Page 6 of Frosted and Sliced

“Yeah, but the rhyme scheme fits, and I’m not up enough on my anatomy to know what the carotid actually attaches to,” Ribs answered. Everyone faced Burke, anticipating his input, but he remained fixated on Georgie, suddenly and intensely uncomfortable with the conversation in front of a civilian. Women like Georgie shouldn’t hear about things from his world.

“Take five,” Burke muttered and shifted through the room toward Georgie, who stood at the back with an actual picnic basket in her arms. Like Dorothy and Toto.

“Were you talking about…” she began, but he cut her off.

“No.”

Her gaze narrowed. “You’re telling me I didn’t overhear you describe how to remotely kill someone? Was my lip reading that far off?”

His scowl narrowed impressively because he could imagine a thousand different instances where someone used that line on her.You misheard. You got it wrong because you can’t hear.“I’m telling you that context is important.”

To his surprise, she seemed all too ready to accept that answer. With a little shrug, she brushed off what must have been an odd conversation to overhear and turned instead toward the table, removing muffins from her basket and setting them on a delicate China platter. Burke watched her curiously a few minutes, realizing as he did so that she was probably as odd to him as he was to her. It was blatantly clear that Georgie did not encounter a lot of spies—current or former—in her little corner of Maine. What bugged Burke was how long it had been since he encountered a non-spy. To him, a woman setting out a plate of freshly baked muffins on a decorative plate was such an oddity that it was almost surreal. Any minute he half expected an insurgent to run in with a gun and overtake the place, taking Georgie—the softest and most vulnerable asset—hostage.

As he gazed around the room, though, he realized he was the only one on alert. The big guy, Tristan, had cop eyes, wary and suspicious and guarded. But Elyse and Ribs, who’d seen almost as much action as Burke had, were casual and relaxed. Ribs even had his back to the door, an impossible feat for Burke to accomplish.

His astonishment grew when he felt soft hands fold around his. His disbelieving gaze shifted downward, only to realize that Georgie had placed a muffin in his grasp. What was more astonishing was that it was warm.

“It’s blueberry,” Georgie said, when Burke stared at the muffin like it might be a live grenade. “I picked them myself.”

Burke stared at the muffin, now nestled in their conjoined hands. “You can’t be here,” he heard himself say. After he said it, he was certain it was the correct thing.

“What?” Georgie said.

It was the kind of “what” that said she didn’t understand, not that she’d misheard. “You can’t be here,” he repeated, more slowly and emphatically this time.

“In my inn? Or on earth?”

He winced. Apparently she’d heard more of his presentation than he realized. Did she actually think he might kill her? After she gave him a warm muffin and everything? He wasn’t that much of a monster. Was he? His finger circled the room. “This information is classified.”

“Gaines made me sign a non-disclosure agreement,” Georgie said, dismissing him. She faced toward the table again and continued arranging her muffins, along with fruit and a few carafes of coffee and tea.

“Yeah, but…” she wasn’t facing him and couldn’t hear his protest, which was fine because he had no idea how to finish it. Why didn’t he want her there? Why did it bother him for Georgie to hear this presentation, but not Elyse? Even Jordan, Gaines’s wife, had poked her head in during a particularly gruesome sentence and Burke hadn’t winced. Georgie, though, was much too soft and gentle to learn what went on in the world’s underbelly. She was an inn owner, completely unconnected to the world of espionage and private security. Maybe that was it. Even though Jordan was technically a civilian, she’d been spy adjacent long enough to know things. Georgie was a baker from Maine, and a baker from Maine she should stay.

“I can’t focus when you interrupt,” he said, which was also true.

She gave him a helpless shrug. “I have to feed people. What do you want me to do, turn off my hearing aids every time I enter a room?”

“Could you?” he said.

“You’re serious,” she said, which was his first realization that she hadn’t been when she made the suggestion.

He nodded.

She sighed. “Fine, but it’s going in my notes that I think you’re mental.”

“What notes? Am I being rated as a guest?”

“Yes, for my blog, Difficult Guests of New England. Right now you’re tied for first with that guy who insisted on wearing his pants as a hat instead of, you know, pants.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded.

“He walked around the inn wearing no pants,” Burke clarified. This entire conversation might be the oddest of his life, and that was saying something because he’d seen a lot of things.

Georgie nodded.

“I don’t like that,” Burke said, scowling.

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