Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel Read online

  “Really?” she said.

  He stuck his head around the door. “Last one in the shower has to cook dinner.”

  Sara was off the bed in a flash, and she slid under his arm as she got into the shower first.

  “You cheated,” he said as he got in after her and pulled the glass door shut.

  “It’s the influence of this house. There must be some leftover evil lurking about.”

  He turned on the water, his arm about her, as they waited for it to warm up. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the blood I shed in here took care of that.” When she looked at him in question, he pointed to a scar on his shoulder. “I got shot on this case.”

  Sara kissed the place. “You poor baby. I’m so sorry.”

  He moved them under the warm water. “Actually, it was this wound.” He touched a place lower on his side, and Sara bent to kiss that.

  He said, “I think—”

  “Let me guess. You were wounded even lower,” Sara said as she went to her knees.

  “Any injuries here?” she asked.

  But Mike didn’t say anything.

  It was nearly an hour before they got out of the house, and Mike drove them directly to a Best Buy.

  “I thought you wanted essentials.”

  “Music is necessary to life,” he said so seriously that Sara laughed.

  They bought what Mike said were the most important things a house needed. She stood back as he chose the components of a stereo, but together they picked out a flat-screen TV that was much too big.

  As Mike paid for it all, it was on the tip of her tongue to ask if she was going to be watching and listening with him, but she didn’t.

  In the CD department they separated. She liked what she considered to be “modern” music but what Mike called “soulless rubbish.” He went to Andrea Bocelli. To Sara’s amazement, he was an opera buff. But when their hands met as they reached for an Eric Clapton CD, they laughed together.

  “Classic,” he said, and she agreed.

  To reach the next store, Mike whipped across a couple of expressways, got off what he called “the turnpike,” and they ended up in a divine shopping center with a huge Barnes & Noble. Like a piece of iron drawn by a magnet, Sara started for it, but Mike caught her arm. Instead, he pulled her into a Sur la Table.

  Sara’d seen the catalogs but never one of their stores. For a moment she just stared at the shelves full of beautiful cookware. Mike lifted her hands, put a basket in them, and said, “Think pie making.” When she came out of her trance, he directed her toward the back, where she filled her basket three times. An obliging saleswoman took everything to the counter.

  They packed the trunk of Mike’s car, then went to a restaurant called Brio for dinner.

  “You still owe me a home-cooked meal,” Sara said, “because I made it into the shower first.”

  “For a shower like that, I owe you a thousand meals. Here, taste this.” He held out a forkful of sea bass marinated in lime juice.

  After dinner they went to a Bed Bath & Beyond.

  “No flowers and no pink,” Mike decreed as soon as they walked through the door.

  “And no brown plaid. Or racing cars or men kicking each other.”

  “Agreed,” he said, and they set off.

  They settled on off-white sheets and had fun putting their heads on the pillows and trying them out. But when they started kissing, they almost fell to the floor. If it hadn’t been for a curious little boy rounding the corner, they might not have stopped.

  Laughing, they took their two big carts to the checkout. They had to stuff the backseat with the linens, as the trunk was full.

  “No room for groceries,” Sara said. “And there’s nothing for breakfast.”

  “That’s all right. I never eat before I work out.”

  “If you tell me where to go, I’ll get groceries while you’re at the gym, and we’ll have breakfast when you return.”

  Mike gave her a look that she couldn’t read and said they’d go to the store together.

  Turning away, Sara hid her smile. It seemed that he liked shopping with her.

  When they got back to the apartment, they hauled in all their purchases. Mike put the stereo together—the TV was being delivered—and Sara put the linens through the washer. They both opened the cookware bags and stored things away to the music of Eric Clapton. As they danced around each other, Sara was pleased to see what a good dancer he was.

  “Learn undercover?” she asked.

  He pulled her into a classic waltz pose and began leading her around the room in graceful moves. “Drug lord’s wife. Lessons.” As he held her in a dip, he said, “I helped her practice.”

  He pulled Sara up and went into a tango to the sounds of “Cocaine.” “I persuaded her to testify against her husband.”

  “All because you helped her dance?”

  Mike turned them toward the other end of the room. “And because I accidently let her find her husband in bed with their kids’ two nannies.”

  Sara laughed as he lifted her arm and spun her around.

  When the song was over, he turned off the stereo. “I have to get up early. What do you say we go to bed?” The look he gave her made her knees weak.

  “Uh, sheets,” she managed to say. “Dryer.”

  If there were an Olympic event for speed of dressing a bed, they would have won. Mattress pad went on, then bottom sheet. Mike didn’t like the way Sara tucked in the corner of the top sheet, so he quickly redid it.

  “Something else you learned undercover?” she asked.

  “No. Hot little nurse.”

  She threw a pillow at him. He dodged it, grabbed it midair, then tackled Sara on the bed.

  When he started kissing her neck, she said, “It seems a shame to make a wet spot on our new linens.”

  Mike picked her up and put her on the floor on the blue and gold rug. “I happen to know,” he said in his deep voice, “that this rug cost eighty thousand dollars.”

  “Really?”

  “The rug importer wanted a favor.” Mike kept kissing. “And this was his gift to the launderer.”

  “Twenty to life?” Sara put her head back, so he could get to all of her neck.

  “No, just life.”

  She pulled back to look at him and at Mike’s shrug she knew the man was dead. She wasn’t about to ask who killed him for fear Mike would say he had. “It’s a very nice rug.”

  “Yes, quite pleasant,” he said as he moved on top of her. “And oh, so very useful.”

  Afterward, as they lay together, Mike started laughing.

  “What’s that about?” she asked as she slipped her nightgown on.

  “I was just remembering that I told the captain I didn’t know how to please a ‘good girl.’ I had no idea that all of you want the same thing.”

  “And I told my mother you were gay.”

  Smiling, they fell asleep, entangled in each other’s arms.

  In the morning, Sara was sound asleep when Mike threw back the cover. She didn’t stir.

  “You have to get up,” he said.

  Vaguely, she heard him, but she didn’t move.

  “Sara, my dear, you’re going to the gym with me.”

  She buried her head under the four pillows they’d bought.

  “Up!”

  She didn’t budge.

  Mike put his hands on her waist and pulled her out of bed. When Sara made no effort to wake up, he hung her over his arm like a wet towel and carried her to the bathroom where he set her on the side of the tub.

  He held up a plastic shopping bag. “These are for you. Put them on. You have ten minutes.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Mike left the bathroom.

  “I hate exercise,” she muttered as she picked up the bag. It was full of workout clothes, including sneakers, all in her size.

  Sara grimaced. It seemed that yesterday while she’d been happily enjoying their time together, Mike had been dev