Cold Moon Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lola chuckled, as I slid off the stool to order the same meal from Millie.
    “Could I have what Aaron’s having, Millie?”
    “Sure, Vin. Coming right up.” Her face crinkled in a smile. For an instant, I was struck by how she’d changed in the past few months. A good change.
    Within minutes, Millie swept through the door bearing a tray loaded with food. She set it on the work table. I thanked her and grinned as she bustled away to handle customers who had just entered the deli.
    “Millie’s doing real well, huh?” I asked Lola.
    Lola lowered her voice as she said, “Yeah, she’s come a long way from the battered wife she was. My brother Bobby just locked up her ex-husband for abusing his girlfriend. The idiot choked her—didn’t kill her though—and then went to the neighborhood police station to ask if the cops would go with him to get his clothes from the house. In the meantime, his girlfriend had filed an abuse complaint, so Bobby arrested his butt.” Lola shook her head. “Bobby said the guy’s attitude sucked. He acted like it was okay to choke the crap out of her.”
    “What a jerk.” Aaron used the remainder of his bread to sop up the soup from the bottom of the bowl. He glanced at my bowl and then looked at me with his puppy-dog eyes. I grinned and moved the bowl away from him. Lola chuckled while Aaron got up and went out to the front room for more soup.
    “Good grief, that man is handsome.” Lola gave a wistful sigh. “He’s tanned, even in January, and those perfect teeth gleam when he smiles. How do you keep your hands off him? He just rocks my socks.”
    “He is handsome. Good thing he doesn’t live upstairs from you, huh? He’d be on your menu.” I laughed.
    “That is so not true. Well, okay, maybe it’s a little bit true.” She snickered and removed the oversized apron from around her petite frame. “I have to leave. I have a real date tonight. Imagine?” She turned to hang the apron on a hook. “Oh, by the way, I’ll call you later about the car rental thing.”
    “Okay.” I shrugged. “Who are you seeing?”
    “A friend of Bobby’s needed a date for a police function, so I agreed to go.”
    “You’re kidding, right? You’re going to date a cop?”
    “Is this the pot calling the kettle black? Are you teasing me when you’re the one dating her own super cop?” With her hands on her hips, she grinned at me. Unable to suppress it, she broke out into laughter and shook her head. “It’s just a date, nothing more.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, and look at me.” I grinned over how I’d been drawn to Marcus Richmond from the first moment we met. My inner voice, the one without the shut-up button, nagged me constantly about the folly of dating a law enforcement officer. It ragged on and on about the rate of infidelity among cops, who tended to stray into someone else’s grazing pastures. And I’d ignored it, too.
    “Wish me luck.”
    “Is he so bad that I have to wish you luck?” I asked in surprise.
    “No, wish me luck on my cruise, dummy. Don’t worry. The date is with someone you know. Detective Anderson.”
    “He’s a good guy, shrewd and egotistical, but a good guy all the same.”
    “Vinnie, they’re all shrewd and egotistical, even my brother.” She laughed and then said, “Especially my brother.”
    “I’m not shrewd or egotistical,” Aaron said, settling back down on his stool.
    We both laughed at him, and I pointed out that he must be since he’d egotistically thought he was the topic of our discussion. Cops are all alike when it comes to ego. They think there is only one way life should go—their way. They also tend to think the world revolves around them. Aaron may be a super, super cop, but he was no different than the rest as far as his ego was concerned. I figured the higher the rank, the bigger the ego.
    After Lola left, Aaron and I finished eating and ambled into the front room of the deli to sit on the sofa placed before