“Ever been skydiving?” he asked.
“I am far too busy dealing with the living and the dead to hurl myself from any mode of transportation.”
“Water skiing? Or is your kind not allowed to get wet?”
Riley backed into Nick and hoped her grandmother hadn’t learned how to hurl lightning bolts from her eyeballs.
“You will both be in attendance. You will dress appropriately. And you will not put your tongues in each other’s mouths in the presence of your family,” she announced, pointing a bejeweled finger at them.
Riley’s arms came up like a shield just in case. “We’ll be there,” she promised.
“Seven o’clock,” Elanora said stiffly. “Come, dog. You will walk me out.”
Burt, who had given no indication of understanding much of the English language besides “what’s that smell?” and “ice cream,” loped over to the terrifying woman and led the way out.
Riley collapsed back against Nick’s broad chest.
“Well, that was terrifying. Can she see through walls? How did she know I was feeling you up?”
“You’re Nick Santiago. Of course you were feeling me up.”
They stared at the open door for another minute. Elanora Basil had an uncanny ability to kill moods.
“We need a new apartment. One with a moat,” he decided.
“Let’s see if Fred left us any fajitas,” she suggested.
They headed into the kitchen to examine the remains of their dinner.
“By the way,” she said, “I decided I’m going to help Kellen on the case.”
Nick blew out a breath. “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
“Looks as if my powers are rubbing off on you,” Riley said cheerily.
“I wish something else of yours was rubbing off on me.”
5
7:01 a.m., Thursday, August 13
“Iforbid it,” Nick announced.
“Excuse me?” Riley opened one eye and frowned at him from the pillow next to his.
Despite the fact that the new bed was a thousand times more comfortable than the old one they’d shared, he’d spent half the night awake, thinking about relationships and corpses in closets.
“I’m your boyfriend, and as such, I forbid you from working with Weber on a case.” There were relationship rules. Evenheknew that. Hell, those rules were the reason he’d never settled into a monogamous deal before. But being able to tell someone else what to do was starting to look like a pretty big pro.
Now both of her eyes were open, and there was a fire in them. “You can’t do that.”
“I just did.” He figured it was smart to lead with confidence. Maybe she wouldn’t realize he had no idea what he was doing. What the fuck was he thinking? Of course she would know. She was psychic.
She pulled the comforter over her head. “Ugh. Let’s talk about this when it’s not dawn.”
“No need to talk about this,” he insisted, yanking the blanket back. “You’re not doing it. I’ve decided.”
She shoved a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face. “Listen. I’m trying to cut you some slack here, but you can’t just forbid me from doing something.”
