Live and Lime Die: A Key West Culinary Cozy - Book 8 by Summer Prescott

Chapter 1
    Marilyn
Hayes groaned and tried to open her eyes slowly enough that it wouldn’t cause
her pounding head to hurt any worse. The petite brunette prided herself on
having a strong constitution and never coming down with the irritating, but
mostly harmless, illnesses that other folks endured. Right now, however, it
seemed that she was living proof that pride comes before a fall - the flu bug
had knocked the wind out of her sails so badly that she could barely get out of
bed.
    After
spending the morning flinging the covers off because she was burning with
fever, only to draw them up around her neck, moments later, teeth chattering
with chills, she had tried as best she could to sleep through the misery. Her
head and body ached, her throat hurt and she was as weak as a newborn kitten.
It took seemingly superhuman effort to even reach over to the bedside table for
a drink of lukewarm water that had been sitting there overnight.
    Her
phone was next to the water, and her headache was so profound that even the
innocuous chime, which indicated that a text had come in, shattered her cocoon
of silence and made her wince. Reaching over to pick it up, just so she
wouldn’t have to hear the chime again, she saw a message from Cort, the
handsome Key West detective whom she’d been dating for the past few months.
    “Can
I bring you anything?” the text read.
    Marilyn
was touched by his concern, and inadvertently smiled, causing waves of pain to
ripple over her face, forehead and skull. The headache tablets she had taken
didn’t seem to be doing their job.
    “No,
thank you though. I just need to rest J ” she replied, her fingers
hitting the wrong keys so many times that she nearly gave up.
    Cort
obviously understood what she was going through, because he was kind enough not
to reply. Tiara, her lovely, golden-haired daughter, who was taking care of
Marilyn’s Key Lime pie shop, SubLime Sweets , in her absence, had left a
crock-pot of homemade chicken noodle soup warming on the counter. With the goal
of grabbing a bowl of the delicious soup, she slowly swung her legs over the
side of the bed, and rose gently to a sitting position. That simple act was
enough to cause her to feel lightheaded, and she took a moment to catch her
breath, swallowing painfully.
    Standing
up, Marilyn felt as though she had aged a hundred years, but she slowly made
her way to the bedroom door and down the stairs, clutching the hand rail for
support and stopping to sit and rest more than once. Heading to the kitchen,
she hoped that she’d be able to lift the lid off of the crock pot, and once
she’d served herself, that she’d be strong and steady enough to transport her
bowl to the breakfast bar.
    Slumped
over her bowl, one hand working the spoon, the other supporting her head,
Marilyn took nourishment from the piping hot soup that felt great going down
her sore throat, even if she couldn’t smell or taste it. She managed to consume
the entire bowl before succumbing to the exhaustion that gripped her. Unable
and unwilling to make it back upstairs to bed, she grabbed a chenille throw
that was tossed artfully on one end of the couch, and burrowed under it,
falling asleep almost immediately.
    **
    Marilyn
awoke with a start. The light in the room had dimmed, and after having fallen
asleep on the couch, it took her a moment to figure out where she was. She
heard sounds in the kitchen and sat up slowly to see what was going on.
    “Hey
sleepyhead,” Tiara smiled, putting food onto plates. “I was hoping that you’d
wake up in time for dinner.”
    Her
mother blinked sleepily, a bit confused. “Dinner? But I just had lunch and took
a nap like ten minutes ago,” she murmured. “What time is it?”
    Her
daughter chuckled. “It’s just after seven. I came over to check on you after I
closed the shop and went home for a shower. I pretty much knew that you
wouldn’t have eaten dinner yet, so I made mashed potatoes, meatloaf and green
beans, with a