waving both arms over its head and shouting, like a swimmer who needed saving.
And it was Dylan to the rescue. He was going to be Kitty's savior. He was going to be her ticket out of town.
Every scrap of media product about him she'd seen or read whirled in her mind. Entertainment Tonight, the tabloids, Time magazine. The man was a gold mine of publicity.
She'd need a press release, of course, Kitty thought in growing excitement. Advertisements taken out in the Stockton, San Francisco, and Sacramento papers, not to mention L.A. and San Diego. A banner stretched across the entrance into town. DYLAN MATTHEWS KEEPS OUR STREETS SAFE!
Kitty bit her lip. Letting Dylan play sheriff would mean she must overcome her embarrassment about their marriage. It would mean she'd have to face him every day and hide the shivery truth of what one look from his dark eyes could do to her.
It would mean that in a few weeks she could leave Hot Water and her Wilder reputation behind, once and for all.
Kitty pushed away from her desk, the decision-that-was-no-decision-at-all made. Now that she thought about it, however, she wondered if he'd really been serious about taking on the sheriff job. No matter. By tomorrow she'd find some way to convince him to go along with her plan.
* * *
Forty minutes before his breakfast appointment with Kitty, Dylan slumped in a corner booth at Pearl's Cafe, located a few blocks from Old Town and across the street from the I.O.O.F. Hall. It was just his luck that this was the day the Independent Order of Odd Fellows held its monthly breakfast in Pearl's small banquet room, so he'd been forced to endure an early-A.M. dose of back-slaps and handgrips from the movers and shakers of Hot Water.
Nearly every town in the Mother Lode had its Odd Fellows Hall and fraternity of Odd Fellows, because the group dedicated "to improve and elevate the character of man" had provided a sort of social security during the Gold Rush. Nursing the sick, providing for widows and orphans, and burying the dead had been essential social functions in the wild boom times.
In twenty-first-century Hot Water, the Odd Fellows continued to do good works, everything from operating the town cemetery to running a summer camp for underprivileged kids in the nearby mountains. Dylan shook his head. He'd likely be an initiated Odd Fellow himself if he'd stuck with his original plan of establishing a practice in Hot Water after law school.
Regret started pounding like a headache at the base of his skull. Dylan winced, then gulped a scalding mouthful of coffee, letting it burn away the feeling. Those long-ago plans were best forgotten. It was now that mattered, the now of confronting Kitty and getting the issue of ending their marriage resolved.
Dylan gulped more coffee, staring at the cafe walls covered with wallpaper of trailing ivy. Nearly every green leaf was hidden by some Victorian-inspired knickknack - wreaths of silk flowers, paintings of rosy cherubs, and lace-embellished ladies' hats. It wouldn't surprise him if he had enough time to count them all before Kitty showed. As a matter of fact, because of yesterday's hedging and stalling, he wasn't convinced she'd arrive at all. And everything he'd learned about human nature warned him that if she did turn up, she'd turn up late.
But this time he refused to let her put him off or distract him. Hell, he'd track her down if necessary. His bike was parked outside, already gassed up and packed for the return trip to L.A. Once he extracted Kitty's promise to immediately begin the termination of their marriage - he'd wring it out of her if he had to - it would be adios to Hot Water. Good-bye forever. Then, if his stubborn boss refused to be moved on the vacation issue, Dylan would simply stare at the soulless walls of his condo for the rest of the summer.
Pain throbbed in his head again, made even worse by the cheerful jangle of the bells hanging from the cafe's front door. Dylan took another fortifying swallow of coffee, then glanced toward the newcomer.
He blinked. It was Kitty. She was early.
Her silky hair was knotted to smoothly hang over one shoulder, a shoulder made nearly naked by a dress about thirty degrees more outrageous than the one the day before. Its shiny fabric laced up the center of her body from belly to cleavage, and the skirt ended at her ankles in a froth