Scarlet Nights

  Sara didn’t say anything, but she knew he’d seen the obscure movie. He might not have TV but, somewhere, he had a DVD player. Wonder if he’s seen Mad Men? she thought. And he’d probably love Dexter.

  “We need to go,” Mike said as he stood up and looked down at Lang. “Remember to tell me everything.” He put his hand on Sara’s lower back and escorted her to the door. Lang went out with them, but he stopped by the dogs. Sara didn’t think she was supposed to see that Mike slipped Mr. Lang some folded hundred-dollar bills, about five of them, and again told him to get rid of the traps.

  After Mike opened the car door for Sara, he went to his trunk. It had half a dozen fifty-pound bags of dog food inside. “I’d put them away for you,” he called to Lang, “but not until the traps are gone. Do it today.”

  Sara watched Mr. Lang nod, then Mike pulled out of the drive. “You weren’t afraid of visiting him at all, were you?”

  “Why would I be afraid?”

  She stared at his profile until he smiled.

  “Sara, my dear, I’ve seen how you love to take care of people, so I let you take care of me.”

  For a moment, she couldn’t say anything. When Mike had been saying he didn’t want to visit Mr. Lang, he had been completely convincing—but he’d been lying. She suddenly saw how he’d been able to work undercover for so many years. “Did you find out what you need to know?”

  “Not a word of it, but he made me think about some things. From the time Vandlo was a kid, he was trained in reading people’s faces. All he had to do was see the way your eyes got dreamy whenever that rotting old farm was mentioned and of course he’d start saying he was going to buy it for you. You know, Sara, I’m beginning to think that it might be true that Vandlo wanted that old farm just to please you.”

  “No,” she said softly. “That would imply that he loved me, but he never came close.”

  “Really stupid man.” Mike reached over to take her hand.

  This time, she knew he was lying—and distracting her from Mr. Lang. He’d found out a lot but he didn’t want to tell her what it was.

  “So how about we get take-out sandwiches, go home, and eat them off each other’s bellies before we go to the fair?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better plan,” Sara said, smiling.

  But on the drive home, his cell rang, he said a few words, then hung up. “Stefan Vandlo has been released.”

  24

  BY THE TIME they’d bought sandwiches, driven back to Edilean Manor, and Mike had made a pitcher of green tea—he refused to drink carbonated beverages—their minds were on things other than bellies. All Sara could think was, This is it. Now it was just a matter of time before the “action” would start. Over the next few days she and Mike would have little time to be alone. He’d told her that at least a dozen agents would be coming to Edilean for the fair. They’d all be undercover, so any couple or groups of flirting males and females could actually be well-armed law enforcement people.

  The sober news had taken away their original eating plan. They both had the same sandwiches: lean meat and lots of vegetables. Sara’d given up her tuna salad that was drowning in mayonnaise.

  “I think I should go over some things with you,” Mike said from across the table. He reiterated that at the fair they would act like a normal couple, lots of hand holding, teasing, laughing together. The idea was to shock the townspeople and set them to talking. It was to be a buildup to when Stefan Vandlo arrived and Sara told him—and the town—that she and Mike were married.

  When he saw that what he was saying was scaring Sara, he tried to entertain her with a story from the dossiers he’d read. It was said that when Mitzi’s husband found out that he’d been tricked into marrying an ugly woman, he couldn’t consummate the marriage. But his young wife still got pregnant, and her old husband was too proud to say that he’d never touched the girl. When the boy was born and said to resemble a handsome young man who was a master pickpocket, no one mentioned it, but six days after the baby’s birth, the young man was found dead. It was years later, when the husband said he was leaving everything to his stupid and cruel son with his first wife, that Mitzi’s husband was found at the bottom of a staircase with holes smashed into his head.

  When Mike finished the story, he again talked of using the games at the fair to draw attention to himself—and that made Sara think about what would happen when it was all over.

  When they take Greg and his mother away in handcuffs, Mike will leave with them and I’ll never see him again, she thought.

  She did her best to calm down. It wasn’t as though he’d lied to her. From the first he’d told her he was marrying her for the case. He’d even told her that after it was done they could divorce. And since the wedding, he certainly hadn’t said he loved her. And he hadn’t—

  “Sara?”

  “Sorry, my mind was wandering.”

  “You want some more tea?”

  She held up her empty glass, and he filled it. “Last time” kept going through her head. A few days from now it would be like they’d never met. Their whirlwind relationship would be finished and they’d go back to the way they had been. She had a vision of herself alone in her little apartment, a hundred dresses on her lap. Maybe she’d take some refresher courses and try to get a job as a conservationist in Williamsburg.

  She looked across the table at Mike. When they’d come in, he’d removed his clean white shirt and his shoes and socks. Now all he had on was his perfectly pressed black trousers and the belt with the little gold buckle. She’d ironed his trousers that morning and she’d chosen that belt when they were in Fort Lauderdale. His whiskers were very black and she knew he hadn’t shaved before they went to see Mr. Lang because he’d been too busy making love to her. As for Sara, she’d removed her dress and was wearing her favorite blue teddy.

