D is for Drunk Read Free

kind of thing that makes me want to take up swimming again,” Tex said. “Salvage. You get to keep whatever you recover on the high seas, you know.”

                                                                                                                                                                     

    CHAPTER 3
    L  ess than an hour later, Sofia pulled out onto the PCH and her red Tesla joined the traffic crawling along the highway. She turned on the car’s heater full blast. That was the last time she was going swimming without a wetsuit. But the thought that, because of her swim, Jaxon and his wide-open smile were still around made it all worth it.
    When she turned into the parking lot, she checked her watch. Still on time. A yellow Porsche and a black Lincoln Town Car sat alone in the parking lot. Not a good sign. Business had been slow at the detective agency lately, and it hadn’t picked up this morning. The Town Car belonged to the owner of the agency, Brendan Maloney, a former Los Angeles police detective and consultant to the TV show Sofia had spent most of her childhood working on, The Half-Pint Detective . The Porsche belonged to his son, also a former Los Angeles police officer, and Sofia’s partner at the agency. He lived to drive her crazy.
    “You’re tardy,” Aidan said as soon as she walked in.
    “It’s thirty seconds past nine.” She made a beeline for the coffee machine. “That’s perfectly on time.”
    “Thirty seconds is a long time.” He wandered into the kitchen after her. “Ask a trapeze artist.”
    “Any new work?” She poured herself a coffee and took a quick sip. Aidan made good coffee, but she’d never tell him.
    “How was your morning?” He raised an eyebrow.
    “Why?” Something was up.
    “You have a certain glow about you.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Rosy cheeks,” he said. “Star-struck eyes.”
    “I went swimming this morning before I came in.” She took a longer sip of the coffee. Coffee was the elixir of the gods.
    “In the freezing cold Pacific? With the undertow?” Apparently, Aidan wasn’t a water person. “And the pollution?”
    “I made it out alive,” she said. “And I pulled someone out with me.”
    “Do tell.” Aidan’s blue eyes sharpened, and she wished she hadn’t said anything.
    “A surfer guy named Jaxon Ford.”
    “Action Jaxon,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like the name of a guy who’d need rescuing.”
    “He got hit in the head by his board.”
    “Not good at the whole action thing then?”
    “He’s probably plenty good at it. He’s a horseback rider in that show, The Riders of Randorin . And he owns a ranch.” She wasn’t sure why she was defending Jaxon to Aidan, so she decided to change the subject. “What are we supposed to be doing this morning?”
    “I brought some locks in for you to practice on.” He pointed to a pair of handcuffs sitting on her desk next to a package of bobby pins.
    “Ooo! Lock picking!” She raced across the office to her desk. He had been promising to teach her to pick locks for a while now. She ran her finger across the handcuffs. “How do I start?”
    “Don’t make so much noise. We don’t want Brendan to hear.”
    She had often wondered where Brendan came down on lock picking. She guessed on the law and order side. Not Aidan, though. She’d watched him pick locks before, and he was too good at it not to have had a lot of practice.
    “Let’s start with the handcuffs.” Aidan gave her one of his trademark Irish smiles, all dimples and insincerity. “Hold out your wrists.”
    She hid her wrists behind her back. “I’m not letting you handcuff me.”
    “It only makes sense to practice in real world conditions.”
    She wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he had her handcuffed, but she