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their faces aren’t instantly recognizable later, while they’re out shopping with the wife and kids.”
    “I could order some male wigs,” I offered. “I know a place in New York that does really good work.” I shrugged apologetically. “Not cheap, but you might want to consider it. I keep the catalog at home. I could bring it to your office if you’d care to look it.” How obvious could a girl get? Inwardly, I slapped myself upside the head.
    “Great. I’d appreciate that.”
    Crystal had been listening to our conversation with considerable interest, waggling her brow and smirking behind Boone Talbot’s back. Later, she’d probably tell me she’d seen my aura go neon.
    It probably had.
    Absurd.
    “I imagine the Chief wants to talk to you about last night,” Crystal said. Why don’t you two talk in my cave? I’ll handle the counter.”
    “Cave?” Chief Talbot, obviously scenting the unusual, appeared amused. And intrigued.
    Crystal waved a hand toward the midnight-velvet curtains. “I tell fortunes sometimes,” she said. “Just for fun. The Cave also doubles as a dressing room. Gwyn’s brother Scott built it,” she added. “Maybe you know him. Scott Wallace. Runs Sea Tow?”
    The Chief didn’t bother to hide his surprise. I could only hope he knew Scott because of his sea rescues or his role in last night’s disaster, not for more – ah – professional reasons. Scott was really good on the job, but when time hung heavy on his hands and he was bored . . .
    Let’s just say the Golden Beach police, the Sheriff’s Department, and the Florida Highway Patrol were all familiar with Scott’s antics. And tolerant. I hadn’t yet had to bail him out, but I feared it was only a matter of time.
    “Not much alike, are you?” Boone Talbot said.
    “I’m adopted. Scott isn’t.”
    “I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to pry.” Oh yes, he did. That’s what policemen do.
    “I’m the Gypsy, Scott’s the redneck. We’ve never figured out how the adoption agency stuck my parents with a dark cuckoo like me, but we’ve learned to live with it. Fortunately, when I was growing up, this was still a small town and everybody knew, so mom didn’t have to explain me to anyone but the snowbirds.”
    The Chief actually blushed. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, given his age and his profession. “Does that make me a snowbird?” he asked. “An inquisitive, insensitive one at that?”
    “Just a stranger,” I told him. “Snowbirds fly home. I assume you’re here to stay.” My eyebrows rose in question.
    “Took one look at the ocean and knew this was it. Unless they throw me out,” Boone Talbot vowed, “I’m here to stay.” The look that accompanied his reply made it my turn to blush. The butterflies that had settled to a steady flutter, went kamikaze again, frantically attacking the pit of my stomach.
    Crystal shooed us into her cave, the tinkle of the glass beads obscuring my drumming pulse. I dove behind the small table holding Crystal’s ball—at the moment covered with a white satin cloth fringed in gold—and settled myself into Crystal’s white wrought iron ice cream chair, using the table as a psychological barricade to keep my rampant hormones in check. Down, girl ! But it didn’t help much. Not even when Boone Talbot was no longer towering over me, having folded his near six feet into the customer chair on the other side of the table. The light filtering through the bead curtains was dim; the atmosphere, intimate.
    I gulped, put on my best professional façade, folded my hands on the table, and asked, “What do you want to know?”
    Mine wasn’t the only transformation. The Chief was all business now, leaning back in his chair as if we were only having a conversation between friends, but his eyes were sharp, his ears on the qui vive , and I could almost see the steel trap lurking beneath all those beautiful silky blond waves of hair.
    “Tell me what you saw. Every detail, no