A Flower Shop Mystery 03 - Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins

Author:Kate Collins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101088203
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

It was after nine o’clock when I trudged upstairs to my apartment, a modest two-bedroom with a decent bathroom, a galley kitchen, and a narrow living/dining room that sometimes got a little cramped. Fortunately, Nikki worked the three-to-midnight shift at the county hospital—she was an X-ray technician—so we were usually able to stay out of each other’s way.

I unlocked the door to find Simon waiting for me, a rubber band dangling from his mouth. Simon loved to play fetch with rubber bands and plastic straws, and would happily scamper after one for hours, unless it landed on a throw rug. Then, rather than admit he was a coward, he would pretend he couldn’t find the toy and send us off in pursuit of another one. No dummy, that cat.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, giving him a scratch behind the ears. I didn’t bother explaining why. He’d heard it all before. I gave him a dollop of cat food, put fresh water in his bowl, and grabbed a spoon and the container of ice cream and took it to the living room. Then, sitting on the sofa with the carton in my lap and an old episode of Friends on TV, I dug into the creamy dessert, trying to erase the image of Marco and the exotic beauty that kept replaying in my mind.

Suddenly, Simon came galloping across the room and leaped onto the sofa right next to the container of ice cream.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said, turning my back on him, as if I actually expected that to deter him. He climbed across my lap and tried to poke his head inside the carton, so I held it out of his reach. But that, as any cat person would know, only made him more determined to get it. As he balanced on my knees, trying to swipe at it with a paw, the phone rang.

I set the carton on a high bookshelf and went to grab the cordless phone on the end table, only to find the handset missing. Since Nikki had a habit of carrying the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she walked around, it was anyone’s guess where she’d left it. She also managed to lose the TV remote on a regular basis. I kept telling her it was a good thing we were best friends because otherwise I’d have to kill her.

I ran to the kitchen and picked up the phone there just as our answering machine kicked on. “I’m here,” I cried over the sound of Nikki and me saying in unison, “Leave a number. If you’re lucky we’ll get back to you.”

As soon as the beep sounded I heard Marco’s sexy voice say, “Hey, is everything okay?”

“Are you kidding?” I tried to give him a carefree laugh, but it came out as more of a sneer. “Everything is great. Why?”

“You left the bar without saying good-bye.”

He’d actually noticed? “I had things to do, and you seemed”—I had to inhale in order to finish the sentence—“busy.

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