Read Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria Online

Authors: Diane Kelly

Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Humorous, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Women Sleuths

Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (6 page)

BOOK: Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria
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Josh read from the screen. “The bio says her name is Kira and she’s a freelance Web
designer.”

Another tech nerd. “She sounds perfect for you, Josh.”

Lu took control of the mouse and pulled up her account next. She’d received three
responses. The first was from a forty-year-old man with greasy hair and a sleazy grin.
“No thanks,” Lu told the screen. “I’m not a tiger mom.”

“I think you mean cougar,” I said.

She waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. I’m not dating someone my son’s age.” She
clicked on the second link. This potential suitor had the opposite problem. He was
a man in his late eighties looking for a “nurturing” woman. Lu’s lips pursed in disgust.
“That’s just a nice way of saying he wants someone to change his diapers.”

While Nick, Josh, and I leaned in, she pulled up the third respondent. This guy was
sixty-five, which made him age appropriate for Lu. The bio indicated his name was
Carl. He wore a navy-blue polyester leisure suit with visible white stitching around
the collar and buttonholes, along with black plastic horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

“He’s very fashionable,” Lu said, gesturing at the screen. “He’s wearing those new
stylish glasses that are so popular.”

Nick and I exchanged glances. Carl’s glasses weren’t the geek chic look that was in
vogue today. No, his were definitely original horn-rims from the 1950s. To make matters
worse, the guy had a horrid comb-over. Well, maybe “comb-over” was the wrong word.
“Comb-forward/comb-across” would be more precise. His hair, which appeared to originate
on the back and sides of his neck, had been combed up and over his bald dome in a
sort of crisscross pattern, like a hairnet made of real hair. He’d glued the stuff
in place with Brylcreem.

I looked at Lu, taking in her pinkish-orange beehive, false eyelashes, and lemon-yellow
dress trimmed in purple rickrack. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Comb-over Carl.
He could be just the guy for Lu.

Josh put a hand on the mouse. “Let’s check your responses, Nick.”

As Nick leaned in closer to the screen, a slight twinge of guilt tightened my gut.
Poor guy. He still didn’t realize I’d sabotaged him with that horrible bio and angry
photo. I hoped he wouldn’t feel bad when he learned there’d been no interest.

Josh clicked the mouse. “Holy crap!” he cried, his eyes wide as he turned from the
screen to look up at Nick. “You’ve got seventy-three responses.”

What!?!

I leaned in closer now, too. Yep, sure enough, seventy-three women had responded to
Nick’s ad. Well, make that seventy-two women and one guy named Sergio who encouraged
Nick to “be open to new experiences” and “take a walk on the wild side.”

To my surprise, Nick didn’t look so much excited by the responses as exhausted. Josh
clicked on each of them in turn, taking us through a long line of women with abundant
cleavage, excessive lip gloss, and biographies containing far too many exclamation
points.

Maddie, a blue-eyed blonde, was a “party girl!!!” who was sure she and Nick would
“hit it off!!!”

Kaitlyn was a green-eyed redhead who “enjoyed wine! Music! Dancing!” and thought Nick
looked “sexy and fun!”

Shea was an African-American woman with cute short curls. She was a “Dallas Mavericks
Dancer and a big sports fan!” who thought she and Nick would have “an awesome time
together!”

No fewer than a third of the bios noted that the woman enjoyed long walks on the beach.
Seriously? Dallas was three hundred miles from the nearest beach. That was indeed
a long walk.

“If I were you,” I told Nick, “I’d give Sergio a try. Look at those biceps. He definitely
works out.”

Nick shot me a look before turning back to Josh. “They’re all running together. Is
there a way to sort them?”

“How about by IQ?” I suggested, my sarcasm earning me another exasperated look from
Nick. Hey, he was the one who said he wanted a woman with some brains.

“Try sorting them by breast size,” he told Josh, earning himself an indignant grunt
from me.

“I thought you were an ass man,” I said. He’d told me so himself after a well-endowed
reporter named Trish LeGrande had made me feel inadequate when Nick and I were working
together on an earlier case.

Nick eyed me again and shrugged. “Maybe my tastes have changed.”

