Whiskey Rebellion (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 1 (Addison Holmes Mysteries)

button. His fingers roamed lower and my brain began to function despite the new intimacy.
    “Wait , this is too fast,” I panted, pushing him away with both hands. I wrapped the robe back around me and tied the belt into a double knot.
    “Okay, but maybe you could give me a timeline. I’d like to be inside you before I die of old age.”
    I had to close my eyes and gather my wits, because holy shit was I tempted to let him get his wish. “It’s kind of embarrassing, considering all we’ve been through, but I’ve kind of decided that I don’t want to have rebound sex with you.”
    “Good, because I don’t want to have reboun d sex with you either,” he said.
    “Oh.” There was my prolific vocabulary again. I wanted to ask what exactly he meant. I couldn’t tell by the look on his face because he’d banked the heat in his eyes and gotten his body back under control.
    “ You need to put some more cream on those scratches. They look pretty nasty, and I don’t want them to get infected. There’s no telling what kind of germs were under her fingernails.”
    “Oh, right,” I said, still dazed and confused from jumping in and out of intimacy so fast. Not to mention the fact he’d just told me he didn’t want to sleep with me.
    I looked down at the scratches in question. They hurt worse than I wanted to admit , and I shuffled into the bathroom to get the antiseptic cream. I changed into a pair of heather gray jersey shorts and a soft white tank top. When I came out of the bedroom Nick was reading the paper again.
    “ Is anything else injured?” he asked.
    “ Just my pride. She weighs a lot more than she looks.”
    “Yeah, but you got in a couple of pretty good punches before you got stunned. She’ll have at least one black eye, and her nose was bleeding like a faucet. Very unattractive.”
    “You’re just trying to make me feel better,” I said, smiling. “Hey, what do you mean before I was stunned? Are you saying somebody tasered me?”
    “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it. It was the only way anyone could get in between the two of you to stop the fight. You were cemented together with chocolate icing and you had a death grip on her hair.”
    Nick shuddered at the memory.
    “I got knocked on my ass twice trying to get to you. One of the beat cops pulled a taser out of her purse and got you both.”
    “I guess that would explain the memory loss.”
    “Sweetheart, be lucky you don’t remember . It’s something people are going to be talking about for years.”
    I grabbed a cup from the cupboard and filled it with coffee. Nick had left the sugar and cream out, so I put both into my steaming mug and then put them away in the proper places. He at least had the decency to rinse out his cereal bowl and put it upside down in the drain pan. I gulped the coffee standing up and the cobwebs started to clear from my mind. There was something different about my kitchen, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me. The cream and sugar. The cereal. I had food.
    “Where’d the cereal come from?” I asked. I still hadn’t had time to go to the grocery store since starting the job for Kate. I just hoped Nick hadn’t gone begging for food from my neighbors. I’m sure my mother had had enough phone calls about me in the last twenty-four hours.
    “I went early this morning and got a few essentials,” Nick said, not looking up from his reading.
    I opened the fridge and the pantry to see what Nick considered essential. “Two loaves of bread, whole milk, macaroni and cheese, pork rinds, beef jerky, beer, potato chips and Frosted Flakes. It’s good to see you eat such a well-balanced diet.”
    “You didn’t think I kept such a manly physique by eating a bunch of fruits and vegetables, did you?”
    “Hmmm,” I said, getting my own bowl of cereal. “You have some explaining to do about a few things.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, for starters you said you needed my help on Mr. Butler’s murder and then you don’t tell me anything about it. And then last night you drop the bomb that Greg was there at The Foxy Lady at the time of Mr. Butler’s death. Care to explain?”
    “ Eventually. But first I want to know about these.” He upended a big manila envelope full of photos on the table. They all had one thing in common. I was in every photo.
    “Where did you get those?” I asked. The spit in my mouth had dried up so the question came out as a croak.
    “They were taped