by Lucy Score
She held up a finger and drank deeply. This time when her eyes opened, they were clear, focused. She felt more coherent.
Nick was waving a pair of salad tongs in her face.
“What are you doing with my Dirty Dickie Underwear Tongs?” she asked.
“I’m retiring them. You don’t live with a dirty old man anymore. You’re living with me now. And we’re not roommates. We’re dating. You’re my girlfriend. I’ll remember your damn birthday and take you out for dinner and buy you shoes or whatever as soon as you apologize for being a headstrong idiot.”
“Here, I saved you a taco,” she said, handing him the bag.
He looked down at it and opened his mouth. Then closed it. Hugging the bag to his chest, he looked back up at her. “You could have died, Riley.”
“You too,” she shot back.
“That’s beside the point!” And he was back to yelling.
“Yeah? Well, then your point is also beside the point,” she shouted.
He was looking at her with that patented Nick Santiago hunger, and she felt something tingle to life in her nether regions.
There was a knock on her door. “Riley! That Leon Tuffley guy is on the phone for you. He says something about Human Resources investigating you for kidnapping a receptionist and making terroristic threats?” Fred called. “They want you to come in early tomorrow.”
Nick was back to staring at the taco.
“Hang on one second,” Riley said to him. She gimped the five steps to the door and opened it. “Tell that crotch-scratching, bottom line-licking dumbass that I quit.”
“Crotch-scratching, bottom line-licking dumbass. Crotch-scratching, bottom line-licking dumbass. Got it,” Fred said cheerily and then uncovered the cordless phone.
She shut the door and turned to face Nick, feeling a combination of giddy and terror and determination.
“You just quit your job,” he said, looking a little bewildered.
“You need a place to stay? I need a job,” she said, advancing on him unsteadily.
“You want to work for me?”
“We can play it by ear,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck. She thought about boosting herself up but didn’t trust her current vertical leap or Nick’s ability to catch her with that extra hole in his tush throwing off his center of gravity.
He, however, had no such qualms. He grabbed her by the butt cheeks and picked her up off the ground. When he pressed her against the wall, she realized it would take a lot more than a gunshot wound to the ass to dampen Nick Santiago’s libido.
“I didn’t get to yell at you enough yet,” he complained when she nipped at his bottom lip. “I also didn’t get to impress you with what I did to your ex-husband.”
“Impress me after sex,” she breathed.
“Hey,” he growled.
“Sorry. That came out wrong.” Riley laughed.
He kissed her and stumbled in the direction of the bed. It felt like falling, he realized. That dip in his gut during freefall. The thrill of it. The adventure. But they were in it together. She’d saved his life, then saved him a taco. If this wasn’t love, he knew jack shit about romance.
He pitched them forward, and together they fell onto her bed.
“Ouch,” they muttered between kisses.
Epilogue
A few weeks later
The Susquehanna River flowed over Riley’s feet and ankles, making the summer swelter seem a little more manageable. Cicadas buzzed in the trees. Sunshine sparkled and danced on the surface of the water, baking vitamin D into her skin. She soaked it all in, luxuriated in it.
Music of the Jimmy Buffet variety wafted to them from the speakers in the bullet-ridden Jeep onshore.
“This was a really good idea, Thorn,” Nick murmured next to her. She tipped her head to the side and peered at him. He was kicked back in a partially submerged lawn chair next to her. His ball cap was pulled down over his eyes. There was a cold beer in his hand, half a sub in his lap, and a smug smile on his face.
“Actually, it was my Uncle Jimmy’s,” she said with a grin.
“Remind me to thank him when I meet him,” he said lazily.
She bit her tongue and waited.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Nick said finally.
“Yep. He haunts the Jeep,” she told him.
“Of course he does.”
“Anytime you get sick of the weirdness, you’re free to start sleeping across the hall,” Riley teased. Their relationship was still fresh, still intoxicating. They’d bonded over murder and wound care and now found themselves settling into a quieter normal with no murders to solve, no innocence to prove.
They were only a few weeks into this new normal. But it was good. Really good.
Nick had moved in across the hall into Dickie’s old space, but they spent every night together in her bed. Riley was dipping a toe into the private investigating waters by studying up on criminal justice and investigative techniques while working part-time as an office manager for Santiago Investigations. Her financial burden had lightened considerably thanks to Nick forcing Griffin to declare Riley’s legal debt to him settled.
She also had a slot reserved in an upcoming firearms safety course.
Thanks to the media attention from the Mayor McMurder case, Nick was juggling a heavy caseload and shopping for a new office space. Preferably one with a sprinkler system.
Best of all, they both were still sleep deprived because every time they got near a bed or a flat surface, sex happened.
Really great sex.
A massive splash snagged their attention. Burt motored toward them with a small tree clutched in his mouth. Nick put the beer in his cupholder and made a grab for the tree. “Buddy, I told you. Smaller branches. Not entire trunks.” He broke off a branch and hurled it into the water. Burt bounded toward it, sending river water everywhere.
“How was Perry today?” Riley asked before biting into her half of the sub.
