Never Love a Naked P.I.

A moment of ineffable loss flickered in his eyes, before it was quickly replaced with, “Yeah? Yeah? Wait, wait! Could you speak into the microphone?”

She sat up and punched him in his rock-of-Gibraltar chest. “You are such a clod. I’m not about to say all the nice things I had planned to say. You’ll just have to come back someday and beg me. And by then I probably will have forgotten all about you.”

She turned away haughtily, arms crossed, and leaned back against him contemplating the passing trees lit by the street lights, even more lush with fresh new leaves.

A rain would have been nice.

“Amanda, will you marry me?”

Uh, oh. She had flipped out.

“I know it’s asking a lot. I mean, I’ll really miss the coast but there’s got to be surf off the Jersey shore, right? And I’ll probably gripe about it a lot, how great LA is and how unlivable Manhattan is. Maybe we could get a little place upstate in the country or something, whatd’ya think, for the kid’s sake, except I’m not sure how having a private eye for a dad is going to set with the P.T.A. Do they still have P.T.A.s?

“And with you climbing the corporate ladder we’ll probably have to have a couple of kids so they can look after each other, right? Like you and your brothers and me and my brother. I mean, all in all we didn’t turn out too bad, all things considered. Our kids will have a mom and dad who’ll love ‘em like crazy, even if she’s Ms. CEO and he’s Mr. Head-of-his-own-Outstanding-Investigation-Firm who is willing to go all the way for his clients.”

He wiped her tears and they kept flowing, happily, joyously, unbelievingly. It probably would never work, they were so different.

I mean, he loves that God-awful herb tea stuff and I can’t start the day without…

Her mouth hit his like a freight train. To drink him deep. To pour herself into him. Forever.

He pried his grinning, self-satisfied, handsome, magical mug away. “Does this mean you’ll think about it?”

She jumped on him.

The driver of the hansom cab woke with a start. “Hey, what are you two doing down there? You’re gonna scare the horse!”

He chuckled and drove the bouncing carriage on into the sparkling night.

ELIZABETH MAYNOR

Elizabeth Maynor has been writing professionally since 1993, with numerous short stories published in national magazines and several anthologies. “The Farm Hand and the Widow Lady” appears in Northern Hearts – New England Love Stories, edited by Lori A. Paige. A member of the national Romance Writers of America and the New York City and Los Angeles chapters,Never Love A Naked P.I. is Elizabeth's first epublished romance novel.

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