Lavender's Blue by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer PRE ORDER now live

Liz Danger: Two

When we pulled up in front of Porter's Garage, it looked pretty good, still your basic fifties three-bay garage, but the blue and white paint on the building and the bench in front of the office plate glass window was all fresh, and somebody with brains had kept all the signage from when it was built, so it was now charmingly retro. At least that's what Anemone would call it. When you're ghost-writing somebody's memoirs for them, you have to think like them, so a lot of Anemone creeps into my speech. Thank god, it'll be gone in July.

Vince the cop opened the door for me, but he let me haul my own bear so he lost points for that. A gentleman would have carried the damn bear. I dropped it on one of the chairs in front of the plate glass window and then turned and saw him talking to a sharp little brunette behind the counter. She looked around him at me and her frown dissolved as she shouted, "Lizzie!", and I realized she was Patsy Porter. The last time I'd seen Patsy she'd been ten and bitching at me because I wouldn't play more than twelve games of Go Fish before I sent her to bed so I could read her mother's dirty books.

"Patsy?" I said, and she came running around the counter and threw her arms around me.

"You're home! I can't believe it, it's a miracle!"

I patted her back gingerly. Patsy and I had not been close. Also, I'm not a hugger even though Anemone keeps nagging me to hug more. Possibly the only reason I patted Patsy's back was because I was channeling Anemone, but it may have just been the Porter charm. God knows that had made me open my arms in the past.

Vince, the cop, stood by the counter watching us, as if he were storing up information for later, although what he was going to do with '"Patsy hugs Liz'" was beyond me.

Patsy pulled back, beaming at me, and said, "We really missed you, Lizzie!"

"You forgot I was gone the minute I left town."

She shook her head so hard, her dark hair whipped around. "The Porter family will never forget you, honey. Cash never stopped talking about you. Oh, Lizzie, I'm so glad to see you!" She hugged me again.

"Thanks," I said, patting while I tried to ignore the part about Cash. He and I had had a good time, mostly, aside from the three times he'd broken my heart, but that had been in high school, and it wasn't just that a lot of water that had gone under the bridge since then, continents had formed. I hadn't thought about him much in the past fifteen years except as a base line comparison for every guy I met.

Take the new guy, Vince. He was a little taller than Cash, but Cash was drop dead gorgeous and Vince was just . . . interesting looking? Compelling? He had that strong, rough edgy thing going for him where Cash was smooth. Cash was really charming, everybody loved him. Vince was . . . efficient? Calm? Too calm to be brooding. Silent. Probably the kind of guy who stayed in the background, but that everybody depended on. Cash would not have had lug nuts, I thought, and then I realized Patsy was talking again.

"Now you've gotta stay for a while," she was saying, and I said, "No, I have to leave," and then somebody behind me said, "You the lady with the antique Camry?" and I looked around and Willie Porter was standing there, grinning at me, wiping his hands on a rag. Willie had been thirteen when I left, and puberty hadn't looked particularly good on him, but he'd matured into the basic Porter male—thick dark hair, handsome boyish face, blue-collar strong body in a white T-shirt—and if I'd been ten years younger, I'd have considered staying longer in Burney.

Well, no, I wouldn't have, it was Burney. Tony Stark with a hot fudge sundae wouldn't have kept me in Burney. But those Porter boys were enough to make you stop and stare for a minute.

"How are you, Willie?" I said.

"It's Will now. You're looking good, Liz." Then he shook his head. "I can't believe you're still driving that Toyota. Damn thing's eighteen years old."

"I bought it used," I said and then remembered that I'd bought it used from Will's dad when I'd left town. "I love that car, it's a good car. You guys do good work. Listen, I have to be in Chicago tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest, Will. No, joke."

"I'll go get it off the highway," Will said, and then Patsy stepped in front of him and said, "But we can't guarantee we can find a part right away if it needs one."

Will looked at her, frowning, but Patsy squeezed my arm, her eyes all shiny and happy now and a little too wide. "Now you just forget Chicago and plan to stay awhile. Mom bought the Red Box a while back, and she's slinging hash there now. She'll be so tickled to see you. And then you settle in here for a couple of days 'cause we need to catch up!"

'Catching up' would be pretty much 'I've been waitressing and writing other people's books for fifteen years, and you're working the family garage,' so that wasn't going to take long.

"Molly's in town," Patsy went on. "You could stay the weekend."

Call me paranoid, but Patsy's lust for me to stick around was now definitely on the side of creepy. "Am I missing something?"

"Probably your fuel pump," Patsy said. "You want to use the bathroom to clean up a little before you go?"

"Yes, please," I said, and when I looked around to tell Vince I was okay now, I realized he'd gone. "Where's the cop?"

"Cooper?" Patsy beamed at me. "He's nobody. Forget him, you stick with us Porters."

Vince Cooper was going to be hard to forget, he'd had lug nuts, but I wasn't going to tell Patsy. She wouldn't be impressed; she probably carried extra ones in her bra.

My clean clothes were still out on the highway, so I went into the bathroom and washed the worst of the mud off. It took a while, and the back of my jeans was going to be damp for the immediate future, but when I was mud-free again, I went out and picked up the bear.

"Don't you be in a hurry now," Patsy said, and then the door to the street opened and my cousin Molly Blue came in, blonde and beautiful as ever, this time with insane curls that were definitely not her style. "I do not believe this, Elizabeth Magnolia Danger, you have finally come home."

You may have noticed that I had been in town about half an hour and three of the four people I'd met had been happy to see me. I liked those three all right, but the idea that these people would keep popping up like surprise lilies on a Thursday late afternoon and squealing my name . . .

No.

"What the hell is going on?" I said, and then Molly grabbed me in a bone-cracking hug—honest to God, that sign out on the highway should have said 'Welcome to Burney: We Hug'—which was overkill because she'd just seen me six weeks before in New Jersey.

Molly said, "You tell me what you're doing here and how long you can stay!"

"I was stopping by on my way to Chicago with a bear for Mom's birthday and my car broke down," I told her. "And I'm leaving as soon as Will gets the car fixed." I took another look at her. "What's with the curly hair?"

"Long story," she said as Patsy said, "Oh, honey, it'll probably be a week at least before that old clunker is fixed!"

"I need it done tonight," I said. I was not spending a week in Burney.

Molly shook her head. "Liz, even if Will gets it running today, you won't make it to Chicago before midnight. Come on, stay in town for the night. I have a bridesmaid's dress fitting at seven, but then we can go to JB's." She grinned at me. "Play your cards right, maybe you'll get lucky."

That was a thought, hit the old gang's favorite bar, see if Cash Porter had gotten better at sex in the past fifteen years. And then for a change, I'd leave him. That was more tempting than the sex, actually. I'm not a noble person.

"I need it done by tonight," I said, but Molly said, "Lunch!" and pulled me toward the door and I let her, knowing that no matter what Patsy was up to, I was not going to be spending any damn week in Burney.