4th of July (Women's Murder Club 4)

“Exactly,” Joe said, reaching an arm around my waist. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

I put my hand on the front of his crisp white shirt.

“Claire called you.”

“And Cindy.” Joe laughed a little sheepishly. “Let me take you out to dinner.”

“Hmm. What if I make dinner here?”

“Deal.”

Joe tapped the roof, and the sedan took off.

“C’mere,” he said, folding me in his arms, kissing me, shocking me once again that a kiss could spark such a conflagration. I had one moderately sane thought as the heat surged through my body: Here we go again. Another drive-by romantic interlude on the roller-coaster affair of my life.

Joe cupped my face in his hands and kissed me again, and my heart surrendered its feeble protestation. We entered the house, and I kicked the door shut behind us.

I stood on tiptoe with my arms around Joe’s neck and let him walk me backward through the house until I was on my back in bed and Joe was taking off my clothes. He started with my shoes and kissed everything he exposed on his way up to my lips.

Dear God, he melted everything but my Kokopelli.

I gasped and reached for him, but he was gone.

I opened my eyes and watched him undress. He was gorgeous. Fit, tanned, hard. And all for me.

I smiled with sheer delight. Five minutes ago, I’d been looking forward to a Law & Order marathon. Now this! I opened my arms, and Joe covered my body with his.

“Hey,” he said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Shut up,” I said. I bit his lower lip, not too hard, then opened my mouth to his and wrapped my limbs around him.

When we emerged from the bedroom an hour later, barefoot and disheveled, it was pitch-black outside. Martha thumped her tail, plainly meaning, Feed me, which I did.

Then I made a luscious tricolor salad with a mustard vinaigrette and thinly shaved Parmesan, and I put some pasta on to boil while Joe stirred basil, oregano, and garlic into tomato sauce. Soon a divine aroma filled the air.

We ate at the kitchen table, exchanging our headlines of the past week. Joe’s headlines were a lot like CNN’s. Horrifying car bombs, airport infiltrations, and political dustups that I didn’t need to have top-secret clearance to hear about. As we washed the dishes together, I told Joe the briefest, least inflammatory version of my encounters with Agnew.

His jaw clenched as I laid it out for him.

“Pretend I didn’t tell you,” I said, kissing his brow as I refilled his glass with wine.

“Pretend I’m not mad at you for putting yourself in that kind of danger.”

Jeez, had everyone forgotten that I was a cop? And a smart one, by the way. First female lieutenant in San Francisco and so on and so forth.

“How do you feel about Cary Grant?” I asked him. “How does Katharine Hepburn grab you?”

We cuddled together on the sofa and watched Bringing Up Baby, one of my favorite screwball comedies. I cracked up as I always did at the scene where Cary Grant crawls around after a terrier with a dinosaur bone in its mouth, and Joe laughed along with me, holding me in his arms.

“If you ever catch me doing that with Martha, don’t ask.”

I laughed.

“I love you so much, Lindsay.”

“I love you so much, too.”

Later that night, I fell asleep inside the curve of Joe’s body thinking, This is so right. I just can’t get enough of this man.