“He’s good. I took him chicken salad and some new socks. Said the cops talked to him about the arson, and he IDed the perps from mugshots. Same two who tried to take you out on the bridge. Weber thinks they’re going to roll on Shapiro if the deal’s right.”
“Good,” she said with a satisfied sigh.
“No one associated with that mess is going to see the outside of a cage for a very long time,” he said.
“Have you noticed Mrs. Penny’s been acting weird lately?” Riley changed the subject.
“Define weird. She’s always weird.”
“She swears she’s not doing the vigilante thing anymore, but she’s been sneaking around. Some days it looks like she’s in disguise.”
“Yeah,” he said. “About that. I’ve been meaning to tell you—”
But Burt bounded back, looking very proud of himself with five feet of rotting log.
Nick repeated the process, tossing a foot-long piece of bark into the river.
“Hey, Thorn?” he said.
“Mmm?”
“What time is it?” he asked.
She peeked at her phone. “11:17 a.m.”
His dimples appeared. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
“What are we doing right now?”
Her grin nearly split her face. No more hours wasted behind industrial gray walls. No more snide receptionists or accounting for every minute of her day. “Whatever the hell we want.”
“Cheers,” he said, tapping his beer to hers. “Oh, shit. What time did you say it was?”
“11:18 now,” she told him.
“We gotta go,” he said, standing and folding his lawn chair.
“Why? Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“You can’t surprise a psychic,” Riley warned him as a dozen messages tried to ping onto her internal screen.
“No cheating,” he said, pulling her out of the chair.
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said dryly.
“T
ell your spirit guides that you don’t want to know,” Nick said.
“Hear that, spirit guides?” she said wryly. “I don’t want to know any surprises for the rest of the day.”
He whistled for Burt, and the muddy, wet dog romped toward them.
Back at the mansion, Nick parked next to a large delivery truck idling in the parking lot. “What are my parents doing here?” Riley asked, noticing their car was parked where Mrs. Penny’s minivan used to sit.
“Let’s find out,” Nick said, putting his hands on her shoulders and pushing her toward the house. While he closed the dog gate on the porch, Riley pretended to ignore the hand-painted “No Trespassing” and “No Psychic Readings” signs on the front of the house. She hoped fervently that in a few weeks they could come down once everyone in the city forgot about the whole psychic thing. But for now, the phone rang off the hook, and letters from people asking for help or calling her a fraud continued to arrive.
They left Burt outside to dry off and went inside, finding the usual amount of chaos.
There seemed to be a lot of extra people in residence. Two uniformed delivery men were trooping down the steps. Riley’s dad was talking gin with Mrs. Penny in the front parlor.
Fred and Lily were having a spirited discussion in the kitchen about seasoning and the second season of Gossip Girl.
Nick peeled off two twenties from his wallet and handed them to the delivery guys. “Any trouble?” he asked.
“Thanks, man. Had to maneuver around the lift chair, but nothing we ain’t done before,” the first guy said.
Nick dragged her up the stairs past Mr. Willicott, who had moved a bench from his room into the hallway and was reading a newspaper from the 1990s.
On the third floor, they found Riley’s mom and Gabe and a cloud of pungent smoke.
Riley coughed. “Mom, what are you smudging?”
Blossom swirled around, making the long orange skirt float out around her, “It’s your housewarming, sweetie!”
“I’ve lived here for a whole year,” she pointed out.
“Not like this,” Blossom said with a very unsubtle wink at Nick. “Ta-da!” She threw open the door to Nick’s room.
Riley poked her head in. “What the—?” Nick gave her a nudge inside.
What had been a mostly empty room with a few half-emptied bags of new personal effects now housed a very large king-sized bed, matching nightstands, a tall dresser, and a huge dog bed.
“Uh. This is nice, but where are you going to watch TV?” Riley asked, hopping on the bed and lusting after the comfy mattress.
“The question is, where are we going to watch TV,” he said, pulling her to her feet.
“I’m so excited I could just die,” Blossom squealed.
Back in the hall, Gabe bowed low and opened Riley’s door with a flourish.
“Holy shit.”
Her bed and god-awful couch were gone. A new, deep sofa with fat pillows sat in front of an obscenely large flat-screen TV. There was another dog bed next to it, this one shaped like a couch. Her rickety card table had been replaced with an actual dining table with four chairs.
In the dormer, a pair of cushions rested on the floor next to a low bench that held a collection of candles and a few books that she recognized from her mother’s personal library.
Exploring Your Psychic Abilities.
Guiding Your Spirit Guides
Great Psychics of the Seventeenth Century
“That’s for your future training with Mount Everest over there,” Nick said, nodding toward Gabe.
Gabe beamed his benevolence at Riley, and something behind him on the wall caught her eye. It was a framed photo, a still from the Cumberland Sentinel of Nick and Riley, arms around each other, bloody and battered, as they limped away from the capitol fountain. They were both grinning.
She crossed to it and ran her fingers over the plain black frame.
“It’s, uh, our first picture together,” Nick said, sounding a little embarrassed. He scratched nervously at the back of his head. “Thought it looked pretty cool.”
