Hot and Irresistible (24 page)

“Do you really think Daemon’s her dad?”

She kissed Donovan and took his hand. “I think it’s over and it should stay that way and we should get some chicken Marsala before it’s gone.” She started off and he held her in place. “Donovan, if you’ve found something else, I don’t want to hear it. My brain is oatmeal.”

“You got the necklace and we found the killer and you have a dad. Things are pretty good…except for the oatmeal brain…right?”

“Agreed, especially with you here.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him

“And that’s the problem.”

She knew what was coming and had refused to even think about it, hoping that if she didn’t send those brain waves out into the universe they simply wouldn’t exist. “Not now. Not yet. I don’t want you to leave, not when everything’s so good. It’s not fair.”

“If I hang around here, it’s back to your side, my side. Not over Ray as the killer, but Ray and the gambling, and that one’s not going away. I’ll get that warrant sooner or later and then what? Arrest him? You’re right, he’s a great guy and I’m not going to be the one to put him in prison, especially when I get to watch you hate my guts while I do it. The problem started when I got here, and if I go, the problem goes with me.”

“What about Sly? The task force?”

“Not if it costs you your dad. I’ll tell the congressman there wasn’t enough evidence for a warrant. He’ll find something else that will get him votes and make him look good and move on.”

“I’m not ready for this. I don’t know if I’ll be ready. I…I love you. I really do.”

“And you love Ray. If I go, I just go back to Boston. If I stay, Ray goes to prison. No one ever gets it all, cupcake. It just doesn’t work that way.”

“When do you…”

“In the morning. I have the room at the Inn for another night. Stay with me.”

She looked at him, knowing that this time tomorrow he’d be gone and she’d never see him again. She crossed her arms over her chest to stop the hurt. “Other than Brie, Char, and Prissy there’s never been anyone in my life I care about or who cared about me. I found Ray and I found you and I can’t just let you go.”

“Hey, Bebe? Donovan?” Ray said as he came into the room. “We’re all wanting to toast you two up there. Quit your necking and smooching and come on up.”

She started up the stairs with Donovan following her, and she realized she was listening to his footsteps, trying with all her heart to remember them so when he wasn’t with her some part of him would be even if it was simply the sound of his footsteps behind her.

Everyone clapped and wolf-whistled, including Edwina and Shipley. They sat beside Charlotte. The age of miracles was not over if the three of them were talking. Bebe and Donovan took chairs between Joe Earl and Vincent. Bebe was not in the mood to be Little Miss Sunshine right now. She’s rather go home, eat popcorn, and lose herself in reruns of
Lost
, so she didn’t have to think about Donovan going. But these were her friends, who deserved better than Bebe moping.

“Now this is a really great dinner.” Bebe smiled and waved her hand over the table piled high with chicken and eggplant and bread and bottles of red wine.

Anthony stood and raised his glass. “To spring nights, new friends, and good food to share.” He grinned. “I am getting very good with the English.”

And they ate and ate more and talked and drank till dark fell across the windows and Bebe thought for sure she’d turn into a pumpkin or whatever happened to people at midnight when they were really tired. The fearsome foursome that had morphed into eight thanked the brothers and Joe Earl and wished Edwina and Shipley good night, then shuffled out of the morgue and onto the sidewalk.

“Well, here we all are,” Prissy said. “It’s nearly midnight and we found the necklace today, the necklace that brought the blood sisters together. So you know what that means, don’t you?” She looked at Brie, Char, and Bebe.

Bebe shrugged. “We’re thirty and getting old.”

Prissy huffed, “We have to renew blood sisters forever. Our lives together started with the necklace lost, now there are eight of us, and new lives begin with necklace found. Who’s got a knife?”

Donovan reached into his pocket and pulled out the one Bebe had used to dig the bullet out of the attic floor at Magnolia House. Prissy beamed. “That’s perfect. We’ll meet at Bonaventure.”

