Playing God (47 page)

She arrived shortly after Melia dropped him off, carrying a small duffel bag and a stainless steel saucepan. She dropped the bag on the floor, set the pan on the stove, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her fingers were warm on his skin as she gave him a long, tender, peppermint kiss. "I've been thinking about that all day," she said. "That, and this." She tapped the pan. "Chicken soup. I knew you'd need it." She adjusted the gas and slipped off her coat. She wore jeans and an oversized blue sweatshirt.

"There's probably no word for how tired you are," she said. "Take your coat off. Sit down. Make yourself at home." She unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, careful of his arm, watching his face closely for signs of pain. "Sit. Man, this thing weighs a ton, doesn't it? I know. I know." She tipped her head as she spoke. "Your other one got shot full of holes. I saw it, remember?" She steered him into a chair. Knelt down and removed his shoes and socks, lingering there, rubbing his feet.

It felt so good. "You think a man could have an orgasm from having his feet rubbed?" he asked.

"Is that about to happen?"

"Maybe." She was making him breathless.

She lowered his foot. "Soup's ready. You want anything with it? Tea? Crackers?"

"You."

She grinned at him, then turned, her hair hiding her face. "That you got."

"Why me?" He liked the shining rain of hair down her back, the way it rippled and shifted as she moved.

"You need rescuing. I rescue people."

Something they had in common. "Then what? You tinker with my heart a little and move on to the next hard case?"

"I'm getting tired of moving on." She ladled soup into a bowl and found crackers. "Too soon to tell, but I could see making a long-term investment. You'd have to shower and shave more often, though. I've got sensitive skin. Sensitive nose, too."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Standing beside him, her breasts were level with his head. She pulled it against them. They were soft and pillowing. "Eat your soup."

"Can't, if you keep distracting me like this."

"Eat. Eat. Mind if I check out your place?"

"Be my guest."

She wandered into the living room, then the bedroom. He heard her opening doors, checking things out. She stuck her head around the door. "Got any clean sheets?" He told her where to find them. "It's pretty spare. You smash it all up in a fit of crazy male anger?"

"Yes."

"Thought so. The pictures. Those empty crime scenes. Interesting. Your job is to fill them in?" He nodded. "Mind if I change the bed?" She rustled away in the other room while he ate his soup. Delicious soup. The first thing he'd eaten since last night's steak. His mother had believed in the healing power of soup. Soup for lost games, soup for broken hearts, soup to heal them all after his father's displays of violence. He pushed back his chair, put his dish in the sink. Went into the bedroom.

She was lying on top of the covers, still dressed, reading, looking like she belonged there. "That's Kristin Marks on the closet door, isn't it? A shrine?" He nodded. She came around the bed, her bare feet silent on the floor, her toenails electric blue. She ran her hands lightly up his body from his waist to his shoulders and started unbuttoning his shirt. He shivered under her touch. "If you can love half so well as you can hate, Joe Burgess, I'm a lucky woman." She slipped the shirt off his shoulders, eased it gently over his bad arm and reached for his belt. "And I'm not talking about sex."

He slept on his back, the only position that didn't hurt one of his wounds, a pillow she'd insisted on underneath his arm. She slept beside him on her stomach, one leg thrown over him, one arm across his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. Her hair smelled like apples. She wore a plaid flannel nightgown, but where it rode up and her thigh crossed his, her skin was warm and silky. They didn't make love, yet the room, the air, and the bed were full of sex. Rich and voluptuous and tangible, like night air in the tropics. He inhaled deeply, drawing it in as his body rolled toward the edge of sleep and fell over.

He slept fourteen hours, waking alone in the middle of Sunday afternoon. The apartment was quiet. When he turned to look at the clock, he found a glass of water on the nightstand with a note propped against it. It said: "Take your pills. Wait fifteen minutes. Then take a shower." Below, in smaller letters: "Call me when you're ready for that shower." He took his pills. Needed them, moving set the damaged parts of him on fire. He rested fifteen minutes, until he felt the first tendrils of relief, then called her.

Feet thudded across the floor and the bedroom door opened. She leaned in. "Hi, sleepyhead? Ready for a shower and some breakfast, or whatever it's called when you eat it at this time of day?"

"I stink," he said, "and I'm starving."

"How appealing. I'll give you five minutes and then come wash your back. Okay?"

"I'm no fool," he said.

She gave him a goofy smile. "Is that right?" Then, suddenly serious. "Paper says Dr. Bailey was arrested last night. You have anything to do with that?"

He nodded. "It's not my jurisdiction, but I did a little work on it. I found the body."

"Whose body?"

"Kevin O'Leary. The pimp who set up Pleasant's last evening."

"What does that have to do with Dr. Bailey?"

"It's a long story," he said. "Can I tell it over breakfast?"

She pointed toward the bathroom. "Get cleaned up. I've been waiting to eat with you for about six hours. I'm starving."

"You're an angel," he said.

"Don't get mushy on me."

He kept his smartass replies to himself, concentrating on getting out of bed without yelling. When he finally got on his feet, his legs were like rubber. She must have been a mind reader. Before he was half-way across the room, she was tucking her shoulder under his. "I wasn't thinking," she said, matter-of-factly. "Second day is always worse."

She walked him to the bathroom and left so he could attend to "necessities." Then he stripped off his underwear and turned on the shower. He liked his showers hot. Wondered if she did, too, or if she was one of those people who liked things lukewarm. She didn't seem lukewarm. He let heat sluice down over his back, and picked up the soap.

