“Yeah. I'd like to keep him that way.”
“Do I have any clothes here?”
“Some underwear. I think it's mixed in with mine.”
I found the underwear and borrowed a T-shirt. I located some clean sheets and made the bed.
“This is nice,” Morelli said. “I knew the room needed something, but I couldn't figure out what. It was sheets.”
“Stick a fork in me,” I said, crawling into bed.
Seventeen
I woke up to someone banging on the bedroom door and Morelli in bed next to me with the pillow over his face. I took the pillow off Morelli. 'What's going on?"
“If I go out there, I'll kill him,” Morelli said.
I crawled out of bed, toed through the clothes on the floor, and located a pair of sweatpants that looked fairly clean. I stepped into the sweats and rolled them at the waist. I was still in Morelli s T-shirt. Didn't bother to brush my hair. I opened the door and looked out at Dickie. He had two black eyes and a Band-Aid on his nose.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Jesus,” he said. '“What are you doing here? The nightmare never ends.”
Good thing for him I didn't have a staple gun.
'How did I get here? Last thing I remember I was kidnapped," Dickie said.
“Go downstairs and look for breakfast. We'll be right down.”
I turned and bumped into Morelli, who was standing behind me, naked. What is it with men that they can walk around like that? I could barely get naked to take a shower.
“No clothes?” I asked him.
“You're wearing my last almost-clean sweats.”
“Underwear?”
“None. I need to do laundry. Dickie's been wearing my clothes.”
“I'm not going downstairs with you naked.”
Morelli kicked through the clothes and came up with a pair of jeans. I watched him put the jeans on commando, and my nipples got hard.
“I could have these pants off in record time,” Morelli said, eyes on my T-shirt.
“No way. Dickie might hear.”
“We could be quiet.”
“I couldn't concentrate. I'd be imagining Dickie with his ear to the door.”
“You have to concentrate?” Morelli asked.
“Hey!” Dickie yelled from the foot of the stairs. “There's no milk.”
I followed Morelli down the stairs to the kitchen, where Dickie was eating cereal out of the box.
“There's no milk,” Dickie said. “And there's no more orange juice.”