Free Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) by Livia Day Page B

picnic basket. ‘Usually I’m hard pressed to get a cheese sandwich out of you.’
    ‘Lies, such lies,’ I said in my best hard-done by voice, opening the basket and laying out the cloth. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately. And it was true that after a long day in the café, I was more likely to beg him to make me an omelette than to produce something awe-inspiringly domestic for him.
    It wasn’t like I went around demanding he do police work for me on his days off, was it?
    Okay, maybe that’s a bad example.
    I had cooked a chicken stuffed with herbed potatoes, and padded it around in the basket with cheese scones, cold bean salad (for me, since Bishop is as bad as the rest of his police buddies when it comes to greenery) and a bag of fresh cherries from my favourite farm.
    Bishop raised his eyes at the spread. ‘This is you working up to telling me you murdered someone and hid the body, right?’
    I handed him the butter knife, and smiled. ‘Just don’t ask what’s in the gourmet sausage rolls.’
    ‘If there is beer in that basket, I may have to propose.’
    I handed him a bottle. ‘Don’t get grass stains on your knees.’
    It’s hard to talk to boys when they are eating. Well, not hard if you have something to say and you want to rattle it out while they’re chewing. But most of the things I could make conversation about today were … things I wanted to avoid talking about. So mostly I watched him eat.
    ‘You realise how alarming the silence is, right?’ he said after a while, eyes dark on mine.
    ‘Maybe I’m enjoying the quiet romantic moment,’ I said. Innocent face, innocent face.
    He brandished a piece of chicken at me, and then bit into it. ‘Tabitha … we’re either going to talk about this or we’re not. But please don’t assume I’m stupid.’
    ‘Honestly not something I ever assumed,’ I said wistfully. Oh, for a stupid sexy man in my life. That would be so convenient.
    He leaned back, still gnawing on the chicken. ‘Let me tell you, then. We can start with how you and my sister got yourself roped in to look for a missing person rather than report said missing person to the police.’
    ‘They did report her,’ I said huffily. ‘Helping to look was part of convincing the girls at The Gingerbread House to do that. Which they did, thanks to me, you’re welcome.’
    Bishop grinned and shook his head. ‘You do realise that every word you said within that house was recorded, right? I know exactly what happened.’
    I stared. ‘You watch The Gingerbread House?’ My eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a subscriber? Those girls take their tops off, you know. I don’t think I approve.’
    ‘And while we are at it, you can let my sister know that I’d appreciate a heads up next time she’s going to flash the internet? So I can leave the country.’
    ‘You can’t outrun the internet,’ I said sagely, chewing on cold beans. Mmmm. Olive oil dressing. Sesame seeds. Yummy. ‘What else have we been up to that you already know about?’
    Bishop gave me a look. ‘This isn’t me lecturing you about getting involved in police business, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’m actually impressed at how hard you’ve been working to avoid it.’
    ‘Which you know because you have been spying on me…’
    ‘I don’t have to spy on you. You’re Tabitha, and everyone I work with knows you. Regardless of whether or not I get to use the word ‘girlfriend’, every officer I work with does tend to pass the Tabitha-related gossip in my general direction. I figured out you were involved in this French Vanilla thing pretty early … though not as involved as Xanthippe.’
    ‘You will note that my boobs did not appear in the footage,’ I said with some degree of pride.
    ‘I appreciated that, yes. Very restrained of you.’
    Hmm, no mention of Shay French. Did Bishop’s all-seeing eyes not extend to my recent entertaining of teenage relatives of murder victims?
    ‘What are your thoughts on