Wendy Etherington - Undone by Moonlight

As he walked from the bedroom toward the kitchen, she was dishing scrambled eggs onto a plate already groaning with bacon. His stomach grumbled in response.

“How do you take your coffee?” she asked in a cheerful, if low volume, voice.

His pounding head appreciated the care. Why was she so good to him when he didn’t deserve to be in the same room with her? “Black, thanks.”

He sat on one of the two stools pushed up against the bar bracketing the kitchen on two sides. She handed him a heavy-looking mug, though he imagined her cupboards were full of dainty teacups. A quick scan of the counter proved his guess—a cream scallop-edged cup with a bouquet of pink roses decorating the side sat beside the stove.

As he took the first sip of coffee, their gazes locked. Weak as he was, he quickly looked away. He didn’t need to complicate his already tangled life with his confusing feelings for her.

The silence lingered until she set a filled plate on the bar before him. Maybe he could slink away, after all.

But he’d barely taken his first bite when she slid onto the stool next to him and asked, “So, wanna tell me about last night?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Very.”

She pushed a small glass filled with orange juice toward him. “This will help.”

Shrugging, he drank the juice in a quick swallow.

As soon as he set the empty glass on the bar, she pushed another one in his line of vision. This one held tomato juice, complete with celery stalk artistically leaning against the side.

He curled his lip. “I don’t like—”

“Drink it.”

As he often found in her presence, he did as she ordered, though he would swear he hadn’t made a conscious decision to do so.

Surprisingly, the juice wasn’t bland, watery tomatoes. The drink had a spicy kick, as if she’d made a Bloody Mary without the shot of vodka. Though he had a feeling, based on the determined look on her face, that he could use the added buzz.

“The vitamins in oranges, tomatoes and celery are good for you,” she said.

He also had the feeling she’d told him that before. Not surprising. This wasn’t his first ride around the block with hangovers. “Goody. You know how I like to take care of myself.”

“Eat the celery.” When he started to argue, she added, “Think of the celery as a carrot for the bacon reward.”

He chomped the stalk in two bites, then grabbed two slices of bacon from the plate before she could come up with some other healthy barrier to his fat-laden breakfast.

His obedience bought him silence, as she said nothing while he inhaled the food.

“You’re not eating?” he asked when he paused long enough to notice she wasn’t.

“I had a spinach omelet earlier.”

In his opinion, the only place for something green in eggs was in children’s stories that rhyme. But also knowing she’d go back to the subject of last night, he commented, “You’ve got a nice place.”

“Thanks. Because of all my pageant winnings, I went to college on a full scholarship, so my parents gave me the money they’d been saving for school.”

“Pageant? Like bikini contest?” He could certainly imagine her figure earning piles of cash.

“No, like Miss America. You know, evening gowns, crowns and sashes, questions about world peace.”

She was a beauty queen; he was a master marksman. If ever two people were less compatible, he couldn’t imagine who, when or where. “You have a lot of roses in here.”

“When your name is a flower, you have to go with it.”

“So why not lilies?”

“Too obvious. You’re not going to divert my attention from asking about last night, by the way.”

“I figured it was worth a shot.”

“How about if we start with an easy question? Who hit you over the head?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“Okay, not a good start.”

“Everything’s pretty fuzzy.”

“I’ll bet. How ‘bout we start from the beginning? What’s the last thing you remember clearly?”

He struggled to think back. “I picked up my suit from the dry cleaners.” His only suit, come to think of it.

“You were coming to the wedding,” Calla said, gazing at him with wonder.

“I was invited.”

“So you were. After dry cleaning?”

“Hung around my apartment awhile, fixed my neighbor’s ceiling fan, then went to the bar down the street to watch football.”

When he stopped, she asked, “Did you get into an argument with somebody at the bar?”

“No, I—” What? He recalled watching the Syracuse-Rutgers game of all things, but had no idea what happened afterward.

“Try to picture yourself.”

When he did, he was rewarded with a sharp jab of pain to the back of his skull. Wincing, he shook his head.

She slid off her stool. “Why don’t you take one of your pain pills? You’ve eaten now, so you can—”

“What pain pills?”

“The ones the E.R. doctor prescribed, but you didn’t pick up, instead choosing to drown yourself in whiskey.” She pursed her lips in censure. “Which was not prescribed, by the way.”

He grabbed her wrist as she started off. “No, thanks. They’ll make my thoughts even more jumbled.” He realized he was touching her when heat shot up his arm. He let go immediately and picked up his coffee mug. “Thanks for getting them, though. I’ll pay you back.”

She returned to her seat, and he got a mouthwatering glimpse of her upper thigh. “You’re racking up quite a tab.”

Tab . He pausing before drinking the coffee. “I paid my tab at the bar and left. I headed down the street … toward my apartment, but I saw … something.”

“Somebody you knew?”

Automatically, he shook his head. He didn’t think he’d talked to anybody. Since he wasn’t much on conversation, he was fairly certain he’d remember having one. Hell, he could have tripped over a damn dog and banged his head on the sidewalk for all he knew.

But even a bungling move like that wouldn’t have sent him to drown his sorrows at O’Leary’s.

“Somebody hit you,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.

Startled, he stared at her. “How do you—”

“You told me last night. You weren’t sure at first whether you’d gotten hit or the Yankees lost ‘cause they couldn’t, but since a picture of the Yankees manager kicking home plate is on the front page of the sports section, and you’ve got a bandage and a headache, I’m pretty sure you were the one involved in hitting.”

Sometimes, for no reason at all, he found himself tempted to smile at her. “You’d make quite a detective.”

“No, thanks, the job perils are a little steep for me. Who’d hit a cop?”

He shrugged. He had some basic assault cases pending on his desk, but nothing that would warrant clobbering a cop. And it’d been years since he’d made the mistake of sleeping with a married woman.

Job . She’d jarred his memory again. He’d been doing his job after the bar. He had a vague picture of a short, dark-haired guy wearing a ball cap and overcoat running down an alley. He told as much to Calla.

“Why was he running?” she asked.

“He was a thief?” he asked rather than said, though the reason sounded right.

“How did you know he was a thief?”

“He was running away.” But he hadn’t worn his uniform since the swearing-in ceremony two years ago when he’d made detective. How had the guy made him for a cop? Or had he? “He had a bag, a red lady’s handbag,” he said finally as a flash of the scene came back to him. “I was pissed cause I had to chase him. I knew I’d be late for the wedding if I had to arrest him.”

He’d known Calla would be furious. Plus, he’d wanted to see her in her bridesmaid’s dress.