In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(14)

"We have career day for our fifth-grade students next week. The cost of this supper is that you are all coming to the school Tuesday afternoon and giving a ten-minute speech about your careers."

"I'm a waitress. You want me to encourage the children to put on an apron and carry salsa and corn chips to tables?" Kate said.

"You are a detective. Maybe not a working one, but a detective and, from what Fancy says, a very good one. That's what you are going to talk about," Theron said.

"And me?" Sophie looked up.

"You are a ranchwoman. That will appeal to the girls in the group who are in 4-H and looking at FFA when they are in high school. It will show them that ranching isn't just for men anymore, that women can run a ranch too," Theron said.

"She's covered ranching. I guess you won't need me," Hart said.

"Not so quick, partner. You're going to talk about rodeos and riding bulls. Bring your buckles and get ready to brag. We're proud of our royalty in this part of the world. And Fancy is going to talk about being a teacher, even though she's not working at that anymore. They see their teachers every day, so it will be good for them to see someone else who did that job too."

"Expensive steak," Kate muttered.

Theron laughed. "Enjoy. And don't think you are off the hook either, Marc. You are going to talk about going into the ministry."

"I'd be glad to," Marc said.

Hart looked at Kate. "So give me your practice speech. What's it like to be a female detective?"

"You can hear it on Tuesday with the rest of the speeches," she said.

When they'd finished eating, Theron put a CD on the small player on a table beside one of the Adirondack chairs out under the shade trees. When George Strait started singing a slow ballad, Theron held out his hand and Fancy took it gracefully, melting into his arms to dance with him. Kate turned green with envy at the way they looked at each other and fit so well together.

"What about you?" Hart asked.

"What?" Kate asked.

"Want to dance, or you a chicken?"

Nobody dared Kate or called her a chicken. She stood up at the same time he did and walked right into his arms. She listened to the words of the song as they danced around on the grass.

"This feels good," Hart whispered in her ear.

"You only want what you can't have. You wouldn't want it if you got it," she said.

"I don't know about that. Why don't you give me a chance?"

The song ended, and the next CD started on a Zac Brown Band tune that had a Zydeco sound to it. Kate grinned. She raised an eyebrow and stepped back to do some Cajun dancing. Hart folded his arms over his chest while she danced all around him.

When the song ended, Fancy's and Sophie's eyes were wide with surprise.

"Where did that come from?" Fancy asked.

"Bayou dancing. That song sounded Cajun," Kate said.

"You miss it?" Hart asked when the fiddle music started on the next song.

"I'd be proper and ask you to dance, but I'm afraid I don't have any idea how to do any of that," Marc said to Sophie.

"Me, either. But I'm going to make Kate teach me. That looked like fun"

Theron turned down the music and pulled Fancy into his lap on a lawn chair.

Hart would have liked to do the same to Kate, but it was way too early. She hadn't even agreed to go to dinner with him. But with the dance, he'd laid claim to her that evening, and the preacher man wouldn't be stepping in on his territory. Hart wasn't blind. He'd seen Marc eyeing both of the women, and his pick had been Kate.





Kate arrived early and chose one of the second-row seats that had paper signs taped to them, with CAREER SPECIALIST written in bright red marker. Would someone in her eleven-year-old audience turn out to be Stephens County's first major detective?

It happened to you, only you weren't eleven, you were sixteen. Remember the first time you got a whiff of the courthouse in New Iberia?

Hart slipped into the seat beside her, his arm brushing against hers. "You're not much of a detective. I just slipped up on you. Could've been a bad cowboy wearing a black hat instead of a white one and about to kidnap you"

She moved her arm, but it still tingled.

"I figured you'd come all decked out in uniform," he said.

The air around her sizzled. Kate wasn't sure what that meant, but she was sure she'd never felt it anywhere but in Hart's presence.

"Detectives wear plain clothes," she said. She'd chosen black slacks, comfortable shoes, a mustard-colored button-down shirt, and a black leather blazer. It was pretty close to what she wore every day on the job in New Iberia.

The kids filed in, and with them several other members of the career specialists. Sophie sat on the other side of Hart. Fancy slipped in beside Kate. A nurse in white, a judge in a black robe, and a man in a suit that Kate recognized as the fellow who owned the local newspaper. She almost groaned. It was going to be a long afternoon. No way could she deliver her little speech and escape. Out of respect, she'd have to sit there until every last person spoke.

Fancy had been right last fall when she said that Theron Warren had looked like a little boy playing dress-up in his police uniform. Kate thought that he should have an orange pumpkin half full of candy in his hands when he took his place behind the podium on the stage in the school auditorium.