And just like that, Riley’s heart threw itself down the stairs of her chest. Tumbling madly into real-life, honest-to-goodness love. Not that she was going to tell him right this second. They’d moved way too fast to get to this point. She could give him a few months to settle into monogamy.
“You did all this?” she asked, turning to him.
Unable to contain her excitement, Blossom danced around Gabe. “It’s a living room! You have a bedroom and a living room now! Isn’t this exciting?”
It was the little things for Blossom Basil-Thorn.
Nick flashed her his dimples, and Riley felt a little light-headed. “My renter’s insurance check landed. Figured I might as well do something with the money.”
Nick Santiago had moved them in together. Without asking. It was a very Nick-like thing to do.
“You realize what you’ve done, right?” she asked.
“What?” he asked.
“You moved us in together. Like officially. Like no safety net of you having your own space.”
He reached for her, settling his hands on her hips. “I am aware, Thorn.”
“And you’re okay with this?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” he said, pulling her closer. She slipped her arms around his neck.
“You’re really sure about this? You’re ready to say goodbye to your bachelor glory days?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, his mouth zeroing in on hers.
Riley’s lips were already parting. Her body was already responding to his touch.
“Ahem!” Blossom cleared her throat loudly. “We’ll give you some privacy to break in the new furniture in a few minutes. But first, I think it’s time for another tarot reading,” she said, producing a deck of cards from the folds of her skirt.
Instinctively, Riley stepped between her mother and Nick. “Mom, do you think that’s a good idea? Remember what happened last time?”
“Oh, pfft. That was weeks ago. I have a very good feeling about your future.”
Riley sighed. “Fine. But we’re doing this with alcohol.”
They trooped downstairs, and Blossom bustled ahead of them into the parlor where she confiscated an ornate marble side table.
“Mrs. Penny, a round of whatever you feel like making,” Nick said.
“Straight bourbon it is!” Mrs. Penny announced, whipping out a bottle.
“I think I will get some celebratory ice cream,” Gabe mused and headed off to the kitchen.
Riley and Nick sat down on the velvet settee. Blossom dragged one of the heavy wingback chairs up to the table while Roger noodled out a tune on the organ in the corner.
“Mom, I really don’t think this is necessary,” Riley began.
“Nonsense. We’ll just make it a quickie. Not a sexual quickie, of course.” She giggled.
Riley laid her hand on Nick’s knee and squeezed. Hard.
“We’ll just do a linear spread,” Blossom insisted. “Now, you both handle the deck.”
“I beg your pardon?” Nick said.
“Deck. She said deck,” Riley said.
“Bourbon’s up,” Mrs. Penny said, shuffling over with three glasses with very generous pours in her grip.
Riley gave the cards a half-hearted shuffle and then handed them over to Nick. He did the same, only with more enthusiasm. Another reason why she liked him. He was nicer to her family than she was.
“Okey-dokey,” Blossom said, taking the deck back and dealing out three cards. “We’ll just do a little past, present, future.” She flipped over the first card. “I think we can all agree that this is an accurate read of your recent past.”
“The Knight of Wands,” Riley said to Nick.
“Mmm. Uh-huh,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulder.
“It means action and adventure and lots of fearlessness,” Blossom supplied. “Now, let’s take a peek at your present. Oooh. The six of cups. That’s very nice.
”
“Happiness, healing, and familiarity,” Riley explained.
His thumb was distracting her nicely with its little circles on her shoulder. She couldn’t wait to go back upstairs and try out that new bed.
“Now for the future,” Blossom said.
“If she draws the dead guy stabbed full of swords, I’m out,” he joked in a whisper.
“Don’t be silly, Nick. I see nothing but happiness and adventure in your fut—fuck.”
“Mom!”
But Blossom was staring down at the card she’d just flipped. “It’s the Tower. The major arcana card known as Chaos.”
“Eh, better than the dead guy, right?” Nick said, peering at the card.
It was a card of upheaval and destruction, as illustrated by the stone tower collapsing in a shower of fire and sparks into a dark river.
Riley did not have a good feeling about this.
Roger hit a two-handed cacophony of sharps and flats on the organ, and not one second later, the doorbell rang.
“Uh-oh.” Riley and Blossom stared wide-eyed at each other.
“Oh, no. She wouldn’t have come without calling first,” Blossom said, shaking her head back and forth.
“She can’t be here,” Riley hissed.
“Didn’t you sense her coming?” Blossom asked.
“Nick made me shut up my spirit guides so he could surprise me!”
“Well, that was a stupid thing to do,” her mother complained.
“What? Who?” Roger asked.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked, standing up to face the unknown threat.
The front door swung open on its own, and a tall woman with ramrod posture and a pinched frown swirled into the foyer. She was dressed in head-to-toe black worn in flowing layers. Her lipstick was a dark purple on a tight mouth bookended with deep lines. She had bird feathers tucked into her short, silver hair.
Everyone in the room came to their feet.
“One would think that one’s family would have prepared a proper greeting,” she announced coolly.
Blossom picked up her tumbler and knocked back four fingers of bourbon in one gulp.