Renegade Player Read Free Page B

certain circumstances. “Actually, you’re supposed to bake it in cockleshells, after topping it with crumbs. Do you suppose I might be able to find enough shells on the beach along here or has it been pretty well picked over?”
    “Well, we’re pretty private this far south—residential, mostly—and since most of the residents have long since collected whatever they needed in the way of baking shells and ashtrays, you could probably find enough. But if you’re in a hurry, I have a dozen or so and you’re welcome to as many as you need.”
    “Thanks. That’s awfully generous of you. Perhaps in appreciation I could prevail on you to help me sample it . . . unless you lack the nerve to sample a stranger’s first attempt at shellfish coquilles.”
    Willy unfolded her elegant length from the barstool. “Oh, I’m a purple-heart winner when it comes to bravery in the kitchen,” she assured him with her slow, half-shy smile.
    “Sounds promising. No purple heart, I sincerely hope, but how about a croix de guerre ?”
    “If you’re sure you have enough, perhaps I will come try a bit when it’s done. If I like it, may I have the recipe?” she asked.
    “Not unless you agree to help me stuff your shells and do a bit of preliminary tasting. Your taste for sherry may not agree with mine. I like it well-laced.”
    She grinned more freely now. “So do I, up to the point where it stops tasting like sherry and begins to taste like library paste.” She located her shells in a bottom drawer and, after selecting half a dozen of the largest, most perfect, followed him from the room.
    “Don’t you need to lock up?” he asked. “This may take a while.”
    Willy glanced up at him, shaking her head. “There’re only a few of us living here at Wimble and they’re all awfully nice people. Besides,” she added with a gurgle, “there’s nothing to steal, unless someone covets the rest of my cockleshells.”
    “Not even your purse? You’re the first woman I’ve run into who can go more than twenty-five paces without a full stock of supplies.”
    “Well, since I don’t lock up, I don’t need keys, and since I don’t smoke, I don’t need cigarettes, and since I assume I’m trading my very good sherry for a sample of your equally good cooking, I won’t be needing any money, so why bother?”
    He shrugged. “Why, indeed?” he agreed, his well-worn deck shoes almost silent as he led the way down her ramshackle stairs.
    “Hey,” she called after him as she hopped barefoot across the patch of hot concrete that separated the two frame cottages at the end of the street. “Who are you?”
    Turning to see her predicament, he grabbed an arm and pulled her, laughing, into the scant noonday shade beside his garage door. “Sorry ... I forgot to introduce myself. Kiel Faulkner. And you?” He bent to lift the door, revealing a familiar silver-gray Porsche.
    Willy stood on one foot, rubbing her calf with the burning sole of her other one as she gazed raptly at the low, superbly engineered piece of machinery. “So you’re the Porsche,” she breathed reverently. “It’s gorgeous.”
    He leaned against the side and leveled her a gaze that, had she been looking at him, might have puzzled her. “Are you a fan?”
    “I could easily become one,” she admitted, stroking the flawless finish wistfully.
    “Maybe you’d care to give it a road test sometime?” Her unbelieving eyes flew up to beseech him. “Could I? Really? The only thing I like better than driving a good car is eating a good meal, and it would have to be Cordon Bleu to compare with this.”
    He looked at her skeptically. “That’s a bit hard to believe, Willy.”
    “What, that I like food and cars?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
    “You certainly aren’t the first woman to admire a good car, but you’re the first I’ve run across who put them in the same category as food. Come on, this way up.” He indicated the stairs in the comer of the garage