“And why are we doing this?” Donovan asked as he drove the two of them through town toward Skidaway Island and the cemetery. She’d pretend this was just another drive with Donovan and not the last drive. That she’d see him tomorrow and they’d work on some other case and find clues and bad guys and eat Chinese and talk about how they had to write teeny-weeny to sign Daisy’s cast.

“Because Prissy wants us to do this, and the trip is a small price to pay to keep Prissy happy. No one wants to piss off the priestess or whatever she is. Her grandma Minerva is responsible for some pretty wacky stuff around here and who knows what gets passed on in the great gene pool of life. Take a left there,” Bebe said. Donovan did, then stopped the car in front of the double gates. “Well, it’s closed. Now what?”

“It’s not iHop. We have to improvise. There’s a space down by the river where the wrought-iron fence ends. We can shimmy through the break, although I have to tell you shimmy at ten is a lot easier than shimmy at thirty, and we have to hide the car in the bushes or we’ll get arrested and I hope you have a flashlight.”

“Is it really worth it?”

“How do you feel about being a werewolf or growing an extra ear? Family photos will never be the same.”

Bebe had no problem finding the right gravesite, mostly because Charlotte and Griff were already there, Griff looking as enthused as Donovan. Brie came around the corner with starry-eyed Beau, who would obviously go anywhere with BrieAnn, and Prissy and Sam arrived a few minutes later, Sam looking as if he were used to the world of Prissy.

They all sat on the granite slab, a crescent moon reflecting in the polished surface, the river lapping the shore, a nightingale calling in the distance. Prissy dumped a paper bag upside down on the slab. Skittles, Sno-Caps and gummy worms fell out.

“Better than eye of gnat and hair of dog,” Griff said, the other guys nodding.

“We were ten,” Prissy said. “Who else would choose a grave inscribed with
I’ll Be Back
on it? And people wonder why Savannah is haunted, the whole place is loopy. And since we’re renewing the blood sister bond that will now be the blood-sister-and-brother bond, we need continuity.” She opened the Skittles, ate one, and passed the bag. She lit a white candle, then put eight white stones in a circle around it. “Donovan, the knife, if you please.”

“If I didn’t love you all so much,” BrieAnn said, “I’d never consider doing this, you know. I hate blood, especially my own.” Brie nicked her pinky, stifled a yelp, then passed the knife to Beau, who did the same without the yelp till the knife got all the way around the circle to Donovan. “I’m leaving tomorrow, guys. Maybe I shouldn’t be part of this.”

“You’re leaving?” Brie sounded almost as forlorn as Bebe felt and Beau added, “You’re already part. You’ve been a friend and at times you’ve been a pain in the ass along with it, but we got over it. Good God, now we’ll have Yankee blood.” They all made the sign of the cross.

Prissy pressed her pinky to Beau’s, who did the same to Charlotte to Sam to Brie to Griff to Donovan to Bebe, then back to Prissy while she recited…

“Now everyone, take a stone.” Prissy clapped her hands together. “I did it. I did it right. I can feel it in my bones. Good mojo abounds.”

Donovan felt the side of his head. “Hey, I think I’m growing an extra ear.”

They finished off the candy except for the gummy worms, all agreeing that the taste for gummy worms diminished with the arrival of adulthood. Prissy blew out the candle and Bebe brushed Savannah sand from their clothes like she did when she and Donovan first landed in that pile at the morgue.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Beau said and shook Donovan’s hand. “There’s always a Moon River waiting for you at the bar, Yank, if you get back this way.” Donovan shook hands with the guys and cheek-kissed the girls, then he took Bebe’s hand. They strolled back to the hidden Jeep and started toward town.

“Come to Boston,” Donovan finally said, his voice tight. “I’ll take you to a Sox game.”

“Forget the Sox, how about Filene’s Basement?” A stupid response, but if she didn’t keep things light, she’d lose it. They needed small talk, the kind that passes time and gets you where you need to go without anything meaningful. She couldn’t handle meaningful now. They’d been through too much meaningful already.