  She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t. He was telling her about the cameras they’d installed in the fortune-telling tent, but she could tell that he was worried about something. She hoped it was the case and not what she feared, that he was thinking about how to let her down easily when he told her she was just another victim that he’d had to rescue.

  “Can you remember all that?” Mike asked.

  She hadn’t been listening, but then she’d heard it all before. “Tell no one we’re married. That’s to be dropped on Greg when I see him.”

  “And?”

  “Be sure and get him into the open. To get the ultimate effect, I’m to shock him by telling him that just before our wedding I ran off with another man.”

  Mike raised an eyebrow at her sarcastic tone. “I hear his wife had a face-lift and she’s looking good.”

  “That’s nice,” Sara said as she cleared the table.

  “Your mother texted me that I’m to go to her house early tomorrow to get dressed.”

  Sara had her back to him as she stood at the kitchen sink. “In your kilt. Nearly all the men from Edilean will be wearing them, even my father and he hates dressing up. Luke will—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, she was crying. Instantly, Mike had her in his arms. She buried her face in the warm skin of his shoulder and the tears kept coming.

  Picking her up, he carried her into the bedroom, where he put her on the bed and stretched out beside her, his arms around her.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.

  He handed her a tissue and stroked her hair. “It’s all right to be frightened. I wish you didn’t have to do this, but we need to surprise Vandlo, and only you can do that. From the second you’ve told him that his plan has been foiled, we’ll tail him so close that he—”

  “It’s not that,” she said. She ran her hand across his bare chest, her fingers in the dark hair. Would they ever be together like this again? Who was going to make her go to the gym? Who was going to hold her when she cried? And make her laugh?

  “Then what is it?” Mike asked. “You can tell me.??
?

  But she couldn’t tell him. Her pride and her fear of yet another rejection wouldn’t allow her to tell him what was bothering her.

  They lay together in silence for a while. Sara knew they should get up and start getting ready for the fair. Mike would have to put on a kilt, and she knew that would cause a lot of laughter. And Sara had some long-skirted, medieval-looking dresses she wore, and of course Luke would have saved one of his wildflower circlets for her hair. She looked forward to it all, but right now she couldn’t bear to separate from Mike.

  Lifting her left hand up, he looked at her rings.

  Sara turned onto her back, her body pressed against his. She could feel the fabric of his trousers against her bare legs. Again “the last time” rang in her head.

  “They look good on you,” he said.

  “They’re the most beautiful rings in the world.”

  “Everything was such a rush when I chose the diamond ring that I wasn’t sure I was getting the right one.”

  “My mother didn’t help you?”

  “No. She stood by the computer and hovered over me like a bird of prey. I don’t think anyone’s ever made me as nervous as your mother does.”

  “Me either.”

  “When I said I wanted this ring, she kissed me on the cheek. I think maybe there were tears in her eyes.”

  “She knew I’d like it, that’s why. Kim makes some modern rings that I don’t care for.”

  “I saw those, but I couldn’t see you wearing one of them. Do the rings fit? Will you have trouble getting them off?”

  Sara’s fingers curled up and she put her hand under the small of her back. “I’m not removing them. Ever.”

  He turned to look at her. “You have to. If the people of Edilean see the rings before Stefan gets there, they’ll talk. Mitzi will hear, and she might call her son and warn him. As much as we want to, we can’t tap into those throwaway phones they use.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to figure out a way to keep my rings from showing because I am not removing them.” She said this in her fiercest voice, letting him know that no matter how much he tried, he wasn’t going to win.

  But Mike didn’t protest. Instead, he just lay there beside her, his arm under her shoulders.

  “I, uh … I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said at last.

  Here it comes, Sara thought, and her body went rigid.

  “As soon as this case is done, meaning that the Vandlos are taken away, I have to go back to Fort Lauderdale. I have three other cases pending, and I need to take care of them. The Vandlos aren’t really my problem. I was just asked to help out because I have a sister here and …” He trailed off.

  “And what?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I was pretty angry that they burned down my apartment, but it worked out well, didn’t it? That place the captain got me is nice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “A bit big though,” he said.

  “Quite large,” she answered.

  He was silent for a moment, and she almost didn’t breathe.

  “Sara,” he said at last, “I know your life is here in this town and all your friends and relatives are here, but—”

  “So are yours.”

  “My what?”

  “All your relatives are here. And you and Luke seem to be hitting it off. And I think you’ll like Ramsey.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but that isn’t what I meant. I can live anywhere. But you’ve only lived here in this little town, so leaving it might be too much for you.”

  Slowly, it was dawning on her what he was saying. “You think I couldn’t bear to get away from my mother who thinks it’s her duty to tell me how to live? That I can’t be away from snooping relatives who click their tongues at me because they thought the man I dated for four years ran off and left me? Get away from their pity because I was swept up by a man nobody can stand? Is that what you’re asking me?”

  She could feel his smile.

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I was asking. I know we don’t know each other very well, but we’ve hardly ever argued and we seem to agree on most things.”

