Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to be fair, Batten hadn't promised me anything. He just hadn't told me the whole truth.
    “Is that what I should have tattooed on my wrist, then? Plain Jane?” Harry studied me, head cocked. “Perhaps if you cut your hair, a bit of fringe, some layering.”
    I grabbed a handful of ash blond hair protectively. Damp trails of it curled around my fist and I wagged it at him. “It took me a whole year to grow it this long.”
    “Queen Anne's dead.” Harry's version of duh.
    “And what do you mean, ‘if you cut your hair’?” I demanded. “What's wrong with my hair?”
    “You always wear it in a ponytail. I have often thought it rather dull.”
    “This from a man who hasn't changed his hairstyle since 1720.”
    “Insolent bird!” Harry laughed, delighted, his smile revealing a row of straight white teeth without the slightest hint of fang; while Harry was closer to plain than handsome, his mouth looked soft and scandalously kissable, though I'd given up hopes of ever finding out. “You cannot possibly know that!”
    “You're forgetting James Latham painted a lovely portrait of you that year,” I happily reminded him. “It hangs above our mantle in the living room.”
    “What manner of maniac builds a mantle above that modern monstrosity of a wood stove, I ask you? Despite affording us withthe purest good fortune of having a place to put our candelabra, it is completely inappropriate to the space.”
    “Changing the subject!” I accused. “You look exactly the same as you always have, Lord Dreppenstedt, except for the lace cravats and tricorne hats. Whatever happened to that stuff, anyway?”
    Harry flicked me in the butt with a hand towel. “I keep them in storage, of course. I plan to look dashing at your funeral.”

FOUR
    You might think that a dead guy would be immune to a Colorado winter's cruel temperatures. That being undead might render one's body impervious to discomfort. So not true. I couldn't speak for all revenants, but Harry claimed to be prone to chill, professed that he could not bear the wind that whipped off the lake at Shaw's Fist. I suppose it was plausible. His body temperature measured a mere 68 degrees at most, after a solid feed made him comfortable. He slept with an electric blanket tucked under the goose down duvet in his casket, and some evenings his feet were so cold we soaked them in a pot of hot water. Twice a year he received shipments of angora and wool blend socks from Iceland. If he caught a chill, not only would he gripe and moan for hours (complete with chattering teeth of drama-king proportions), but he'd burrow his frigid toes under my legs for warmth while we sat watching evening TV, or steal my coffee to warm his hands. That being said, shoveling snow almost always fell to me.
    This morning's hail had turned to a hard, spitty not-quite-snow that was entirely unlike the fat magical flakes of a holiday postcard, and it pelted me while I tried not to think about Kristin Davis. I focused on the miserable weather, forcing my brain away from thoughts of missing heads and Y-incisions. The temperature was dropping fast, but the moisture in the air was high. It was like December was having a psychotic break, and I was a ward-weary nurse wishing I had extra Thorazine on hand. Despite my puffy pink parka, I could feel the damp cold down to the bone; it made me want to curl in on myself and hide. Wind snuck into the neckline and licked my collarbone in the most irritating way. My breath made a humid steam that drifted back into my face, which was also pretty annoying.
    All right, maybe everything was annoying me today. I was jumpy from lots of caffeine and Chapel's terrible crime scene photos. I was miserable from seeing Sherlock's ankles, flustered from seeing Batten all unapologetic and business-as-usual, like nothing had happened between us. Maybe it was nothing to him. Maybe if I stopped calling him Mark in my head and started thinking of him as Jerkface it would make the