Free Whiskey, You're The Devil: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 4) by Liliana Hart

Rosemarie. Things don’t sound so good.”
    “Damn, I was just about to volunteer to do that,” Phoebe said.
    “You snooze, you lose.” I pushed back my chair and headed toward the chaos. Just as I pushed open the swinging door Rosemarie came barreling toward me, followed by a cloud of black smoke that burned my eyes and lungs.
    “Look at my kitchen!” A short, bony thin man dressed in torn jeans and stained white t-shirt cleared from the smoke. He had a meat cleaver in his hand and I remembered what Byron said about how much damage to the human body a cleaver could do.
    “What the hell?” I yelled as Rosemarie knocked me to the ground in her attempt to escape. The swinging door smacked me in the side of the head, and I got to my hands and knees and managed to stick my hand out before it smacked me a second time.
    “Come on woman,” Rosemarie yelled back at me. “This is no time to dillydally. The whole place is going to burn to the ground.”
    With that announcement, everyone seated in the restaurant hauled ass and pushed and shoved their way out the front door. Rosemarie hadn’t been kidding. The kitchen was in a shambles and flames whooshed up from the grill almost to the ceiling.
    Someone picked me up from under my armpits and I looked back a little dazed. The door had whacked me pretty good and I was seeing stars. Or maybe it was just the smoke. Vince’s face cleared in my vision.
    “It’s probably a good time to leave. If I wanted a burned hamburger I’d have stayed home and let your mother cook.”
    I burst out into laughter and let him help me outside. I could see why he and my mom got along well together. It took a good sense of the absurd to love a Holmes girl.

Chapter Six
    Tuesday
    T HERE ARE TWO kinds of people in the world—those who can function in the mornings and those who can’t. I fell into the first category, and I’ve been told on more than one occasion that it’s an annoying trait to possess.
    Nick fell into the second category. Though there was one part of his body that woke up alert and ready to go every morning. It was currently poking me in the back and didn’t seem to have any intention of going back to sleep.
    “What time did you get home?” I asked. It was just shy of six in the morning, and though I woke early and alert, I also slept like the dead and hadn’t felt him get into bed.
    “About half an hour ago.” He snuggled in closer behind me and his hand cupped my breast.
    “Long enough to recharge it feels like.”
    He laughed, low and raspy, and kissed the side of my neck. Nick was really good at a lot of things. But he was exceptional at sex. Like All-American exceptional. If sex was a sport he would’ve lettered many times over. He was so good at sex that he gave me the illusion that I was pretty good at it too. And that took an amazing amount of skill. Because once I orgasmed I was pretty much the man in the relationship and wanted nothing more than to roll over and go to sleep. Unfortunately, Nick usually had at least another half hour of stamina at that point and he oftentimes required me to be conscious for it.
    “Recharged doesn’t even begin to describe it. And I figure I owe you one for missing dinner last night.”
    He rolled me to my back and parted my legs with his knee, sliding smoothly between them. My pulse was beating about a hundred miles a minute and things were starting to tingle in all the right places.
    “I’m thinking you owe me two or three for missing dinner. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the smoke out of my hair.”
    “I hate to tell you this, babe, but you didn’t. Though now that you mention it I’m getting hungry for a hamburger.”
    He sniffed at my hair and then bit my neck hard. I huffed out a breath and pushed against his shoulder, but he chose that moment to slide deep inside of me and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Twenty minutes later I was just about to see God when Nick froze.
    “Don’t stop! Are you crazy?” My