Brynne got the joke and laughed, too, but then she went looking for her feline companion.
She found him seated majestically on the back of the couch, apparently untroubled by Festus’s presence in the apartment, but not quite ready to roll out the red carpet, either.
Satisfied that the animal had not been traumatized, she returned to the kitchen and helped herself to a cup of coffee.
“Do you always cook breakfast for women you’ve just slept with?” she asked, faintly surprised at her own boldness. The man had melted every muscle in her body the night before, and she still felt deliciously languid.
“Only sometimes,” Eli answered, spearing slices of bacon and placing them onto a plate covered by a paper towel.
“What’s the deciding factor?” Brynne asked, teasing.
Using a spatula, Eli scooped scrambled eggs from a second pan into a bowl. Carried them to the table, already set for two, along with the platter of bacon.
While doing those things, he appeared to deliberate.
Finally, as he drew back a chair for Brynne, he said, “It usually means I didn’t get called out to a car wreck or a bar brawl in the middle of the night.”
Brynne pretended offense, though she took the chair he offered. “Well, that’s romantic,” she replied. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Getting called out in the middle of the night?” Eli asked, purposefully missing the point. “Or sleeping with a woman I might or might not cook breakfast for?”
“What do you think, Sheriff Garrett?”
Eli laughed and sank into his own chair—the one he’d taken the night before, when she’d offered him a back rub.
Brynne blushed at the memory, not out of embarrassment, but out of residual pleasure.
She waited.
So did Festus. He sat nearby, on full alert, his attention trained on the slice of bacon Eli raised to his mouth.
“Are you asking me if I sleep with a lot of women?”
Brynne said nothing. She sensed a trap.
“Because,” Eli went on, after chewing thoughtfully on a bite of bacon, “if you are, I must remind you that, were I to ask you if you ‘sleep with a lot of men,’ you’d probably hand me my head.”
“I don’t sleep with a lot of men,” Brynne said, rather primly, though it was actually none of Eli Garrett’s business how many partners she’d had.
“I’d already figured that out,” Eli said. He gestured toward her empty plate. “Eat something.”
Now Brynne’s pride was stung. “Strange,” she said. “I could have sworn you were having a good time.”
“Brynne,” Eli said, “I didn’t mean you seemed inexperienced. I meant, you seemed—hungry.”
“So did you,” Brynne pointed out.
He reached across the table, holding a strip of crisply fried bacon in front of Brynne’s lips. “Eat,” he repeated. “You’re cranky.”
“I’m not cranky.” She took the bacon, nibbled.
“Yes, you are,” Eli said reasonably. “I’d like to know why.”
Suddenly, Brynne began to cry.
And that mortified her.
“Because I’m afraid we made a mistake,” she admitted, drying her eyes on the soft sleeve of her robe.
Could she be any less sophisticated?
“If that was a mistake,” Eli replied, “I’d really like to make it again.”
Brynne scooped scrambled eggs onto her plate. “What if it has lasting consequences?” she asked, between bites. She needed sustenance; last night’s exertions had burned a lot of fuel.
“Such as?” Eli inquired lightly. “It’s pretty unlikely that you’re pregnant, since you’re on birth control and I used condoms.”
“I wasn’t referring to pregnancy,” Brynne said. “I meant, what if we both regret this?”
“Speaking for myself, I can safely say I’ll never regret last night. It was practically a near-death experience.”
Brynne lightened up; now that she had some food in her stomach, she felt better. Or was it because Eli hadn’t rushed out, while she slept, leaving her to wonder if he’d given her—or their lovemaking—a second thought.
“A near-death experience?” she asked. “Really?”
“Really. Wherever this thing goes or doesn’t go, last night will still be the best sex I’ve ever had. Period.”
“Well,” Brynne said, almost in a whisper, “I guess that beats flowers and a thank-you note.”
Eli smiled. “You’ll get the flowers,” he assured her. “Maybe not the note.”
She laughed, which was strange because she wanted to cry again.
She wanted to, but she didn’t.
“Be careful,” she said. “Doris Gilford holds a black belt in gossip.”
Doris ran the only floral shop in town.
Brynne went on, “Even a bouquet of flowers will have her spamming everyone on her contact list with photo evidence that something must be going on between Sheriff Garrett and the manager of a certain restaurant.”
Eli, finished with his breakfast, leaned back in his chair and regarded Brynne thoughtfully, but with a gleam in his eyes. “Brynne,” he said, his tone mock-reproving, “the word is out. Has been since the midnight kiss, night before last. By now, Doris and her friends are marking their calendars so they can gloat if you wind up in the maternity ward nine months from now.”
He was right, Brynne realized. She’d forgotten the way of small towns after living in Boston for so long.
An unexpected chill rippled through her, taking some of the luster off the exchange with Eli.
There was another small-town meme, too.
Deaths come in threes.
Remembering the young girl found on the lot behind Russ Schafer’s motel and then Freddie Lansing, Brynne gave an involuntary shiver.
“What?” Eli asked, frowning. He was way too perceptive, probably because his job required him to notice nuances.
“It’s only superstition,” Brynne said, shaking her head.
It was, she knew that. And yet she’d seen it happen, over and over again.
“The death-in-triplicate thing?”
Brynne nodded. “Do you believe in it?”
Eli considered the question before answering. She liked that tendency in him, although she supposed it might be frustrating at times. “In towns the size of the Creek,” he finally replied, “every death gets noticed because everybody knows everybody else. Since the human brain always looks for patterns, it’s easy enough to group them into threes and call it a phenomenon.”