AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her breath caught. A frivolous part of her that so rarely showed itself did a silent Yes! while another part sighed with relief. If she were a different person, a more overtly emotional person, she might even call it a swoon.
“Do we wait until the case is over and done with and then see...?” He arched one brow.
Tilting her head to the side, she replied, “That’s one option.”
“It could be weeks.”
“Months,” she agreed. “Or...”
“Or?”
The thought played in her head, tempting her with the possibilities, stunning her with the idea of making such a commitment to a man who might be nothing more than a short-term fling. Though in her gut, she knew there was nothing short-term about what she felt. What she was pretty sure he felt.
He was waiting for her to suggest option two, still standing impossibly close, his dark gaze locked with hers. A slow smile formed, softening the lines of his face. “Guess I’ll have to wait to find out.”
She smiled, too.
“I’ll be going to the funeral home again tomorrow. I’ll give the guy Scott’s credit card information and ask him to outdo the old man’s send-off.” Hands in his pockets, he gazed into the night. “The good thing about them finding her body when they did...with the year-and-a-day rule, she can’t be buried in the same crypt as him. Her life with him might have seemed like an eternity in hell, but at least she won’t have to really spend eternity with him.”
“Thank God for small favors.” Alia wasn’t wild about the aboveground crypts or sharing her final resting place with a bunch of other people, but the idea that, one year and a day after she was interred, the workers could pop open the vault and slide someone else in, frankly, made her skin crawl in a major way.
“Come by the bar tomorrow evening if you get a chance.” His hand fumbled for hers, and he gave it a squeeze, then let go.
She was still nodding agreement when he reached his car. She watched until he drove away, then moved a few steps back to sit. Getting comfortable, she drew her feet into the seat, wrapped her arms around her legs, then sighed softly, thinking about that second option again.
When she realized that the bump pressing against her hip was her cell phone, she pulled it out, stared at it a moment, then dialed. Though it was her mom’s cell she’d dialed, her dad answered. After thirty-five years together, neither needed nor wanted much privacy from the other.
Alia caught him up on the public aspects of the case before her mom came on the line. “Tell me what’s new, chica.”
“That’s cô bé to you.”
“Don’t get sassy, girl. Have you had a date since we last talked?”
Alia ran through her encounters with Landry, but none of them technically qualified as a date. Except...”A man cooked dinner for me this evening.”
In her mom’s book, that was beyond dating and darn close to being engaged. “Really? What did he fix?”
She recited the menu, then teasingly added, “That was after he took me out for Vietnamese for lunch.”
“Ooh.” Lien sounded somewhere between envious and thrilled. “So what are you doing for this man that makes him want to feed you so well?”
For a moment, Alia wished she could give a naughty reply that would make her mother laugh. Instead, she went for blunt truth. “I’m helping find out who murdered his parents.”
The silence on the line made clear that her mom’s light mood had vanished like a helium balloon in typhoon winds. “He’s Admiral Jackson’s son.”
“Yes.”
“He’s a part of your investigation.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not supposed to get personally involved with him.”
“No, I’m not.” Alia watched lights streak across the distant sky and wished they were shooting stars or lightning. She could make a wish or sleep well in her warm, dry cocoon of a bedroom while nature raged outside. But based on their location and movement, she was pretty sure the lights belonged to a medical helicopter, picking up or dropping off a critical patient.
“Landry is a good guy, Mom,” she said quietly. “He...he gets me. He likes me. And I like him.”
For a moment she was transported back to Hawaii and the day she and Kanani had become official. Do you like me? he’d asked solemnly, and she’d shrugged. I like your toys. And your bike. Plus, I can run faster and jump higher than you, so that’s good.
But I can skateboard better, and I can surf. So d’ya want to be my girlfriend?
Seeing that they’d been pretty equally matched, she’d agreed. Thankfully, her tastes had matured since then. She liked Landry’s eyes...smile...body. His sense of humor and his intelligence. The way he could say so much with only a look, and the way he’d survived a childhood so ugly that it made her hurt for him. She figured she could outrun, outjump and outskateboard him, and she didn’t give a good damn if he could surf.
