Free Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan by Intrigue Romance Page A

all Jasmine could manage.
    Rogan did better, working up a slow smile. “One’s good for me.”
    The spell shattered. “Two’s better.”
    Dollar signs came and went from Riese’s black eyes. “Adjoining?”
    “Please.” Rogan dropped an arm onto Jasmine’s shoulders. “Away from the other guests if possible.”
    “In a house the size of the Titanic, I can swing just about any request.” Pausing, Riese shook a curious finger at Jasmine. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you any relation to Lacey Blume? She ran off thirty years ago with a psychologist from Boston. Fat toad insisted we were loony for thinking any part of our legend was true. Then he got himself tangled up with the biggest loon of all. Er, no offense if you are related.”
    Jasmine turned a burgeoning laugh into a smile. “Not that I know of.”
    “What about you?” She zeroed in on Rogan. “Your lady friend’s got Lacey’s eyes, but you’ve got the look of a Blume altogether. Dark, dangerous and brooding, with a healthy dose of just plain bad. Not that my great- great- blah, blah, blah ancestor, the one who was poofed into a raven, was truly bad, but…”
    The door opened and closed behind them. Riese continued to talk while she mounted the stairs to the entrance, where Boxman stood with a backpack on his shoulder and a butterfly bandage stretched across his nose.
    “My multiple great’s name was Hezekiah Blume,” Riese went on. “There aren’t any portraits, but most agree he was a strapping man with a very large chip.”
    Despite the fact that she appeared to be in storytelling mode, Jasmine saw her hand ball into a fist. Boxman had mentioned meeting a birdwoman in a local bar. Given the fact that Riese looked like a woman with a fistful of mad, two and two probably made four.
    A glance at Rogan yielded nothing except a placid “Cause and consequence, love.”
    Because she felt she and Boris owed him for the bandage, Jasmine got to Boxman first and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Nice to see you again, Sergeant.”
    He kept his uneasy gaze on their hostess. “What? Oh, yeah, thanks. Uh, hi there, Rita.”
    “It’s Riese.” But she stopped on the third step and scowled at Jasmine. “Is he really your friend?”
    “Mmm. He’s also a police officer,” she said when the woman’s hand twitched back into a ball.
    “What happened to his nose?”
    “He tripped over my dog while he was doing police stuff at Lenny Grant’s cottage.”
    Riese’s heavily made-up eyes slid to Rogan. “Are you a cop, too?”
    “Ever since I quit my restaurant job.”
    As he’d undoubtedly anticipated, Riese pounced. “Can you cook?”
    Jasmine suspected he was just able to fight back a grin. “Not as well as my—friend can. She and her mother own the restaurant in question.”
    Riese tapped a finger to her lips while Jasmine shot him a lethal look. Smiling a little, he absorbed it and started for the door. “I’ll get Boris and our bags while you two talk menus.”
    Before she could object, Riese was dragging her toward a shadowed archway.
    “All I really need’s a little coaching. You’re on the third floor,” she said to Rogan. “Left staircase, end of the hall, hang another left, you’re there. First two doors on the right. Rooms have fireplaces and balconies. Bathroom’s in between.” She stabbed a backward finger at Boxman. “We’ll sort out your accommodations later.”
    Jasmine knew she could have escaped. However, Riese’s grip held a measure of desperation she couldn’t ignore. In any case, a tour of the kitchen would get her away from the thought of adjoining rooms, balconies and, God help her, fireplaces.
    “I don’t usually take on more than a few guests at a time,” Riese confided. “Currently, and if I include your sergeant friend, who, just so you know, put the moves on me in town last night, then didn’t show here later like he promised he would if I’d pick up the tab because he was a little