Read To Die For for Free Online Page A

memory banks to match it.
    I was surprised by the flash of potent anger in his green eyes. “Wyatt,” he said curtly.
    I backed up a little more. “Why what?” I leaned to the side and looked around him, as if making certain there were still cops within calling distance to protect me if he turned violent—which, to be honest, he looked as if he might.
    “Wyatt Bloodsworth.” The words dropped from his grim mouth like lead balloons. He wasn’t finding my little charade at all funny, but I was having a great time.
    I repeated the name silently to myself, moving my lips just a little, then let enlightenment dawn on my face. “Oh!
Oh!
I remember now. I’m so sorry, I’m terrible with names. How’s your mother?”
    Mrs. Bloodsworth had fallen off her bicycle onto the sidewalk in front of her house and broken her left collarbone as well as a couple of ribs. Her membership at Great Bods had lapsed while she was recuperating, and she hadn’t rejoined.
    He didn’t look any happier to hear that his mother was my foremost connection to him. What had he thought, that I’d throw myself into his arms, either crying in hysteria or begging him to take me back? Fat chance. The Mallory women are made of sterner stuff than that.
    “She’s almost back up to speed. I think what hurt her even more than breaking bones was finding out that she doesn’t bounce back as fast as she used to do.”
    “When you see her, tell her I said hello. I’ve missed her.” Then, because he was wearing his badge on his belt, I lightly smacked myself on the forehead. “Duh! If I’d noticed your badge, I’d have made the connection faster, but I’m a little distracted right now. Detective MacInnes didn’t want me to call my mom before, but I notice half the town seems to be in the parking lot, so do you think he’d mind if I called her now?”
    He still didn’t look very pleased with me. Oh dear, had I hurt his little ego? Wasn’t that just too damn bad? “No civilians have been allowed on the scene yet,” he replied. “The press is being held off, too, until the preliminary investigation is finished. We’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to anyone until the interviews are finished.”
    “I understand.” And I did, truly. Murder was serious business. I just wished it weren’t serious enough to have required Lieutenant Bloodsworth’s presence. I stood up and stepped around him—giving him the same amount of personal space I would a stranger—and poured myself another cup of coffee. “How much longer will it take?”
    “That’s hard to say.”
    Which was a good nonanswer. I noticed him looking at the coffee and said, “Please, help yourself.” I grabbed the plastic pitcher I’d been using to fill the coffeemaker now that both pots were occupied. “I’ll just get some water to start another pot.” Then I whisked myself out of the office and down to the bathroom, where I filled the pitcher and basked in satisfaction.
    He certainly hadn’t liked the idea that he’d been so unmemorable that I hadn’t even recognized him. If he’d thought I’d spent the last two years mooning over him and mourning all the might-have-beens, his thinking had now been properly adjusted. And what had he expected, anyway? A rehash of old times?
    No, not under these circumstances, not while he was working. He was way too professional for that. But he had definitely expected me to react to him with the unconscious intimacy you use when you’ve known someone personally, even if the relationship had ended. Too bad for him I wasn’t unconscious.
    When I came out of the bathroom, Detectives MacInnes and Forester were talking with Wyatt in the hallway, their voices pitched low. He was standing with his back to me, and while he was distracted by their conversation, I had an opportunity to really look at him, and damn if it didn’t happen again, the heart-flutter thing. I stopped in my tracks, staring at him.
    He wasn’t a handsome man, not the way