Wicked Games (Hartley Grace Featherstone Mysteries Book 3), Gemma Halliday [free ebooks romance novels txt] 📗

behind the counter. The line of customers had momentarily thinned to just a few people, but the lull wouldn't last. Book buying and tchotchke shopping seemed to be thirsty work. In just a few minutes, the coffee bar could be swarming with co-eds in need of a caffeine or sugar fix. Pamela's Mr. Interesting might even show up. Hopefully she wouldn't be off tending to dental hygiene when he did.

Still thinking about Dr. Osterman's presentation, I filled orders and handed them over, wiped down the counter, and restocked the napkin dispensers and the bakery case. The scent of cinnamon and chocolate tantalized me, and my fingers had just closed on a coffee cake muffin when someone asked, "Got any crullers left?"

I dropped the muffin and raised my head too fast, cracking the back of my skull on the lip of the display case. Grimacing, I looked up to see my best friend, Irene Adler, frowning at me.

"Were you just going to take that muffin?" she asked.

I rubbed my head. "No. I was rearranging it."

"Sure," Irene said. "From the case into your face. I thought you were on a diet."

"I thought you were at a meeting with some Silicon Valley babies." I pulled a cruller from the case, plunked it onto a plate, and shoved it across the counter. I could have shoved a half dozen crullers across the counter, and Irene could have scarfed all of them and had no repercussions except powdered sugar on her fingers. Her size two frame never dared gain an inch. I loved her anyway.

Irene made a face. "Got canceled. One of them woke up with a runny nose." She shook her head, her diamond earrings sparkling in the light. "Kids."

I refrained from pointing out that Irene herself was only twenty-seven. A gorgeous and very accomplished twenty-seven. Irene was something of a computer prodigy and had parlayed that genius into a degree from MIT at the age of fourteen and then into millions of dollars when she'd sold her own start-up on the day she'd turned twenty-one. Of course like any good computer prodigy, she also had a checkered past, which included hacking into a government mainframe at the ripe old age of twelve, but as she'd pointed out, kids would be kids. And now "kids" were coming to her looking for venture capital to fund their own start-ups.

I'd first met Irene a few years ago when she'd come to give a lecture about social media's impact in political and economic culture. I'd peppered her with questions afterward, and between my enthusiasm for hilarious political Twitter fails and her enthusiasm for pastries, we'd bonded right away and been fast friends ever since.

"Know what would go with this cruller?" Irene asked, shifting her designer handbag higher on her shoulder. "A decaf mocha latte."

Pam and her ultra-clean teeth came back while I was blending the latte. "Has he come up here yet?"

I looked up. "Who?"

"Mr. Right," Pam said. "You know, the guy downstairs? The blond?"

"You're not talking about a muscle-y guy in a Stanford Cardinal T-shirt, are you?" Irene asked her.

Pam's eyes got wide. "You saw him too?" Her face fell, and I could practically read her mind. If Irene had seen him, and he'd seen Irene, it was all over for Pam. Irene had green eyes and auburn hair, and I was pretty sure the Mattel people had modeled Barbie's body after hers.

Irene nodded. "He left with a redhead. I think they're a couple. Your Mr. Right was even carrying her backpack."

Pam fell against the counter, her shoulders slumping. "Just my luck."

"There'll be another Mr. Right," I assured her. It wasn't an empty promise. There'd been about eighty Mr. Rights since Pam had started working there. And that was the first week.

"I hope so," Pam said. "I'm not getting any younger."

I snorted. "You're twenty."

Pam nodded. "That's what I said." She went off to take a refill to a customer.

Irene grinned at me. "Is that how we sounded at twenty?"

"I sincerely hope not," I said. I handed over the decaf mocha latte. "But it wouldn't surprise me one bit."

*   *   *

The rest of the afternoon managed to slip past with no more Mr. Rights for Pam and no more head injuries for me. At eight o'clock, I left the bookstore, reclaimed my bike from the rack, and headed home. Which wasn't exactly the high point of my day, since home at the moment was not much more than a rathole of an apartment with antique plumbing and a few antique neighbors who seemed to sit with one cataract pressed to their peepholes to catalog my comings and goings. The space was small, and the rent was high. Welcome to California. But that wasn't completely problematic since I hadn't paid it in a couple of months anyway. What could I say? Tips had been sparse lately. I blamed the cost of education rising almost as fast as tax rates. But consequently, rent payments had become a line item on my long-term to-do list, like dusting the ceiling fan. Sooner or later, the dust would build up and fall off the fan blades under its own weight. That was my working hypothesis anyway.

I hopped off the bike and wheeled it up the front walk into the tiny, gloomy lobby with its chipped vinyl tile floor, dirty white walls, and inadequate forty-watt lighting. A quick check of my mailbox revealed nothing but some sales circulars and a credit card bill. I tucked both into my bag and kept moving up the stairs to my second-floor apartment. The smell of cabbage, faint in the lobby, grew stronger and more noxious with each step. Wrinkling my nose, I stabbed my key at the lock, when I felt the presence of someone behind me.

I spun around to find 2B leering at me from his doorway. 2B's