Chapter Twenty-Five
Cooper didn’t make it to supper, but he did call his uncle partway through the meal and said he hoped to make it in time for dessert. Something had come up at work that was slowing him down.
My fingers were crossed that his delay didn’t have anything to do with a certain imp.
Or one of the Nachzehrer.
Or any of the other “undead population” Dominick had mentioned.
Or that Duzarx thing Prudence had seen crawl out of the Open Cut.
Or … I poured another shot’s worth of tequila into my glass of lemonade. That was enough thinking about my to-do list for now.
After supper, Natalie and I had cleared the table and done the dishes while everyone else enjoyed the peach pie and ice cream that Cornelius brought. He’d stopped at the store after leaving a certain jerkweed patient at the hospital with a small concussion from blunt force trauma via a stapler.
Fortunately, Rex didn’t remember how he got the dent in his head, and being that he didn’t fully come to until he was on the way to the hospital, he had no memory of me being involved. Cornelius didn’t enlighten him, he just claimed to have found Rex by his car next to a patch of ice.
As far as I was concerned, Rex was lucky I hadn’t left a permanent dent in his cranium. While he wasn’t fully to blame because it’d been the lidérc running the show, that didn’t make up for his past assholery.
Cooper still hadn’t shown up by the time the kids finished with their dessert. Natalie didn’t mention anything about his tardiness, but I caught her looking toward the dining room more than once.
I let the kids escape the “boring” adult table talk and go watch a little television before bedtime. I was checking on them to make sure they were settled in with a movie that wouldn’t give them any trouble falling asleep when the front door opened.
Cooper walked in, sniffing the air as he unzipped his Deadwood police department coat.
I joined him in the dining room. “You didn’t ring the doorbell.”
His face furrowed. “Sorry. I thought—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “I meant that as a good thing. You don’t have to ring it or knock anymore.” I waited as he took off his coat and draped it on the back of a dining room chair next to Reid’s. He still wore the blue jeans and shirt he’d had on earlier, but the sleeves were rolled up. His hair was sticking up in shark fins yet again and his eyes looked as tired as my bones felt. “Did you have any problems tonight at work that I need to worry about?”
He shook his head. “You’re off the hook for now.”
“Good.”
“Don’t celebrate yet. Your partner in crime got caught.”
My partner? “Natalie?”
He nodded.
I thought about what she’d told me about Tiffany seeing her at the diner. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Not yet,” he said, “but she’s aroused suspicion.”
“Fudge berries.”
“Yeah.” He plowed his fingers through his hair, rearranging the fins. “We’re going to have to be especially careful now. If Hawke finds out that she and I are more than just longtime acquaintances who share more than a few friends, he’ll be up my ass even more.”
“He really needs to get a hobby.”
“You are his hobby. You’ve done one hell of a job getting under his skin.”
“That’s not my fault.”
He hit me with a squint.
“Okay, maybe a little,” I said, changing my tune. “But he started it.”
He scoffed. “I was there the first time you two met, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I was having a bad day.”
His face softened. “It was certainly memorable, Parker. Now, how about you lead the way to whatever smells so good in the kitchen?”
“Sure, but just so you know, your girlfriend is pissed.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t let me include her in our posse, but I’ve since changed that. Natalie is on board, too.”
“It’s not a posse.”
“A posse is a group of people with a common purpose, which is usually enforcing some sort of law and order.”
“I’m fully aware of what a posse is, Parker.”
“Good, then you know that I’m right.”
“Christ. Nat gets in enough trouble without being dragged into your catastro-fucks.”
“I love you, too, law dog.” I punched him in the shoulder.
“That’s assault, Parker.”
“Maybe, but I said I loved you first, so that negates the assault.”
A small grin curved his lips. “Your affection is an assault on my senses, as well.”
“Keep it up, Cooper, and I’m going to hug you.”
A full-on smile surfaced. “Try it and I’ll arrest you for battery.”
Laughing, I returned to the kitchen with him following. “Look, everyone. Cooper decided to grace us with his prickly presence finally. Aren’t we so lucky?”
Cooper and Natalie exchanged heated looks when he entered the room. Actually, hers was more of a gunslinger glare, and his was a very definite smoldering stare. He detoured to the cupboard and grabbed a bowl and a spoon from the drawer, dishing himself up some of the soup we’d left cooling in the pot on the stove.
A smattering of liquor bottles now sat in the center of the table, surrounding Aunt Zoe’s Betty Boop cookie jar, which was open and filled with chocolate chip cookies. Dang, Betty was really hitting the sauce this evening, and it was high time I joined her.
I took the seat next to Doc once again, toasting his bottle of beer with my glass of lemonade and tequila that he’d apparently refilled while I was in the other room. “Merci, Gomez.”
“Come here, Tish.” He hooked his finger in the neckline of his T-shirt, pulling me in for a kiss. His lips tasted like peach pie, giving me whipped cream notions.
“Knock off that shit, you two,” Cooper said, taking the open seat next to Natalie that Layne had vacated.
“Okay, Violet Lynn,” Aunt Zoe said after uncorking the Gamay wine Reid had brought.
