It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good To The Last Death #1) - Robyn Peterman Page 0,96

with a grin. “A lot.”

“Back at you,” Steve said. “As long as you’re good to Daisy, I’m good with you.”

“You will be good with me always,” Gideon said. “I promise.”

I shook my head and wondered why everything was coming together for me in such a spectacular way. My dead husband and my new kajillion-year-old boyfriend—for lack of a better term—were getting along and liked each other.

I’d recently realized I wasn’t insane and had sent a lot of deserving dead into the light.

My pet quota was filled with a dog and a Hell Hound. It shocked me that I wasn’t unsettled about having a Hell Hound, but a whole hell of a lot had changed in the past few weeks.

Accepting the unbelievable was now my norm. I had a new job on the horizon that I was excited about. I had dear friends and Gram was still kicking. Life was good.

Of course, the wary side of me wondered when the other shoe would drop, but I pushed the thought away. I was going to live in the now, not in the what ifs.

“Do you like to run?” I asked Gideon.

“Haven’t done it in a while,” he said, taking the plates to the sink. “Do you?”

“I love it,” I said, pushing him out of the way and getting started on the dishes. “You cooked. I’ll clean up.”

“Good deal,” he said, sitting back down and sipping his coffee. “If you want to go for a run, I’ll come with you.”

“You’re not dressed to run,” I said, scrubbing the frying pan.

“I beg to disagree,” he replied.

“You can’t run in jeans and a sweater,” I said as I turned around to look at him. “What the hell?” I muttered, dropping the soapy fry pan to the floor.

Gideon was now in running gear and tennis shoes. He looked like a million bucks, but he was just in jeans and a sweater a minute ago. I was very aware that my mouth was hanging open, but there was very little I could do about it.

“How?” I whispered. “How did you do that?”

“Magic,” he said with a grin. “Does it freak you out?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Is that how you got here the first time without a car? Magic?”

“It is,” he said, carefully. “If it bothers you, I won’t do it.”

“Nope,” I said, picking up the pan and putting it into the sink. “No holding back. You will be you and I will be me. I will always use tons of syrup and I will never do pig. I’ll continue to talk to dead people and commit mail fraud on a semi-regular basis. You can morph around all you want. Maybe a little heads up every now and then might be helpful,” I said. “If you just disappear mid-conversation, I might worry.”

Gideon rose, came up behind me and wrapped me in his strong embrace. “Deal,” he whispered in my ear.

“Good,” I whispered back, breathing in his scent. “Well, since I can’t magically produce running gear, I’ll go get changed and we can go for a run.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Hey,” Steve said as I moved to leave the kitchen. “You know what I miss?”

“What do you miss?” I asked.

“Board games.”

“Seriously?” I questioned with a grin.

“Yep,” he replied as the squatters began to fly around the room in excitement.

I shook my head and laughed. I wasn’t sure how we would make the logistics work, but we could certainly give it a try.

“I like board games,” Gideon volunteered. “I like to cheat.”

“Of course you do,” I said with a groan. “How does this sound? After we come back from running, we’ll pull out some board games and give it a shot.”

“Perfect,” Steve announced. “Best day ever.”

Steve was right. Who knew that the best day ever would include a round of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit with dead people and the Grim Reaper who liked to cheat? I certainly didn’t. But I was all for it.

“Holy hell, Daisy,” Gideon said, walking in a circle and catching his breath. “You’re a machine.”

We’d run ten miles. I could have kept going, but Gideon had clearly had enough.

“You’re out of shape, Reaper,” I said, not even winded.

Gideon eyed me and shook his head. “It’s not that—although you might have a point about me being out of shape—but a human can’t run like that.”

“Dude,” I said with an eye roll. “A human just did.”

“You’re not even sweating,” he said, perplexed.

Looking down, I realized he was correct. That was the second time it had happened. First running to