“Mitch, I haven’t the slightest idea what Lacy’s designs were. As for my own…” Cecily gazed at him through her eyelashes. “I assure you that they involve twisting an entirely different part of your anatomy.”
Mitch swallowed hard. “Are you always this shy?”
“Actually, I’ve demonstrated admirable restraint considering that I’ve wanted to jump you since the moment I walked in that door. The only thing that’s held me back has been my acute sense of propriety.” She studied him seriously. “One thing does concern me, however.”
“And that is…?”
“Do you have something against my nipples?”
“Not a thing. They seem very nice. I’d like to get to know them better.”
Cecily yanked her T-shirt off over her head and flung it in the general direction of Mitch’s Sungold tomato plants. “So what the devil are you waiting for?”
CHAPTER 9
“I don’t make friends with anyone who is so totally and completely full of shit.”
The bubble bath felt heavenly after the punishing hour in her weight room capped off by a five-mile run through the hills around Uncas Lake. Des’s body was good and relaxed now. All muscle tension gone.
If only her mind would ease off, too.
She could not stop obsessing about her encounter with Jen Beckwith at The Works. Replaying their conversation. Wondering how she might have handled it differently. Teenagers were just so damned hard. Trust was hard. Hell, Dorset was hard. It always got tricky when she waded into the lives of these people. Sometimes, as much as Des hated to admit it, she missed the moral clarity of a nice, clean gunshot wound to the head.
She shaved her long fine legs. Rubbed them with baby oil after she’d rinsed off. Dabbed some perfume behind her ears and between her breasts. Put on her tiny, low-cut red mini with not a stitch underneath. Barefoot, she set the table with her good china and silver and wine goblets. Lit the candles. Got the Reverend Al Green going on the stereo, feeling tingly and girlie-girl all over.
Brandon arrived home at six on the dot bearing a dozen long-stemmed red roses and two chilled bottles of Dom Perignon. “My god, Desi!” he gasped, gaping at her from the front hallway. “You look so foxy you’re going to throw me completely off my game.”
She sashayed over to him, worked his tie off and draped it around her own neck. “Which game is that?”
“I… had this speech all worked out.”
“This isn’t a courtroom, baby,” she said, gazing up at him. “It’s just us. Talk to me.”
“Fair enough,” he began, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I understand why you were upset last night. It was wrong of me to shut you out of Operation Burrito King. I should have told you what was going on. You had every right to know. I simply let work get the best of me. I have to do a better job from now on, and I promise you I will. I’ve already lost you once, Desi. Lord knows I don’t want to lose you again. I’m nowhere without you. I really mean that. And I-I… Damn, this was all going to sound fine until I saw you in that little dress.”
“It sounded plenty fine,” Des assured him. “Besides, it’s not all on you. They told you to keep it quiet. You were being a professional. It was wrong of me to judge you. Sometimes I get a little turfy about this place and these people. I feel responsible for them.”
“I know that.” Brandon’s eyes gleamed at her. “And it makes me so proud.”
She glanced over at the champagne he’d brought. “Are you planning to open one of those or are they just for show?”
He went to work easing a cork out while she fetched their goblets from the tablet. He poured. They clinked glasses. They drank, gazing at each other as Reverend Al crooned smooth and silky on the stereo.
“So how awful was your meeting at the barracks?” he asked her.
“Let’s just drop that, okay? I’ve punched out. Don’t want to talk about work anymore.”
“Well, what do you want to talk about?”
She put her arms around his neck. “Who wants to talk?”
They kissed, her heart pounding so hard she felt weak in the knees.
“All day long I’ve been wanting to hold you in my arms,” he purred at her.
She melted into him, her head nestled on his shoulder as they slow-danced right there in the kitchen, pausing now and again to sip their champagne and get lost in each other’s eyes. Just like it was when they first met. When she couldn’t believe this one in a million man noticed her, liked her, wanted her. Couldn’t believe how gentle he could be. How lucky she was.
“God, you smell good.” He ran his big hands up and down her bare back. “And you are smooth all over.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, raising her mouth to his. “Just so you know, there’s steak.”
“How can you think about food at a time like this?”
“Why, are you thinking about something else?”
“Girl, you are naughty. Know what happens to naughty girls, don’t you?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea.” She put a finger to his lips before he could say another word. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”
For starters, that dress came right off over her head. And now Brandon’s tongue was on her breasts. And now, oh, God, it was slip-sliding its way downtown. He fell to his knees, the better to devour her. She threw one leg over his shoulder and let out a groan, her breathing growing deeper and deeper… until he picked her up and carried her off to their bedroom.
It was long past dark out, nearly ten, by the time she stirred and got up, searching for something to throw on.
“Where are you going?” he asked her sleepily, sprawled there in bed.
“To start dinner.”
“Now that you mention it, I’m starved,” he admitted. “Only, wait, there’s something else I wanted to say to you. Let’s disappear from this place for a couple of days. Jump in the car tomorrow morning and head for the Cape. Find ourselves a little inn near a beach somewhere. What do you say?”
She flashed her wraparound smile at him. “I say, what time do we leave?”
That was when her phone rang. It was the 911 dispatcher. A call had come in from the Sullivan residence on Sour Cherry Lane. Amber Sullivan phoning to report she’d just heard some sort of a fight out in the lane. Followed by the sound of a man screaming.
There were plenty of lights on at Kimberly and Jen’s, as well as across the lane at the Procters. But the lane appeared to be deserted as Des eased past their cottages. Until little Molly suddenly loomed before her there in the road-standing out in front of the Sullivan cottage with her eyeglasses shining in the headlights.
Des rolled down her window and called out, “Girl, what are you doing out here at this time of night?”
“I heard something,” Molly answered in a quavering voice. “Somebody’s hurt.”
Des nosed her cruiser up to the pile of cedar mulch in Amber and Keith’s driveway and got out, flashlight in hand. The night air was very heavy and still. It smelled of a skunk that had been marking its territory. With her light, Des looked the girl over carefully as Molly stood there in her UConn jersey, baggy shorts and floppy socks. She seemed frightened but unharmed. “Were you up in your tree house for the night?”
Molly nodded her head, swallowing.
“Did you see anything?”
She shook her head gravely.
“Well, what did you hear?”
“Voices. Men’s voices. They came from out there somewhere.” Molly pointed past the Sullivan place toward the utter darkness at the end of the lane.
Des shined her light out there. Saw nothing other than wild, overgrown brush crowding both sides of the pavement. The road dead-ended at Jersey safety barriers after a hundred feet or so. Beyond the barriers was the bank of the Connecticut River.
“How many men did you hear?”
“Two, I think.”
