Once they left the Algarottis’ house, Emory and Jeff drove to Noah’s Market to pick up some groceries before heading to the Romes’ house. As they shopped, Emory told Jeff about what he had found on Ian Algarotti’s computer.
Jeff’s reaction mirrored Emory’s when he learned about the pictures. “Oh my god! Dirty pictures of his own father?”
The duo received disapproving looks from three shoppers, including a prudish woman who reversed her cart to avoid them. Emory shushed Jeff. “Keep it down.”
“Sorry, you caught me off guard. So Ian’s got daddy issues.”
Emory steered the cart into one of the checkout lines. In a tone just above a whisper, he asked, “Do you think that could’ve led him to murder?”
“You mean, if he was jealous of the attention his big sister was getting? I guess it’s possible, but you’d need a lot more to go on than candid nudes of your dad.”
The older couple in line ahead of them and even the cashier threw them chastising glances. Jeff smiled, but Emory kept his face down all the way through the checkout and to the car.
Once they were driving away, Jeff asked, “If Ian did kill Britt in a fit of jealousy, why would he kill Rick Roberts?”
“I don’t know.”
They continued talking about the case until they arrived at the house. While they were bringing in the groceries, Lula Mae called to apprise Emory of his father’s condition.
As Emory spoke on the phone, Jeff greeted Sophie, who accompanied him on a self-guided tour of the house – the parts he hadn’t seen before. When the tour wound back to the kitchen, Emory hung up the phone.
“How’s your dad?”
“He’s fine. He’ll be home in the morning.”
“Listen, I don’t know that I feel comfortable sleeping in your parents’ bed.”
“You can have my room, and I’ll sleep in there,” Emory said as he emptied the grocery bags.
Jeff nosed around the kitchen, starting with the refrigerator. “Ooh, peach juice. I love that stuff.”
“Have some.”
“Maybe later.” Jeff closed the door. “Do you want me to help with dinner?”
“Just go make yourself comfortable. I’ll have it ready in about forty-five minutes.”
Jeff opened the cabinets and stopped when he found a bottle of Malbec wine. “What are you making?”
“Mustard chicken with asparagus and Greek potatoes.”
“Sounds ambitious.”
“I like to cook. I don’t get a chance to do it much anymore. Cooking for one just isn’t…fulfilling.” He saw the bottle in Jeff’s hand. “There should be a bottle opener in that drawer to your left.”
Jeff found the opener and screwed it into the cork. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“I used to help my granny, and when I came to live here, my mom taught me what she knew.”
Jeff popped the cork from the bottle and put both on the kitchen counter. “That’s an odd turn of phrase. What do you mean, when you came to live here?”
Emory whisked the mustard, flour, herbs and spices inside a bowl. “The Romes aren’t my birth parents. My granny raised me most of my childhood. My mother was a bit of a vagabond, a free spirit. She had a passing fling with a man and ended up pregnant. Thankfully, she had the good sense not to raise me herself and left me with her mother, my granny. My mother would show up occasionally, sometimes staying for a few months, but she would always leave – like she was on the run. When I was twelve, she died in an accident. My granny was killed in a fire three years later.”
“I’m sorry.” Jeff placed a consoling hand on Emory’s back.
Emory stopped scraping the whisk around the bowl for a few silent seconds. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine.” Jeff dropped his hand back to his side. “So how did you end up with the Romes?”
“That’s a story for another time.” Emory nodded toward the wine bottle. “There are glasses in the cupboard over there.”
Jeff retrieved two wine glasses and filled them a quarter each, handing one to Emory. The PI dipped his nose into the glass and inhaled. “Mmm. Like black cherries and cracked pepper warming on an oak plank in the sun.”
Emory sniffed, and he could feel his face redden at his inability to distinguish the aromas. “It smells good.”
Jeff clinked his glass against Emory’s. “Cheers.”
After an initial sip, Emory and Jeff’s eyes lingered on each other to the point of loitering. Like a swinging pocket watch held by a hypnotist, Jeff’s sparkling green eyes mesmerized Emory. The special agent tilted his face to one side but couldn’t break his gaze. “I should get dinner ready,” he muttered. He blinked, turning away before letting his eyelids rise again. “Go relax.”
