Holly and Homicide: A Holiday Cozy Romantic Mystery by Alina Jacobs

Author:Alina Jacobs [Jacobs, Alina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

17

EMMIE

“We need to just confront her,” I said, barging into Marius’s great-aunt’s apartment. Frances was out at bingo night with my grandmother. I knew I shouldn’t bother Marius, but I could feel it. We were close to solving this thing.

“Confront who?” he asked.

I walked into the kitchen, where he was standing shirtless at the sink with a big tub of soapy water, giving Moose a bath. “You bathe your cat?”

“Yeah, because you clearly don’t,” he said. “They all reek of that almond spray.”

“You ever tried to bathe a cat?” I complained.

Then it hit me.

Marius was standing in front of me with no, zero, shirt on.

Droplets of water from where the cat had splashed him clung to his chiseled chest. The muscles in his forearm worked as he shampooed the black-and-gold cat’s head.

“Guess he doesn’t sit in front of a computer all day,” I croaked.

Marius gave me an odd look.

I tried not to think about how he’d almost kissed me.

“You still owe me dinner,” the deep voice purred.

“Of course! I’ll cook for you anytime.”

“No,” he said, fishing the sopping-wet cat out of the bucket. “I still want to take you to dinner.”

Forget dinner—I wanted him to take me to bed.

He was literally all my favorite things in one perfect Christmas package as he stood there in front of me, just in the dress pants and barefoot, cradling his cat to his chest in a towel as he gently dried him off.

Marius kissed Moose’s little velvet nose.

My heart clenched.

My ovaries exploded.

“You’ll, um…” I stammered, “have to teach me your tricks.”

“You want to hop into a bath with me…?”

“Yes.”

“And bathe a cat?”

Minus the cat? Yes, right now.

He looked down at Moose. The Bengal cat extended his neck to give Marius a kitty kiss.

Ugh, so freaking adorable.

The man’s and the cat’s eyes were almost the same green-gold color.

I am not thinking about all that shifter-romance soft-core porn I consumed after my breakup.

“I, um… think we should do it tomorrow.”

“The bath?” he asked.

My ovaries started building him a shrine.

“Uh, the confronting of Rosie?”

The toweling of Moose paused.

“If she is the murderer, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

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