“You threw up on his shoes?” Pepper stared at me, her emerald eyes as big as saucers.

“Yeah, I think I might be coming down with something, although I feel fine now.” I pressed my fingertips against my temple in a futile attempt to make the painful pounding stop. “Other than this headache.”

“What happened?” She busied herself behind the counter of her shop, getting things ready for the morning crowd, glancing up at me every so often as I told her how I’d run into Striker at the Bates mansion. Her lips quirked up in a smug smile when I told her about how we’d had coffee and exchanged clues.

“His car was parked up here, so we were standing in front of my shop while I dug out my key.” I leaned across the counter, lowering my voice even though no one was in the shop to hear me. “It almost seemed like he was about to kiss me.”

I had Pepper’s full attention. “Really? What happened?”

“I felt sick and threw up. Lucky thing he was wearing police issue shoes—they should clean off pretty easily.”

“That sounds awful … what did he do?”

“He was a complete gentleman,” I said, grimacing at the memory. “He acted like it was nothing. But I noticed he didn’t seem like he wanted to kiss me anymore after that. It was humiliating … took me three Appletini’s to recover.

“Maybe that explains the headache I have this morning. Funny thing though, I didn’t feel sick when I was drinking those.”

“Oh, dear,” Pepper wrung her hands together, her eyes darting around the store as if she was trying to avoid eye contact with me.

“Pepper, do you have something to tell me?” I didn’t like the way she was not looking at me.

“Well …” she wrinkled her face. “I was only trying to help …”

“You didn’t!” My heart dropped—had she given me one of her crazy herbal teas thinking she could fix me up with Striker?

Pepper nodded. “I guess maybe I shouldn’t have made it a love-sick potion.”

“Pepper! I asked you not to.” I gave her a ‘how-could-you’ look, but the stricken look on her face made it impossible for me to be too mad at her. “So now I’m going to get sick whenever I see Striker? Did you give him a tea, too?”

“No, he didn’t need one.” Pepper tucked a long strand of hair back into the swirly bun on top of her head. “But don’t worry, I’ll make this right.

I felt a moment of panic as she turned around and started throwing herbs into an infuser. Her previous tea had made me throw up, who knew what this one would do to me?