Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas Read Free Book Online

already had a habit of carrying her work around with her, lodged in her mind. She wanted at least this boundary.
    After she washed up, she went back into the bedroom. Logan had turned off the TV. He leaned back against the pillows, hands behind his head, watching as she crossed the room. She slid under the covers next to him.
    “You could have joined us,” she said.
    “Sure. That wouldn’t have been awkward at all.” Logan slid his arm around Veronica and pulled her toward him. She caught a whiff of the cedar and sandalwood of his aftershave as she rested her head against his shoulder.
    “Come on. They wouldn’t have minded.”
    “Oh, yeah? Is Mac still calling me ‘Not-Piz’?”
    “That was just a joke. Besides, you and Weevil are cool, right? I thought you guys had some kind of edgy-outlaw-mutual-respect thing going on after all was said and done.”
    “Right…” Logan said. “That was his verbatim comment when I friended him on Facebook.”
    “I’ll bet you favorite all his Tweets too,” Veronica replied, propping herself up on her elbow and looking at him.
    “
Favorite?
I retweet every word that man posts.”
    Their tone was light, but the conversation wasn’t a new one. Veronica had no doubts about Logan’s place in
her
life, but there was still so much awkwardness between him and the other people she cared about. He’d spent half his high school career as a cynical, entitled jackass, which hadn’t endeared him to her father
or
her friends. Since she’d moved back to Neptune and gotten back together with Logan, everyone had made a sincere effort at acceptance. Logan and Veronica went to Keith’s once a week for dinner, and Logan had taken them both to a Padres’ game for Father’s Day. Among her friends, there’d been some cordially awkward get-togethers. Everyone got an A for effort, but she still sometimes found herself wondering if it’d always be this hard—if Logan could ever sync smoothly with her other relationships.
    He smiled, tracing the line of her cheek with a fingertip. She went quiet then, all thoughts of the case and her friends and her father, all the vague anxieties she had about making this relationship work, in spite of all the differences between them, banished. How could any of it matter, when he was
here
, when they were together? She leaned up and kissed him.
    His arms tightened gently around her.
    “Welcome home,” he whispered.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Preuss’s evidence had already arrived when Veronica got to the office at nine the next morning. It was crowded around her desk, a dozen cardboard bankers boxes labeled in black Sharpie. The sight made her feel slightly claustrophobic.
    “They said a
few
boxes,” she said incredulously.
    Behind her, Mac stood cradling her coffee mug. She smirked knowingly.
    “Please. Endless stacks of evidence and unsorted information to sift through? You’re thrilled. This is Veronica Mars catnip.”
    “Yeah, better get your spray bottle at the ready in case I start rolling on a pile of carpet-fiber spectrographs,” Veronica said with a mock scowl. “This is why you shouldn’t hire your friends. It’s all nice and professional until the insubordination starts.” She sighed. “Well, you know where
I’ll
be.”
    “I’ll poke some food under the door at lunchtime,” Mac said, giving a jaunty little wave.
    Once she’d shut her office door, Veronica just stood for a moment, looking around the cramped office. One box was labeled MEDICAL in a barely legible scrawl; another said CRIME SCENE . Several others were unlabeled. A few seemed to be packed past capacity, bulging ominously.
    One of the first lessons Keith Mars had taught his daughter about solving crimes was that their most important tool was organization. That didn’t necessarily mean keeping an immaculate system of files and notes and evidence. Keith’s own notepad was indecipherable and incomplete, his corkboard a fluttering mess of scrap paper. But his mind was a