  “Except for food and the right to lie down for three straight hours to watch TV without doing even one form of exercise. And—”

  When Mike laughed, Sara moved her hand to his flat, hard stomach. She could feel the ridges of muscle there.

  Moving onto his side, he propped his head on his hand. “But we do agree on the fundamentals.”

  “Such as that you think I should do exactly what you tell me to every minute of the day?” she asked innocently.

  “I was thinking of important things, like music.”

  “You like opera and I like—” She broke off because he kissed her, and her arms went around his neck.

  He pulled away to look at her. “You want to go back to Fort Lauderdale with me and see if we can make this marriage work?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that very much.”

  He kissed her again, but in a way he’d never kissed her before. From the first moment they’d come together, there’d been great passion between them. They’d had sex on every conceivable surface, and in every position that Sara’s flexible body and Mike’s muscle could come up with.

  But this kiss was different. There was something in it besides passion. There was a yearning, a longing for a great deal more than they’d given each other before. For all that Sara was surrounded by people who knew her, and for all of Mike’s frequent conquests, essentially, they were alone. They clung to each other.

  Mike moved back from the tender kiss. His body was half on top of hers and his hands smoothed her hair back as he looked at her face as though memorizing her features.

  Sara held her breath. Was he going to say those three little words that she so very much wanted to hear?

  “You know, Sara …”

  “Yes?” she whispered, her breath held in anticipation.

  “I hate those dishes you picked out.”

  “What?”

  He rolled off of her and onto his back. “Those dishes with the flowers on them, I can’t stand them.”

  She moved half on top of him. “Those dishes are Villeroy and Boch and they’re great.” She was kissing his neck.

  Mike unbuckled his trousers. “I don’t care what they are. I still don’t like them.”

  “You better get used to them because I’m going to register that pattern and everyone in Edilean will give us place settings.”

  He held her away for a moment. “We’ll get wedding gifts?”

  “Sure, of course. Everyone in town will—”

  “In this town? That’ll get us what? Four gifts?” He slid the straps of her teddy down her arms.

  “Very funny! Did you forget that the Fraziers are your relatives? I’ll get Mrs. Frazier to throw a reception for us at their house. They’ll invite the governor.” Mike’s mouth was on her breast. “And of course we’re both related to the McDowells, and they’re rich. I’ll get the Fraziers and the McDowells to compete as to who can give us the most.”

  Mike stopped kissing to look at her. “I had no idea you were so mercenary.”

  She gave an evil little laugh. “I want every person who’s said ‘poor Sara’ to pay!”

  “You are truly wicked,” he said, smiling.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, baby,” she said as her lips moved much lower on his body.

  Mike didn’t reply.

  An hour later, Mike said she’d kept him too busy to get his work done. And her mother had left him four text messages asking him where he was and saying he had to go to her house to get dressed.

  “Maybe I should show up like this,” he said as he headed toward the shower. He was naked.

  “You may think you’d scare my mother, but far from it. You’d end up being the one with the red face.”

  “Speaking of red body parts, I don’t really have to wear—”

  “There??
?s no way you’ll get out of putting on a kilt, so don’t even try. I’ll meet you at the fairgrounds in a little while. I’m going to go see Joce.”

  “Sure you don’t want to join me in the shower?”

  “You’re postponing the inevitable.” She wanted the time to dress properly and to think about her future—her new life.

  “You’re dying to tell your friend that you managed to tie a ball and chain around me, aren’t you?”

  “You’re free to run back to the life you had. Oh! Wait! You didn’t have a life.”

  Mike grinned. “Go. I’ll see you at the fair. I’ll be wearing a skirt. Half naked.”

  Laughing, Sara left the apartment.

  Joce’s eyes widened when she saw her friend. “Sara! What’s wrong with your neck? You look like you were burned.”

  She put her hand up to her throat. “It’s nothing.”

  “But that’s not ‘nothing.’ Did you show that rash to your father?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Ah,” Joce said slowly. “It’s whisker burn, isn’t it?”

  Sara didn’t answer.

  “How far does it extend?”

  Sara raised her eyebrows in a way that made Joce laugh. “You have to tell Tess.”

  Sara looked at her in disbelief. “Tell Mike’s sister that I’m having a great time in bed with her brother? I don’t think so. But …”

  “But what?” Joce asked.

  “Mike asked me to go to Fort Lauderdale to live with him. We’re to see if our marriage will work.” Sara held out her left hand to show her ring.

  “I’m telling Tess,” Joce said as she admired the three-diamond engagement ring. “She’ll be as glad for you as I am.” She picked up her phone. “We’ll have to tell Tess in a way that’ll make her laugh. Rams told Luke the hormones are getting to her and she’s crying a lot.”

  “Tess is crying?”

  “Yes. Wait until you’re—Okay, too soon for that, but we must tell her about you and Mike.”

  Sara typed, handed the phone to Joce, who read it and said, “Perfect.” She pushed Send.

  In Venice, Tess’s cell buzzed and she picked it up just before Rams made a flying leap for it.