Death of an Irish Diva Read Online Free PDF Page A

told them.
    â€œBut who even knew she was being questioned?” Annie asked.
    â€œMaybe nobody. Maybe it’s the killer, wanting to keep us occupied. Away from him,” the detective said.
    Annie thought a moment. “Must not be anybody from around here.”
    â€œWhat makes you say that?” Bryant asked.
    â€œVera and her family are highly thought of in this community. If the killer really wanted to frame someone, it should be someone like me, an outsider,” she said.
    â€œObviously, the killer isn’t that bright,” Mike said.
    â€œExcuse me. I told my boss I’d give him a call.”
    He left the room, and Annie’s eyes went directly to the TV. But she knew Bryant was looking at her.
    â€œHow did you get to be so smart, anyway?” he asked.
    She ignored him and continued to watch the game.
    â€œWhy are you being like this?”
    She looked at him. “Like what?”
    â€œSo standoffish.”
    â€œI don’t want to lead you on,” she said with a lowered voice. “There’s nothing between us, and you need to stop pushing.”
    She was hoping he’d sink back even farther into the couch and look crestfallen. Acquiescent.
    Instead, he sat on the edge of the couch, leaned toward her. “I wish I could believe that. How do you think this makes me feel?” He glanced toward Annie’s bedroom, where Mike was still on the phone. “Do you think I want to be lusting over my friend’s wife?”
    Annie leaped up out of her chair and slammed her beer bottle down on the table.
    â€œI’m leaving,” she said. “You can tell Mike I’m at Vera’s place.”
    â€œDon’t,” he said, following her to the door. “Annie, I tell myself it’s going to be okay. That as long as I’m in your life, it’s going to be okay. I don’t need anything else from you. I don’t have to touch you. Nothing. But then I think about that kiss. And I know it’s not all me. I need you to open up and tell me what you’re feeling.”
    He was less than six inches from her, and she could so easily lean into him and test that theory. That it was more than a kiss. But she held her breath as she felt a tear stinging.
    She took it all in: There he was, in her home, which she shared with Mike and their sons. Their home. And yet there he was, standing in their entryway, professing his feelings for her, wanting her to do the same.
    It was just so wrong on every level she could imagine. Yet, unreasonably, her body responded to him as she remembered the way his lips felt on hers, his breath on her neck, the way their kiss had shot sparks through her.
    She turned away from him, and he grabbed her. “Please. At least give me some explanation.”
    â€œAdam,” she whispered. “I am married.”
    â€œAre you . . . happy?”
    Damn. She knew it was coming. How dare he stand in the home she shared with her husband and ask her that?
    He dared because he was, after all, the arrogant detective Adam Bryant. She had despised him when she was investigating Maggie Rae’s death. Then they had worked together again on the New Mountain Order case. It was then that he had become approachable to her. The first time she realized she was seeing him in a different light was when she was sitting on the floor of Cookie Crandall’s vacant house. And he had brought her the remnants of Cookie’s scrapbook of shadows, which Annie had refused to even look at because she was so angry with her.
    â€œWe are fine,” she managed to say. “Now, let me go. Oh, damn. Let me get the keys,” she said, reaching around him to the key rack, brushing against his shoulder.
    â€œI wish I could believe that,” she heard him say as she walked out the door.

Chapter 7
    â€œNow, Vera, you need to settle those nerves,” Beatrice said to her. “Maybe you should see a doctor, you know?”
    Her