Harlow giggles. “Daddy-O is calling. Better not keep him waiting.”
“Yeah, sure.” I grunt my way over and move to answer. “He’s been extra crazy since we— “
“Met you a rebel ginger with freckles, pretty eyes, and a dick that will make you a very happy woman?”
I scowl at her and attempt to cover the receiver just as my dad barks, “What did Harlow just say?”
“Nothing, Dad. What’s up?”
“It’s just the two of you down there, right?”
Ugh. “The two of us and Mrs. Liddell. Who is finished by the way, and she looks amazing.”
Dad sighs into the phone. “I have no doubt, but that girl needs to wash her mouth out with soap.”
“Thatgirlis twenty-one years old, Dad. If that worked, you would have gotten all the bullshit from between Harlow’s lips a long time ago.”
He chuckles a little and it makes me smile. “Sounds like you both could use the Irish Spring treatment.”
“Maybe. So, what’s up? Did we get another call?”
“Yes, but not that kind. They’re coming to pick up H. MacAllister’s ashes. I need you to bring them up here quickly, then you and Harlow can go home for the night.”
My belly flips as I hang up the phone, the possibility of seeing Snipe again causing butterflies to flutter through every inch of my stomach, but I push the thought to the back of my mind.
Roland Berk had a huge issue with me even looking at him for too long the other night, and that’s probably why he’s trying to rush me out now. Dad would be thrilled if I never saw that man again, I’m sure, and that probably means I won’t get to go out on many calls unless they’re deemednaturaldeaths, either.
But I don’t want that because I like what we do.
Is that weird for an almost twenty-one-year-old woman? Probably, but I like working at the funeral home, and I enjoy working with my dad and best friend. I like helping people cope with loss, make peace with it, and honoring the departed by caring for them after they’re gone. It gets hard sometimes, really hard, but I enjoy my job. And even though it’s super illegal and dangerous working for the club, I like that my dad is acting as a medical examiner again, and that I get to illegally help with that too.
I’m only three years into becoming a mortician myself, but being able to apprentice under my father for basically my whole life helped speed things along and I’ll be graduating early. When I was a kid though, before my mom left, my dad was a county coroner with Mr. Johansson’s office. He loved what he did, liked figuring out mysterious causes of death or helping solve crimes and get the bad guys, but when it wound up being just me and him, he stuck to running the family business so he could be around for me.
I appreciate that he did that, so much more than I can say, but I know this isn’t his real passion, and when he told me he was going to start working with Mr. Johansson again, I was thrilled. I had no idea it meant being on call by the Wulven Kings covering up murder and forging death certificates, but if he was happy it was fine.
And he was. Dad was happy to be doing something close to what he truly enjoyed, but the deeper he got, the more nervous he became and taking me out on that call with him might have blown it for both of us.
I’m determined to keep that from happening though, and not just because of the super attractive redhead that I’m hoping to see right now.
“What’s up with Dad?” Harlow asks as she starts packing up her kit.
“He needs the MacAllister ashes.”
“Oh, your man is back already?”
I roll my eyes as I grab the plain, unmarked box from the shelf and start writing up the tag. “I doubt that. It’s probably one of his sons or grandsons picking this up.”
“Mmhmm…”
“Come on, Har. It’s a simple pickup of the cremains. They didn’t need some huge entourage just to do that.” I smirk as I head toward the door. “Besides, what am I going to do, corner Snipe down here and bang him next to Mrs. Liddell?”
“Nope!” my best friend chirps. “She’s coming down the hall with me, so the room is yours!”
With a chuckle, I leave the embalming room and take a left down the hall, heading in the opposite direction my bestie will be whisking Mrs. Liddell off to in order to wait for her big day tomorrow.
This is another part of my job I love.
Upstairs, the funeral home itself is pretty standard. My great-grandfather turned his home into a parlor when my grandfather became an undertaker, the two of them working tirelessly to make the big colonial functional as a home as well as what they needed it to be professionally. The second floor was all bedrooms and bathrooms, normal standard stuff, and the first floor had a large kitchen with a small private dining room and sitting room off to the side, but the rest of it became the actual funeral home.
