Deadfall Read Free

minutes after Ifed the guys, and I figured you’d be ravenous when you hit the porch.”
    “Just buttering me up ’cause your birthday’s tomorrow,” he accused her, clattering the pan of biscuits into the oven. “Won’t work, you know. I’m wilier than that. Smell a bribe a mile away.”
    Content in his presence, she watched him moving purposely in the compact kitchen, a grin on his face like that of a mischievous small boy with a secret, as he closed the oven, lifted the lid to peer at the stew, and fished a long-neck of Killian’s Irish Red Lager from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. He held up a second bottle. “Want one?”
    “No, thanks. When I finish this, I’m planning to dip into my sacred stash of Jameson.”
    “I’ll get it. Ice water?”
    “Yes, please. Now who’s buttering who up?”
    “A little spoiling, maybe. Not buttering. I save buttering till I have a real reason for it. Then you’re in trouble, because no one butters better than I do.”
    He stuck his head out of the kitchen space and twisted his face into a comic leer, waggling the wide handlebar mustache on his upper lip suggestively. “I could, however, be persuaded to do some kind of buttering later tonight, if you’re absolutely set on it.”
    Jessie laughed and, realizing there was no chance of gathering her scattered concentration long enough to finish her work, abandoned it and began to collect and organize the papers she had spread out.
    “Hey. Whatever. Dirty old men need love, too.”
    Along with the clink of ice and glass, she could hear him at the sink, muttering a tongue-twister she had never been able to master—butter, obviously, still on his mind.
    “Betty bought a bit of bitter butter, put it in her batter, made her batter bitter. Betty bought a bit of better butter, put it in her bitter batter, made her bitter batter better.”
    Where had all this silliness come from? What could have put him into such an exuberant mood?
    He brought her shot of Irish whiskey in a small snifter and set it, with a separate glass of ice water, in the space she had just cleared on the desk.
    “What, no butter?”
    “No butter,” he told her. “This is just a well-deserved ‘Happy Birthday.’”
    Beside the drink, he laid a small package wrapped in gold paper and tied with a matching ribbon.
    “Alex!” She swung around to look up at him over the back of her chair. “It’s not till tomorrow.”
    “So? Tomorrow’s tomorrow. This is tonight’s birthday present. And, if you are really a good girl…”
    She reached up, took hold of his shirtfront, and pulled his face down to give him a kiss.
    “You…are too much.”
    “Open it,” Alex directed, and laid a gently encouraging hand on the nape of her neck.
    Jessie picked up the present and held it for a moment in the palm of her hand, considering. She hoped he couldn’t feel her heart beating wildly, for at first sight of the gift it had all but leaped from her chest. The package was tantalizingly close to the size and shape of a ring box. Was it? Did she want it to be? Slowly, she untied the ribbon and carefully loosened the tape, holding the paper to avoid tearing it.
    Time. If this was what she suspected, she needed time to decide how to respond. Whenever the question of marriage had entered her mind, she had, with purpose and determination, resolutely shoved it aside. Now she found herself confused, both wanting and resisting the idea. Glad he was behind her, could not see her face, she held her breath and cautiously lifted the hinged lid of the jeweler’s box she had freed of its wrappings.
    “Oh, Alex! O-o-oh!”
    Against black velvet a pair of diamond studs for her ears caught fire in the light of the desk lamp.
    Exhaling a sigh that could have meant anything, Jessie brushed them with the tip of one slightly trembling finger, then glanced up to see the delight in his eyes.
    “They’re beautiful,” she started to say, but, halfway through the words, her throat