The Truth About Comfort Cove

y. She’d made a turkey and all the trimmings, just like his mother used to. She’d asked about his parents—if he had any, where they were.

The odd thing was, he’d told her about them. About Diane. About his own culpability. About his mother’s subsequent withdrawal from life.

He was a boy again, believing he had something good to offer, although how Amelia helped him feel that way, he had no idea.

And when he was through, he thought maybe he’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe Lucy was right. They were just tired. Overworked. Near the end of years-old cases. They weren’t themselves.

As his voice had faded away, Amelia had told him that he had to go see his parents. Before the year was out.

She was clearly disappointed in him, too.

He’d promised to bring Lucy to meet her.

He’d called his folks from work earlier in the day because calling from work gave him an excuse to not be on the phone longer than the time it took to wish them a happy Thanksgiving and tell them that he loved them. He was the only detective on duty, which they knew, and the holidays had a tendency to bring out the crazies.

Those crazed with grief or loss or aloneness. All maladies that were exacerbated by occasions centered on family celebrations.

He’d had a relatively easy day of it in Comfort Cove. The uniformed guys got the standard domestic violence and disturbance calls.

He’d had to go out on a possible murder, but it turned out that the ninety-year-old man hadn’t been murdered by his much younger, obviously distraught wife. He’d died of natural causes. At least, Ramsey was certain that the medical examiner was going to return that determination later in the day.

In the meantime, he’d investigated the scene, collected evidence, talked to the new wife and older children, taken statements from witnesses and told everyone not to leave town. And then, after dinner with Amelia, he’d come back to the office to write up his report on the incident.

And now, a few hours later, he was up and full of energy. He’d put clean sheets on the bed in the seldom-used room across the hall from his bedroom. It was going to be a good day.

L ucy got off the plane ready to go to work. A full day on the job, dinner someplace in Comfort Cove—maybe at the place in the tourist district where Emma Sanderson’s fiancé, Chris, played piano on Friday nights. Not that he’d be playing tonight since it was the night before his wedding.

And then a short night’s sleep before—

“Hi.” Ramsey was there, standing by the luggage carousel, looking gorgeous in a gray suit with a white shirt and red tie, his sandy-colored hair long enough to touch the tip of his collar and kind of windblown. But it was the warm glow in his green eyes, focused straight on her, that froze the professional greeting on her lips.

“Hi.” She turned for her bag, giving her face time to cool down. “I’d have just done a carry-on but I have my dress and shoes for the wedding, and my garment bag doubles as a suitcase and was too big…?.”

She was embarrassing herself.

He stepped up to her, close enough that their bodies were almost touching, close enough that she could feel his heat and every breath she took was an inhalation of his musky aftershave. Bending over, he lifted her face and Lucy closed her eyes, ready for the kiss that was probably wrong, but that she’d known, in some part of her being, was also inevitable.

Who were they kidding?

They were healthy adults. Who liked each other and didn’t have a significant other. It was natural that they’d experiment, satisfy the curiosity and be done with it.

But her curiosity wasn’t satisfied.

Opening her eyes she saw him bent over her farther, to get a good look at the disfigurement on her chin.

“It’s a nasty jag,” he said. “But they did a good job stitching you up. Looks healthy, and there won’t be much of a scar.”

“It’s not like it’s going to show,” she said, back on track. They weren’t experimenting. There would be no kissing between her and Ramsey Miller.

“I’m just glad that it’s healing.”

“It itches.” She saw her bag. Went for it.

Ramsey grabbed it just as she was about to lift it off the carousel.

He carried it to the elevator, into the parking garage and put it in the back of his car.

Fine. The necessary personal stuff was done. Now they could get to work. She wondered who would be in the office. Bill Mendholson? She’d met him once. Liked him.