Brownies, Bodies and Bad Guys Read Online Free

door. Lexy felt unusually awkward as they stood in front of it. She wanted to invite him in, but the image of the blonde draped over him made her hesitate.
    Lexy pretended to search in her purse for her keys as she felt the tension grow in the air between them. Jack put his hand on her arm and turned her toward him. Placing his thumb under her chin, he tilted her head up, forcing her to look into his deep golden-brown eyes.
    “Are you sure nothing is wrong?” Jack’s furrowed brow and concerned eyes made Lexy feel guilty for suspecting something was going on between him and his ex.
    Her shoulders relaxed and she smiled. “No. Sorry. It was just a stressful day with Ruth getting pulled in to the police station and all.”
    Jack nodded. The concerned look in his eye turned to something else as his finger gently traced a line down her neck, past the hollow in her throat and down her cleavage, causing Lexy’s heartbeat to kick into overdrive and tingles to race up her spine.
    “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
    Lexy thought about it. The look in Jack’s eye wasn’t that of a man who was cheating. If he was, Lexy figured he’d probably want to high tail it out of there, but the glint in his eye told her he intended to stay … for a long time.
    Lexy raised her eyebrow, a smile tugging at her lips. She made a big show of looking at her watch.
    “Well, I would, but I do have to get to bed early. I’m bringing day old pastries over to Nans’s tomorrow at the crack of dawn,” she teased.
    Jack’s lips formed a smile of their own. He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at her.
    “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll personally see to it that you get to bed very, very early.”

Chapter Five
     
    Lexy put the pastry box that held an assortment of day old pastries from her bakery on Nans’s dining room table and opened the lid. Nans, Ida, Ruth and Helen peered into the box.
    “Oh, what a lovely assortment,” Ida said, choosing a pecan roll.
    “You brought my favorite! Pistachio biscotti.” Helen gingerly removed one of the crunchy biscuits from the box and put it on her napkin.
    “You know I love eclairs. How can I resist?” Ruth bit into the chocolaty confection with gusto.
    “Really, Lexy, this is too much,” Nans said, picking a cheese Danish out of the box. “All this fatty food will harden our arteries.”
    Lexy noticed the threat of hardened arteries didn’t stop any of them from taking a bite of their pastry as she picked a cream cheese brownie out of the box for herself.
    “I’ve found some exciting information on Nunzio.” Nans pushed her Danish aside and pulled the iPad she had sitting on the table in front of her. She tapped a few keys then turned the screen to face the rest of them.
    “Look at these newspaper articles. He was arrested quite a few times on various charges but they never stuck. Of course, that was decades ago. But still, I think it proves there could be an organized crime angle to the case.”
    “All the more reason to stay away from it,” Lexy mumbled around a mouthful of brownie.
    “Oh. No, dear. That’s what makes it exciting!” Nans’s eyes sparkled, “Right girls?”
    Ruth, Ida and Helen all nodded.
    Lexy rolled her eyes. Apparently Nans wasn’t going to back off on this one, no matter how dangerous it might be.
    “But why would the Mob take him out now? He hasn’t been active in that business in a long time,” Ruth said.
    “Yeah, you’d think they would have had him rubbed out long ago if he was a threat, not wait until he was in his last years,” Helen added, with an apologetic look toward Ruth.
    “Well, that’s just one of my theories,” Nans said. “The other one, of course, is his family.”
    “Right, one should always look to the family first,” Ida said. “That’s what they do on TV and in the movies.”
    “Why would his family want to kill him?” Lexy furrowed her brow at Nans.
    “Money? Hatred? Revenge?” Nans offered. “You know, all