Temple glanced nervously out the car windows at the people passing on the sidewalk, some of them carrying lawn chairs, others pushing strollers. “You’re too paranoid, Panda. I haven’t worked this hard to blow it on street food.”

“Reassuring, but that doesn’t change the rules.”

Lucy tugged on the waistband of her shorts. Despite living in a house with nothing but diet food, she’d managed to regain the weight she’d lost before her wedding. She turned to inspect Temple’s disguise again and saw her compressed lips. “Will you knock it off?”

Temple frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The exercise you’re doing right now. Squeezing your thighs or contracting your stomach or something like that.”

“I’m doing my Kegels.” Temple gave a condescending smirk. “And if you cared about your pelvic floor, you’d be doing them, too.”

“I swear to God,” Panda declared, “if my next job involves a woman—even a female gerbil—I’m not taking it!”

Lucy smiled and propped her elbow on the seat back. “Here’s the good news, Temple. When Panda is around, no one looks at anybody else.”

“Exactly why Lucy and I need to go off by ourselves,” Temple declared.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll work,” Panda said dryly. “The second you two are out of my sight, you’d both be mainlining funnel cakes.”

So true. Which explained Lucy’s weight gain. Being surrounded with nothing but diet food left her so unsatisfied that she gorged herself when she came to town. So far she’d avoided Panda’s threatened body searches by turning out her pockets and patting herself down in front of him. To her relief, he hadn’t pushed her.

“Your paranoia is a sickness,” the Evil Queen declared as Panda eased into a tight parking space. “You should get therapy.”

Lucy eyed Temple. “No offense, but you might want to go along with him.”

Panda smiled, his first of the morning, then cut the ignition and returned to his lecture. “We watch the parade, take a walk around the harbor, get back in the car, and go home better people.”

Now Lucy was the one who snorted.

“It could happen,” he said with a lack of conviction.

THEY FOUND A VIEWING SPOT near the end of Beachcomber Boulevard away from the smell of fried food and the worst of the tourist crowd. As Lucy had predicted, the people nearby were more interested in Panda than either of the women, although Lucy attracted more notice than Temple, something that irritated the Evil Queen. “I know it’s illogical,” she whispered, “but I’m used to being the center of attention.”

Lucy laughed and whispered back, “Now’s as good a time as any to consider adding a mental health component to your workout.”

“If I were sane,” Temple said on a sigh, “I wouldn’t know who I was.”