Day of the Dead by Lisa Brackman Page B

toasting?’ she asked.
    â€˜I don’t know.’ He gave her that half a grin, the one where she wasn’t sure what he was really thinking, that crinkled the crow’s-feet around his blue eyes and sharpened the lines of his cheekbones. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
    Her move, then.
    â€˜I’m not good at toasts.’ You can do this, she told herself. She clinked her glass against his, took a swallow, and then put her tumbler down on the nightstand, her mouth dry, her heart pounding.
    He took a sip of his wine and watched her.
    She leaned in, her lips grazing his. Softly. A taste. He held back, still holding his glass, still watching her. Looking for something, some sign of her real intentions, maybe.
    Fuck it, she thought. So show him. Pretend you mean it.
    He let her kiss him. Let her straddle him. Her heart was still racing, but that could be from desire, couldn’t it? That’s what he’d think, probably. She wasn’t sure herself by now.
    â€˜Guess I’d better put this down,’ he said, stretching out his arm, setting the tumbler on the nightstand. He slid his other hand up her thigh.
    It wasn’t so hard to pretend.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Daniel slept for a while. She lay there listening to his deep, even breaths. At least he didn’t snore.
    Not that she’d been able to sleep.
    Though it really had been okay. If she’d been able to forget the circumstances, it might even have been fun. She’d almost forgotten, once or twice.
    Even so, she wasn’t about to fall asleep with him in her bed.
    I just need to find out who cursed me.
    She lay there – muscles knotting in her shoulders, acid in her gut like a weight – and watched him sleep.
    Shortly after dawn Daniel yawned, stretched, and sat up.
    The rooster that had started up around 3:00 A.M. began another round of crowing. And was that a donkey?
    â€˜Hey,’ Daniel said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
    â€˜Hey.’
    â€˜I should go. Got some stuff I got to do today.’
    She watched him find his clothes, put them on, check his pockets for his keys, like it was all some jerky, stop-motion movie, her eyes closing now and then despite her best intentions to stay awake.
    He came back to the bed and kissed her again, on the lips this time.
    â€˜I’ll call you,’ he said.
    â€˜I’d like that.’
    She smiled at him, lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers as he paused by the door and gave her a mock salute.
    Maybe he didn’t mean it any more than she did – maybe it was just something to say after a one-night stand that he had no intention of repeating. Well, two nights, she amended, but the first night had hardly counted. This was just finishing what they’d started.
    She managed to sleep for a little while after that, until her phone rang. The default tone for known callers. She fumbled around on the nightstand for the phone. By the time she found it, the ringing had stopped.
    Two minutes later it started again.
    She grabbed the iPhone and hit ANSWER .
    â€˜Hey, Michelle. Ted Banks.’ A chuckle. ‘You have a nice night?’
    She stared at the phone. How could he know?
    â€˜You know,
Ted,
if you were really in Los Angeles, it’d be six A.M. Kind of early for office hours.’
    Gary wheezed out another chuckle. ‘Oh, I knew you were good, Michelle. Look, let’s meet for lunch. I got a little something for you. And we can talk about your date. Call me when you wake up, and I’ll let you know where.’
    He disconnected.
    Did he still have people spying on her? Was that how he knew?
    She thought about that night in his condo, how he’d known the next morning that she’d put a chair in front of the door.
    Some kind of hidden camera? A bug?
    What if he’d been watching?
    She bolted out of bed.
    She tried to remember movies and TV shows she’d seen where rooms had been bugged. Radios, she thought, they put bugs