A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) by Darynda Jones

“I thought …” Her voice broke and she swallowed hard.

With the gentlest of nods, he beckoned her toward him.

Auri ran and threw her arms around him. Sun didn’t miss the wince. Despite being in obvious pain, he lifted his cuffed hands over her head and hugged her to him.

“I’m okay.”

“I thought you were stabbed,” she said between sobs.

Once again, the strong connection between her daughter and the man Sun had been in love with since the beginning of time hit her square in the chest. Even the fact that he was covered in the blood of, quite possibly, three men didn’t convince her to separate them.

Her chest tightened again, this time for a different reason. Levi Ravinder seemed to grow more enigmatic by the hour. The fact that he’d saved her daughter’s life when she was seven only added to his thundering appeal.

Sun’s parents stood watching, as well, with the most endearing expressions on their sweet faces. For reasons unknown to Sun, they seemed to love Levi. Sun had figured that out a while ago. But even after everything, there were still so many questions Sun had about his past. Or, more to the point, her past and his involvement in it.

She’d been abducted when she was seventeen. Held for five days. Violated, or so the evidence would suggest since nine months later she gave birth to a squalling copper-headed ball of fire appropriately named Aurora Dawn.

Fifteen years after that, on Sun’s second day on the job, they found the decomposed body of one of Levi’s uncles near where Sun had been held. He’d been stabbed once through the chest and left there for over a decade. The timing fit perfectly with Sun’s abduction, and after Levi’s sister confessed to killing their uncle, Levi confessed as well. Then one of Levi’s cousins confessed. His plant manager. His barber. Hell, even Doug, the town flasher, confessed.

Thus far, eleven people had confessed to killing Kubrick “The Brick” Ravinder.

But the man’s denim jacket had been soaked with blood that was not his own. He’d hurt his opponent. Bad. And Sun had Levi’s DNA. She’d sent it in and was still waiting, four months later, for the results.

She understood. A cold case was hardly high priority, but she knew people. She could’ve rushed the job. So why hadn’t she?

She walked over to Levi and Auri.

“Why is he in handcuffs?” her daughter asked, then looked at Levi. “Why are you in handcuffs?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother.”

“Mom!” she said in that spitfire way of hers. She stepped toward Sun and asked under her breath, “Why do you have Levi in handcuffs?”

“Because I’m arresting him,” Sun whispered back.

“What?” She jammed her fists on her narrow hips. “Why?”

“Because he won’t go to the hospital.”

“So you’re arresting him?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.

Sun smiled inwardly with the knowledge that she was about to win this particular argument. It didn’t happen often and she took her victories where she could get them.

“First, he thwarted an attempted murder. Then he fought off the three knife-wielding assailants unarmed. And then he got hit by a Toyota Tundra when he tried to stop the knife-wielding assailants from getting away because, apparently, he thinks he can stop a half-ton truck with his two-hundred-pound body. So now we know two things.” Sun raised an index finger. “One, he’s bad at math.” Her middle finger joined the first one to form a V. “And two, he most likely has internal injuries and is bleeding to death on the inside.”

Auri dropped her jaw and shifted her outrage to the man standing beside her.

Sun fought the urge to pump her fist in triumph. “I just want some X-rays to be safe,” she said instead. “And Levi is not only refusing to go to the hospital, he is insisting on going after the assailants. Alone.”

“You are so under arrest,” Auri said, pointing to the inside of Quincy’s cruiser.

A sly grin spread across his face. “Traitor.”

She pointed harder. “In.”

He leaned down, kissed her cheek, then did as he was told.

It was Sun’s turn to drop her jaw. If she’d known that was all it would take, she would have called Auri to the crime scene half an hour ago.

He climbed inside the SUV and sat back, but Auri wasn’t finished. She jumped onto the step and kissed his stubbled cheek. “Thank you.”

The look he gave her, the adoration in his eyes, took Sun’s breath away.

Auri stepped down and offered her mom an apologetic hug. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to contaminate your crime scene.”

“It’s okay, bug,” she said, even though in some places she could lose her job for such an indiscretion. She looked at her parents. “You have my permission to duct tape her to a chair and lock her in the basement.”

Her dad chuckled, but her mom was still looking on dreamily, so enamored with Levi Ravinder, Sun fought a knee-jerk reaction to stake her claim. Mostly because she had none.

They’d certainly never been a couple. The one time they almost hooked up, they were just kids and he was half-drunk on his family’s moonshine, a recipe he’d legitimized and grown into a very successful business. He owned one of the most famous corn whiskey distilleries in the world, Dark River Shine.