Scarlet Nights (Edilean 3)

After he finally graduated and went to the East Coast, he sauntered into a boxing gym, and that’s where he met Frank Thiessen, who was twenty-three and thinking of joining the police force. They trained together and became such good friends that Frank waited until Mike turned nineteen so they could enlist together. On the force, they were a good team, both of them athletic, both from bad childhoods, but they had at last found a way to channel the anger in them. On their time off, they trained hard and entered matches that they nearly always won.

When they took on undercover assignments, they had to separate, and Frank moved to California.

“I’d like to meet him,” Sara said as she tried her best not to let Mike know of her horror at what he’d just told her. She was ashamed that she’d ever complained about her own family.

“Hey!” Mike said. “I’ll take anything but pity.”

“Good thing, because you won’t get any from me. Besides, you’ve always had Tess, who adores you. Why didn’t you ever come to Edilean to visit?”

“Uh oh. This is turning into a question session. I’ve found out that there’s only one way to stop that.” Rolling over, he began to kiss her neck.

Sara wasn’t sure what had happened, but it felt as though they’d taken a big step forward. She thought she should be despondent, if not depressed, at what he’d told her, but instead she felt almost good because he’d confided in her. No wonder Tess was so secretive about her life.

“Are you going to keep thinking or help me out with this?”

She didn’t laugh. “Mike … I’m sorry about what was done to you.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she could tell he meant it.

They didn’t make love. Instead, Mike pulled her to him and held her tightly—and it was the closest she’d ever felt to him.

“We’d better go to sleep,” he said. “Gym is in the morning.”

Sara tried to groan but couldn’t do it. The truth was that he was right and she’d rather enjoyed her workout. She’d especially liked spending time in a place where Mike was so well known. In Edilean, she knew everyone, but here it was her husband who knew people.

Smiling at the word husband she drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Mike had to wake Sara, but he didn’t have to ask her to get dressed. “Want to try to make some muscles today?”

“So I can get arms like yours?”

He flexed a bicep. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

“You are too vain!”

“Have to be about something. With this face, no hair, and this voice I need to work on the rest of me.”

Sara didn’t laugh at what she was sure he’d meant as a joke. “I think your face is beautiful.”

“That’s not what you said the first time you saw me, but … thanks. Are you ready?”

“Is Megan waiting for us?”

“No. Today you’re all mine!” When he leered at her and Sara gave a fake squeal of fear, Mike grimaced. “If we don’t leave now you’ll drag me back into that bed and I’m already worn out from what you’ve done to me these last two days.”

“Poor you!” Sara said as she scurried to the door. “How about if I drive?”

“Do two people fit inside that toy car you brought?”

“No, I meant that I’d drive your car.”

“What a sense of humor you have.” He opened the passenger door for her.

They argued all the way to the gym, but Sara didn’t make a dent in his refusal to let her drive his car.

At the gym, he spent thirty minutes with her, showing her the perfect form for doing a few rudimentary lifts. She thought it was a bore, but she loved his hands on her elbows and shoulders.

Afterward, she went swimming, and as she put her arms on the side of the pool, her legs lazily kicking, she watched him do his intense forty-six minute workout. He was a mass of sweat that made his pumped-up muscles gleam. By the time he was ready to leave, she could have torn his clothes off on the gym floor.