The Ghoul Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

door, as the rug dealer that’d previously occupied that space had gone out of business. If they go through with their plans, Mama D.’s will double its square footage.
    Our host continued to chat happily at us as she crooked her finger for us to follow her over to the counter, where she ducked behind the pastry case and came up with two slabs of banana nut bread and her delicious honey butter without even waiting for our order. She then filled our cups and waved her hand at Heath when he tried to pay. I saw him put a ten in her tip jar.
    And then she said, “Oh, do you know who came into the shop this morning, M.J.? Dr. Sable! And guess what! He’s engaged! He showed me a picture of his fiancée, oh! What a pretty girl!”
    All that tension that’d fallen away walked right back up my spine. Mama D. had set up my first date with Steven, and even though she knew we’d split up, she still remained a big fan of his. As she chatted on about how well he looked and how good it was to see him, I pushed a big old smile onto my face and nodded like a bobblehead.
    “We saw him this morning,” Heath said, subtly placing a hand on my lower back. “And we’re meeting Steven and his fiancée for dinner.”
    Mama D. clapped her hands together. “That’s wonderful! Oh, I’m so happy y’all are getting along so well.”
    I was grinding my teeth together so hard that I couldn’t really respond, but for Mama D.’s sake I kept that big smile firmly planted on my face, and thankfully, a group of students approached the counter with mugs and hungry expressions. Heath and I managed to move off without looking rude.
    We found a love seat near the fireplace and I sat down with a sigh. “Maybe we should cancel,” Heath said after a minute of silence.
    I’d been staring into the fire and I pulled my eyes away and pushed the smile back up. “It’s fine.
I’m
fine, Heath.”
    He nodded. “Oh, I know you’re okay with it. But I’m not so sure about it.”
    My smile became real and I rolled my eyes a little. Heath was just saying that to make me feel better. I reached out and took his hand. “We’ll go to dinner,” I told him. “We’ll meet the fiancée and see what’s up with her brother. It’s cool.”
    Heath arched a skeptical eyebrow.
    “I pinkie-swear I’m cool,” I insisted. If I said that a few times, maybe it would be true enough soon. “Let’s go to dinner, and hear what they have to say.”
    Heath nodded. “It’s just a job, right?” he said.
    “Yep. Just a job. And if at any point during dinner you think I’ll need reminding that it’s just a job, feel free to say something.”
    “What’s just a job?” I heard a voice ask.
    Looking up, I saw Gilley standing there nibbling on a puff pastry. “Hey!” I said. “Where’ve you been?”
    “Seeing Michel off,” Gil said, adding a pout as he took a seat across from us. Michel was Gilley’s new boyfriend, whose mother is French, but his father is a Scot and so is Michel. We’d met him a few months earlier as we were wrapping up our final shoots for our cable show, and he’d proved very good with a handheld camera in some rather dicey situations.
    “Seeing him off?” I said, sitting forward. “You didn’t break up with him, did you?” I liked Michel, not only because he was a lovely person, but also because he’d taken the annoying right out of Gilley. With Michel, Gil had lost fifteen pounds, smiled more, pouted and complained less, and was just a general delight to be around. Without Michel, Gilley’s charming company could be used by the CIA to extract information from terrorists.
    “No,” Gil said with a sad little sigh. “He’s got a job in New York. He won’t be back till the weekend after next.”
    Fourteen days. I wondered if we could all last that long without Michel as a buffer.
    “Anyway, I talked to Ma,” Gil said next, eyeing his puff pastry with more than a hint of guilt in his eyes. He’d been doing so well on his