Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,61
to drive from coast to coast, meander from Maine to South Carolina, then back up to Chicago and west along Route 66 to California. Long ago, he and Emmy had discussed making the trip, but a lack of vacation time meant they’d done nothing more than talk.
“How do you feel about taking a road trip?” he asked Beth.
“For the case?”
“No, after the case. I know you want to get home to see Chaucer, but maybe later in the year?”
“In America? With you?”
“That was the general idea.”
“Like two friends on holiday?”
Friends? Deep down, Alaric had been hoping for more, but he’d take what he could get.
“Exactly that.”
“What about work?”
“I think the boss’ll let you have time off.”
Beth’s face blossomed into a wide smile. “Uh, okay then. Later in the year. Can we drive some of Route 66? I suggested we do that for our honeymoon, but Piers said it was called flyover country for a reason and booked us a trip to the Maldives instead. Which was lovely, don’t get me wrong, but there was an awful lot of beach and not much else.”
“The scuba diving’s great.”
Beth shuddered. “I don’t even like swimming. When I was little, I went paddling in the sea in Barbados, and something touched my leg. I haven’t been in open water since, not unless you count the time Polo dumped me in a pond at our first one-star event.”
“Tell me you have a photo of that.”
“Worse. There’s a video.” She looked sheepish. “I bet you’re a great scuba diver.”
“I worked as an instructor for a while when I lived in Thailand. It’s really not as bad as you think. Visibility’s better underwater than on the surface, and whatever touched your leg was more likely to have been a plastic bottle than a shark.”
“Logically, I know that, but I’m still sticking with the hot tub. Even just trundling up and down Lakeshore Drive gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Okay, the lake it was named after was pretty murky, he’d give her that. And he liked the hot-tub idea as long as she was in it too.
“People pay extra for that view.”
“I’d rather live in a broom cupboard.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, heck. I shouldn’t joke about that, not after what happened to Gemma.”
“Gemma’s okay. I spoke to her last night. At least with Nada’s drama, she’s got a distraction from her own problems.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining?”
“So they say. Are you going to finish those pancakes?”
Beth slid her plate in his direction. She’d only managed to eat half a portion. “Help yourself. I need to use the bathroom.”
He watched her go. That ass… What the hell had he been thinking, suggesting a road trip? He’d never be able to keep his hands off her if they were stuck in a car together for two weeks, just him and Beth. Dammit, he was in trouble.
CHAPTER 24 - BETH
NEXT TIME, I’D order from the children’s menu. I’d only been in America for a week, and my jeans were already getting tight. If I hadn’t been doing the horses, I’d have needed to go up a size or perhaps start wearing elasticated waistbands. Portions just weren’t the same here.
I looked in the mirror above the sink and cursed under my breath. Why hadn’t Alaric told me I had straw stuck in my hair? Lucky Mother couldn’t see me—I’d gone from socialite to scarecrow in under a month.
“Excuse me?”
Was someone talking to me? I turned, drying my hands on a paper towel, and found a redhead standing there. Where had I seen her before?
“Yes?”
“You spoke to my mom. At our house.”
Ah, now I remembered. Lisa? Her mom had been the grouchy lady who thought Piper was murdered by a cannabis user. The guy who peed on a cop. I still wasn’t sure how anyone could mistake a police officer for a urinal. Up close, Lisa looked older than I’d first thought, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four.
“Yes, I did, yesterday.”
“About Piper?”
“Yes.”
The girl fell silent, and it seemed as though she was sizing me up. Did she want to tell me something?
“Do you know anything about Piper’s disappearance?”
The girl glanced furtively towards the closed door. We were alone in the bathroom, and I began to feel uneasy. She should have been talking to Dan, not me.
“It weren’t Homer. He only looks at me funny ’cause he’s stoned.”
Oh, phew. Was that it? “Don’t worry, we’ve already ruled him out. He had an alibi for the time Piper went missing.”