Page 57 of Chilled
Brenna grinned. “Oh, she’ll love that.”
“It’ll be fine. We could use a break from the case, and a home-cooked meal is just the ticket.”
Paul’s head came up. “Home-cooked meal? Where?”
“Yeah, where?” Melissa chimed in.
“My sister’s house,” Brenna said.
“Forget it.” Nick gave Paul and Melissa a narrow look. “I’m taking her.”
“You get all the cushy assignments.” Melissa glanced at Paul. “Heads, we call out for pizza—tails, we go for Chinese.”
“I’ll flip.” Paul pulled a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air. Then he slammed it against his wrist. “Damn. I’m going to have heartburn the rest of the night.”
Melissa grinned. “Pizza, it is!” She moved toward the door. “We’ll be positioned outside the bistro. If you need us, you know how to get us.” She patted the cell phone on her hip and turned to Paul. “You buyin’?”
Paul raised his hands. “No way. I’m all over women’s rights. Besides, I don’t pay for heartburn.”
Melissa laughed. “You’re just sore you didn’t win.”
Brenna chuckled as the two exited the room to make the call for their pizza delivery.
The sound left a warm feeling inside Nick’s chest. “You should laugh more often.”
Her chuckling ceased, and a frown settled over her forehead. “If I had more to laugh about, I might. Come on. We better get moving. I don’t want to be late to my sister’s. She and Stan are into punctuality.”
“What did you say your brother-in-law does?”
Brenna shrugged into her coat. “He owns a communications firm, and he’s the deacon at their church.”
“And your sister?”
“She’s a stay-at-home mom and consummate volunteer.”
Nick loosened his collar, already working on his departure speech for right after dinner. “Sounds like an interesting couple.”
“You’ll love them,” Brenna said, her tone flat. “They’re perfect.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He slung his jacket over his shoulders and shoved his hands into the sleeves. “Maybe they could shed a little light on the people they know.”
“Actually, we should ask Stan about the Ethernet cable. He deals in that kind of stuff. He might have an idea where we should look.”
CHAPTER 14
“So,Nick, where did you say you live?” Alice asked as she sliced into a portion of the steaming chicken cordon bleu she’d served on china.
He swallowed the bite in his mouth, savoring the creamy sauce. “I’ve spent most of my life on the east coast. I have an apartment in Norfolk, Virginia.” He stuffed another piece of the chicken into his mouth and hoped Alice wouldn’t ask him another question while his mouth was full.
Brenna sat at the edge of her seat, pushing the food around her plate and glancing at the clock on the wall every two minutes. She hadn’t said more than two words to Alice or Stan since their initial stilted greetings. Or anyone else for that matter.
“You should be married.” Marian Jensen pointed her fork at Nick for the twentieth time. “Brenna needs a husband. You should be married.”
Brenna’s cheeks reddened, and she sank lower in her chair. How many times had her mother said the exact same thing in the past hour? Nick hid a grin at Brenna’s obvious discomfort.
Alice smiled and patted Nick’s hand. “Don’t pay her any mind. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“May we be excused?” asked Brandon, the older of Alice’s two children. He sat with his hands in his lap, his hair combed neatly and his shirt tucked into khaki slacks. He hadn’t wiggled once at the table, and he’d displayed surprising table manners for a six-year-old. If one of Nick’s nephews had sat at the table, he’d have fallen out of his chair at least three times by now, trying to slip scraps to a persistent pooch beneath the chair. Even the younger boy, Luke, was well behaved.
