I put the blame on Abby.
“The whole thing was Abby’s idea!” I blustered. (Well, it was the truth, you know!) “She thought the easiest and fastest way for us to observe and question Corona in person would be to masquerade as call girls. So we spoke to Sabrina, told her our plan, and asked her to arrange it. Sabrina then called Corona, told him two new girls had just joined her agency, gave him first choice of the fresh recruits, and offered to send us to the Copa for his inspection. Corona took the bait and invited us to dinner and the eight o’clock show, and to his dressing room afterward.
“And it was darn lucky for you that we went!” I barreled on, talking as fast as I could, not giving Dan a chance to express his disapproval. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have heard Corona tell Little Pete to get rid of you! I wouldn’t have heard him say that he wanted you ‘put down,’ and that he wanted your head on a platter, and that he was going to talk to Costello about it that very night! And I wouldn’t have raced like the wind out of that dressing room to find you at the bar and warn you that your life was in immediate danger!”
Dan’s jealous scowl melted into something soft and kind of swoony. It wasn’t a smile, exactly; it was more like an honest, open, goofy look of love. “I’m sorry, Paige,” he said. “I should have thanked you for that before. You did a very brave and daring thing, and I’m lucky to have such a clever, quick-thinking girlfriend.”
My heart did a double cartwheel. “You’re pretty fast on your feet yourself, babe,” I replied. “Pretending to arrest me was downright inspired.”
Dan grinned and gave me a sexy wink. “So you liked that, did you?”
“It was very exciting,” I admitted.
Chuckling and rolling his sleeves up another notch, he shoved his chair back from the table and stood up. “Then I think I’ll arrest you again,” he said. “Right now.”
The next thing I knew, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me over to the couch. And the next thing I knew after that, he grabbed a fistful of my clammy hair, pulled my head away from his shoulder, and lowered his hot, luscious, demanding mouth onto mine. Then he pressed me all the way down into the seat cushion and climbed on top of me, burying the length of my body in his writhing warmth, covering my face and neck with ravenous kisses, breathing hotly in my ear, driving me out of my mind, making me cry out for more…
What can I say? I was dying for it. Who gave a flying fig about marriage? I wanted Dan to make love to me, and I wanted it now. This very instant. Diaphragm or no diaphragm. “Take me, baby!” I begged. “I want you so much I can’t stand it. Please take me now!”
(A word to all sex-crazed girlfriends: Be careful what you beg for. If you get it, you might feel screwed. If you don’t get it, you’ll feel like a dope.)
Dan pushed himself away from me, swung around to a sitting position, rubbed his face in his hands, and dropped his chin to his chest. He was panting like a racehorse.
“I’m sorry, Paige,” he groaned, chest heaving. “I can’t go through with it.”
“What’s wrong?” I gasped. (I was panting a bit myself.) “Is it the chlorine? I’ll run upstairs and take a shower if you-”
“No! It’s nothing like that!”
“Then what is it? I don’t turn you on anymore?” I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. “Maybe I should put the blonde wig back on.” I was kidding, but just barely.
Dan smiled and put his arm around my shoulders. “You turn me on as much as ever, Paige,” he said, holding me tight. “Even more, if you want to know the truth.”
“Under the circumstances, I find that a weensy bit hard to believe.” I wasn’t kidding at all now. I was dead serious and teetering on the verge of a king-size crying jag.
“But it’s true, babe,” Dan said. “I love you and want you more than ever.”
“Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the right time.”
Aaargh!
“Right time?!” I screeched. “I’m so hot I’m screaming for it, and you say it’s not the right time? What time would be good for you? Greenwich time? Mountain time? Alaska time? Suppertime?”
Dan sniggered and shook his head. “Where’s your patience, Paige? We’ve already waited so long, I didn’t think it would hurt us to wait a few weeks longer.”
“A few weeks? What for? What possible difference could a few weeks make?” I was getting more confused by the second.
“It would give us some time to get our ducks in a row,” Dan said.
“Ducks? What ducks? I don’t know any ducks.”
Dan laughed, and pulled me closer. “Look, what I meant was a lot could happen in a few weeks’ time. A promise could be made. A license could be issued. Blood could be sent to the lab for testing. A ring could be found. A killer could be caught. A date for the execution could be set…”
I almost wet my pants. Was Dan saying what I thought he was saying? Afraid of jumping to conclusions-especially this conclusion-I peered deep into his laughing black eyes and asked, “What’s on your mind, Detective, murder or marriage?”
“Both,” he said-which, to my way of thinking, was the perfect answer.
Chapter 37
RENEWING OUR RESOLVE TO SAVE THE MAIN event for our wedding night, Dan and I decided to celebrate our engagement by indulging in another sensual experience we’d never shared before-a home-cooked breakfast. Dan went downstairs to buy the essentials-bread, eggs, bacon, juice- and I ran (okay, floated) upstairs to shower and change my clothes. Chlorinated capris and a matted Angora sweater just didn’t seem festive enough for our first feast together as husband and wife. (Okay, okay! What I meant was future husband and wife. You don’t have to be so persnickety about it!)
By the time Dan got back to the apartment with the food, I was back downstairs in the kitchen, playing the happy little homemaker, looking very wifely in my clean black capris, fuzzy pink sweater, and ruffled blue-and-white-checked apron. I set the table with my best china (okay, two of my four melamine plates), put up another pot of coffee, and hoisted my almost-never-used, two-ton cast-iron skillet out of the cabinet and lugged it over to the stove. (And I thought hauling around the office Coffeemaster was hard!)
While Dan unpacked the groceries and poured the orange juice, I heated the skillet and cooked the bacon. While Dan sat at the table sipping juice and smoking a cigarette, I fried four sunny-side up eggs in the bacon grease and sliced, toasted, and buttered the bread. Then I poured us some more coffee, dished up the food, and brought everything to the table.
“To us!” I said, sitting down and holding my juice glass up for a toast.
Dan grinned and clinked his glass against mine. “And to many more conjugal breakfasts like this!” He shot me a cocky smile, downed the rest of his juice, then dunked a piece of toast into one of his egg yolks and started eating. “And now that we’re going to be married,” he said between mouthfuls, “I want you to think about quitting your job.”
I almost choked on my first bite of bacon. “Jesus, Dan!” I cried. “We’ve been engaged for less than an hour and already you’ve got me chained to the stove and giving up my career?! What’s next? A baby every year?” I was only half teasing. Maybe this whole marriage thing wasn’t such a good idea…
Dan laughed and shoveled an entire egg white into his mouth. He chewed it up, swallowed, and said, “I didn’t mean it that way, Paige, and you know it. Yes, I do want you to leave your dangerous job at Daring Detective, but I’m not asking you to give up your writing career. I’m just saying you don’t have to work nine-to-five anymore. I can support us both. Besides, things have been so lousy for you at DD lately, I thought you’d want to quit.”