The woman looked like she’d been slapped in the face. Speaking through a rictus of a smile, she said, “Little girls say the cutest things, don’t they?”
It seemed an eternity ago, yet it had only been the previous evening. Katie brushed out her hair. She started to braid it, then dropped her hands back to her sides. This was her wedding night. How very peculiar that was. Miles was right about the one-stop shopping. They’d plunked down thirty dollars and were in business. During the brief ceremony Sam stood straight and important beside his father, Keely beside her, and everyone else just a couple of steps back. It was a pity that her mother had been fogged in, no flights out at all for the entire day. Minna promised to come in the next couple of weeks. She wanted to give them some time to themselves.
Conrad Evans, Miles’s right hand at the plant, had looked as shell-shocked as Cracker. He’d been quite nice, no choice, really. The man looked like a linebacker for the Titans, and had hair as red as Sherlock’s.
Katie looked down at the plain gold band. Married. She was married again. She’d killed two kidnappers, an idiot former postal employee had burned her house down, and here she was, in Virginia, married. For the second time. She felt very strange, as if her life had taken a one-eighty, which indeed it had.
Her name was now Katie Benedict Kettering. It was weird.
When she came back to the big bedroom after tucking Keely in yet again for the night, making certain the bathroom door was open on both sides, she faced Miles across the length of his bedroom. It was a big airy room with large windows, antique furniture, and a bed the size of the Queen Mary. Katie crossed her arms over her chest, her position defensive, her fight-flight response in high gear.
She couldn’t imagine taking off her clothes in front of this man who was nearly a stranger, and also her husband. She already had in a way, not really thinking about it.
“How tall are you?” she asked.
Miles wasn’t a fool. He didn’t move even a single step toward her. “Six-two, something around there. I’m not planning on jumping you, by the way,” he said and grinned like a schoolboy who’d just shot a three-pointer from twenty feet.
Katie shook her head, both at him and at herself. “This is all just so weird.”
“But just look at what you’ve accomplished in the space of a very short time.” He tapped off his fingers. “You’ve known me for this entire week, enough to know I’ll make a terrific mate, and you’ve made our kids so happy they just might not act bratty for another week. Your new last name isn’t that bad at all. The best thing is that I really like you, Katie. Really. You looked great in your wedding dress.”
“Don’t forget the three-inch heels that brought me eyeball to eyeball with you.”
“Never.” He hadn’t seen her in a dress until their wedding seven hours ago.
“I’m thirty-one years old.”
“Yeah, I heard you tell the county clerk. I’m thirty-five, which means I’ve got more experience than you, a really finely honed judgment, and you should trust me completely.” He held out his hands to her, palms up, fingers spread. “These are perfectly good hands you’re in, Katie.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve had more years to learn how to joke around and be an all-around smart guy.” She paused a moment. “I haven’t really trusted anyone-a man, that is-since Carlo.”
“That makes sense, since the guy was such a gold-plated jerk. But I’m me and there’s no gold plating about me. I’m not a shit, Katie, believe me. Now, it’s nearly midnight on a fine Monday night. I’m exhausted, you’re exhausted, and even Keely and Sam didn’t complain about going to bed.”
“That’s a first and likely a last.”
“Come here and let me kiss you. Then we’ll go to bed and get our first good night’s sleep in a week.”
Katie looked at the bed, then back at Miles. “I haven’t had sex in so long I think I’ve forgotten what comes after a kiss.”
He started ticking off on his fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out when I had sex last. I’ve used up all my fingers. This is truly pathetic. Maybe we can figure it out together, sooner or later. What do you think?”
She wasn’t thinking anything, her brain was on hold. She tugged on her sleep shirt that showed a buzzard wearing a cowboy hat singing “Howdy, Howdy, Howdy, I’m a cowboy.” He’d have liked that sleep shirt to disappear. He really liked those long long legs of hers; he’d really like them wrapped around him.
“Which side of the bed do you prefer?”
She pointed to the left. After he climbed in beside her, Katie said, “Those pajamas look brand new.”
“They’re my official wedding pajamas.”
Miles flipped off the lights. Silence fell. After about five minutes, Katie said, “What are you humming?”
“Just an old buccaneer song.”
“Miles?”
“Yeah?”
“How about we try a kiss, and maybe then those wedding pajamas can go back in the drawer.”
A younger man, he thought, rolling over to a beautiful woman who was also his new wife, might feel a little nervous, but all his parts that counted were working just fine.
“We’ll always have fun in bed,” he said against her mouth, “maybe moan and thrash about a bit, and you’ll see, our problems won’t follow us here. You know something else?”
“What?”
“I swear I’ll respect you in the morning.”
When he had her under him, those long legs of hers wrapped around his flanks, and she was panting, biting his earlobe, kissing any part of him she could reach, he said, “We’re going to be just fine, Katie,” and he laid his hands on her then and she would have flown out the window if he hadn’t been on top of her.
37
S herlock heard a shout and turned to wave at Sean, who was running after Keely and Sam. Then Sam turned, held out his hand, and Sean latched on to it, shrieking. She smiled as she said to Katie, “They’re really good with him.”
“Yes, Sam told me he had to take care of Sean because he was little and ignorant.”
Sherlock laughed.
“Keely said Sean would grow up fast enough. Then she said since boys had so much to learn, she’d better start teaching him stuff now. She didn’t want to have to wait and cram everything into his head when he was grown up.”
Another shout. Katie looked over her shoulder to see Miles throw a Frisbee to Keely. So much laughter. It warmed her all the way to her bones.
Katie said, “It’s been two weeks and no more math teacher murders. Maybe the madman has simply left the area.”
“Thank God for no more murders, but I really hope he hasn’t left, it would make it that much harder to get the creep. Dillon hasn’t said much, just told me he’s doing good old-fashioned police work, and then he smiles. We’ll see. I’m busy on other cases, so it’s really pretty much in his bailiwick. Calls on the hot line have dropped over the past two weeks to only about fifty a day. You wouldn’t believe how many man-hours it takes to check just fifty calls, and all for nothing.”
“I can’t begin to imagine. I never had to do anything like that.” Katie shaded her eyes and looked over the park, always coming back to Keely who was chasing Sam, Sean running as fast as he could behind them. She didn’t realize she’d stopped walking and was staring at nothing in particular when Sherlock said, “What’s up, Katie?”
Katie gave a start. She looked down at the small woman who could probably knock her on her butt. “Do you fight dirty, Sherlock?”
“Dirty? Hmm. As in would I do anything at all, no matter how rotten, to disarm a bad guy? Oh yeah. Why?”
Katie shrugged. “I was just wondering, that’s all. Would you look at this gorgeous day. Can you believe this Indian summer? In early December?”