Ouch.
That hurt. Like a knife in the heart. He wasn’t over me already, was he? Just when
I’d decided to take a shot with him?

Josh pulled up the next potential candidate and Nick sat bolt upright, his eyes wide.

What was that about?

Lu squinted at the screen. “Natalie. She looks like a nice girl.” Lu glanced up at
Nick, then back at the screen, then back at Nick. “Wait a minute. Isn’t she that woman
you almost married?”

Nick nodded, his gaze still locked on the screen, a faraway look in his eyes.

The knife in my heart turned and twisted, like a sharp corkscrew working its way to
my core. I knew Nick had been engaged years ago, but he’d never talked much about
it other than to say his job as a special agent had been a problem in their relationship,
just as it was sometimes a problem in my relationship with Brett. Our jobs were demanding
and risky and often took us away at inopportune times. Not everyone could deal with
it.

Nick’s reaction was strange. Did he still have feelings for this woman? And did she
still have feelings for him? Of course she did. Why else would she have responded
to his ad?

Did Natalie want Nick back?

I looked at the screen. The photo showed a dark-haired girl with sweet brown eyes,
a scattering of freckles, and a figure that bordered between voluptuous and pleasantly
plump. She was dressed modestly in a pink cotton blouse buttoned high enough to keep
her cleavage completely under wraps.

If ever there was a girl-next-door, Natalie was her. I was more like the girl down
the block with bare feet and a frog in her pocket, hanging upside down from a tree
branch.

I looked back at Nick. He stood stock-still, as if transfixed.

Dammit!
I was about to dump Brett for him. Was he still hung up on his ex-fiancée? Was I
about to make a big mistake?

I couldn’t take it. I had to get out of that office. “Good luck with the dates,” I
managed as I bolted from the room, blinking back tears of frustration.

Just when I thought I had things sorted out they got all screwed up again.

I’d better move fast or I could lose Nick forever and spend the rest of my life wondering
what might have been.

 

chapter five

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Tuesday after work, I stopped by a neighborhood Italian restaurant and picked up two
orders of manicotti to take home. I was about to break Brett’s heart. The least I
could do was fill his stomach first.

Despite the delicious smells emanating from the take-out bag, I wasn’t sure I’d be
able to eat. My stomach had shrunk into a tight little ball.

Brett and I had been dating for a few months now, ever since last spring when we’d
met at a charity event at the Dallas Arboretum. The firm he worked for had sponsored
the event. Brett had taken my ticket and captured my interest. For several months
things had seemed nearly perfect. But then Nick came along and got me all discombobulated.

I greeted my cats as I came through the door with my briefcase in one hand and the
bag of food in the other. Henry, my oversized Maine coon, glanced my way from atop
the TV cabinet with his usual look of disdain. Anne scampered out from under the couch
and followed me to the kitchen, interrogating me all the while.
Meow? Meow? Meow?

I glanced down at her. “You ask too many questions, you know that, Annie girl?” Despite
the third degree she’d given me, I fed her a tuna treat and ruffled her ears affectionately
once I’d deposited my briefcase and the food on the counter.

On my drive home, I had convinced myself that Nick’s reaction to seeing Natalie’s
photograph was perfectly natural and didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t seen her since
they’d called off their engagement shortly before a violent money launderer forced
Nick into a three-year exile in Mexico. If she’d still meant anything to him, he would
have looked her up himself, right? Sure. It had only been the surprise of seeing her
face come up on the screen that had set him aback. No sense postponing my
let’s-take-a-break
discussion with Brett.

It had been a while since I’d broken up with a guy, so I was a little out of practice.
One of my college boyfriends had made breaking up with him easy. Telling someone you
never wanted to see him again was fairly easy when he showed up at your door with
a hickey on his neck that you hadn’t put there.
Jeez.
Did the guy think I was blind? Most of my other breakups had been relatively amicable,
the fact that the relationship wasn’t going anywhere obvious to both of us. But with
Brett things would be difficult, especially since I wasn’t exactly breaking up with
him for good. Rather, I’d just be seeking permission to date another man and evaluate
my feelings before making a more definite decision.

