“I find that hard to believe. How many rejections do you get?”
“Not many,” he said, “hence the reason they’re so memorable. Don’t worry, I’m quite persuasive. I’ll wear you down yet.”
“I thought this was business.”
“It is,” Gem said. “In a sense. There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about in regard to Gem Industries.”
“Is this about my sister?”
“Not unless your sister has complaints about her job.”
Jane Rosetti had taken on the role of manager at Rubies after her boyfriend, Wes Remington, had gotten the place up and running smoothly. As far as I knew, it was the longest she’d held a job in... well, her entire life.
“No, she loves it,” I said. “I just—forget it. Is your business criminal? Have you gone to the police?”
“If you let me explain, your questions will be answered.” Gem brushed a curl out of his eyes. His gaze glittered with amusement. “Though I appreciate the enthusiasm.”
I was a little too busy appreciating Gem while he spoke. His high-cut cheekbones stood out against his bright eyes, and his lips—which I knew from our whisper-kiss at Christmas—were perfectly soft. He wore dress slacks and a crisp white shirt topped with a designer overcoat. A scarf draped lazily over his shoulders and his skin looked naturally tanned as if he’d just rolled off a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Then again, he probably had.
Thankfully, my mother arrived then and put the kibosh on any moment Gem and I might have shared. Those eyes of his were dangerous—they had the power to suck me in without warning. It was half the reason I’d been avoiding him so ardently the last few weeks. I’d come a little too close to kissing him at the Christmas party, and I couldn’t afford a distraction at this point in my career. Especially not a distraction the size of Alastair Gem.
“Coffees for the cuties,” Annie Rosetti said, slinging two fresh cappuccinos onto the table along with the good sugar cubes she normally reserved for special guests. “Enjoy!”
My mother backed away without turning around, watching us with a huge grin on her face. She’d acted the exact same way when I’d come in here with Special Agent Jack Russo. I was beginning to think my mother didn’t care what sort of man I ended up with, so long as my future partner had little-to-no criminal record and the ability to change the marital status of her thirty-year-old unwed daughter.
“She’s...” Gem stared after her.
“Pushy? Intrusive? Obvious? Subtle as a gun?” I suggested.
He turned a grin on me. “She’s great.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure your mother doesn’t try to hitch you off to every available woman who falls onto your lap.”
Gem’s eyes lost a shade of their enthusiasm. He turned his gaze on his cappuccino and pulled it closer toward him, picking up his spoon and spinning it around in his beverage without appearing to actually see it.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” I said into the awkward silence. “You said you had a question on business?”
“Actually—”
“One second.” I held up a finger as my phone rang. “Sorry, but I have to take this.”
I stepped away from the table and answered the line from the precinct that would undoubtedly send me out on a case. My pulse raced with the jolt of adrenaline that came from getting a case—any case. The thrill of the chase. The unknown. The clues waiting to be peeled from a crime scene—questions in need of answers.
“Detective Rosetti,” I answered.
As I listened, I was aware of Gem’s eyes on my back.
“Sure, I’ll be right there.” I hung up, turned to face Gem. “I’m really sorry—I know you said you had business to discuss, but it looks like I’ve got a case.”
Gem’s eyes met mine. He stood, pushed his cappuccino further away from him. “Duty calls.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s not a big deal,” he interrupted. “I didn’t actually have business to discuss. I just wanted to see you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“No need. I’ll let you take off.” Gem flashed a quick smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Before I could come up with anything else to say, he’d disappeared from the bakery, leaving only the brush of a cool breeze behind him.
“Now, how’d you manage to scare him away so quickly?” My mother arrived at my shoulder. “He didn’t even touch his cappuccino. What a waste of the good sugar.”
“I have to go. Can I get those drinks?”
My mother handed me a to-go tray with three drinks on it. “I figured you’d say that. Dear, if you don’t reconsider your priorities, you’ll never end up married.”
“I’m not interested in ending up married.”
“Are you interested in living alone?” My mother pointedly slapped a few packets of sugar into the spare cup holder on the to-go tray. “Because when your career is over and those dead bodies are tucked away, then what?”
I left my mother behind as I hurried to my car. I didn’t feel like dwelling on any nugget of truth in her statement. She just wanted me to be happy. And to her, happiness was a family. To me, happiness was a blossoming career and... what? I wondered, unlocking the car door and slipping into the driver’s seat. A host of dead bodies?
I cranked the car into drive and set off through the mush and slush toward yet another dead body and forced the rest of my thoughts to the back of my mind. Marriage could wait. Catching a murderer couldn’t.
Chapter 2
“I’m sorry,” Melinda Brooks said when I arrived at the scene. “The chances I’ll rule this a homicide are slim.”
“Really?” I handed over a flat white. “I thought it was a suspicious death.”
“We all thought so, but...” Melinda gestured toward the body which was slumped over the steering wheel of a car. A sock had been shoved in the exhaust pipe and the garage door left closed. “It has every indication of a suicide.”
“That’s the third one this month.”
“It’s a dreary time of year.” Melinda sipped her drink. “Don’t look so disappointed.”
“I’m not disappointed.”
“Warmer weather is coming,” Melinda said. “With it will come the homicides.”
“Yippee. You sound like my mother.”
“Why are you so cranky?” Melinda spun to face me. “No need to be angry at the dead guy.”
I heaved a huge sigh. “I just ran into Gem at the café.”
“Ah. Have you seen him since the party?”
I shook my head. Melinda Brooks, a natural beauty, clothing aficionado, and medical examiner extraordinaire, was one of my very best friends. She, along with Asha West, Erin Lassiter, and me, made up the four musketeers. Melinda handled the medical side of death, I handled the physical investigation. Asha was a genius on the computer, and Lassie had people skills and a blog that kept her mysteriously looped into every aspect of the Twin Cities social scene.