“Maybe I planned it all to go exactly that way. I asked you to marry me. You weren’t ready. I got shot. You realized you love me more than you love your stubborn streak.” He holds all his weight on his one good arm, and leaning down, he presses a quick kiss to my chin. “Maybe I’m the best damn poker player you’ll ever know, and because I’m so damn good, you walked headfirst into the trap I set.” He sets one last kiss on my lips before pulling back.
He moves his feet to the floor and snags my hand to pull me up. Without him, I might lie in this bed forever. “I set you up, Mayet, and you had no fuckin’ clue I was playing you.”
“Really?” My stomach jumps as he tugs me toward the shower. “Archer?” I try to pull him around to face me. “You set up your own shooting just so I would marry you?”
Instead of speaking, he only shrugs.
“Archer!”
“It was my birthday.” Glancing back with a lopsided grin, he winks. “I knew what I wanted.”
“You’re such a liar.” I move around him and flip the taps on for the shower, then I turn the heat right up and feel no guilt in the fact a boiling spray will melt the flesh from Archer’s bones. “You didn’t set up a damn thing. You’re lucky you’re even alive.”
“And yet…” he follows me in and hisses when the water stabs at his skin. “I got married.” He smacks a kiss to the side of my neck. “On my birthday, no less.”
* * *
The fact I’m a married woman now, and not justseeingthe homicide detective, means I’m able to finagle a few extra days off work to stay home and help the man who is competent in all things in life, except taking care of himself.
Why get his own cereal, when I could bring it to him? Why wash his own back when the wife could help out? Why do any damn thing, if it makes him feel good to have me do it instead?
He’s lucky I love him.
But none of this means my workplace ceases to exist when I’m away.
The George Stanley is a medical facility dedicated to finding a person’s cause of death. Fifteen stories of dead people, doctors for the deceased, lab technicians who wear too much color, and uncountable crimes still to be solved.
Which, ironically, brings me and myhusbandtoo close on a daily basis.
As the chief medical examiner, my absence isn’t an easy pill for anyone to swallow, which means my emails pile up. My text inbox overflows, and my list of missed calls include pathologists, assistants, and the mayor himself.
Archer and I have been hiding from the world for a week, and yet, it feels like a single second and a lifetime rolled together.
Pushing up to sit on the kitchen counter, I scroll through my phone and skim over the million requests for my attention. Some want to run test results by me, and others would like approval to spend money on tests in the first place. Some want to complain about someone else, and others—the mayor—want me to take time to get coffee with them.
Zooming in on the one name that’ll keep everyone else in line, I hit dial and bring the phone to my ear while Archer wanders across the kitchen. He goes to the fridge—and the cat follows because she’s obsessed with him.
“This is Doctor Emeri.” Aubree, my second in charge and the closest friend I have in all of Copeland, answers her phone with a voice void of emotion. “How can I help you?”
“It’s me.” I lift my feet when Chloe, the promiscuous cat, traipses closer and attempts to flick me with her tail. “Minka.”
“Oh, hey.” Aubree’s tone lightens a little, but it’s not as cheery as it once was. “I was getting ready to call you in a bit. How’s Arch?”
“Chronically unable to cook his own meals, now that he has awifeto do it for him.”
At the fridge, Archer scoffs, while in my ear, Aubree asks, “So you’re cooking? Like, actual food at the actual stove? Really?”
“Well,” I scowl. “No. But I’m ordering in. I’m the one who has to talk to the people on the phone, since Archer won’t set up the apps with his address.”
“You poor, poor thing.” Aubree’s mocking is softer than usual, not as carefree as I’m used to. But that’s what happens when a flower child is witness to a mafia murder.
Aubree Emeri is the child of hippies—probably. I’ve never actually met them—and for the longest time, she’s been crushing on the oldest Malone brother. While I’ve spent my time in Copeland falling stupidly in love with Archer Malone, Aubree has been helplessly stuck on Timothy.
Little did she know, they’re both sons of a mafia kingpin, and Tim, the heir to an empire he doesn’t want to inherit.
As medical examiners, we step onto murder scenes daily. We’re used to it. We’ve trained for it. But never in a million years would Aubree have expected to trip upon a woman whose throat had been slit inside Tim’s bar.
Worse: she was the woman Tim had been dating. Sort of.