St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

too much hot coffee, and winced. “No. I’m trying not to back you in a corner. This is my problem, not yours.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “Well, that’s an adult argument.”
    “Were we arguing?”
    “Dan, you don’t have to do this. You don’t know me and—”
    “You are trying to piss me off.” He leaned over, pulled her close, kissed her cross-eyed, and lifted his head. “It won’t work, Carolina May. I know everything I need to about you, except how good we’ll be together in bed. Sooner or later, I’ll know that, too.” He smiled at her, his mother’s smile, the one that could light up winter.
    “You’re sure?” she asked.
    “Very.”
    “Not about the sex. The rest of it.”
    “Yes.”
    She blew out a long breath. “Okay. But if you get hurt because of me, I’m going to wring your neck.”
    “Sounds kinky.”
    “You’re such a guy. ” Carly pushed back from the table and looked away before she grabbed him and did interesting things to his body. “I’m going to work on the stereographs.”
    Dan’s expression said he’d rather she worked on him. “I printed out the list of things you wanted from the archives,” he said, pouring himself more coffee.
    “Thanks. Leave them by my purse and—”
    “No,” he cut in easily, “we’ll do it together, after I call my mother. But I thought we described the stereographs last night, or was I hallucinating from lack of sleep?”
    “We did everything but try to date by the type of card itself. Shape, color, that sort of thing. If that agrees with the costume and the guesses someone wrote on the back of the stereographs, then we can be reasonably certain we have the correct date.”
    Dan glanced at his watch. His mother should be home now, unless she had extra tutoring. “You want to shower first, second, or conservatively?”
    “Conservatively?”
    “Together.” His green eyes gleamed at her.
    “Doesn’t sound conservative to me.”
    “When it comes to saving water, it is.”
    “Go take a liberal shower.”
    He laughed and walked to the bedroom. She listened to the intimate, intriguing sounds of Dan showering and told herself she was doing the right thing staying dry. She wasn’t sure she believed it, but she was certain that sex with him wouldn’t be casual.
    That was what was holding her back.
    She didn’t know if she was ready for something that could break her heart.
    With a sigh Carly pulled on white cotton gloves and reached for the stack of stereographs on Dan’s bedside table. Although photo albums had been available since the 1880s, apparently no one in the Quintrell family had caught on to the idea until the 1910s. After that there were several albums. Sometime in the 1940s, someone in the family had made one or several attempts to identify the people in the ancestral collection.
    At the back of her mind she heard the shower turn off, then the low murmur of Dan’s voice talking to someone.
    She dragged her attention back to the stereographs. Nothing had improved. Whoever had been trying to do the family history had relied as much on guesswork as fact, leaving a tangle for Carly to sort out along with the cramped yet flowing handwriting of the mysterious wannabe historian.
    “You’re frowning.”
    Startled, she looked up. Dan was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, freshly shaved, shirtless, barefoot. The fact that he was decently covered by old jeans didn’t keep her pulse from skipping, then jumping into double time. While she stared, he pulled on a T-shirt that was as faded as the jeans. As the last of the tempting male landscape vanished, she swallowed hard and tried to ignore the humming in her blood, in her body.
    “Bad family historians are worse than none,” she said huskily.
    He looked at the stack of card photos in her hands. “Our elusive spider woman, she of the shaky script?”
    “I can live with the handwriting. It’s the foolish dates that get to me.”
    “Go shower,” he said. “It’s nice and warm.”
    And she was hot.
    Carly set aside the cards and turned a tablet on the small cardboard table so he could see it. “These are rough categories for dating stereographs. Use tissue to hold them while you sort. I won’t be long.”
    Dan nodded absently. He was already reading the neat printing on the tablet. Forcing himself to concentrate. Telling himself he couldn’t hear her strip off his sweatshirt. He’d sunk pretty low when he envied a sweatshirt that was old enough to vote.
    Blindly