"No," Fleetwood said despairingly. "That's just the trouble. I don't pose for Fleetwood Cassidy. I've never heard of Fleetwood Cassidy. I mean I am Fleetwood Cassidy. Anyway...."
But Kitty's attention had already gone back to the illustration. "I always thought this fellow, Grant Dermitt, just made you up out of his head. You a good friend of his?"
"Grant Dermitt?" Fleetwood asked. "Who's he?"
"The guy who writes about you," Kitty said. "Oh, you know; you're kidding me." She smiled down at the illustration, unaware that just beyond her nose its flesh-and-blood counterpart had become distorted with a look of slack-mouthed stupefaction. "Just listen here to what it says about you." She began to read from the page opposite the illustration:
Fleetwood shoved Caroline away from him, and she plumped down on the sofa like a mail bag heaved off a passing train, soft and sullen.
"Save it for the next sucker," he drawled. "When I'm ready to go shopping for coffins I'll let you know. But I'm not ready, not just yet."
Her face became a white mask of anger. "I'll kill you, Cassidy!" she shrilled. "You can't push me around and not bleed for it sooner or later. I'll kill you, damn you!"
"You'll try," Fleetwood nodded with a wry smile. "But take a tip, sugar, when you come gunning for me don't wear that negligee. It doesn't give you any place to hide the weapon. In fact it doesn't give you any place to hide anything."
When he sauntered out the door she was still staring at him, her face twisted and mottled in the firelight like an artist's paint rag.