"Hey," she said, stepping in and closing the door. "Did you start without me?"

"At my age, it takes a while."

Her hair was pinned up with a clip the color of her eyes. "Really," she said, eyes skipping down his body with teasing little glances. "I think the evidence is to the contrary."

"That's just how it is when a man wakes up."

"What man? Rip Van Winkle?"

He pulled her against him, rivulets of water running between them, feeling blessed and confused, for once utterly in the moment.

"Want me to wash your back?" she asked.

"I want to wash your front."

She put her hands behind her head and stuck out her chest in a pin-up girl pose. "Go to it," she said.

He went to it. He'd had an idea of taking things slowly, taking her back to bed and making slow and gentle love to her. A proper first time. It didn't work out like that. They slithered and slid around the shower, exploring with mouths and tongues and soapy fingers. He ended up behind her, his hands cupping her heavy breasts, buried deep inside her, as they nearly knocked the wall down in an uninhibited crescendo that must have been audible blocks away. It left him awestruck and dizzy and needing to go back to bed.

Chris, on the other hand, was energized. "And I thought I was hungry before!" she said. "Aren't you starving?"

He couldn't quite stifle his yawn. "Guys," she sighed. "One little orgasm and you fall flat on your ass."

"Give me a minute," he said. But he was embarrassingly tired. All his bandages were wet and soggy and the tape was peeling. He looked like The Mummy after a rainstorm. "You think these things need redoing?"

Suddenly her assessment was clinical. "Oh, yeah. That was dumb. I got so caught up in... uh... playing in the shower, I forgot I was assaulting the walking wounded. Go lie down on the bed and I'll fix you right up." She caught his look. "I didn't mean that, idiot. Now shoo!" She unclipped her hair and it came tumbling down, falling almost to her waist. "Not quite Lady Godiva yet." She bent and picked up some panties, then a bra. She started to pull her sweatshirt over her head. "Go on. Beat it. If you fall over, I can't pick you up."

He got in bed, pulling the covers modestly over him. A little late for that, but suddenly he felt shy. And it was cold in the room. He closed his eyes and felt the delicious post-coital tug of sleep. It felt so damned good. There was a chill as she pulled the sheet down, then gentle fingers, and a warning, "Watch out! This is going to hurt," as she pulled the bandages off.

"Goddamn!"

"Sorry." Her cool hand touched his face. "You're just so hairy I can't help it." She patched him back together, murmuring to herself about the status of things. The bottom line seemed to be he was unlovely, but he'd live.

She pulled up the covers, then crawled underneath them, fitting her body to his. She cupped him in her hand and, as old Rip Van Winkle struggled to rise for the second time in two hundred years, she whispered, "There are so many things I'd like to do to you, but I think you'd better sleep. I'm going to go eat." Her hand relaxed. Moved away. She slid out of bed.

Burgess fell asleep. If he was being graded him on his performance today, he'd probably get an F. On the bright side, maybe that meant he'd have to take the course again.

Chapter 36

She woke him a few hours later by whispering, "I have to leave." First they made love again the way he'd planned it—a slower, more sedate coupling with condoms and kisses and an exquisite, satisfying sweetness in the way she dug her nails into his shoulders, the way her eyes opened wide, the way she whispered, "Oh my God, Joe. Oh, my God!" like he'd done something right in a way no one ever had before. He came as close in that moment as he ever had to being a fool for love. He would have married her then and there.

She didn't leave until she'd marched him to the table and watched him eat, smiling like his voracious appetite was entirely her fault. Only then, her hook set, did she go, leaving him satisfied and longing. Which, she told him, was how she wanted it. She left the chicken soup in a plastic container and took back her pot. "I'm not moving in," she said. "I'm not leaving my stuff here. You're too cranky and set in your ways to be moved in on quickly. And I'm too proud and independent myself."

"What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"Tap dancing. And you can't come. I love it but I'm a total klutz. If you came and watched, I'd fall and break my ankle. You can pick me up after and buy me a milkshake. We could have a real date. Go somewhere besides bed."

"It's not like we spend our whole time in bed."

"Would if we were here."

He reached out and tangled his hand in her hair. She tipped back her head and he kissed her. "Where's tap dancing? I'll be there." His mind was with the program—say good-bye, get back to work—his body had other ideas.

Against his will, because he had the good Catholic boy's hang-up about whores and virgins and the prohibitions about mixing them up, he heard Alana's voice in his head. If he ever did find a woman, he'd take her to bed and not come out for years. He wanted to take her back to bed and spend the next week fitted into the curves of her body. This was why he never opened the gates. Wherever his passion went—love, hate, rage, sorrow—there was always too much.

She reached out and rubbed his scratchy cheek. "Tomorrow, you'll shave?"

"Tomorrow I'll shave." Goddammit! He even had sex in his voice. Those thickened vocal chords, that raw need. He wanted to hold her there, beg her not to go.

"Don't think I don't feel it, too," she said. "Scares the hell out of me." She picked up her bag, opened the door, and walked out. He went to the window, watched her get in her car and drive away, then stood and watched her taillights until the car was out of sight.

He shaved, poured himself a glass of bourbon and put on Emmylou Harris. Then he sat down to think. In the spaces around the edges of all that had been going on, he'd been thinking, assessing, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. What he had to decide now was what to do with what he knew. Where he was going with it, when lives, fates, and futures hung in the balance and he understood so much about the past.