Drop Dead Gorgeous(11)
I get what she means. Holly has enough stress in her life. She’s a single mom, she works with her dad in the family business, she’s alone a lot, and she deals with death all day, every day. She is quite the badass, though, keeping a golden outlook on life while taking care of her five-year-old, Olive, who’s really the cutest kid in the county, in my opinion.
Holly goes quiet for a moment, and I glance up to find her smiling at her phone. “You’d better not be DMing some fuckboy. You deserve better than that, Holls.”
She’s slow to tear her eyes from the screen, but when she does, I can tell she’s gearing up for round ninety-four of a fight we’ve had before. “Just because you choose frigidity doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t choose good dick. You make it sound like these guys are taking advantage of me, but trust me, it’s the other way around. I want some adult conversation that isn’t about” —she gestures to Chad’s body where I’m still working— “this, someone to have a drink with when my bestie bails on me, or someone to press my buttons when my battery-powered bedside buddy starts catching feels because we’ve seen each other so many times this week.”
Her smirk lets me know that I’m never gonna win this one. She might hope to meet her soulmate, but she’s okay with meeting a temporary fix too. I shouldn’t judge her considering I don’t meet anyone, ever.
Nor do I have any intention of doing so.
“Fine, text your fuck boy. Does he at least use your thighs like earmuffs?”
I don’t get an answer because the door opens as I finish my question. I turn, expecting to find Alver, the deputy security guard from upstairs. He’s good about asking if I want to order dinner when he orders his own because I always work late.
But it’s not Alver.
It’s . . . Blake Hale.
In my morgue.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, embarrassed because I know he heard what I asked Holly.
His blue eyes are scanning the room, leaving no corner unexamined until he gets to me. Well, more likely to Chad, who’s laid open in front of me. That obviously sets him back because he makes a small choking sound deep in his throat that makes me laugh a bit.
“Feel free to go back out the way you came in if it’s too much for you,” I offer snidely with a shooing wave of my hand.
He stands straighter, stretching to what must be six-two or three, and a muscle in his jaw works. “Not until you do the paperwork.”
“Paperwork?” Holly interjects. “Interesting.”
I pause, realizing this is going to go over like a fart in church when I explain. “I got in a tiny little fender bender, but I’m fine. More importantly, the other guy is fine too.”
I tilt my head toward Blake, inviting him to disagree. Sure, I downplayed the accident, but Blake seems ready to let it slide.
I also look for wood to touch again but still find none. I cross my fingers once more because though Blake Hale had looked good—too good, in fact—after the small accident, he looks even better now.
He’s wearing a button-up shirt, rolled up to show his forearms, and a silver watch and flat-front khakis with a dark brown belt, which could come off as bland business casual. But the fire in his eyes has me feeling warm and tingly in this icebox of a room.
I’m honestly glad he seems so vibrantly alive because I had a nightmare that he dropped dead of an aneurysm after leaving the accident scene. It’d bothered me so much that I actually searched the database to be sure that hadn’t happened.
But with the scowl he’s throwing my way, perhaps my relief was premature because I can see the way his heart is racing by the pulse in his neck beneath that jaw muscle that’s still working double-time.
It’d probably serve me right to have him die right here in front of me in my morgue. God, that story would make the rounds in an instant.
Despite whatever stare down moment Blake and I are having, Holly is having none of it. She not only stops spinning in my chair but leaps from it to come to my side and smack my ass.
“What the ever-loving actual fuck, Zoey? An accident? That is the sort of thing that requires an immediate phone call. Friend Code 101. Are you okay? Really okay?” She scans me from head to toe, looking for anything amiss as she lifts my left arm and then right, scalpel and all.
“I’m fine,” I say reassuringly as I shrug her off. Believing me, she whirls on Blake. “You’re that guy . . . ‘Call me, Blake Hale, today at (555) 917-LIFE.’ Aren’t you?”
“How do you know his number?” The words pop off my tongue before I even realize I’ve thought them.
Holly’s answering smile is pure evil, decadently reveling in whatever plot she’s cooking up. “His commercials, of course. Mr. Hale here is a life insurance guy, and you’re a death dealer.” She holds a hand up to stop the argument she knows is coming. I hate when she calls me that even if I’m the one who said it first during a drunken, tearful breakdown shortly after Grandpa died.
“You two are a match made in heaven if there ever were one. Especially considering the wreck didn’t kill him,” she adds sassily, knowing how touchy I am about my history from that same drunken conversation. Flipping back around as though she’s a tennis ref, she gives me her back and focuses on Blake once again. “I’m Holly, the bestest of the besties. So start talking, what paperwork?”