The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (read this if txt) 📕

mouth. Eileen had never felt that much heat or intensity from a kiss before, never known the unadulterated pleasure that came from a tongue caressing her own. She pressed her hands against his chest, felt the muscles tense as he sighed with lust. Even his moan was delicious, an ardent plea to deepen the sensations to which they freely surrendered.

The heat between them built and their desires grew feverish as they explored each other’s body. Holden pressed Eileen against the tree, his hands roaming over her waist and hips as the tree bark pressed into her back. She wanted him. All of him, right there in that moonlit garden while the party was in full swing less than a hundred yards away.

But, as though he read her mind, Holden pulled away and said breathlessly, “This isn’t right. We can’t do this here.” He glanced toward the house, light blazing from the windows and piano music drifting into the garden. “Not that I don’t want to…I sense that memories of this moment would delight me in my old age.”

Eileen bit back a smile.

“I want to date you properly first.” Holden touched her cheek as he looked into her eyes. “If, of course, that’s what you want too.”

If her heart could have burst, it would have. Hot sex in the garden would have been amazing, but she couldn’t deny that a storybook romance had its own appeal. “Yes,” Eileen blushed. “I’d love that.”

A cloud shifted overhead, unveiling the moon and washing the garden in silvery light. “How about we leave this place? Maybe get some fried fish from Astor’s Road?” He grinned. “Our first date.”

Eileen smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that."

Chapter 17

Something is fishy

They got two juicy steaks of fish fried to perfection over a wood fire from a sidewalk vendor whose coal pot was still aflame at that late hour. It was a typical Friday night on Astor’s Road. Similar to Buckworth Street, the road was heavily traversed with buses and cars, but instead of accountants and pharmacies, it had more than its fair share of rum shops and shoe repair businesses. At night, the street transformed into a drive-through food court with vendors setting up brightly painted trays and coal pots to ply their trade. The fish vendor they visited occupied a small soot-stained corner, her bright yellow stall a stark contrast to the corona of dark, smoky residue that framed her location.

She heaved her generous figure off the flaking yellow bench, taking bits of shiny paint for a ride on her ample backside when she got up to prepare their food. Two fat steaks of dolphin were stuffed with a heavenly homemade herb seasoning, then doused in flour and dropped into a pan of oil that bubbled merrily on the fire. The aroma of frying fish was enough to make Eileen dizzy with hunger.

“My child father make this coal pot here, you know,” she said as though Holden and Eileen had asked. “Yes, he gimme some pretty red-skinned daughters. Got good hair and thing,” she added as she checked the fish.

Holden winked at Eileen and whispered, “This is why I like vendors; they’re so amusing that it’s like free dinner theatre.”

The woman returned to the bench and sat on the opposite end so gently that Eileen wondered if her robust frame was a suit, so graceful were her movements.

“Yeah, that is an old gearbox housing that my child father rigged up to cook the fish. But it is my seasoning that does make it taste good. Best fish in Barbados," she bragged. Her grin was cocky as she rubbed her hands and turned the damp flour into moist balls that clung to her fingers like tiny white barnacles. She shook her hands, releasing the flour balls and giving them a new home on Holden’s crisp black suit. The vendor didn’t notice though; she was too busy looking at the frying pan. “Ah, it ready.”

She returned a moment later with two steaming strips of foil and plastic forks. The fish tasted as good as it smelled. Eileen couldn’t imagine a better first date with Holden: delicious fish in the cool night air with the stars overhead and a chatty vendor who skipped nimbly from one subject to another while they ate. There wasn’t much the vendor missed from her busy street corner. She knew which paros had gone to university and fallen prey to drugs, which politicians drove by on Friday nights with their outside women. She even knew where Holden could get stolen picnic hams in time for Christmas. The vendor shrugged like it was a given that anyone in their right mind wanted picnic hams at half price. No? Well, that was Holden’s business because she certainly wanted a stolen picnic ham. It was for the children, of course. The daughters with the good hair, she reminded them as she dusted more flour onto Holden’s pants. To Eileen’s mind, she could have eaten that fish and laughed at the vendor’s quirky monologue every night and never gotten bored.

They wiped their mouths and Holden handed the lady a hundred dollar note. She dug into her apron pockets for change, but Holden held up his hand. “No change needed. Get the ham for your girls.” The woman’s face lit up as she looked at the hundred dollar bill. Holden reached out to shake her hand. “And you’re right; it is the best fish in Barbados.”

“You’s a good man.” She grinned and then caught sight of the flour crumbs that coated the left leg of Holden’s pants. “Don’t mind that flour. It sends my children to school, so it is a blessing.” Eyes wide, she cocked her head to the left, her sharp ears attuned to a sound that Holden and Eileen didn’t catch until a few moments later. “Wait… you hear that?”

It was a siren, growing louder and louder as a police car sped by. Two more cars soon followed, all of them heading west. Eileen’s eyes met