“Take that by Grandpa, Jacob,” I order.
He shrugs on his way out. “Maybe.”
“Ah, alone at last,” Holly says as Jacob leaves. She plops down in my desk chair, spinning circles with her head thrown back to stare at the fluorescent lights. It makes me dizzy just to watch.
“What’re you doing here, Holls?” I ask as I pick my scalpel back up. I can work with her here. She’s used to it. I press the blade to Chad’s abdomen for the third time, hoping it’s the charm. I pause for a split second to make sure nothing else is going to interrupt me, but it’s all good this time, so I make my incision.
The chair continues spinning as she says, “Finished work—every last Gertrude and Harold fixed up with nowhere to go—so I thought I’d see if I could talk you into an after-work drink. My babysitter’s there ’till seven today.”
Holly takes her work seriously, her play even more so. And she likes to drag me along for her escapades. And as much as I’d love to say no, I learned long ago that it’s faster to go for the drink, even if I’d rather skip it. The argument alone where she tries to talk me into it will take longer than drinking a glass of wine.
“Sure. One drink.” I hold up a gloved finger, and Holly stops her spinning long enough to give a victory dance that involves wiggling her hips in the chair and kicking her legs in the air. Ironically, it makes this ‘MILF’ look more like a teenager.
“Where you wanna go?” she asks, all sarcasm. There are only two bars close by and only one of those that we go to.
“Guess,” I fire back with sarcasm of my own. I don’t stop working as I ask, “How’s your week been?”
She spins again, adding a sigh. “Good. It’s been slow, which is both good and bad. Dad’s worried about the business side of things, and no matter how many times I tell him that everyone dies eventually, he still keeps crunching numbers and saying creepy things like, ‘We need two more funerals this month to get out of the red,’ which makes him sound like a serial killer. But on the upside, not too stressful . . . all things considered.”
I get what she means. Holly has enough stress in her life. She’s a single mom, she works with her dad in the family business, she’s alone a lot, and she deals with death all day, every day. She is quite the badass, though, keeping a golden outlook on life while taking care of her five-year-old, Olive, who’s really the cutest kid in the county, in my opinion.
Holly goes quiet for a moment, and I glance up to find her smiling at her phone. “You’d better not be DMing some fuckboy. You deserve better than that, Holls.”
She’s slow to tear her eyes from the screen, but when she does, I can tell she’s gearing up for round ninety-four of a fight we’ve had before. “Just because you choose frigidity doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t choose good dick. You make it sound like these guys are taking advantage of me, but trust me, it’s the other way around. I want some adult conversation that isn’t about” —she gestures to Chad’s body where I’m still working— “this, someone to have a drink with when my bestie bails on me, or someone to press my buttons when my battery-powered bedside buddy starts catching feels because we’ve seen each other so many times this week.”
Her smirk lets me know that I’m never gonna win this one. She might hope to meet her soulmate, but she’s okay with meeting a temporary fix too. I shouldn’t judge her considering I don’t meet anyone, ever.
Nor do I have any intention of doing so.
“Fine, text your fuck boy. Does he at least use your thighs like earmuffs?”
I don’t get an answer because the door opens as I finish my question. I turn, expecting to find Alver, the deputy security guard from upstairs. He’s good about asking if I want to order dinner when he orders his own because I always work late.
But it’s not Alver.
It’s . . . Blake Hale.
In my morgue.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, embarrassed because I know he heard what I asked Holly.
His blue eyes are scanning the room, leaving no corner unexamined until he gets to me. Well, more likely to Chad, who’s laid open in front of me. That obviously sets him back because he makes a small choking sound deep in his throat that makes me laugh a bit.
“Feel free to go back out the way you came in if it’s too much for you,” I offer snidely with a shooing wave of my hand.
He stands straighter, stretching to what must be six-two or three, and a muscle in his jaw works. “Not until you do the paperwork.”