“If you tell me where to go, I’ll get groceries while you’re at the gym, and we’ll have breakfast when you return.”
Mike gave her a look that she couldn’t read and said they’d go to the store together.
Turning away, Sara hid her smile. It seemed that he liked shopping with her.
When they got back to the apartment, they hauled in all their purchases. Mike put the stereo together—the TV was being delivered—and Sara put the linens through the washer. They both opened the cookware bags and stored things away to the music of Eric Clapton. As they danced around each other, Sara was pleased to see what a good dancer he was.
“Learn undercover?” she asked.
He pulled her into a classic waltz pose and began leading her around the room in graceful moves. “Drug lord’s wife. Lessons.” As he held her in a dip, he said, “I helped her practice.”
He pulled Sara up and went into a tango to the sounds of “Cocaine.” “I persuaded her to testify against her husband.”
“All because you helped her dance?”
Mike turned them toward the other end of the room. “And because I accidently let her find her husband in bed with their kids’ two nannies.”
Sara laughed as he lifted her arm and spun her around.
When the song was over, he turned off the stereo. “I have to get up early. What do you say we go to bed?” The look he gave her made her knees weak.
“Uh, sheets,” she managed to say. “Dryer.”
If there were an Olympic event for speed of dressing a bed, they would have won. Mattress pad went on, then bottom sheet. Mike didn’t like the way Sara tucked in the corner of the top sheet, so he quickly redid it.
“Something else you learned undercover?” she asked.
“No. Hot little nurse.”
She threw a pillow at him. He dodged it, grabbed it midair, then tackled Sara on the bed.
When he started kissing her neck, she said, “It seems a shame to make a wet spot on our new linens.”
Mike picked her up and put her on the floor on the blue and gold rug. “I happen to know,” he said in his deep voice, “that this rug cost eighty thousand dollars.”
“Really?”
“The rug importer wanted a favor.” Mike kept kissing. “And this was his gift to the launderer.”
“Twenty to life?” Sara put her head back, so he could get to all of her neck.
“No, just life.”
She pulled back to look at him and at Mike’s shrug she knew the man was dead. She wasn’t about to ask who killed him for fear Mike would say he had. “It’s a very nice rug.”
“Yes, quite pleasant,” he said as he moved on top of her. “And oh, so very useful.”
Afterward, as they lay together, Mike started laughing.
“What’s that about?” she asked as she slipped her nightgown on.
“I was just remembering that I told the captain I didn’t know how to please a ‘good girl.’ I had no idea that all of you want the same thing.”
“And I told my mother you were gay.”
Smiling, they fell asleep, entangled in each other’s arms.
In the morning, Sara was sound asleep when Mike threw back the cover. She didn’t stir.