But he couldn’t do that.
He walked back to the apartment and smiled when he smelled popcorn. Inside, Sara was bent over the DVD player.
“Want to see a movie?” she asked.
“Only if it’s a romantic comedy. They’re my favorite.”
“That’s odd. I would have pegged you for a Jason Statham fan.” She held up a copy of Shank. “But if you don’t like it, I have a couple of Katherine Heigl films around here somewhere.”
“I’ll suffer through another action film if I have to.” He walked toward the couch, where a huge bowl of popcorn was on the coffee table. “How’s your neck?”
“Washed, so you can draw in your fangs.”
“Fangs aren’t the part of me that needs drawing in,” he said as he sat on one end of the couch and patted the seat beside him.
Sara picked up the bowl of popcorn and put it next to him.
With a grimace, he said, “Give me that” as he held out his hand for the remote.
Sara suppressed her laughter and sat down as far from Mike as the couch allowed.
In the main house next door, Jocelyn sent a text message to Tess:
DID YOU KNOW YOUR BROTHER IS FALLING IN LOVE WITH SARA?
Immediately, Tess wrote back:
I’M GOING TO SPEND TOMORROW AT ONE OF THE CATHEDRALS HERE PRAYING IN THANKS. WHAT ABOUT SARA?
SHE TREATS HIM LIKE HE’S ANOTHER COUSIN.
CONTRIVE TO GET HIM UNDRESSED.
Joce looked up at Luke. “You said you saw Mike at the gym. Did you happen to see him with his clothes off?”
“Not something I would pay attention to, is it?”
“So what’s he look like naked?”
“Fat. Big belly. Scrawny legs. Not a muscle on his body.”
Joce texted back to Tess:
WILL DO. YOU REALLY ARE MY BEST FRIEND.
11
MIKE LOOKED FOR Sara across what he’d been told was Nate’s Field, but he didn’t see her. “Maybe I should look for a woman so angry her hair is on fire,” he muttered as he remembered what she’d seen that morning, of his sitting on the edge of Erica’s desk and openly flirting with her.
Across the open field were about a dozen men wearing leather tool belts as they built the pavilions for the coming fair. If he weren’t going to spend a second day searching Merlin’s Farm he’d be helping them. Maybe he’d be able to tomorrow, he thought. Jocelyn had sketched some designs for the fortune-telling tent, and she’d given them to Sara to replicate. Mike and Sara laughed that Joce had won the argument over her participation in the fair.
“She won’t be in any danger, will she?” Sara’d asked. “I mean this Mitzi person won’t bash Joce on the head to get the cards?”
“And miss out on what she really wants—whatever that is?” Mike asked. “No, I don’t think she will.”
Mike didn’t say so, but he didn’t want Sara in direct contact with Mitzi. But he did want to obtain as much DNA as he could. His new plan—which he didn’t tell Sara—was to get the notorious Erica to help out. She would call as many women of the appropriate age as possible to come into the shop, fit them with dresses, and get them to drink the free wine from a paper cup. She would write the name of the woman on the cup and bag it. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Mike had asked a couple of people about Erica, and if she was half as sexually voracious as he’d heard, he knew how to deal with her. He’d persuaded a lot of women like her into doing what he wanted.