Sugar and Spite Read Online Free Page A

going to listen to him bellyache for two long, miserable years like he did when you left him before. If I have to pick up the pieces of Dirk, Miss Priss Pot, somebody’s going to have to pick up pieces of you. You got that?”
    Polly didn’t answer. But Savannah could tell by the wide-ness of her spider eyes and the way her too-lipsticked mouth was hanging open that she had heard and believed… at least a little.
    Savannah left the trailer, slamming the door behind her, and nearly ran, chest first, into Dirk.
    “My cell phone isn’t in your car,” he said, his nose inches from hers, his voice as low and ominous as hers had been a moment before. “But then, neither one of us really expected it to be, right, Van?”
    Savannah reached into her left jacket pocket and took out his phone; hers was still in her right. “Oh, silly me,” she said. “Here it is. I guess I remembered to bring it in with me after all.”
    When she handed it to him, he looked puzzled and apologetic enough to make her feel a little guilty. “Oh, you really… oh, thanks, Van.”
    “No problem. Watch yourself, buddy, with that gal.” She nodded toward the trailer. “Remember last time?”
    “Yeah, I remember. But it ain’t like that this time. She just wants me to help her, to take care of somethin’ for her.”
    “That’s all she’s ever wanted, Dirk, from anyone. She’s a leech. That’s the problem.”
    “Naw. I can take care of it. Don’t worry.”
    Don’t
worry, yeah, sure
, she thought as she left him, got in her Camaro, and drove away. Dirk wasn’t stupid—not by a long shot. But he had a blind spot where women were concerned… especially women he loved.
    Why else would he buy a stupid story about a cell phone?
    Savannah had no idea what line of bull Polly was going to try to sell him, but she was pretty sure he’d buy it, too.
     
    * * *
     
    Savannah felt a lot older than her forty-plus-a-few years as she walked from her driveway up the walk to her house. The place needed a lot of work. The white stucco could use a coat of paint. Some of the red Spanish tiles were crumbling on the roof. And the bougainvillea—affectionately named Bogey—that had once graced the front porch was a tangled, red-and-green jungle. The mess definitely needed to be hacked back. At one time a pair of ladies’ garden shears would have done the job. Now a macho machete would be required.
    And she wasn’t in the mood for home improvement.
    Or catching wanna-be-Nazi adolescents.
    Or playing the role of codependent rescuer to a guy whose main problem in relationships was that he was a codependent rescuer.
    She was in the mood for a hot bubble bath, a hot chocolate topped with mounds of whipped cream, and a hot, steamy romance novel… with a subplot involving mounds covered with whipped cream.
    As she walked through the door, her two cats—pampered, four-legged children wearing glossy black fur and rhinestone-studded collars—wrapped themselves affectionately around her ankles. “Cleopatra, Diamante,” she cooed to them as she stroked the ebony fur and was rewarded with motorboat purrs.
    “Anybody home?” she called as she tossed her purse and keys onto the piecrust table in the foyer and kicked off her loafers. “Tammy, are you still here?”
    “In the office,” came the reply from what had once been Savannah’s sunporch, before she had been kicked off the police force, before she had formed the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency… back when she had been gainfully employed and could afford cheese with her macaroni and cheese dinners. Ah, those were the days.
    Savannah entered the room just in time to see Tammy whip a pair of reading glasses off her face and into the desk drawer. She stifled a giggle as she watched her assistant squirm a bit in her chair, squinting at the computer monitor in front of her.
    “Screen fuzzy again?” Savannah asked, unable to resist.
    “Yeah… kinda.” Tammy donned her most officious, computer-expert