Ten Big Ones (Stephanie Plum 10)

'I do,' I said. 'It's the beer.'

'Okay,' Morelli said. `I'll go with you.'

Everyone sucked in some air. A piece of pot roast fell out of my father's mouth, and my mother's fork slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her plate. We weren't the sort of family who went to the bathroom together. We barely admitted to using the bathroom.

Morelli looked around the table and gave a small defeated sigh.

He reached into his shirt pocket, extracted the key to the cuffs, and released me.

I popped out of my seat and ran upstairs to the bathroom. I locked the door, opened the window, and climbed out onto the roof over the back stoop. I'd used this escape route since junior high. I was good at it. I dangled myself off the roof, and I dropped to the ground.

Morelli grabbed me, spun me around, and trapped me against the back of the house. He leaned into me and grinned. 'I knew you'd go out the window.'

In a perverse way, I liked that Morelli had me figured out. It was reassuring to know he paid attention. 'Very clever of you.'

'Yep.'

'Now what?'

'We go back to the table. And when dinner is over, we go home

... together.'

'And what happens in the morning?'

'We sleep late, read the Sunday paper, and take Bob for a walk in the park.'

'And Monday?'

'I go to work, and you stay home and hide.'

I did a major head slap. 'Unh,' I said.

His eyes narrowed. 'What?'

To begin with, I'm afraid to hide in your house. I'm afraid to hide in my apartment or in my parents' house. I don't want to endanger anyone, and I don't want to make it easy for the bad guys to find me. And if that isn't enough, I hate when you order me around. I'm in law enforcement, too. I'm key to this mess. We should be working together.'

'Are you crazy? What did you have in mind? I should use you for bait?'

'Maybe not bait.'

Morelli grabbed the front of my shirt, pulled me to him, and kissed me.

It was a great kiss, but I didn't know what the heck it meant. It seemed to me a breaking-up kiss would have had less tongue.

'So,' I said, 'do you want to explain that?'

'There's no possible explanation. I am so messed up. You frustrate the shit out of me.'

I knew the feeling. I was the mess-up queen. There was a contract on my head, and I was weirdly involved with two men. I didn't know which was more frightening.

`I'm going to take the coward's way out and leave,' Morelli said.

'That whole thing with the handcuffs got a little freaky. I should go back to work anyway. We have a twenty-four-hour watch on Ward's brothers house, so stay far away. I swear if I see you anywhere near there I'm going to have you arrested.'

I did another eye roll arid returned to the house. I was doing so many eye rolls these days I was getting head pains.

Sunday morning I took a good look at myself in the mirror in