the covers beside him, so I quietly picked up the magazine section and tried to concentrate on world affairs.
As an academic exercise, Dwight had seemed to enjoy his brief busman’s holiday, looking over the shoulder of those New York detectives and mentally comparing their procedures to those he used back in Colleton County. Now, as if hearing my thoughts, he said, “It does feel weird, though.”
“What does?”
“To be on the outside looking in on this investigation.” He lowered the sports section and his eyes widened the instant they touched my new negligee.
I pretended not to notice. “Given your druthers, you’d be out there right this minute, questioning everyone in the building,” I teased. “Right?”
“Wrong.” He dumped the sports section on the floor in favor of a new sport, and pulled me toward him.
More newspapers slid off the bed and I flung aside a sheaf of colorful advertising inserts that tried to insert themselves between Dwight’s chest and mine.
He pushed back my hair so he could nuzzle my neck. “You know that thing Mrs. Lattimore sent up?”
“Yes?” I tried to tug at the waistband of his shorts, but he had begun to lower the skinny straps of my gown and my arms were briefly imprisoned. “What about it?” I asked as innocently as possible, considering that my negligee had now become a crumpled ball of soft black silk that he tossed to the floor.
“I’ve been thinking. If we put your leg here”—he positioned my leg across his bare shoulder—“and my head here, and then your hand here while I—”
The rest of his words were lost as an electric spasm shot through my body. I gasped, and after that, all coherent thoughts and words disappeared beneath an avalanche of physical sensations that culminated in a firestorm of explosions.
“Dear Lord in the morning!” I said when I could talk again.
“Well, it is Sunday,” he murmured smugly.
Once everything quit pinging like an overheated motor cooling down, I spooned my back against the curve of his muscular body and we fell asleep with his hand cupped around my breast.
I awoke an hour or so later to find his lips touching mine and his hands gentle on my skin, but moving with increasing urgency. This time, our lovemaking was slower and more conventional, but it was very sweet and every bit as satisfying. We showered together afterwards, soaping each other down carefully. For the first time since our first shared shower over a year ago, I only got a halfhearted salute.
“Sorry, shug,” he said. “The spirit’s willing, but the flesh is gonna need a little time to regroup.”
After that big breakfast, I wasn’t particularly hungry, but that didn’t stop me from joining Dwight when he got into Luna DiSimone’s party goodies. Afterwards, we called Cal, who was on his way out the door to a birthday party with Mary Pat and did not seem to be missing either one of us bad enough to make him want to be late to the party.
I talked briefly with Kate, who commiserated about the weather. She was shocked to hear about Phil Lundigren and asked me if I would take some flowers or a potted plant down to his wife.
“She has an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for her to connect with strangers, so don’t try to make her your best friend, Deborah. Just tell her that the flowers are from me—she probably still thinks of me as Kate Honeycutt from 6-A—and that I’m thinking about her, okay?”
“Good as done,” I told her.
As he took the last cold shrimp from the platter, Dwight said, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”
“Well, we’re not far from the Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History.”
He frowned. “You really want to look at stars or dinosaur bones?”
“Not really,” I admitted. I’m all for culture and I know New York’s museums are world-class, but we have a great natural history museum in Raleigh and a fine planetarium over in Chapel Hill.
Dwight seemed to feel the same. “Why don’t we take the camera and walk over to Central Park? See what city folks do in the snow.”
We piled on a couple of layers of warm clothes and were soon heading out the door, this time making sure that it was really locked. I felt a bit vindicated when Dwight had to pull on it firmly to make the latch fully engage.
The man on the elevator was the same one as from Friday evening. Sidney. He was a mixture of regret for the