Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [19]
“Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her.”
“Oh, right. How could I forget?” She grinned at him across the console. “Mr. Let-nothing-impure-pass-my-lips.”
“Exactly.” He nodded, amused in spite of himself. “That stuff you eat will kill you. Seriously. Fat. Sodium. High cholesterol. And God knows what kind of meat those fast-food places really use.”
“Oh, but those three eggs you had this morning were okay, right? And all that butter you put on your toast?”
“There’s nothing wrong with eggs. And butter won’t hurt you. Margarine, on the other hand, is pure yellow death.” Adam changed lanes to pass the car in front of them. “I’m surprised that a smart woman like you doesn’t keep up with this stuff. That you prefer to remain unenlightened.”
“You mean I don’t subscribe to all those alternative health journals that you used to read.”
“Still do. And may I add that I believe I’m a better person—a healthier person—for it.”
“I guess you keep in shape lugging around all those vitamin bottles that I saw you stashing in your briefcase after breakfast this morning.”
“Absolutely.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, then pulled back into the right lane. “There’s a restaurant up here that looks like it might do. There on the right. Let’s give it a try.”
“But it’s part of a chain.” She feigned horror. “Who knows where they get their meat from?”
“If it worries you, order a salad.” He smiled. “Foreign as the concept might be to make a meal out of a bowl of greens with no chemical aftertaste.”
Kendra recalled the last restaurant meal she’d had with Adam. It had been two nights before her mother’s death.
“I think I’ll have a BLT—heavy on the bacon, heavy on the mayo—and a diet cola.”
“Ugh,” he muttered something under his breath—Kendra thought she heard the words pig fat and unnatural—as he parked the car close enough to the front door that he could keep an eye on it. “I’d hate to see what your arteries look like.”
“Smoking or non?” The hostess met them at the door with a smile.
“Non,” Adam replied, then hesitated. Turning to Kendra, he asked, tongue-in-cheek, “Unless you want to sit in smoking?”
Kendra rolled her eyes at him. “I may eat junk food, but I draw the line at cigarettes.”
“Nonsmoking,” he nodded to the waitress, who gestured for them to follow her.
They slid into a booth that faced the front of the restaurant, where Adam could happily keep an eye on his car.
“Why did you ask if I wanted to sit in smoking?” Kendra asked after they had made their selections and ordered. “You know I don’t smoke.”
“That’s funny,” Adam replied, “I could have sworn I smelled pipe smoke last night.”
“Where?” She leaned back to permit the waitress to pour their water.
“In the study. But it’s okay, you don’t have to hide the fact that you smoke . . . or that you entertain men who do.”
“I don’t smoke. And I haven’t had a man in my house since . . . well, I guess since I moved back. Unless you count Oliver Webb, who’s seventy-something, or Father Tim, whose interest in me is strictly as a supporter of his homeless shelter.”
“Why the smell of tobacco, then?” Adam did his best to mask his relief that there’d been no entertaining in the study other than himself.
“My dad smoked a pipe.”
“Your dad?” His eyebrows raised. “But I thought your dad has been dead for . . .”
“Seventeen years.”
“Are you saying that your father has . . . stayed on in the house?”
“No, no,” she laughed. “It’s not a ghost. But for some reason, every once in a while, you get a whiff of tobacco in that room. Sometimes I can’t tell if I really smell it or if it’s just a memory. A trace of him. I find it comforting.”
He nodded thoughtfully. If believing that a bit of her father had stayed within the house gave her comfort, what was the harm? He knew what it was like to bury a much loved parent, and as she’d already buried everyone she’d loved, Adam figured she was entitled to this bit of fancy.
“A trace of your dad’s scent left behind. A memory of sorts.