I was scared, to be honest. Part of me still wondered whether it could be a mistake,
whether raising the subject would backfire on me. There would be things about Brett
I’d miss, like playing with his dogs at the park, laughing together over ridiculous
British comedies, daringly sampling unusual ethnic foods. Heck, Nick thought an egg
roll was an extreme culinary adventure.

Still, as much as I adored Brett, there was no denying that Nick and I were more alike
at the core, that we understood better what made each other tick. The fact that I
could totally be myself with Nick said a lot, too. It wasn’t that I had to hide my
feisty side from Brett, because he often found my unconventional nature to be exciting.
But he worried about me, too. Despite my pledge to be honest with him, I found myself
conveniently leaving out the details of my job that would cause him anxiety. And as
classy and sophisticated as Brett’s parents were, they could sometimes be a tad too
conventional. Nick’s mother, on the other hand, was warm and open and down-to-earth,
the kind of woman who would make a wonderful mother-in-law and grandmother.

I dragged myself upstairs and changed into a pair of wrinkled jeans I scrounged from
the floor. I really needed to get on my laundry. The pile had expanded from the hamper
to a laundry basket beside it.

I slid out of my work shirt and into a T-shirt I’d picked up at a Toby Keith concert
a couple of years ago. I didn’t bother freshening up my makeup or brushing my hair.
If I didn’t look too good, maybe Brett would find it easier to let me go.

I went back downstairs to wait, pouring a tumbler of peach sangria to fortify myself.
I simultaneously dreaded what I had to do and wanted to get it over with as soon as
possible. I wished someone would invent a time machine so I could fast-forward to
tomorrow morning, when I’d tell Nick I was a free woman and wanted to give the two
of us a try.

I wondered how Nick would react when he heard the news. Would he grab me in a hug?
Maybe plant a big ol’ kiss on me?

Dare I dream of more?

I glanced at the clock. Brett wouldn’t be here for a quarter hour. Just enough time
to call my mother and fill her in. She’d encouraged me to give Nick a shot when she’d
met him a few weeks back. She’d be glad to hear I was finally heeding her advice.

I dialed my parents’ home number, and after the usual preliminaries—“I’m fine,” “the
cats are fine,” “the weather’s fine”—I told Mom about my plans to put Brett on the
back burner.

“I know it’ll be hard, hon,” she said, “but you’re doing the right thing.”

“I hope so.”

“I
know
so.”

Sounded like Mom was speaking from experience. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Did I ever tell you about Candy Cummings?”

“Sounds like a stripper name.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” My mother harrumphed. “Candy was this cute little thing on
the drill team. Your dad had a crush on her our senior year of high school.”

What?
My parents had been high-school sweethearts. They’d met their sophomore year in biology
class and married just a year after their graduation. They seemed so content, so perfect
for each other, that I’d assumed their relationship had been smooth sailing from the
start. Had this Candy been a bump in their road?

Mom sighed. “I caught your father sneaking glances at Candy several times in the cafeteria.
She was a total twit, but something about her got your father’s motor running.”

Urk.
I didn’t want to think about my father’s motor, running or not.

“Anyway, I knew if he didn’t take Candy for a whirl he’d spend the rest of his life
pining for that high-kicking nitwit. I wanted him to be sure about me. So I cut him
loose for a while.”

“If you love something, set it free?”

“Exactly.”

“And what happened?” I asked.

“The two of them fell in love, moved to a castle, and lived happily ever after.”

Obviously that didn’t happen or I wouldn’t have been having this conversation. “Smart-ass.”

For once, Mom didn’t threaten to break out the Ivory soap and wash my mouth. She must’ve
realized she’d earned the curse. “Your dad took Candy out on a couple of dates. Meanwhile,
I went out a few times with the captain of the chess club, a boy named Randall. Smart
as a whip. He’d grown a few inches over the summer and gotten his braces off, and
heck if he hadn’t become quite the catch. He had all kinds of potential, too. Ended
up becoming a research scientist. Last I heard he was working on a new treatment for
diabetes.”

I glanced at the clock. Only five minutes now until Brett’s ETA. “Can you get to the
point, Mom?”

“Okay, hon. Point is, once your dad spent some time with Candy, he realized that as
cute as she was, she wasn’t the right girl for him. She was shallow and spiteful and
full of herself. He came running back to me.”

BOOK: Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria
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