Bare Bones Read Free

filigree jewelry.
    “Here.”
    “Here” was a broom closet at the back of the museum. I giggled as Zac spun me around, pushing me against the door and kissing me. The heat soaring through me had just as much to do with the fact that someone could walk in on us at any moment as the skillful way his mouth moved on mine. I gasped, breathless as Zac’s lips traced their way across my jaw and down my neck.
    “Come on. Let’s get into the closet.” Not something I thought I’d ever be saying to a guy. Then again, I never thought I’d be getting frisky in a museum broom closet with Zac either. He was fun. He was nice, and cute. He made me laugh. And this whole thing was like champagne in my veins, taking my mind off everything that had happened in the last thirty days.
    I pushed him away, laughing as I turned around and flung open the broom closet door. Something toppled out on top of me the second I opened it, knocking me to the ground. My first thought was that whatever had been leaning against the door was far heavier than a broom. It smelled a lot worse, too. It smelled like blood.
    I held back a scream as I tried to shove what appeared to be a freshly butchered side of beef off of me. Zac didn’t have my restraint, and I was oddly amused to hear his high-pitched shriek. Amused until I got a good look at what I’d just pushed off to the side. It wasn’t a huge chunk of beef at all, but something just as unlikely to be found in a museum broom closet.
    It was a human body—a freshly skinned human body.

Chapter 2
     
    D ETECTIVE TREMELAY WALKED into the room and did a double take, his eyes widening as he saw me. “Ainsworth. Why am I not surprised?”
    Zac’s naughty intentions had vanished with the presence of the grotesquely skinned body. Honestly, mine had, too. It wasn’t just the shock or the ick factor, but the blood now decorating my shirt and little black skirt. It didn’t do a lot for my sex appeal.
    The one good thing in all of this was that Janice had texted me to say she was leaving to have coffee with her tall blond guy before all this went down. It was a relief she hadn’t been here. I didn’t want to ruin what had most likely been the best, or only, dating experience she’d had in years.
    “Tremelay. Glad you could join the party.” I grinned at the detective, noticing Zac shoot me a narrow eyed look as I did. “I opened the closet door here, and this body fell out on top of me.”
    Tremelay looked down at the aforementioned dead body. “And what exactly were you doing in a broom closet? Did you break some priceless Ming Dynasty pottery and hoped to do a quick clean up?”
    “We were going into the closet for a bit of private time.” Zac’s tone bordered on the hostile side. “Just Aria and me, you know?”
    Tremelay’s head shot up and so did his eyebrows. “A closet? Ainsworth, you were getting it on with this boy in a closet?”
    Crap. The detective was twenty years older than me, and now I felt like I was all of twelve years old. And Zac wasn’t exactly a boy . He was my age. Give or take a year.
    Although everyone did seem to think I was older than I truly was. Probably not after admitting to almost making out in a broom closet, though. And from the sudden amount of tension in the room I got the feeling that Zac was thinking about opening up a whole can of whoop-ass on the detective. I’m sure the only thing holding him back was the pistol at Tremelay’s hip and the fact that a police record wouldn’t do Zac’s career any good.
    Still, his surge of caveman testosterone was making me rethink this whole dating thing. If he was this way now, was I going to need a restraining order in a few months? I might have just been saved from an obsessive boyfriend by a dead guy in a broom closet. I might need to have the “let’s be friends” talk with Zac sooner rather than later.
    “Any idea who the dead man is?”
    Now it was my turn to do the raised eyebrow thing. “Seriously?