Read Online Goes down easy: Roped into romance by Alison Kent - Free Book Online

apartment building where she and my father grew up long before she opened Sugar Blues.”
    He filed that away, still certain this was all about boxes with false bottoms and suspended panels he couldn’t see. “She died here, you said. The singer?”
    Still holding on to his arm, Perry nodded. “From a fall down the stairs. Though everything pointed to the fall being suspicious.”
    “Was there an investigation?” he asked, watching the ebb and flow of the ethereal light, listening to the faint murmur of song.
    “A cursory one is all I found records of.”
    “You’ve researched the death?”
    Again, she nodded. “You live with a ghost, you get curious.”
    In the next second, the song ceased as abruptly as if someone had turned off a CD player. The stairwell went dark in a flash. It was the strangest thing Jack had seen in a while—at least the strangest he wasn’t able to explain.
    Except the explanation became clear in the next moment when the sudden loud thump that followed turned out to be Della hobbling down the stairs.
    Perry rushed forward. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
    “I was. I think it was Sugar who woke me,” Della said, leaning heavily against Perry until Jack moved forward to take her weight. “Jack. You’re still here.”
    “He was camping out in the kitchen in lieu of a lock on the door,” Perry said, brushing loose hair back from her aunt’s forehead.
    “I’ll finish with the deadbolt tomorrow,” he said, his arm around Della’s waist. “And pick up paint once you tell me what color.”
    “Oh, Jack,” Della said, her brow lined with worry. “I’m afraid I have bad news. I believe Dayton Eckhardt may be dead.”
     

    I T WAS FOUR in the morning when Perry helped Jack get Della settled in the kitchen. She sat in one chair, propped her bandaged foot in another. Once she was situated, Jack rolled up his sleeping bag and carried it out to his SUV. Perry put on a pot of coffee.
    She doubted any of them had plans to go back to sleep, then wondered if Jack had slept at all. He’d been wide awake when she’d come downstairs an hour ago, and he’d certainly shown no signs of being tired since.
    She could not believe that she’d kissed him, or the way she’d tried so desperately to crawl into his clothes and down his throat. She’d met him at most eighteen hours ago, yet had gone after him like she hadn’t had a man in, well, longer than she cared to admit.
    It wasn’t like Sugar Blues was a convent; she waited on plenty of male customers, flirted with more than a few. Then there were her male neighbors at Court du Chaud, with whom she teased and bantered regularly. And, of course, the male friends she’d made while living and working in the French Quarter.
    But it had been many years since there’d been a man who lit the spark necessary for her to want to take things further.
    Jack did. And in a very big way.
    Standing in front of the steaming coffeemaker as the carafe filled, she cursed her renegade thoughts. She didn’t like having to force her mind away from kissing Jack to focus on her aunt’s needs.
    Neither did she like the way Della’s revelation had put a huge scowl on Jack’s face before he packed up his gear. The truth was she didn’t like thinking about Jack at all. Except that was a big fat lie.
    Pulling three mugs down from the cupboard, Perry glanced to the side and caught her aunt’s gaze. “How’s your foot?”
    “It hurts, but I’ll be fine,” Della said, brushing away the concept of pain as nothing.
    Perry looked up at the clock on the wall behind the table. “You’re due for another pain pill.”
    “And I took it before I came downstairs.” Della repositioned the cushion beneath her heel. “What I want to know is what I interrupted by doing so?”
    Perry felt her color rise. “Nothing, what do you mean?”
    “You know exactly what I mean.” Della arched awise brow. “What’s going on with you and our new handyman?”
    “He’s not