Sunset Express

She turned back to the house and lowered her voice. 'And where does the master sleep?'

I grinned and pulled her close. 'The stairs off the living room lead to the master's quarters.'

She pushed away, then leaned against the rail and crossed her arms. It was a pretty good pose. 'Perhaps a bit later I'll get a chance to inspect the premises.'

I shrugged, but even pretending to be disinterested was somehow impossible. My voice came out hoarse and broken. 'If you're good, perhaps I'll let you.'

She let a smile curl out from under the world's longest eyelashes and lowered her voice still more and let the southern accent come thick. 'Oh, Studly, Ah intend to be very, very bad.'

The air seemed to spark with a kind of electric heat and then Ben raced back from the side of the house. 'Elvis, can I go down the hill?'

'Up to your mom, pal.'

Lucy looked over the rail. 'Is it safe?'

'Sure. It's a gentle slope. The people who live over there have a couple of boys, and they play all along the ridges.'

Lucy didn't look convinced, but you could tell she was going to give in. 'Well, okay, but stay close to the house.'

Ben ran around the side of the house again, and this time we could hear him crashing down through the dried grass and into the trees. Lucy looked at me and I looked back, but now she was giving me serious. 'So. Are you going to tell me about the eye, or do I have to keep wondering?'

'A police officer named Angela Rossi popped me with a sap.'

Lucy sighed and shook her head. 'Other women date doctors or businessmen. I have to fall for someone who gets into street fights.'

'It wasn't much of a fight. She suckered me.' I told her about what Green had hired me to do, and how I had done it, and how I had come to get the eye.

Lucy listened, interested more in the parts about Jonathan Green, and frowning when I told her how Rossi had eye-faked me. 'She caught you off guard. You underestimated her because she was a woman.'

'If I said that it would be taking something away from her. I didn't underestimate her, she was just good enough to sucker me with an eye-fake.'

Lucy gave me one of her gentle smiles, then touched the mouse. 'You're such a sweetie.'

I nodded.

She came close and went up on her toes and kissed it. 'I need to make some calls about tomorrow, and I want to take that bath. May I use your phone?'

'Sure.' I brushed at her hair, then stroked her upper arms. 'You don't have to ask, okay? Whatever you want to do while you're here, just do it. Ben, too.'

She went up on her toes and kissed me again. 'Keep an eye on Ben?'

'The good eye or the bad eye?'

'Funny.'

While Lucy was making her calls I fired the grill, then split the ducks and rubbed them with lemon juice and garlic and pepper. Lucy phoned two attorneys to arrange her next day's meeting, and then she called Jodi Taylor. Jodi was filming her series, Songbird, and had invited Ben to spend the day with her on the set. When Lucy was off the phone and in the bath I checked on Ben and, when the coals were right, put the four duck halves on the grill and covered them. I was back in the kitchen working on tarragon rice and salad when the cat door clacked and the cat walked in. He froze in the center of the kitchen floor and growled.

I said, 'Knock that off.'

He moved through the kitchen, stopping every couple of steps, his cat nose working and the growl soft in his chest. I said, 'We're going to have guests for a few days, and if you bite or scratch either one of them it will go hard for you.'

His eyes narrowed and he looked at me. I said, 'I mean it.'

He sprinted back through his door. There are some things you just can't talk to him about.

I checked on Ben again, then finished with the salad and set the table and put on the new k.d. lang. Lucy reappeared in fresh shorts and wet, slicked-back hair, wrapping her arms around me from behind and sharing her warmth. She said, 'Everything is just perfect.'

'Not yet,' I said. 'But soon.'

We called in Ben and ate, and little by little we moved through the evening, talking about and planning our coming days, Lucy and I gently touching as we talked, each touch a way of sharing something larger than a simple tactile experience, and after a while even the excitement of the adventure couldn't keep Ben going and Lucy finally whispered, 'He's sleeping.'

'Need help getting him to bed?'

'No. I'll get him on his feet and he'll walk.' When their door was closed I shut all the lights save one, then went upstairs and took off my clothes. The house was still, and I thought that I could smell her the way, I supposed, the cat had. But maybe that was my imagination.

I lay in the dark for what seemed forever, and then I heard the door below open and the sound of her on the stairs, and I thought how very lucky I was that she had come, and that I was the one whom she had come to see.

CHAPTER 10

The sun was bright and hot on the sheets, and I woke smelling coffee and hearing Bewitched on the television, Elizabeth Montgomery saying, 'But Darren is a wonderful man, Mother,' and Agnes Moorehead saying, 'That's the problem, dear. He's a man, and you deserve so much more.'

When I went downstairs, Lucy and Ben were up and dressed, Ben on the couch watching television, and Lucy at the dining room table, sipping coffee. She was wearing a pale yellow pants suit and her Gucci briefcase was open, with papers spread on the table beside her. Preparing for business. I said, 'Hey. There are people in my house.'

Lucy smiled. 'We tried to be quiet.'

'You were. I didn't hear a thing.' She held out her hand, fingers spread, and I laced my fingers through hers.

She said, 'Mm.'

I wiggled my eyebrows, then made a shifty look back toward the stairs. 'Mm-mm.'

Lucy took back her hand. 'No time, my dear. Jodi's going to pick up Ben on her way in to the studio, then you have to take me to the Budget office. She should be here soon.'

'Great.' We were grinning at each other with great loopy grins that probably looked silly. 'Did you sleep all right?'

Lucy managed a straight face. 'Very well, thank you. And yourself?'

I pretended to stifle a yawn. 'A little restless. I feel drained this morning.'

Lucy raised her eyebrows. 'Imagine that. Perhaps you need more rest.'

Ben looked at us from the couch, confused. 'You don't look tired to me.'

Lucy and I grinned, and Ben looked even more confused. 'What did I say?'

Lucy said, 'I got directions to my meeting, so all we need to do is pick up the car. You shower and dress, and I'll make breakfast. Deal?'

'Deal.'

I did and she did, and we were finishing coffee and toasted banana bread and scrambled eggs when Jodi Taylor's black-on-black Beemer tooled up and stopped across the drive. I pushed open the kitchen door and gave her a kiss as she entered. 'What, no limo for the star?'

Jodi Taylor tugged at my shirt and said, 'I'll buy a stretch if you'll come for a ride, handsome.' Then she winked at Lucy and said, 'Oops, sorry. I see he's already taken.'

I gave her the eyebrows. 'Taken, yes, but perhaps available for rent.'

Lucy said, 'In that case she should buy a hearse. Better to lay out the body.'

Jodi laughed. 'Grr-owl. These southern belles are very territorial.'

'Possessive,' Lucy said. 'The word is possessive.'

Lucy and Jodi hugged, and Ben ran in from the living room. Like Lucy, Jodi Taylor was from Louisiana, though, unlike Lucy, you couldn't hear it in her voice. She was maybe an inch taller than Lucy, with hazel eyes and dusky red hair and a kind of natural beauty that made her accessible and real to thirty million people every week. Supermarket beauty, they called it. The kind and quality of beauty that let you believe that you might bump into her in the market, buying Pampers or Diet Coke. Songbird had been renewed for a second full season, and Jodi Taylor had just begun production on the new episodes. She was happy and confident in returning to work, and was at ease with herself in a way that she hadn't been three months ago. Lucy said, 'Jodi, you look wonderful.'