ached with an emotion he couldn’t identify. The ache in his groin was less confusing. He knew what was causing that. And he knew it was a lost cause.
Chapter 4
Louisa awakened to the aroma of bacon frying and the unpleasant sensation of having a crushing weight on her chest. The weight turned out to be Spike. He opened his yellow cat eyes and stared at her for several seconds before his lids dropped closed. Louisa shifted under him, and he growled low in his throat. Two masculine hands reached over Louisa’s head and lifted the cat off her.
“Morning,” Pete said.
Louisa tilted her head back to see him. “What happened?”
“You had a glass and a half of wine and fell asleep.”
She took a fast survey of her condition. She was on his couch, fully clothed, under a quilt. “Have I slept here all night?”
“Yup.”
She sighed. “I’m not very good at drinking.”
She tugged at her skirt and swung her feet onto the floor, still swaddled in the quilt. “I make up for my alcohol intolerance with my temper. I inherited the belligerent gene.”
He handed her a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a plate heaped with bacon and scrambled eggs.
“Thanks, Mom,” she said.
He slouched in a chair across from her. He wasn’t feeling especially maternal. He was feeling sexually frustrated and emotionally unstable. He’d spent the better part of the night staring at his bedroom ceiling, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life, wondering what it was about Louisa Brannigan that had him suddenly feeling dissatisfied and lonely.
He could easily have awakened her and shuffled her off to her own apartment, but the simple truth was, he liked having her in his living room. Spike was a good friend, but he was small. He didn’t fill the apartment the way Louisa did. Pete liked the way Louisa sighed and rustled when she slept. It was a comforting sound…like a crackling fire on a cold day, or rain against a windowpane.
She drank the juice and munched on a strip of bacon. “It feels strange not to have to rush off to work.”
“What’ll you do today?”
“Get my car fixed. Then I suppose I should start thinking about getting another job.”
“I have a deal for you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“It’s a good deal.”
“I bet.”
“I want to stick with this pig thing, but I’m running low on time. I have rewrites to do on a screenplay that’s going into production next week.”
She took a bite of egg. “And?”
“And I’ll give you a month’s free rent, if you’ll hold off taking another job for a few days. I have my own file on Maislin. I’d like you to go through it and see if you can find a connection between him and Nolan Bishop. Then I’d like you to go to the Post building on L Street and read back issues on either side of the pig story. See if you can talk to any of the reporters that covered the story.”
The offer appealed to Louisa. The detecting part sounded like fun, and she couldn’t turn her nose up at a month’s free rent. Her savings account was going to be fast depleted without a job.
“Okay, it’s a deal. What am I searching for at the Post?”
“I don’t know. Keep an open mind.”
She finished her breakfast and stood to leave, groaning when she looked down at her rumpled suit. “I’ll take a fast shower and get right to work.”
It was almost noon when Louisa finished reading Pete’s file on Stuart Maislin. Spike was back to sleeping on the kitchen table, amidst the piles of news clippings and handwritten notes. Pete was slouched in a padded office chair, staring at the computer screen. He leaned forward and began typing. The soft click of computer keys carried across the room.
Louisa crossed her arms on the table in front of her and watched him, thinking writing was a very quiet, very solitary profession. She’d expected the creative process to be more flamboyant, but Pete Streeter went about his rewrites in an orderly businesslike fashion. There was no hair pulling, no ranting, no empty whiskey glasses littering the work area, or balled-up, discarded sheets of paper spread across the floor. Sometimes his lips moved, but the sounds he made, if any, were soft, polite murmurings as he listened to the music of his written word. All this was very much at odds with the image she’d formed of him, and she found herself fascinated by this serious, introspective piece of his