No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) Read Online Free

my breath and counted silently to ten before plastering a perky smile on my face.
    “Actually, Thomas, I try not to do anything too technical since I’m a female and it’s a miracle I can even read.”
    Thomas looked taken aback for a minute, and then he laughed. “Hey, that’s a good one, Lexi. You’re funny.”
    My mother intensified her glare and I smiled back sweetly, dipping my spoon in Sasha’s delicious stew.
    “So, Thomas,” my mother said, apparently deciding she had better take control of the conversation. “Why did you decide to pursue a career as a CPA?”
    Thomas dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Well, I majored in business at Yale and then went on to graduate school at Dartmouth to get an MBA,” he said. “I graduated top of my class with full honors, passed the CPA exam and pretty much had my pick of accounting firms at which to work here in Washington. My ultimate goal, however, is the Senate, just like Father.”
    I choked on my stew and gagged until Thomas thumped me hard on the back. I knew my mother had something up her sleeve. Thomas Marshall III was a politician in the making, and my mother hadn’t been able to resist trying to set me up. She knew I had a personal rule to never, ever, date anyone wanting to be in politics, which, of course, made Thomas irresistible to her.
    I mumbled something and excused myself from the table. If I didn’t get out of there now, I would certainly say something to ruin the evening. I slipped into the kitchen and saw Sasha, a slight, blond-haired man with a big, Slavic nose, working at the counter.
    “Lexi,” he said, holding out his arms and hugging me. “How’s the food? Is there a problem with dinner?”
    I liked the fact he greeted me with questions about dinner. He didn’t waste time asking me about my health or my fashion sense. He went straight to what mattered—food. I love a man with a one-track mind, especially one who can cook. Too bad Sasha was already happily married.
    “Dinner is perfect, as usual,” I said, patting his arm. To prove my point, I tore a piece off a loaf on the counter and took a bite before he could snatch it back.
    “You little thief,” he scolded, but in an affectionate way.
    “Look, Sasha, there’s something I want to ask you,” I said, my mouth half-full. “Have you seen Basia around lately?”
    “Basia?” Sasha said, puzzled. “I haven’t seen her in a month. She no like my bread anymore?”
    “Perish the thought,” I said, appalled by the very idea. “She loves your bread. I guess she’s just been busy.”
    “Finding you another job?” he quipped.
    I laughed it off, but actually he had a point. It was Basia who had got me hooked up with the NSA in the first place. She dragged me to the job fair when the agency was recruiting at Georgetown because she had always dreamed of working as a linguist for them.
    The problem was that after the Cold War ended, no one needed linguists with Slavic or Romance languages anymore. If you wanted to get hired by the NSA these days, you needed to speak Arabic, Farsi or Somali. Since those were like the only three languages in the entire world she didn’t speak, she hadn’t been hired. And in an ironic twist, I had.
    But that hadn’t dampened Basia’s spirit at all. She started her own freelance translation business and worked part-time at Berlitz—those guys who make those nifty little phrasebooks. It wasn’t a bad living and she got to be her own boss. It was good for me, too, since I get a new phrasebook every Christmas. I’d racked up Spanish, French, Russian, Italian and German so far. I was hoping to get Romanian this year—if I lived that long.
    “What’s wrong with my job?” I asked. “You used to think being a techie was a cool job.”
    “It is…but not for you. You need to start living life outside your comfort zone,” Sasha said, stirring something that smelled like hot fudge in a pot on the stove. “A girl like you doesn’t need to sit