Page 5 of Return Ticket

“Do you think she was doing that?” Gabriella asked, pulling out her chopping board.

He flexed his hands as he lifted his shoulders. “I hope not.”

She didn’t understand why, but she had the sense he was standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down, and pushed her own shyness and vulnerabilities to the side.

She moved to stand right in front of him, lifted her arms around his neck and lifted up on her toes to kiss him. “It’s nice to have you back,” she murmured.

He sighed, as if relieving himself of a heavy weight, and drew her closer, kissed her like a man who’d been thinking of kissing her for a while.

“Nice to be back.” He held her close to him, his hand running up and down her back as if to convince himself she was really there.

They were stepping out together, as Liz would say, but this felt more. More serious.

They had kept things light, or tried to, after the intensity of the investigation Gabriella had gotten swept up in a few months ago, but she had really missed him when he’d gone up to his parents, and she guessed, from the way he held her now, that he had missed her, too.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, tipping her head back to look at him.

He hesitated. “My boss. Whetford. Coming back from a break made me realize how difficult he really is.”

Gabriella had had the misfortune of being questioned by Whetford in the past, and she thought he was more than just difficult, but she gave a nod. “I met him, remember?”

James frowned down at her. “I’d forgotten that.”

“What’s he done?” she asked, stepping back reluctantly to put water on to boil.

James didn’t answer right away, and Gabriella looked over her shoulder, curious about his silence.

Eventually he shook his head. “He’s lazy, and he’s never available.”

She had a feeling he was leaving a lot out, but she didn’t press.

He joined her at the tiny kitchen counter. “Can I help?”

She decided he needed something to do, so she gave him parmesan to grate at the kitchen table, and busied herself with the rest of the meal.

“Do you have a whole lot of work piled up after your trip?” she asked as she chopped tomatoes.

“Yes.” He stretched out on the narrow, wooden chair. “But it’s mainly paperwork. How are things going with you?”

She considered not telling him about the body, because discussing it was the last thing she felt like doing, and then realized that was just silly.

She added the spaghetti to the water and turned to lean back against the counter. “Some boys found a woman’s body today. They saw my uniform and called me to help.”

James pushed up from the table, and she knew he was thinking about what had happened a couple of months ago. Of how much that had affected her. “Where?”

“In Chelsea. Just off the Kings Road. That backstreet with the old bombed building they haven’t rebuilt yet.” She turned back to the stove and scraped the tomatoes into the saucepan, threw in a pinch of salt.

“Gabriella.” He came up behind her, gently turned her to face him. “Are you all right?”

She thought of the mannequin-like arm, thrown out as if reaching for something. The shoe. She shook her head.

“I’m surprised I didn’t hear about it,” James murmured as he let her turn back to the stove. “Could you see how she was killed?”

“She was half-buried under the rubble, I didn’t even see her face.” Gabriella took a breath and tossed in some herbs. “She had been there for a bit. Her skin . . .” She shook her head. She shouldn’t have brought this up while she was cooking. She felt less and less like eating the meal.

James seemed to realize it, and began to tell her about his trip, about walks in the hills with his father, and his surprise at how differently he saw things since he’d been working in the Big Smoke.

She let him distract her, and neither of them mentioned the woman again.

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