Page 10 of By The Book
“Who is she?” Marsali asked.
Denz glanced at her husband, who shrugged.
“You know she’s like a dog with a bone.”
“A dog? Really?” Marsali shot a tolerating glare at her SO. “I’d better be a cute one.”
“Always.”
Denz watched the byplay with amusement. “I never said there was a she, Mrs. B.”
“You didn’t have to. I’m good at reading people, and while you do a really good stone-cold, tough-guy expression, you slipped and I saw it. Now, who is she?”
Carter, Lincoln, and Mac as well as the ladies drilled him with their gazes. “Okay, fine. There may have been a surprise today.”
“Oh, do tell,” Marsali said, sliding an elbow onto the table to prop her chin on, waiting expectantly.
He shook his head at her antics. “The, uh, guy I rented the apartment from has a daughter and grandson who showed up to visit.”
“Oh, do you know anything else about her? How old is her son?” Marsali asked.
“I’d guess fifteen given his height, but I think he’s younger. Big kid, though. Needs to be in basketball.”
“Not married?” Marsali’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Couldn’t tell you,” he said.
“Was she wearing a ring?”
“Mrs. B, stop.”
Everyone laughed.
“I haven’t done anything,” she said, blinking innocently.
“You’re thinking it and…trust me, she’d say no. She had a lot to say about the fact I’ve got a bullet wound.”
“How’d she see it and know the sling wasn’t for a broken arm or something?” Eliza asked.
Realizing he’d dug himself a hole he was going to have to climb out of, he grabbed the water glass in front of him and wished the waitress would hurry up. “I’d just gotten out of the shower when I heard someone trying to get into the apartment. The owner had said people sometimes walk through the yards on their way to the beach just to see what they can steal, so I opened the door.”
“Naked?” Marsali asked, gasping.
Denz was well aware of the glares he was now receiving from the ladies’ male companions. “I had a towel.”
“Mmm, but where?” Eliza, the most ornery one in the group, murmured with a blink and a grin.
Eliza’s husband whispered something in her ear, and she waggled her eyebrows at him, eyes sparkling and a flirtatious look on her face.
“I was perfectly respectable considering I thought someone was breaking in,” he countered. Were all women like this? He hadn’t been around many in a setting like this one, but the questions had him squirming in his seat, something his boss wouldn’t be happy to see.
“Are you ready to order?” the waitress asked, finally pausing by their table.
Denz stared up at the teenager like the lifeline she was. “Definitely.”
“We’ve got his,” Marsali said to the waitress. “It’s a business meeting, after all.”
Denz’s fingers gripped the menu until his fingers turned white. “I am not joining your database, Mrs. B.”
