Page 17 of Immortal By Morning
Her gaze sliding back to Peters, she realized that it was the floor he was staring at with an unhappy expression.
“You have cream-colored carpet here,” he said finally.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Well, I don’t think anybody working in the excavation should be coming in here and crossing the carpet. Even if they take their boots off they might carry in dirt on their clothes and track it through the house. Even I shouldn’t be in here right now. I was down in the hole earlier. I don’t wanna mess up the carpet.”
“I think you’re safe if you take your shoes off. I don’t see any dirt on you,” she said, glancing over his clothing. When he gave in and sat down on the bench to remove his shoes, she added, “But if you’re concerned about the others who are actually doing the digging, there’s a side door on the same side as the excavation, but closer to the back of the house. It enters into a short hall between the laundry room and another bathroom. The floor there is engineered hardwood. We can throw some plastic down, or use that heavy paper—dry sheathing I think they call it. The stuff they use to protect flooring during construction. There’s still a roll of it here from when they were doing the interior renovations.”
“That might be okay.” Peters finished removing his shoes and stood. “Maybe show it to me before you go make that coffee, so I can see if it will work.”
“Sure,” she said lightly and started to lead him through the house.
Seven
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Roberts said.
“Not worry about how to woo my life mate?” Crispin peered at his partner dubiously.
“I just mean stop panicking,” Roberts said and when Crispin opened his mouth to deny he was, his partner added, “Do not even try to deny it. I can hear your thoughts, remember?”
Crispin let his mouth snap closed. He really hated being so easily read now. It was definitely a drawback to finding a life mate.
“Look,” Roberts said, interrupting his inner grumbling, “you will have plenty of time to sort out how to woo Abril. This is not going to be a quick investigation. It will take days, maybe even weeks, to get the bodies out. You can use that as an excuse to hang around here and interact with her.”
“True,” Crispin agreed. They’d been brainstorming on ways to woo Abril for several minutes now, and notcoming up with much. From what he had seen of modern society, there was more “hooking up” going on nowadays than actual dating. There was also a lot of phone play: texting back and forth, sexting, and sending nude photos seemed to be the order of the day. At least that was how it seemed from listening to their single, mortal coworkers talk.
Wooing in his day had been a completely different animal. But courting a woman had changed with the times. He knew that twenty or thirty years ago dinner and a movie had been the thing, and that would have made this all much easier. But apparently that was no longer the thing, and the phone was key.
Crispin was not someone who enjoyed texting, or the phone in general. It was his opinion that cell phones were one of the worst things to happen to mankind. He supposed it came in handy when your car broke down in a rural area, or when a sudden health issue struck a mortal, but otherwise it had become something of a pain in the ass. From what he had seen, cell phones had become addictive. Kids and adults in their early twenties and even older, appeared always to have to be on them. It made questioning them when on a case something of a challenge.
More importantly to him though, it meant you just couldn’t escape people. When the telephone was first invented, he’d thought it was grand. It had made communication much swifter than using couriered messages and such, and if you didn’t want to be disturbed, you simply did not answer. People would assume you were not home. Now, with cell phones, you couldn’t do that. They had been made to carry with you. If you didn’t answer, the caller knew you wereavoiding their call. You were never unreachable with a cell phone.
He himself preferred to actually speak to people in person. At least that’s what he told himself, but he supposed the truth was that he liked to avoid people as much as possible and preferred just to be left alone. With Abril, though, he knew it was going to be different. He wanted to see her face-to-face. He wanted to speak to her, and yes, he wanted to do all sorts of other things to her. He just needed to sort out how to woo her to the point of doing those things without overwhelming her so much that she ran for the hills.
“So...” Roberts said.
When he didn’t continue, Crispin glanced at him in question. “So what?”
“You kissed her, and it was really hot.”
“How the hell—” Crispin began furiously, and then stopped and simply scowled at his partner as he realized he had probably been shouting out the memory to Alexander since he’d joined him. Finally, he just said, “Yes.”
Roberts smiled faintly and nodded, but then cautioned, “You might want to ease up on that.”
Crispin peered at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
His partner hesitated and then said slowly, “Abril seems like a nice girl, but...”
He narrowed his eyes. “But what?”
“I just would not want you scaring her off with life mate passion before she gets to know you.”
Crispin’s eyebrows rose. “I thought people today were all about ‘hookups’ and such.”
“Some maybe. I mean, that seems to be the case amongst the single cops we work with. But that doesnot mean everybody is like that and she may be someone who is not. Besides, even if she is, the depth of life mate passion can apparently be overwhelming. It might scare her off if you move too quickly,” he pointed out. “I just think you should take it slow. At least until I can get a better read of her and see how she is likely to react.”
Crispin frowned. He wasn’t sure he wanted his buddy to get a better read on Abril. He wasn’t happy with Alexander reading him, but he definitely wouldn’t be happy with him reading his mate. Especially when Crispin couldn’t do that himself.
