place for us to talk.”
“Alone in a crowd, angel.” Keeping her firmly behind him, he pushed his way into a shabby seaside bar called Two Toes Joe’s. “Unfortunately, this isn’t your typical Tuesday night crowd.”
“No?” She dodged a man with big feet and an even bigger drunk on. “Interesting that you’d know that.”
“Being a ghost is thirsty work.” He sent her a quick grin. “I’ve come here three times in two years, Raven, and never as myself.”
“Meaning you have an alter ego here in the Cove.”
“Your great-grandfather’s sitting next to the dartboard.”
She waved at a cloud of thick, mostly illegal smoke. “I saw him, and, large crowd notwithstanding, I guarantee he’s seen us right back.”
“No one’s eyes are that good.” When two fishermen vacated a corner booth, Aidan nabbed it and waited while she slid onto the worn wooden bench.
The music was a raspy fiddle-hornpipe combo, the air a sticky, gray miasma, and unless she’d gone color-blind, the beer she’d just glimpsed had been green. Lovely.
Unconcerned, Aidan went with a mug of tap ale. Raven regarded a passing pitcher and opted for club soda. When a puffy-faced male server appeared to take their order, he stared so long and hard she brushed her cheek.
“Am I smudged or something?”
“Or something,” Aidan agreed. But it was an absent reply. His eyes hadn’t stopped moving since they’d entered.
She tracked them now to the bar. “Are we meeting someone?”
“No, just looking. I haven’t been out much lately.”
Resignation slipped in. “And here we go. Straight to the crux of a conversation I never in my wildest dreams expected to have. Except—oh, no, wait—I haven’t actually had what you’d call dreams since Gaitor told me you’d been blown into a million unidentifiable—should have clued in right there—pieces. My life became a full-scale nightmare at that point, and the scary thing is, it doesn’t feel done. In fact, I feel like I’m about to jump from a nightmare straight into a night terror.”
He waited until the server deposited their drinks before turning his dark gaze on her. “How long are you planning to stay pissed at me?”
A glimmer of unlikely amusement blossomed into a laugh. “Well, duh.” Propping her elbows, she moved a finger between them. “Two years’ worth of mourning wasted, pal. And I’ll tell you something you probably don’t know. Every six months your grandmother calls me up and tells me I have to come to New York for an anniversary wake. I go, we cry, she makes sure I’m not seeing anyone, then she drags me to Mass and gets a priest to bless me just in case the evil Blume thing has any merit. Afterward, she makes me promise to phone her every Sunday at 9:00 p.m. sharp so she’ll know I’m all right.”
“Hey, you marry into an Irish family, you’re in it for life.”
“I thought that very thing when we said ‘I do.’ In for life, for better or worse, till death—as in the real deal—do us part.”
“Us do part,” he corrected, and caused her temper to spike.
“You had no right to do what you did to me, Aidan. I knew before I married you that nothing about being a cop’s wife would be easy. I also knew before you decided to pull a Houdini that Johnny Demars was vindictive as hell.”
“Not vindictive, Raven, vicious. There’s a difference.”
“You wind up dead either way.”
“Except in the second scenario, you beg for it. And begging is merely a prelude to his idea of fun and games.”
She spotted a dusty, red-eyed raven tangled in the old fishing net that hung on the wall beside him. “I can’t believe you faked your own death, put me and your family through hell and spent two years—with the prospect of countless more—living like a phantom in Raven’s Cove, all because you were too afraid of what Johnny Demars might do to you to face it like the cop I know you are.”
“The cop you thought I was. Same verb, different
“Alone in a crowd, angel.” Keeping her firmly behind him, he pushed his way into a shabby seaside bar called Two Toes Joe’s. “Unfortunately, this isn’t your typical Tuesday night crowd.”
“No?” She dodged a man with big feet and an even bigger drunk on. “Interesting that you’d know that.”
“Being a ghost is thirsty work.” He sent her a quick grin. “I’ve come here three times in two years, Raven, and never as myself.”
“Meaning you have an alter ego here in the Cove.”
“Your great-grandfather’s sitting next to the dartboard.”
She waved at a cloud of thick, mostly illegal smoke. “I saw him, and, large crowd notwithstanding, I guarantee he’s seen us right back.”
“No one’s eyes are that good.” When two fishermen vacated a corner booth, Aidan nabbed it and waited while she slid onto the worn wooden bench.
The music was a raspy fiddle-hornpipe combo, the air a sticky, gray miasma, and unless she’d gone color-blind, the beer she’d just glimpsed had been green. Lovely.
Unconcerned, Aidan went with a mug of tap ale. Raven regarded a passing pitcher and opted for club soda. When a puffy-faced male server appeared to take their order, he stared so long and hard she brushed her cheek.
“Am I smudged or something?”
“Or something,” Aidan agreed. But it was an absent reply. His eyes hadn’t stopped moving since they’d entered.
She tracked them now to the bar. “Are we meeting someone?”
“No, just looking. I haven’t been out much lately.”
Resignation slipped in. “And here we go. Straight to the crux of a conversation I never in my wildest dreams expected to have. Except—oh, no, wait—I haven’t actually had what you’d call dreams since Gaitor told me you’d been blown into a million unidentifiable—should have clued in right there—pieces. My life became a full-scale nightmare at that point, and the scary thing is, it doesn’t feel done. In fact, I feel like I’m about to jump from a nightmare straight into a night terror.”
He waited until the server deposited their drinks before turning his dark gaze on her. “How long are you planning to stay pissed at me?”
A glimmer of unlikely amusement blossomed into a laugh. “Well, duh.” Propping her elbows, she moved a finger between them. “Two years’ worth of mourning wasted, pal. And I’ll tell you something you probably don’t know. Every six months your grandmother calls me up and tells me I have to come to New York for an anniversary wake. I go, we cry, she makes sure I’m not seeing anyone, then she drags me to Mass and gets a priest to bless me just in case the evil Blume thing has any merit. Afterward, she makes me promise to phone her every Sunday at 9:00 p.m. sharp so she’ll know I’m all right.”
“Hey, you marry into an Irish family, you’re in it for life.”
“I thought that very thing when we said ‘I do.’ In for life, for better or worse, till death—as in the real deal—do us part.”
“Us do part,” he corrected, and caused her temper to spike.
“You had no right to do what you did to me, Aidan. I knew before I married you that nothing about being a cop’s wife would be easy. I also knew before you decided to pull a Houdini that Johnny Demars was vindictive as hell.”
“Not vindictive, Raven, vicious. There’s a difference.”
“You wind up dead either way.”
“Except in the second scenario, you beg for it. And begging is merely a prelude to his idea of fun and games.”
She spotted a dusty, red-eyed raven tangled in the old fishing net that hung on the wall beside him. “I can’t believe you faked your own death, put me and your family through hell and spent two years—with the prospect of countless more—living like a phantom in Raven’s Cove, all because you were too afraid of what Johnny Demars might do to you to face it like the cop I know you are.”
“The cop you thought I was. Same verb, different
Similar Books
