Free A Dose of Murder by Lori Avocato Page B

works? What’d the kid say?”
    I wasn’t going to mention that Eddy was my age, and Nick hadn’t referred to
me
as a kid. Okay, maybe I really didn’t want him thinking in juvenile terms with me.
Woman
was more like it. After all, I was a professional investigator—or at least I wanted Nick to believe that. I told him about my conversation with Eddy and how we’d gone to school together. Then my conscience kicked in. “I know someone else who works for that practice.” I took another little sip.
    Nick looked at me, took a sip of coffee all the while staring over his cup. “Doc Taylor?”
    I nearly choked. “How the hell . . .”
    He grinned.
    My nerves crackled.
    â€œI said I did my homework. Doc Taylor is new to the practice and about your age. I put two and two together—”
    â€œAnd concluded I’m sleeping with him?” Oh . . . my . . . God.
    The corner of Nick’s lip curled at the same time my internal temperature spiked to one hundred four. A few more degrees and I’d be peacefully dead so as not to have to face the embarrassment of what I’d just blurted out.
    â€œActually, I put together that you might have worked with him at Saint Greg’s or something along nursing lines. Sex wasn’t my first thought.”
    That meant sex was one of his later thoughts.
    I shoved a mouthful of salad between my lips, nodded for no good reason and turned to look away.
    Speaking of sex . . .
    My mouth dropped open (this was becoming a bad habit). I forced myself to swallow, and couldn’t take my eyes off the doorway.
    Before the thought that Mr. Suburban had just waltzed in could materialize, I heard Nick mumble, “Shit.”
    I turned my gaze to him.
    He was glaring at Mr. Suburban and cursing under his breath.
    When my mental faculties returned, I asked, “You know him?”
    â€œJagger.”
    â€œOh my God!”
    â€œShush!”
    I hadn’t meant for that to come out so loudly, or out loud at all. But Jagger? Adele’s Jagger?
Of course, Pauline
, I told myself. How many
Jaggers
could there be in this world? And didn’t the guy have a last name? Or was that his last, and he needed a first?
    What did it matter?
    He’d had time to get himself a Coke and bag of Wise potato chips while I had my mental meltdown. I looked back to Nick, who was watching every move Jagger made. “What’s a Jagger?”
    Nick chuckled. “Good way to put it.”
    It was the only way I was capable of asking right at the moment. Jagger had on his black parka, sunglasses he’d shoved on top of his head to cover the dark hair, and I could swear he had a tan since the last time I saw him. Oh God! Had he seen me at Tina’s close enough to recognize me now?
    Something told me that Jagger was also astute when it came to women. Not being vain, I wondered if I’d made enough of an impression on him that he’d recognize me.
    Please, God.
    I looked back at Nick. Now, Nick was nice-looking, but Jagger was . . . damn it all, an instant orgasm. Had to do with him being good-looking in a more rustic, outdoorsy,
dangerous
kind of way. Where Nick dressed as if he’d stepped out of a Fortune 500 club (and reminded me too much of Vance, “stability” and Pauline Sokol’s old life), Jagger looked as if he’d stepped out of a forest with a giant buck in tow—still alive.
    Vance was boredom and solidity.
    Nick was class.
    Jagger was sex. Walking sex.
    I wiped a droplet of drool from my chin and smiled at Nick as best I could. He’d been staring at me as if he could read my mind. What a thought. I felt flushed. “So . . . how . . . you know him?”
    â€œJagger and I go back to the military. Gulf War. We flew sorties in February of ninety-one”—he looked off into the distance as if he could see something I couldn’t—“Desert Storm.