she reciprocated. Weird concept, that. Mine had suffered a fatal heart attack. Currently the unburiable part of her resided alongside the other skeptics and unrepentants in a version of hell I never wanted to see (or smell) again. Oddly, that reminded me of Matt. One of our last conversations had been about my parents. I’d been bitching about my dad.
“He’s all right, you know,” Matt had said between bites of the burgers we’d just grilled on the little deck outside our cozy country-themed duplex. “Once you get past all the bark there’s a quality human in there. Your mom’s the one to watch out for.”
I’d violently disagreed with him about Albert. After all, he hadn’t grown up listening to the man’s lazy-ass lectures. “Get your lazy ass off the couch and do your damn chores!” But he’d had a valid point when it came to my mother. What a depressing duo.
“Your mom can bake too, right?” I asked Cole.
He nodded. “Like a pastry chef. She said Grandma Thea made her try a bunch of girly hobbies after the car crash, and baking was the only one that stuck. She and my dad run a little coffee shop in Miami that’s famous for its homemade desserts. In fact, she likes to say her cinnamon rolls put all four of her boys through college.”
“You got any sisters?”
“No. Why?” Cole turned curious blue eyes my way, his bronzed face and surfer’s ’fro making me long for a pristine beach and a bottle of SPF 80. Anything that would put thousands of miles between me and my dad while preventing skin cancer had to be a good thing.
I shrugged. “I thought your folks might like a daughter. As in me. I’m in the market for a new set.” When his glance wandered below my neck I punched him in the arm. “Of parents, you nimrod.”
“Then we’d be siblings,” he said. “Which would make what I want to do with you illegal.”
I sighed. “Dude, you can’t still want to marry me. Now that you know I’m with—” I jerked my thumb toward Vayl.
“Why won’t you say his name out loud if you two are such a pair?”
igh' widthI yanked my tray out of its upright position and depocketed the poker chips that had become a balm to my troubled spirit ever since I’d had to give up my playing cards. As I divided and recombined them, the familiar clack of clay against plastic eased the kinks out of my knot-infested muscles. “My dad doesn’t know.”
When I felt Cole’s shoulder shaking against mine I glanced over. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t make a sound. As soon as he paused for a breath, the plane’s cabin would be filled with the echoes of his mirth. And I’d have to kill him too.
I whispered, “You make a sound and I’ll tell Pete you compromised this mission and should be reassigned to a desk. Forever.”
The giggles blasted out of him in a single shocked whoof. “You wouldn’t!”
“Okay, not forever. Two weeks, max. But, believe me, it feels like eternity.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Remind me never to break my collarbone. Apparently all the forced rest causes you to peel the skin off your face and reveal your inner monster.”
“It was more of a crack than a break. And I’ve been perfectly reasonable—”
“Save it. I didn’t want to believe the rumors, but now I have to think they were true. You really did come off sick leave three weeks early to answer the phones at the office, didn’t you?”
“Martha hadn’t had a vacation in years. So I just thought—”
“Is it true that you repainted the whole floor? One-handed?”
“The walls were turquoise. Who can concentrate with that color looming over them all day long?”
“Did you, or did you not, reorganize all of Pete’s files so now he can’t find anything?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t see what the big deal is. Most of it’s just backup for what’s on his computer. But that was when he sent me to Florida, which, in my own defense, I’m pretty sure he was planning to do anyway—”
Cole shook his head direly. “Not so fast. I saw you plowing toward the back of the plane just now like you meant to tear off the tail and stuff it down Albert’s throat. No, don’t get that dreamy look on your face. I want some straight talk from you, dammit!”
I gulped. Cole didn’t swear much, and never at me. In fact, he’d been nothing but charming, funny, and pretty much perfect since we’d met in a women’s bathroom when he was still a PI specializing in supernatural cases. “Okay,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
Cole turned fully toward me, bracing his hand against the seat in front of him. He lowered his voice to intimate. “To me this is just another aspect of your recently upgraded weirdocity.”
“That’s not a word.”
“Shut up.”
Since the alternative was kicking a huge dent in his face, which he really didn’t deserve, I pressed my lips together and listened. He said, “Why do you keep holding back with Vayl if it’s the real thing? You wonnt>hing? Y’t tell your dad. Nobody in the department knows. Isn’t true love something you want to shout about from the nearest rooftop?”
I murmured, “Dude, every time I step onto a roof somebody tries to throw me off. Plus that’s so . . .” I rolled my eyes and made an ick-I-swallowed-a-gnat sound.
“That’s not an answer,” he insisted.
I took one of the chips off the pile I’d made and turned it between my fingers. “It’s Matt.” I didn’t need to remind him that my fiance had been murdered, along with my sister-in-law and the rest of our vamp-killing crew. It was one of the first personal stories I’d ever told him. Which said a lot about the kind of guy he was.
For an answer he draped his arm across my shoulder.