“As you wish.” Jeff tipped his glass to him and left the kitchen.
Once Emory had the chicken and potatoes in the oven, he set the timer and wandered from the kitchen. He found Jeff in the living room, which glowed orange from the crackling fire he’d built in the fireplace. Jeff sat on one of two sofa cushions now on the floor, and he rested his back against the front of the sofa with his legs under the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” Emory asked.
“It was a little chilly in here.” He tapped the top of the coffee table. “I thought this would be a better place to eat than the kitchen table. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s nice.” Emory couldn’t tell whether the sudden heat radiated from the fire or percolated through his skin from his over-beating heart. “Dinner’s cooking. I’ll steam the asparagus when it’s closer to done.”
“I’ll do the dishes then.”
“You don’t have—”
“No argument from you.” Jeff patted the empty cushion. “Sit down.”
Emory placed his wine glass on the coffee table next to Jeff’s. He kicked off his shoes and plopped down beside him, nodding toward the fireplace. “You do good fire.”
Jeff clenched his fist in the air, causing vast tributaries of veins to ripple around his forearm. “Just call me Icarus.”
“Well, if you’re done stealing from the gods.”
“I never said that. The gods are hoarders of magic, and I’ve got sticky fingers.”
Laughing, Emory pointed at the PI. “You owe me something.”
Jeff rested his elbow on the sofa and waved a hand over his body. “What do you want?”
“I’ve told you a lot about me, but I know next to nothing about you.”
Jeff gave him an incredulous look. “For the record, there’s no measurement system in the world that would quantify what you’ve told me about yourself as ‘a lot,’ but what do you want to know?”
Emory turned away from the fire and crossed his legs to sit facing Jeff. “Start with where you grew up.”
Jeff added an extra twang when he told him, “Well, I was born and raised in Bristol, right on the state line. Our house was in Tennessee, but our backyard was in Virginia. I moved to Knoxville for college, and I never left.” A log snapped in the fireplace. Jeff smirked at Emory and inched closer, almost within kissing distance, but he retreated, returning his back to the couch and facing the flames. “I lied to you.”
“Really? Where are you from?”
“No, not that. A few days ago.” Jeff tightened his jaw. “I didn’t major in criminology.”
“Why would you lie about that?”
“You had already questioned my credentials. I figured you’d respect me more if you thought I was a serious student of the craft.”
“Did you even go to college?”
The question elicited a snarl from Jeff. “Yes, and I graduated – if you can believe that.”
Emory placed a hand on Jeff’s knee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just didn’t know how deep the lie went. So what was your major?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Hotel management.”
Emory’s expression didn’t change, except for a minor twitch of his eye. “Hotel.”
“I know I told you I was going to Australia for a vacation, but I was actually going for a job interview at this incredible resort in Melbourne.”
Emory’s eyebrows ticked up. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Jeff rested his hand over Emory’s. “You’re thinking something. What is it?”
“All right. I was just wondering how expertise in hotel management qualifies you to be an investigator.”
Jeff retracted his hand. “It doesn’t, but thank you for putting it so nicely.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was trying to figure out the segue from that to private investigator.”
“Like I told you before, I love mysteries. Being a PI was always a fantasy job for me, something I imagined being when I was a kid. Hotel management was a real job that would take me to fantastic places, wherever I wanted to go, as long as it was far away from here. When that fell through, I went back to the fantasy.”
A chime sounded from the kitchen. Emory jumped to his feet. “Time to steam the asparagus.”
About ten minutes later Emory sauntered back to the living room and placed two full plates on the coffee table. He held his breath as Jeff raised the first forkful to his mouth, and the PI moaned as the tines slipped from his tightened lips. “Do you like it?”
Jeff beamed at him. “It’s wonderful.”
Emory exhaled into a smile.
As the two ate, the conversation turned to work when Jeff asked, “What was your most difficult case?”
“Most difficult?”
“One that threw you for a loop.”
