Page 28 of Crazy Spooky Love
“Leo, are you here to ask me to share my findings with you?”
He laughs, as if I’ve said something preposterous. “Only to avoid old Isaac from having to repeat himself. I don’t think he’d take that too kindly.”
I smile and look away. “He’s not talking to you, is he?”
“He will.”
I nod and cross my arms over my chest, chilled by the evening breeze but warm on the inside because Leo and his round-the-clockteam are clearly no closer to resolving the case than I am. Further away, if that’s possible.
“Don’t forget about Friday,” he says, opening his car door. For a second I’m confused, and I feel as if I’ve slipped back in time and I’m seeing him out after a date. At about this point he’d have kissed me. It’s a happy memory, because to be completely transparent and fair to Leo, the man kisses like a champ.
“Friday?”
“Don’t come anywhere near Brimsdale Road,” he reminds me of the real reason he came here, getting into his car and slamming the door. The window glides down as the engine purrs to life. I lift my hand and wave, and he touches his fingers to his forehead in salute as he pulls into traffic.
I watch his car disappear and reflect on the fact that today has been distinctly dodgy on my romance chart. I openly admit that I’m going through a dry spell and in need of some action, but have I really caught myself lusting after both Fletcher Gunn and Leo Dark in the same afternoon? Not to mention Douglas Scarborough. The man doesn’t even have a bloody pulse, yet he still made mine race. I really need to get out more. It’s that or join the dating apps, because I’m twenty-seven, single, and so damn lonely that I’m slowly going crazy.
Chapter
Eight
Gran offers me a glass of champagne as I head back inside the shop and flip the open sign over toClosed. I almost refuse it, but then, why the hell not? I haven’t even raised a glass to celebrate the opening of the agency, and after yet another bizarro meeting with Leo and his creepy twins I really could do with a drink.
“He still carries a torch for you,” my mother says darkly, arranging the flowers Leo gave her in a glass jug.
“What, even after he ate my heart and spat it out again?” I seethe. “Not cool, Mother, not cool at all.”
“He probably regrets it now,” Gran says, distracted as she holds the champagne bottle at arm’s length to read the label. “Supermarket’s own brand,” she mutters. “And him a big shot off the telly too.”
“I’d hardly call having a fifteen-minute spot on morning television being a big shot.” I wrinkle my nose at the decidedly tart, too-warm fizz.
“Not like a two-hour Saturday morning phone-in on the radio for the last three years and a People’s Favorite Award,” my mother sniffs.
It’s difficult to tell, but I think she’s feeling a smidge of professional jealousy. Not that she needs to; she could wipe the floor with Leo Dark if she wanted to—and with me, for that matter. Her skills are finely honed and powerful; our gift is something that only increases with age. How else do you think my gran has managed to keep my grandpa Duke around, despite the fact that he died during a night of overzealous sex almost twenty years ago? She had to call the emergency services to come and lift his stiff corpse off her, and from that day to this, his ghost has been tethered to their bedroom and is as randy as a sailor on leave. Theirs is a love story that refuses to end, and by all accounts, a sex life that refuses to end too.
“Not even close,” I agree, on my mother’s side just as she is always on mine, even if she does show it by making barbed comments to my ex-boyfriend that make me look like a lovesick fool.
She places the jug of flowers on the shelf behind the polished counter that runs along the back of the shop and looks at me over her shoulder. “Will you stay away from the house on Friday as he asked?”
I consider my options. “Probably. Antagonizing him won’t help me solve the case, and it was never part of my business plan to ruin Leo.”
“You have a business plan?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping she doesn’t ask to see it, because it’s in my head rather than my shiny new filing cabinet.
“Look at us, three generations of Bittersweet businesswomen.” Gran refills her own glass and pauses with the bottle midair. “More fizzy cat piss, darling?”
I put my hand over my still half-full flute and grimace at her accurate description. “I’ll pass.”
My mother pulls a similarly disgusted face and refuses too.
“Fletcher Gunn is poking around the Brimsdale Road case,” I say, nibbling my deep-gray-polished thumbnail. Why did I evenmention him? I know exactly how my mother is going to react, and she doesn’t disappointme.
“Gah! Whatisthat boy’s problem?” Changing her mind about the champagne, she knocks the contents of her glass back in one gulp and reaches for the bottle.
Boyisn’t a word that comes to my mind when I think of our least favorite reporter. He’s got a couple of years on me and has satisfyingly broad shoulders that say “lean on me, I’m dependable.” Who knew shoulders could lie? His most certainly do. I wouldn’t depend on him to save my life if I was clinging by my fingertips to a cliff edge; in fact, I wouldn’t put it past him to stamp on my poor, scrambling hands. Like that big, bad lion inThe Lion Kingwhose name I can’t think of, the one with startlingly green eyes. Fletcher Gunn has startlingly green eyes too.
Right, so I think it’s more than time I went back down to my own end of the building; standing around here drinking lukewarm cat piss is sending my mind toward paths I’d rather not stray down.
