Deadly Reunion by June Shaw Page A

didn’t know you’d ever been here before,” I said.
    “You never asked.”
    “Who did you come with?”
    “Do you really want to know?”
    “Yes.” I reconsidered. “No, I don’t.”
    “I can tell you if that’s what you really want.”
    I shook my head, backing toward the corner away from him. We rode without speaking. The elevator dinged, and its door opened. Gil pressed a button for a different deck. The door shut, and we descended.
    The first deck he’d gone for held his stateroom. By the time we’d reached it, he’d certainly realized my mood had changed. Any sensual feelings I’d had faded.
    The door opened. “After you,” he said.
    We stepped onto the deck with shops and the library and bars. He pointed toward a seating area in an open-air lounge. The waiter inside it glanced at Gil, who shook his head. “Or did you want something to drink?” he asked me.
    “Maybe later, after I find out who you came on all these trips with.” I sat back from the small round table and clasped my hands together.
    “I can tell you.”
    I sighed and admitted my thoughts. “Okay, I’m the one who decided we didn’t need to tell each other everything we’d ever done. We weren’t kids needing all of that information.”
    He nodded. “And I believe you said that especially our former love lives didn’t matter. We’re adults. Mature. Maybe wiser. So you wanted whatever we have together to be at the moment, nothing brought up from before, nothing promised for the future.”
    I pinched my palm. I did not plan to lie now. It just ached so much inside my chest, I wanted to direct my pain to some other part of my body.
    “But,” Gil said, “we can change your rules if you’d like.”
    “No way. Okay, let’s forget about who you traveled with before—” I was ready to say before you met me . But maybe he had met someone in-between the times we’d gotten together and gone places with her since. If that were the case, I did not want to know.
    “Let’s get back to what concerns me the most right now,” I said. “Jonathan Mill, the man who died. I’m afraid Sue might be…I don’t know what to think.”
    Gil shook his head. “Sometimes you’re rather difficult to read. Tell me about the dead man’s connection to Sue.”
    “She met him while she and I were on the Lido Deck during our safety drill. They were close together and acting flirtatious.”
    “So you think they got together after that?” Gil’s smirk annoyed me.
    “Sue wasn’t in her room when I tried to get hold of her. She told us she was getting a massage, but the spa wasn’t supposed to be open yet.”
    “And…?” His smile was most aggravating, which was fine with me. I did not want to be enticed by him again. “What do you think happened?”
    “Do you think they could have—?”
    “Had sex?” His smile was huge. “How far did they go with Sue’s operation?”
    “I don’t know. I only know what I told you.” I hated to admit the rest but needed to tell someone. And no matter who he might have come to Alaska with, I considered him my best friend. “Sue was late meeting the rest of us for dinner last night, and by the time our dessert was served, people were yelling in the hall. That man was dead at the bottom of the stairwell.”
    Gil gazed at a distant place, taking in everything I told him. He might have joked before, but he would never take death lightly.
    I squirmed, waiting. He was wise. His judgment would be impartial, much better than mine where a member of my family was concerned. Sue was family.
    “Sue has a bruise and maybe a cut under her eye. She wouldn’t tell me what caused it,” he said.
    “She said she ran into the stand holding the TV in her room.”
    “Which is possible.” He studied my face. “But you don’t believe her.”
    “I want to. But I had the feeling she did it on purpose so she could see the doctor to find out how Jonathan was.”
    “Did she see him?”
    “Yes. After we saw Jonathan