Page 24 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
Tom flushed red. Which shouldn’t have been adorable, but was. “Ah. I hit my knee when I heard you come in. I apologize. I’m trying not to use profanity around my niece.”
“I think buggering is profanity.”
“No. No?”
“Have you been to the United Kingdom? Pretty sure it is.”
“Then it goes on the list at once,” he replied, and to her surprise he extracted a small notebook from his shirt pocket, produced a pencil from somewhere, scribbled a note, put the pad away.
“Huh.”
“Yes.”
“You take that pretty seriously.”
“She is insanely precocious and no one wants another Cokesucker incident.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” Then they just eyeballed each other as the silence stretched.
What are you doing?
Stalling so we can keep talking? If I stand here like a dummy long enough, maybe he’ll tell me about the Cokesucker incident.
“Would you like to meet for breakfast later today?”
“Wh-what?”
“In a professional capacity,” he said quickly, because of course he meant a professional capacity and was she trolling fordatesnow? Clearly their relationship was going to be purely business going forward, which was a good thing, averygood thing, a thing she richly desired, so it was fine. Everything was fine. “I’d like to do some more research and ask you some follow-up questions.”
“Okay…” Something was off. They’d only been speaking for a few minutes, but he was bouncing from kind to businesslike and back again, like he couldn’t make up his mind how best to deal with her.
Who cares? Talk to him. Spill your guts! He might help you think of something, he might find something that jogs your memory or—or—look, it’s preferable to moping in your hotel room, isn’t it?
It was.
“Ten thirty?” she asked.
He nodded. “The Black Dog? Down the street?”
Yes, because nothing said “time to mourn and then get back to getting on with the rest of your life yet again” like a specialty espresso sipped in a hip coffeehouse across from a medical examiner who was trying to cut back on the profanity.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Yes.”
So it was done, and she left Dr. Tom Baker to it (he’d gotten up to walk her out, banged his knee on the corner of the desk again, and yelped “crap on a cracker!” in his deep voice, and she had to bite her lip, hard, so as not to laugh), and within half an hour she was reacquainting herself with the hotel room bed. She was short on sleep and wanted to be fresh for breakfast, plus leave time for a trip to the drugstore,because though she’d had it less than a day, she’d already lost her moisturizer somewhere.
And she needed it, because even though she hadn’t touched Danielle’s ashes, she couldn’t seem to stop washing her hands.
Thirteen
Tom Baker realized he was nearing a full-on sprint and forced himself to slow down. It wouldn’t do to burst through the door of the Black Dog Caférushed and wheezing, then try to radiate calm disinterest while he had coffee with a possible murderess whose mouth and lush curves were sin personified.
It is deeply frigged that I am excited about this. And dammit, I am allowed to swear in the privacy of my own thoughts!
And there she was, Ava Capp, staring pensively out the window onto the street, either because she was pensive or because she was a sociopath who could mimic pensive, and he had no idea which it was.
He walked past the long counter and sun-splashed tables to where she was sitting in the back, though he could have picked her out from farther away. The mass of shaggy dark blond waves, the olive complexion, the eyes, and the elegant lines of her body were unmistakable. Not that he could see her eyes from this distance, but he remembered them: gray and remarkable. He was so intent on reaching her he hardly felt it when his hip slammed into the corner of the counter.
But she’d looked around at the sound and his muffled curse (“Heckfire!”) and winced in what appeared to be perfect sympathy. She greeted him with, “How do younothave a limp? I’ve seen you do that three times in twenty hours.”
