To Die For Read online

  Besides, I felt fine. The stitches in my left arm had been in for seven days and the muscle was healing nicely. I could even dress myself. The soreness from the car accident was mostly gone, taken care of by yoga, ice packs, and general experience with sore muscles.

  After about fifteen minutes Wyatt came down the stairs and saw me sitting in front of the television. “Making another list?” he asked warily as he approached.

  “Yeah, but it isn’t yours.”

  “You make lists of other people’s transgressions?” He sounded a little insulted, as if he thought he was the only one who deserved a list.

  “No, I’m making a list of the evidence.”

  He leaned over and kissed me good morning, then read the list. “Why is your red Mercedes on the list?”

  “Because I’ve dreamed about it twice. That has to mean something.”

  “Maybe that the white one is a total wreck and you wish you had the red one back?” He kissed me again. “What would you like for breakfast this morning? Pancakes again? French toast? Eggs and sausage?”

  “I’m tired of guy food,” I said, getting to my feet and following him into the kitchen. “Why don’t you have any girl food? I need some girl food.”

  He froze with the coffee carafe in his hand. “Women don’t eat the same things that men eat?” he asked cautiously.

  Really, he was so exasperating. “Are you sure you were married? Don’t you know anything?”

  He finished pouring his coffee and set the pot back on the hot pad. “I didn’t pay that much attention back then. You’ve been eating what I eat.”

  “Just to be polite, because you were going to so much trouble to feed me.”

  He thought about that for a minute, then said, “Let me drink my coffee and I’ll get back to you on this. In the meantime, I’m going to cook breakfast, and you’ll eat it because that’s all I have and I refuse to let you starve yourself.”

  Man, he gets testy over the least little thing.

  “Fruit,” I said helpfully. “Peaches. Grapefruit. Whole wheat bread for toast. And yogurt. Sometimes a cereal. That’s girl food.”

  “I have cereal,” he said.

  “A healthy cereal.” His taste in cereal ran to Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch.

  “Why worry about eating anything healthy? If you can eat yogurt and live, you can eat anything. That stuff’s disgusting. It’s almost as bad as cottage cheese.”

  I agreed with him about the cottage cheese, so I didn’t leap to its defense. Instead I said, “You don’t have to eat it; you just need to have girl food here for me to eat. If I’m going to stay, that is.”

  “You’re staying, all right.” He fished in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out something, which he tossed to me. “Here.”

  It was a small velvet box. I turned it over in my hand but didn’t open it. If this was what I thought it was—I tossed the box right back at him. He fielded it one-handed and frowned at me. “Don’t you want it?”

  “Want what?”

  “The engagement ring.”

  “Oh, is that what’s in the box? You threw my engagement ring at me?” Boy, this was such a big transgression I would have to write it in block letters on its own page, and show it to our children when they grew up as an example of how not to do something.

  He cocked his head while he gave this a brief consideration, then looked at me standing there barefoot, dwarfed by his robe, waiting narrow-eyed to see what he would do. He gave a quick little grin and came to me, catching my right hand in his and lifting it to his mouth. Then he went down gracefully on one knee and kissed my hand again. “I love you,” he said gravely. “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes, I will,” I replied just as gravely. “I love you, too.” Then I threw myself at him, which of course knocked him off balance, and we sprawled on the kitchen floor, except he was on bottom, so that was okay. We kissed for a while; then I sort of came unwrapped from the robe and what you might have expected to happen, happened.

  Afterward he retrieved the velvet box from near the door, where it had skittered when he dropped it, and flipped the top open. Taking out a simple, breathtaking solitaire diamond, he took my left hand and gently slid the ring onto my ring finger.

  I looked at the diamond and tears welled in my eyes. “Hey, don’t cry,” he cajoled, tilting my chin up to kiss me. “Why are you crying?”

  “Because I love you and it’s beautiful,” I said, and gulped back my tears. Sometimes he did things just right, and when he did, it was almost more than I could bear. “When did you get it? I can’t think when you would have had the time.”

  He snorted. “Last Friday. I’ve been carrying it around for a week.”

  Last Friday? The day after Nicole was murdered? Before he followed me to the beach? My mouth fell open.

  He put a finger under my chin and pushed up, closing my mouth. “I was certain then. I was certain as soon as I saw you on Thursday night, sitting in your office with your hair up in a ponytail and wearing that little pink halter top that had all the men’s tongues dragging the ground. I was so relieved to find out you weren’t the one who’d been murdered that my knees nearly buckled, and I knew right then that all I’d been doing for two years was avoiding the inevitable. I made up my mind right then to get you corralled as soon as possible, and I bought the ring the next day.”

  I tried to take this in. While I’d been busy protecting myself until he decided he loved me the way I knew he would if he just let himself, he’d already made up his mind and had been trying to convince me. Reality altered once more. At this rate, by the end of the day I wouldn’t have a real good grasp on what was real and what wasn’t.

  Men and women may belong to the same species, but this was proof positive to me that we are Not Alike. That doesn’t really matter, though, because he was trying. He bought a bush for me, didn’t he? And a gorgeous ring.

  “What are you doing today?” he asked over breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage. I ate about a third of what he did.

  “I don’t know.” I twined my feet around the legs of the chair. “I’m bored. I’ll do something.”

  He winced. “That’s what I was afraid of. Get ready and go to work with me. At least then I’ll know you’re safe.”

  “No offense, but sitting in your office is even more boring than sitting here.”

  “You’re tough,” he said unsympathetically. “You can take it.”

  He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer; his track record on that so far was pretty damn consistent. So I decided my arm hurt after all our rolling around on the floor and he had to help me put on some makeup to cover my bruised cheekbones; then my hair just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do and I told him he’d have to braid it. After two attempts, he growled something obscene and said, “All right, that’s it. You’ve punished me enough. We need to leave or I’ll be late.”

  “You might as well learn how to braid hair,” I said, giving him the Big Eyes. “I just know our little girl will wear her hair in braids sometimes, and she’ll want her daddy to do it for her.”

  He almost melted under the onslaught of Big Eyes and mention of a little girl; then he caught himself. He was made of some stern stuff, to withstand the double whammy. “We’re having all boys,” he said as he hauled me to my feet. “No girls. I’ll need all the reinforcements I can get without you bringing in a ringer.”

  I grabbed my notebook before he hustled me out to the garage and practically stuffed me into the Crown Vic. If I had to sit in a police station, I might as well work on my clues.

  When we got to City Hall and he ushered me into the police station, the first person I saw was Officer Vyskosigh. He was wearing street clothes, so I guessed he had just finished his shift. He stopped and gave me a little salute. “I enjoyed the dessert you sent, Ms. Mallory,” he said. “If I hadn’t been late getting off my shift, I wouldn’t have gotten any. Sometimes things work out for the better.”

  “I’m