The male voice at my ear was no more than a whisper. I’d been sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, so soundly, so sweetly under a heap of bedcovers. Then came the voice, dragging me back to the land of the conscious, the anxious, the miserably alert.
“Mike?”
“You heard me. Don’t move . . .”
I was lying on my side, still groggy and disoriented, when I felt the mattress sinking behind me. Under the blankets, large hands caressed my curves.
“What time is it?”
“All the clocks have stopped, sweetheart. There is no time. Right now there’s nothing but you and me . . .”
Soft tugs coaxed off my nightshirt. The touch of slightly calloused fingers were cool at first, but quickly warmed on my naked skin. Tender kisses came next, to the back of my shoulder, along my neck, around my jawline . . .
I smiled in the dark.
A few minutes later, Quinn’s long, heavy body was covering mine, and I found my way back to sweet oblivion.
AN hour later, we were lying together, still under the covers, my head on his shoulder, his durable arm around me.
“Mike . . . ?”
My voice sounded shamefully hesitant in the shadowy chill of the pre-dawn room. “There’s something I didn’t tell you earlier . . .”
“That makes two of us.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. But you go first.”
“No,” I said, far from eager to spill. “You.”
“All right, well . . . Remember that private word I had with your ex-husband?”
“Yeah, what was that about? Matt wouldn’t tell me . . .”
“I asked him to stay here with you.”
“You’re kidding . . .”
Not so long ago, Mike nearly broke up with me because Matt was still making use of this duplex. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “You asked Matt to stay here with me?”
“I didn’t want you to be in the building alone. That’s all. Matt agreed with me.”
“Oh, no, he didn’t. I was up here all night alone—until you came.”
“You were alone in the duplex, Clare, but not in the building. Allegro spent the night downstairs in the Blend, doing business with Europe and Japan on his PDA. I spoke to him before I came upstairs to you, told him to get home, try to get some rest . . .”
Once again, I was surprised, but only a little. Matteo Allegro’s long list of petty vices continued to be trumped by one major virtue: the man had a ferocious protective streak. Whether it was his daughter, his mother, his new wife, or old, my ex-husband refused to accept someone he loved being in harm’s way.
“Okay, sweetheart, your turn,” Mike said, his voice almost teasing. I felt a soft kiss on my hair. “What didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I went to your cousin’s firehouse last night.”
Mike’s big, warm body froze against mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Your cousin swore to me on the phone that he wouldn’t be there—”
“But he was anyway.”
“Yes.”
“I asked you to stay away from him, Clare.”
“I thought I was staying away from him. I swear. He lied to me—”
“You promised me.”
“You’re not listening, Mike. Try to understand . . .”
I did my best to explain my side of it. “I needed to do it. I needed to find answers. The problem is . . . I found more questions . . .”
Mike let my final statement hang for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “You want to explain what that’s supposed to mean?”
“It means your cousin told me about the history between you and his younger brother, Kevin . . .”
Mike exhaled, loud and long. “Let’s get this out of the way, all right? I want to know every single thing that son-of-a-bitch cousin of mine told you.”
“Fine.” I threw off the covers and got up.
“Clare! Where are you going?!”
“I’m not going to discuss your cousin in this bed,” I said, grabbing my robe, wrapping it tight. “Are you hungry? I need to cook.”
“Oh?” Mike blinked, his tone suddenly more pliable. “What did you have in mind?”
CRAB cakes. That’s what I had in mind. Mike loved them, and I’d already picked up two pounds of fresh lump crabmeat from the Lobster Place on Bleecker. (Blue, of course. For Maryland-style cakes, the crabs really should be blue.)
So, okay, seafood wasn’t your typical breakfast fare. But Mike had been up all night and this was going to be dinner for him.
Now, as the coral glow of dawn lightened the darkness beyond my window, I made a