Janet Evanovich - Foul Play

He drew a playful line along the side of her breast to her rib cage. “I’d like to spend the night with you.”

“The night. Hmmm. Just exactly what are your intentions?” Amy purred.

Jake whispered a few suggestions in her ear.

Amy’s eyes opened wide in anticipation. “I think at least one of those things is illegal in this state.”

Jake slid off the bed. “I’m going to check on Spot and make sure things are locked up for the night.”

When he returned the room was dusky, lit by two brass candlesticks Amy had placed on the dresser. She sat on one side of the bed, her legs partially curled under her. She wore a short, creamy satin shift with spaghetti straps and a dab of her best perfume at her throat. The satin clung to her breasts, perfectly outlining every detail, and molded into the dimple of her navel. She smiled at Jake’s reaction: a sharp intake of breath.

The candles flickered out and Amy and Jake were intertwined in a tangle of sheets and spent passion.

“Nice,” Amy said.

He thought “nice” was a little bland. He’d felt like the earth had moved. The after part, the cuddling… that was nice.

He grinned at her and kissed her nose. “You’re going to be sore.”

“Maybe, but right now I feel glorious.”

Amy opened her eyes. She felt as though she’d been run over by a dumptruck. She remembered Jake and decided it was a terrific dumptruck. She had sore muscles in places she’d never known muscles existed.

She limped into the shower and stood under steaming water until her skin turned lobster red. She washed her hair, wrapped herself in a towel, brushed her teeth, and smiled at herself in the mirror. Much better. Better than better. Wonderful.

“I love being in love,” she said to her mirror image. “I love Jake. I love me. I love mornings.”

She quickly dressed in a pair of faded blue shorts and a gray T-shirt advertising running shoes, and padded out to the kitchen, looking for Jake. A coffee cup was on the counter; Jake couldn’t be far off. She found him leaning on a lawn mower, talking to a neighbor. They were discussing lime.

Jake wrapped his arm around her and kissed her cheek affectionately. “Jerry loaned me his lawn mower, and he thinks we should lime the backyard.”

Amy smiled at Jerry. Lime the backyard? Wasn’t lime a color? A fruit?

“I’ve got some hedge clippers, too,” Jerry said. “I’ve got everything. All you have to do is ask. I’ve got a daughter who baby sits. You folks have any children?”

Jake squeezed Amy. “Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

“Mmmm,” Amy said, “we thought we’d start out with kittens and see how it goes.”

By noon, the front yard looked reasonably tame. The grass was neatly cut and trimmed. Jaws had been transformed into a meek shrub, a lilac tree had been discovered hiding in the mountain laurel, and Amy had planted a small fortune in flowers.

“Pretty nice,” Jake said.

“Doesn’t look like the same house,” Amy said.

Jake linked his arms around her. “You know, you’re very sexy looking, wearing all that potting soil. And I love those little blue shorts, especially when you bend over. And is it my imagination, or have you neglected to wear a bra this morning?”

She had purposely gone braless because she’d woken up feeling expansive. Her whole world had changed, grown larger, more wondrous. She hadn’t wanted to feel confined by anything as mundane as a bra. “Besides the bra thing, do I look any different? Can you tell I’m not a virgin anymore?”

“Absolutely. If I saw you walking down the street, I’d say to myself, that woman just lost her virginity. I could tell by the smile on your face.”

“Oh shoot, am I still smiling?”

“Mmmm. It’s very becoming.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. His eyes softened and grew serious. “I love you.”

She encircled his waist with her arms. “I love you, too. And it was nice of you to spend all this time helping me with my yard.”

“I wanted to do something for you. Being in love is a painful experience. It’s… obsessive. I have all this love energy.”

Love energy. Amy thought it was a great phrase. She knew exactly what he meant. She had love energy, too. She wanted to make his coffee, rub his back, iron his shirts. Well, maybe ironing was going too far. She lowered her lashes flirtatiously. “I think I know a way of getting rid of some excess energy.”

Three minutes later she was shamelessly naked on her rumpled sheets. She stretched luxuriously and beckoned to Jake. “This is my first matinee. Do you do anything different when you make love in the sunshine?”

He ran his hand the length of her silken leg and told her of a possible variation.

Amy closed her eyes and arched her back. “Yum,” she said breathlessly.

Amy lay back in the big aluminum rowboat and let her fingertips trail in the water. Her eyes were closed; the sun was warm on her face; the waves quietly slopped against the side of the gently rocking boat. Insects buzzed in the nearby woods and a duck quacked in the distance. Life didn’t get much better than this, she thought. A Sunday afternoon on Burke Lake with her lover manning the oars.

It occurred to her that she’d just gone to bed with a man she’d known less than a week. Hours and minutes, she decided, weren’t an accurate measure of progress in a relationship. She could marry Jake tomorrow and feel absolutely confident in their future. Of course, Jake hadn’t asked her to marry him. Only a matter of time, she told herself. The man was obviously crazy about her.

She splashed her hand in the water and knew she was being outrageously smug. It was allowed. Today was special. Every day would be special from now on.

“I’m going to plant a vegetable garden,” she said. “I’ve always wanted a vegetable garden. They seem… permanent. My father was an army officer and every three years we’d pack up and move to a new base. I have great parents, and it was an interesting life, but we never had a garden.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“They moved to Florida when my dad retired. I went to school at George Mason and decided I liked Northern Virginia. So here I am, and here I’ll stay.”

Jake pulled on the oars. “Don’t have a wanderlust?”

“Nope. I’ve done enough wanderlusting. How about you?”

“My DNA is missing the wanderlust chromosome.”

“I know,” Amy said. “Instead of a wanderlust chromosome, they gave you a detective chromosome.”

Jake stopped rowing. “I’m not much of a detective. I’m stumped, and the part that’s really driving me nuts is that there’s a clue in the office, and I can’t find it.”

“Why don’t we just ask Veronica?”

“What would we say? Excuse me, Miss Bottles, but we’d like to know why you kidnapped your own chicken?”

“Yeah. They do it all the time on television. Then the person gets worried and does something stupid, and they get caught.”

“We could count on Veronica Bottles doing something stupid,” Jake said, reaching for a can of soda in the cooler between his feet. “Everything Veronica does is stupid.”

Amy took a sip of his soda. “That’s why this is such a good idea.”

“I thought you were the one who didn’t want to do any more detecting?”

“That was when I was a virgin,” Amy said. “Now I’m bold.”

Jake turned the boat toward the concession stand. “Okay. Let’s go see what Veronica has to say.”

“We need to be professional about this,” Amy said. “You were right. We need equipment.”

Jake turned onto Ox Road and looked at Amy sideways. “Equipment?” There were gray people and there were black-and-white people, Jake thought. Gray people were middle-of-the-roaders, easing through life with a pleasant smile on their placid faces. He suspected he was pretty much gray. Amy was definitely black-and-white. She didn’t do things halfway. Once she chose a project she pursued it with gleeful intensity. He’d realized that the first time they made love. The remembrance of it brought a stab of heat to his groin. “What sort of equipment did you have in mind?”