prep me Tuesday night, after court finishes for the day.”
Erin knew all of this already and she nodded. The Preston case had been widely publicized and the trial was due to start on Monday in Marlborough, not Boston. Lorraine Preston had supposedly hired a man to kill her husband. Not only was Douglass Preston a billionaire hedge-fund manager, but his wife was a scion of society, involved in charities ranging from art museums and the symphony to inner-city schools. The pretrial publicity had been staggering; a day hadn’t gone by in weeks without one or two articles on the front page and a top story on the evening news. Megamoney, lurid sex, drugs, betrayal, infidelity, assassination, and an illegitimate child. Because of the endless publicity, the trial had been moved to Marlborough. Kevin had been one of several detectives assigned to the investigation and all were scheduled to testify Wednesday. Like everyone else, Erin had been following the news but she’d been asking Kevin questions every now and then about the case.
“You know what you need after you’re finished in court?” she asked. “A night out. We should get dressed up and go out to dinner. You’re off on Friday, right?”
“We just did that on New Year’s,” Kevin grumbled, sopping up more yolk on his plate. There were smears of jelly on his fingers.
“If you don’t want to go out, I can make you something special here. Whatever you want. We can have wine and maybe start a fire and I could wear something sexy. It could be really romantic.” He looked up from his plate and she went on. “The point is, I’m open to whatever,” she purred, “and you need a break. I don’t like it when you work so hard. It’s like they expect you to solve every case out there.”
He tapped his fork against his plate, studying her. “Why are you acting all lovey-dovey? What’s going on?”
Telling herself to stick to the script, she pushed back from the table.
“Just forget it, okay?” She grabbed her plate and the fork clattered off it, hitting the table and then the floor. “I was trying to be supportive since you’re going out of town, but if you don’t like it, fine. I’ll tell you what—you figure out what you want to do and let me know sometime, okay?”
She stormed over to the sink and turned the faucet on hard. She knew she’d surprised him, could feel him vacillating between anger and confusion. She ran her hands under the water then brought them to her face. She drew a series of rapid breaths, hiding her face, and made a choking sound. She let her shoulders heave a little.
“Are you crying?” he asked. She heard his chair slide back. “Why the hell are you crying?”
She choked out the words, doing her best to make them sound broken. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know what you want. I know how big this case is and how important it is and how much pressure you’re under…”
She choked off the final words, sensing his approach. When she felt him touch her, she shuddered.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said grudgingly. “You don’t have to cry.”
She turned toward him, squeezing her eyes shut, putting her face against his chest. “I just want to make you happy,” she stammered. She wiped her wet face on his shirt.
“We’ll figure it out, okay? We’ll have a nice weekend. I promise. To make up for last night.”
She put her arms around him, pulling him close, sniffling. She drew another rasping inhale. “I’m really sorry. I know you didn’t need that today. Me getting all blubbery for nothing. You’ve got so much on your plate already.”
“I can handle it,” he said. He tilted his head and she leaned up to kiss him, her eyes still shut. When she pulled back, she wiped her face with her fingers and pulled close to him again. As he pressed against her, she could feel him getting excited. She knew how her vulnerability turned him on.
“We’ve got a little time before I have to head into work,” he said.
“I should clean the kitchen first.”
“You can do it later,” he said.
Minutes later, with Kevin moving atop her, she made the sounds he wanted while staring out the window of the bedroom and thinking of other things.
She had learned to hate winter, with the endless cold and a yard half-buried in snow, because she couldn’t go outside. Kevin didn’t like her to walk around