Chapter Two #2
I winced. “Rough week.” Ruby was gorgeous, extroverted, and fun to be around. If she couldn’t get a date… well, I was glad to be married. I would have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to the dating world.
“I feel like giving up. What is wrong with people?” she asked.
I thought about my career and wondered where to start with that question.
“Don’t ask Lexi that. Her dating career was less than stellar,” said Lily as she moved past Ruby to reach for an unopened wine bottle. “And before she points out neither was mine, she’s right, neither was mine.”
“You’re both married to great guys now,” said Ruby. “There must be a secret you’re both not telling me.”
“The road to get there was paved with dick pics,” I said and Ruby shuddered.
“Maybe I’m just going to live my best life man fr— oh, hello,” she said, her eyes widening.
I was tempted to turn around and see who walked in but the icy daiquiri was delicious.
When a man hopped onto the stool next to mine, a delicious, but subtle, waft of aftershave reaching me, I barely glanced up.
Clearly, I was dead inside. My attempts to get pregnant had rendered me blind to all but my husband.
“What can I get you?” asked Ruby, sliding over to serve the man.
“A beer and a greeting from my best bud,” said the man. At the sound of his voice, I looked up and smiled.
Special Agent Adam Maddox fixed me with a terrific smile, then pushed his hand over his unruly hair. His stubble was several days old, and his brilliant blue eyes were especially dazzling.
Nope, I wasn’t blind. My ovaries were sending out the bat signal.
The group of several post-work women nearby shuffled closer, Ruby leaned in, and I had to wonder if Maddox was armed. He’d need to be if he planned to get out of the bar alive.
“Who’s your best bud?” I asked.
“You are,” he said and lightly punched my arm. I mock winced and rubbed the spot he’d bopped but Maddox’s attention was already distracted.
“Are you single?” asked Ruby. She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
“She’s desperate,” I told him. “You’re potentially the last reasonable man left in the city.”
“Quite the accolade,” said Maddox. “Am I single? Let’s see. Are you crazy?”
“No,” said Ruby.
He shrugged. “Shame. I like crazy.”
“How crazy?”
Maddox pointed to me.
“I’m perfectly normal,” I said.
Maddox snorted. “Sounds like something a crazy person would say. Alas, Ruby, I am not available.”
“You have a girlfriend?” I asked, giving him my full attention now.
“It’s not that thief, is it? It is, isn’t it?
Maddox! You cannot have a thief for a girlfriend!
” I should have known. He’d been remarkably cagey about the beautiful thief who’d thwarted me twice…
and saved me too, but I’d come to realize he’d known her for a lot longer than he’d let on.
Maddox’s grin widened. “No, I meant I’m literally not available. I have my next two weeks booked solid with work, family stuff, friends, and then I might have to take a business trip out of town. I have no time.”
“Shame,” said Ruby, straightening up and surveying the bar and its patrons. “All I have is time.”
“Can you serve the guys over there?” asked Lily, taking Ruby’s place. “Don’t you have any spare cousins you can give to Ruby?” she asked me. “One of them must be single.”
I frowned. “I don’t know. We can ask my mom. She’ll know.”
“Or you can find time and take her on a date,” Lily said, addressing Maddox now, her arms folded like she meant business.
“I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“To who?”
“To you, Lily. I can’t date all your friends and never you. So, I think I’ll bow out and try not to regret coming in here for a quiet, peaceful beer.”
Lily’s eyebrows knit together. “It’s happy hour. It’s hunting time for the post work crowd.”
“And I’m still waiting for my beer,” Maddox pointed out.
“Oh. On it.” She turned to grab a glass from the rear counter.
“How’s your day?” I asked.
“Quiet. My partner and your cousin are on a date, so I ducked out on time for once and figured a beer would do nicely. And what do I know, here you are, propping up the bar like a woman who’s been abandoned by her workaholic husband and is in need of attention.
What are you drinking anyway? Is that entirely ice? ”
“Passion-fruit daiquiri.”
He slipped two fingers around the glass stem, slid it towards him and sucked on the straw. “That’s an adult slush puppy,” he decided. “How’s your caseload?”
“Quiet, too. Mostly I’m completing outstanding paperwork.”
“We could probably drum up some crime if we put our heads together.”
“Or we could get cheeseburgers?”
“Sold! I like how you think.”
We placed a food order with Lily when she returned with Maddox’s beer in a tall glass, and she entered it into her machine, telling us the wait would be twenty minutes or so since the happy hour crowd were starting to crave carbs.
“I had a strange walk-in today,” I told Maddox while we waited, trying not to shout as the noise levels increased around us.
“Go on.”
“She asked me to solve her murder.”
“To solve her own murder?” Maddox frowned. “Seems premature. Was she a little…” He whizzed his forefinger in circles close to his temple.
“She seemed totally sane to me. She was convinced she was going to be killed.”
“Based on…?”
“She’d been involved in a couple of scary incidents and I think she might have just been a little freaked out. They could have been accidental but… I don’t know. She was worried and scared but doesn’t seem to have any enemies.”
“Perhaps she needed to hear some sympathy and reassurance.”
“Maybe. I’m not sure I gave her any,” I admitted.
“Is it worth taking a look?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She got very upset when she thought I thought she was crazy. I didn’t think that at all but…”
“There’s nothing else to go on,” Maddox finished.
“Yeah, but I suppose I’ve worked with less.”
“Let me know if you have anything to run by me. Always happy to hear about whatever crazy case you’ve got yourself involved in.
Now, here’s an actual lunatic case that I heard about this week…
” Maddox started, filling me in on a wild story until our cheeseburgers came and the crowd thinned out.
We ate at the bar, Ruby and Lily checking in to chat whenever they could, our conversation moving onto other topics.
By the time I got home, a little before nine, I’d put the strange request behind me for now and remembered the good news from the fertility clinic.
Solomon hadn’t called or left a message and he wasn’t home so I took the opportunity to have a long bath and snuggle up in my black-and-white-striped pajamas.
As I caught my reflection in the mirror, I knew at once why I wasn’t pregnant yet.
It wasn’t that Solomon was working late. It was that my pajamas made me look like a burglar, minus swag bag, and, even worse, not the sexy kind. Yes, that was definitely the problem.