Donovan gazed down at her, moonlight in his brown eyes, his black hair needing a cut and mussed from the top down on the Jeep. “Shopping? Fashion? You? Do Prissy and BrieAnn know about this latest development?”

“And no one’s going to tell them. I figure I’ll have to wear a dress for Brie’s wedding, so I’ll take some baby steps toward the land of chiffon and satin and heels and…and don’t go.” She rested her head against his strong arm. “I swore I wouldn’t say that.”

He slid his finger under her chin and brought her face to his. “I hate this. I hate what will happen if I stay more. Tell Daisy I’ll write, I’ll call, I’ll send flowers.”

He pulled the Jeep to the curb by the PT still parked in front of the morgue and kissed her, his lips lingering, his arms holding her tight, then tighter still. She finally broke the kiss and slid from the seat before she cried. “Be safe, Donovan McCabe.”

“You too, cupcake.” He looked at her, his eyes sad. Then he gave her a half smile and a wink and she watched his taillights fade down the street and felt her heart break a little more. It was really over, and for a minute she thought she might die from the sheer agony of Donovan driving out of her life. She understood what he was doing and why, but it just hurt so very bad.

She was not ever going through this pain again. No more falling in love. Even though women have probably been reciting that line for as long as humans have roamed the earth, she meant it. No more trusting a man with her heart to have him up and leave no matter what the reason. It wasn’t worth it. That saying of “better to have loved and lost” was crap. If you didn’t know what you were missing, you didn’t miss it. Like never eating peanut butter out of the jar with chocolate poured on top. If you never did it, you’d never know how darn good it was.

She fired up the PT and headed for home. Forget men, she had cats. Daisy, Gatsby, and Carraway didn’t argue with her, didn’t criticize her driving and none of them had a police badge to get involved in her business and none of them called her “cupcake.” Amen. Cats were better than men…except when considering the sex angle, and there Donovan was spectacular. And to tell the truth she really didn’t mind cupcake. How could she not like a nickname about food? Damn.

Instead of heading home, she turned the PT for Thunderbolt. She needed to drive. Maybe because she wanted to see Ray, or maybe because it was a beautiful night or because if she didn’t head somewhere out of town she’d wind up in Donovan’s bed and that would be heartbreak, round two, and one round of that was enough.

“Bebe,” Ray said as she came into the restaurant. The place was closed and he was sitting at a table, the blue tablecloth still in place, white gardenias with trailing green ivy in the center. He was looking at what were probably the night’s receipts and working on his laptop. The doors and windows of the restaurant stood open, night ocean air wafting through.

“What brings my favorite daughter all the way out here?” He got up and wrapped his big arm around her, then brought her back to the table. “I want you to know I’m really liking that daughter word a lot.”

“Me, too, and I came out here because…well…it was better than going home and being miserable.”

He closed his computer and shoved it under the arrangement. Ray broke the silence. “You know, I’ve ruined three of these things with spilled coffee, Beau’s forbidden me to drink anyplace near it. Sometimes I sneak down to the boathouse where he can’t see me. Don’t you go ratting me out now, you hear.” He chuckled like dads do, and she felt more at ease.

“No ratting out.” She crossed her heart, liking that they shared a confidence.

“Well now, it’s late and Donovan isn’t with you, so I’m assuming this misery you’re feeling has to do with the man himself.”

“He’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Ouch. I’m sorry, sweet pea, I truly am. He’s a good man. Didn’t think so at first, but my thinking’s changed.” Ray got her a cup of coffee from a service tray. “Any chance of him coming back?”

“What would he do here? He’s a Yankee. His whole family is in Boston and he’s a cop and he won’t even try grits, this from a guy who eats rye bread and potato chips on bologna sandwiches. Is that gross or what?” She took a sip of coffee and sat back in the chair. “It’s beautiful here at night, not just the restaurant, but the whole place. You must love it here.”