Emory needed little time to rank the one that impacted him most. “All right. There was this one really sadistic killer who enjoyed humiliating his victims before he would let them die. I won’t go through all of them, but one person he decided to kill was an old woman. He made her drink a potent morning glory tea—”
“Morning glory? Is that poisonous?”
“The seeds have d-lysergic acid amide, a cousin of LSD. He waited for her to finish it, and then he watched this sweet, gentle woman descend into madness. He laughed at each ridiculous thing she said and every bizarre thing she did. She tore off her clothes and clawed herself bloody trying to release her soul. All the while he’s pissing himself laughing so hard.”
“How do you know all this? It’s not like you were there.”
“He described it all to me in vivid detail like he was telling a long-winded joke with no real punchline.”
“So you did catch him.”
Emory cocked his head to one side and clenched his right cheek. “So to speak. Anyway, back to that day. He hid when I arrived, and I didn’t realize he was there until it was too late. I rushed to help the woman, and he hit me from behind. I woke up lying on the cold cement floor of the basement bathroom with something crackling in my ear. I pushed myself up and saw that the door was on fire, and there was no window for escape. Above me, I could hear the woman screaming in agony, and I knew she was on fire.”
Jeff gasped. “Oh my god. What did you do?”
“I grabbed the porcelain cover from the back of the commode and hurled it through the door, breaking it into flaming kindling. I wet a towel and threw it over my head and shoulders. When I jumped from the bathroom, I ran through a tunnel of fire to a spot without flames, and I saw the fire hadn’t spread to that corner of the basement – although the entire ceiling above me was burning. The wooden stairs up to the house were gone, but I saw a small, ground-level window above a shelf beside me. I climbed the shelf, wrapped the towel around my fist and broke out the window.”
“Holy shit.” Jeff waved a hand like he was erasing a chalkboard. “Okay, this isn’t the dinner conversation I had in mind.” He gulped a little wine and returned the empty glass to the coffee table.
Emory rested his hand on Jeff’s rock-solid thigh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get so serious.”
“Oh, I don’t mind serious.” Jeff anchored his gaze to Emory’s eyes. “I can do serious.” He caressed his shoulder before cupping the back of Emory’s neck, drawing his face closer.
Emory raised his hand to Jeff’s side and twisted his body to bring their chests together. Their lips met, and the two lost each other in a kiss that was awkward at first but soon fell into an exultant rhythm. Tasting the wine on Jeff’s tongue, Emory now picked up on its elemental pleasures.
Emory was the first to pull away, just far enough for their lips to part, but Jeff was the first to speak. “Damn.”
Smiling, Emory glanced at the discolored bump on Jeff’s mouth. “How’s your lip?”
Jeff touched the spot where Emory had punched him that morning. “Totally worth the pain.”
Emory swept in for another kiss, but he pulled away as soon as their lips touched. “Wait. I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
Emory returned to his own cushion and motioned at the space between them. “This. It makes me nervous.”
“Wait, are you a virgin?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then what’s the problem?” When Emory didn’t respond, Jeff released a heavy sigh. “What’s in your head right now? Spit it out.”
“All right! I’ve been so focused on my career, I’ve let my personal life basically atrophy. The point is I’m not sure I’m…good.”
“Like I told you before, you intrigue me, Emory Rome. I just want to experience you, whatever form that takes.” Jeff grabbed his arms. “As for the atrophy, I took some physical therapy classes in college. I can trigger that muscle memory for you.”
Now grinning, Emory pushed himself off his cushion and straddled Jeff to deliver a vigorous kiss.
Jeff’s fingers brushed against the handcuffs attached to Emory’s belt, and he pulled them off. “Ever use these outside of work?”
Emory’s eyebrows peaked. “I’m going to want to use my hands.”
“I didn’t mean you.”
“I don’t think I want you restrained.” Grabbing the handcuffs, Emory flung them over his shoulder, and he heard them clang to the floor somewhere near the fireplace.
Emory pulled Jeff down to horizontal on the cushion. Their hands grappled for the other’s flesh, reacting with savage aversion to any clothing that kept them from it. Shirts ripped, and pants were kicked to the sidelines. Pressing every square inch they could against each other, the two men rolled onto the hardwood floor, each fighting for dominance until one submitted.