LITMIR.BIZ

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inside rivaled that of the living room downstairs. Laura McNeal ought to be in hog heaven up here, he thought.

      “This should be fairly comfortable,” he told her. “As far as I know, the bed’s hardly ever been slept in.”

      She made a beeline for his mother’s ancient Singer sewing machine, still parked on a card table, and ran a hand over its worn black surface. He’d seen women look at diamonds or fur coats the same way, their eyes a little glazed, their faces touched with an ineffable longing. But a sewing machine? Sam was half tempted to tell her to take the damned thing with her when she left, but then he was leery of whatever form her expression of gratitude might take.

      “Well, I’ll just let you get settled in,” he said. “Bathroom’s just on the right. I won’t be in your way.”

      “Thanks. I’ll try to keep out of your way, too.”

      “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to go take a look in the freezer and see if I have a nice little steak I can thaw out.”

      “I really don’t expect you to feed me, too,” she said.

      Sam lifted his index finger to touch his eye. “A medicinal steak.”

      “Oh. Does that really work?”

      “Couldn’t hurt.”

      He winked at her as he stepped back into the hall, and then descended the stairs muttering to himself. Winking! Good God. He never winked. Guys in polyester suits with gold chains around their necks winked. So he convinced himself it was just a sympathetic twitch, brought on no doubt from the pitiful sight of the woman’s purple shiner.

      Laura only meant to test the bed. She woke up three hours later, startled at first by her strange surroundings, then comforted by the sight of the sewing machine. She stretched beneath the soft warmth of the granny afghan, then stopped midstretch, suddenly realizing that Sam Zachary must have come in and covered her with it while she was sleeping.

      The Big Ben clock on the nightstand told her it was almost six o’clock. Her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since Artie Hammerman smashed his fist into her half eaten glazed doughnut this morning just before he’d smashed it into her face. She lay there for a moment, refusing to even contemplate her predicament, while from somewhere downstairs came the clattering of pots and pans and the metallic rattling of silverware and the occasional thud of a refrigerator door.

      She smelled coffee, too, and lay there imagining the beguiling fragrance wafting up the staircase like wavy banners in a cartoon. Her stomach growled. Hadn’t Sam Zachary said something about a steak?

      For lack of a comb, she ran her fingers through her hair, at the same time deciding not to get anywhere near the oval mirror above the antique dresser for fear of sending herself into a deep depression. If her eye looked anything like it felt, which was awful, she didn’t even want to see it.

      Laura had trotted halfway down the staircase, still listening to kitchen noises, when it suddenly occurred to her that it might not be Sam Zachary who was making all that decidedly domestic racket. He had inquired about her marital status, she recalled, but she hadn’t asked him if he was married, had she? Instead she’d just assumed—maybe even vaguely hoped—he wasn’t.

      “Stupid,” she muttered, wrenching her tight skirt into line and tucking in her chin to check for any undue exposure. She did the best she could to disguise her cleavage, then sighed. It probably didn’t matter. As a private investigator’s wife, Mrs. Sam Zachary had no doubt seen her share of weirdos and woebegone people. Laura was feeling a bit of both when she reached the bottom of the stairs and turned left, past the dining room, in order to search out the kitchen.

      Sam was standing at the sink, his back to the door while his wide shoulders almost blocked out the light from the blue gingham-curtained window. Gingham apron strings from a big floppy bow in the center of his back dangled over his decidedly iron buns. Sam Zachary in an apron! If there was a Mrs. Zachary, Laura thought, the woman definitely belonged in the matrimonial hall of fame.

      “Hey,” she said, stepping into the room.

      “Hey.” He turned sideways just enough to give her a glimpse of the ruffles on the apron’s bib. “You fell asleep.”

      “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t plan to.”

      “No problem. Are you hungry?”

      “Famished.”

      “Good,” he said. “You’re in charge of the salad.” He picked up a white plastic colander and held it out in her direction. “The garden’s out the back door to the left. There are tomatoes and onions and radishes, a couple of early peppers, and maybe even some endive left.”

      Laura grasped the colander, trying not to let her expression betray the fact that she hadn’t the vaguest idea what endive looked like. Especially on the hoof, so to speak. Jeez. Didn’t they have supermarkets around here?

      “Back in a jiffy,” she said as she pushed open the screen door and stepped outside where she inhaled a long draught of the clean country air ever-so-slightly tinged with roses. It was nice, she thought, not to breathe bus fumes and three-day-old garbage. She was going to enjoy this little vacation.

      The well-tended, rectangular garden was easy enough to find, even though her three-inch heels had an annoying tendency to sink into the ground. She pulled two red tomatoes from a tall vine, then bent forward and plucked a little clump of leaves from the dark soil.

      “What do you know? A radish!” she murmured, shaking off some of the dirt before plopping it into the plastic bowl and proceeding to pick several more of its mates. The onions weren’t all that difficult to identify, and she tugged up four of those. Then she straightened up and gave the rest of the garden the once-over, searching for the mysterious endive.

      Spying something green with curly leaves on the far side of the little plot, she made her way on tiptoe around a pinwheeling plastic sunflower and several wire cages. Then—“Oh, please, please, don’t let this be anything poisonous.”—she reached down to pluck a leaf just as something sprang up into her face.

      She jerked upright. The thing, the horrible thing, was in her hair, so she batted at it, only to have the creature take a flying leap down the front of her dress.

      Then Laura did what any normal, self-respecting city girl would do. She screamed bloody murder.

      Sam dropped the potato peeler in the sink, picked up the 12-gauge shotgun behind the back door, and was out in the backyard in mere seconds expecting to find his client fighting for her very life with a bruiser named Artie. Instead she was hopping around the back of the garden, flapping the front of her dress, screaming “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

      He put the gun down in the grass and headed toward the garden, trying to wipe off the grin that he knew would only irritate her.

      “Get it off me,” she shrieked as he neared.

      “Hold still.”

      Apparently she couldn’t, so he grasped her shoulders, turning her toward him. “Will you hold still? It’s probably just a grasshopper. It’s not going to hurt you.”

      “Get. It. Off.” Her eyes squinched closed in her already squinched face.

      “Okay. Okay.”

      He looked at her hair and scanned the blue velvet on her shoulders and neckline. “I don’t see anything. It must’ve taken off.”

      “It’s down my dress,” she said.

      “Down…” Sam’s gaze dropped to the pale skin bordered by a hint of black lace. “I can’t…”

      “Get it,” she shrieked.

      “Hold still.”

      He closed his own eyes a second, letting out a kind of heaven-help-me sigh, then eased his fingers into the front of the dress, down into black lace and blue velvet and warm, firm flesh. Lucky

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