.   Instead, she planned to give
each of the first one hundred customers a small piggy bank, pink with gray
splotches, as a gift.   She also had ordered
business cards to hand out and would offer a drawing for a $100 gift
certificate. Otherwise, it would be a standard business day—if any buyers
showed up.
    She
nibbled the biscuit and sipped coffee.   Then she walked around the shop, making sure everything was in
place.   Cecily stowed her purse under the
counter and put a scented candle on the candle warmer.    As the sweet rose fragrance wafted through
the space, she turned the open sign to face outward and made sure the door
remained unlocked.   At seven forty-five,
Pink Neon was open.   All