Scarlet Nights (29 page)

“And where is that?”

“On the ocean, baby. Private beaches. Shall we go see it?”

“I’d love to!”

Sara drove Joce’s car and followed Mike through downtown Fort Lauderdale on to a street called Sunrise. They passed fabulous-looking stores and restaurants, and finally came to a hill that she realized was actually a bridge that sometimes opened to let ships through. It was probably ordinary to the residents but fascinating to Sara. On the other side of the bridge, straight ahead, she could see the ocean. When they got near it, Mike took a left, and she followed him down a narrow street. On the right, the ocean side, were large houses hidden behind high walls and enormous trees. Brilliant-colored flowers cascaded over the walls. On the other side of the street were ordinary-looking motels and apartment buildings, and she assumed Mike would turn in to one of them.

But he didn’t. Just a few blocks down, he turned into a driveway with a high gate set in the walls. At the call box he pushed a button, the gate opened, and Sara followed him inside and parked beside his car. To the left were two other cars.

“Wow!” she said as she looked around. The house was large
and two stories—and it looked like something from Old World Hollywood.

“It’s a Mizner repro,” Mike said as though that explained everything and led the way to the front door.

The porch was tile floored, deep and long. “Do you know this house?”

“Quite well,” he said as he unlocked one of the big double front doors. “It used to belong to a money launderer who washed a lot of dirty cash. He got twenty to life, but since he was already eighty-one, I don’t think he’s going to live out his sentence.”

Mike opened the door to a spectacular room. There was an envelope with his name on it on a little table by the door, and while he read it, Sara looked around.

There was one huge room, with a big kitchen in the back to the left, and a living room with a few pieces of white-upholstered furniture. In front of her the whole wall of the house was glass doors that led out to a garden that looked like paradise. Opening a door, she stepped out. To the left, almost hidden behind trees and shrubs that Sara had only seen growing as houseplants, was a swimming pool and a barbecue area. Straight ahead was an opening with a few steps down that she assumed led to a private area of beach.

Mike came out and stood beside her, but he didn’t touch her.

“What did your letter say?” she asked.

“Just explaining things. The upstairs has been divided into two apartments. In the north one lives a motorcycle patrolman and his pregnant wife. The south one contains one of the most successful counterfeiters who ever lived. He’s out on parole now but we keep watch over him. Did you see the rest of the inside?”

She followed him back into the house. Past the kitchen with its granite countertops were two bedroom suites, one of them quite large.

“This used to be Benny the Launderer’s office,” Mike said.

“And you know that because …?”

“I’m the one who brought him down. For an old guy, he put up one hell of a fight.”

Sara walked to the bed. It had a mattress on it, but no sheets or pillows. She ran her hand over the big mahogany headboard, her back to Mike, and wondered if she’d ever see the place after this trip. For all she knew, when the case was finished, Mike would kiss her cheek good-bye. Two weeks later, she’d receive papers for a divorce.

She turned back to him, fully intending to ask about their future together, but when she saw Mike’s eyes, all thoughts left her mind.

She took a step toward him, and the next second he made a running leap as he grabbed her about the waist and they landed on the bed together. Laughing, Sara didn’t have time to catch her breath as Mike began to kiss her. She pushed against him, trying to get closer. They’d only been apart a day and a half, but she’d missed him terribly.

When her skirt came up and she felt Mike’s hand on her bare thigh, her passion was ignited. Seconds later, their clothes were in a heap on the floor and her hands were braced against the headboard. Mike’s thrusts were as deep and as frantic as she felt.

They came together and, as before, he put his mouth over hers to keep her from crying out.

When their shudders had calmed, he pulled her down onto the bed beside him, her head against his bare chest.

Sara lay snuggled against him, her hand stroking his magnificent chest, her fingers feeling the contours of his muscles.

Mike picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips.

“So some FBI agent was to get this apartment?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Mike was grinning.

“Does that mean the rent is affordable?”

“This house was confiscated and now belongs to the U.S. government, and I’m to act as jailer to ol’ Henry the counterfeiter. As I have to make sure he doesn’t create any more fake hundred-dollar bills, the rent is minimum. And as an apology for burning all my stuff, they gave me a check for fifteen grand. Want to help me buy some essentials?”

“Great!” she said. “Sheets, pillowcases, food. Is there any cookware?”

“I’ll go see,” he said and headed toward the kitchen.

Sara had the enormous pleasure of watching him walk out of the room nude, and when he returned, the sight of the naked front of him made her slide down on the bed.

“Every kitchen cabinet and drawer is empty,” he said as he went into the bathroom. “And if you don’t stop looking at me like that the stores will be closed by the time we get out of here.”

“Really?” she said.

He stuck his head around the door. “Last one in the shower has to cook dinner.”

Sara was off the bed in a flash, and she slid under his arm as she got into the shower first.

“You cheated,” he said as he got in after her and pulled the glass door shut.

“It’s the influence of this house. There must be some leftover evil lurking about.”

He turned on the water, his arm about her, as they waited for it to warm up. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the blood I shed in here took care of that.” When she looked at him in question, he pointed to a scar on his shoulder. “I got shot on this case.”

Sara kissed the place. “You poor baby. I’m so sorry.”

He moved them under the warm water. “Actually, it was this
wound.” He touched a place lower on his side, and Sara bent to kiss that.

He said, “I think—”

“Let me guess. You were wounded even lower,” Sara said as she went to her knees.

“Any injuries here?” she asked.

But Mike didn’t say anything.

It was nearly an hour before they got out of the house, and Mike drove them directly to a Best Buy.

“I thought you wanted essentials.”

“Music is necessary to life,” he said so seriously that Sara laughed.

They bought what Mike said were the most important things a house needed. She stood back as he chose the components of a stereo, but together they picked out a flat-screen TV that was much too big.

As Mike paid for it all, it was on the tip of her tongue to ask if she was going to be watching and listening with him, but she didn’t.

In the CD department they separated. She liked what she considered to be “modern” music but what Mike called “soulless rubbish.” He went to Andrea Bocelli. To Sara’s amazement, he was an opera buff. But when their hands met as they reached for an Eric Clapton CD, they laughed together.

“Classic,” he said, and she agreed.

To reach the next store, Mike whipped across a couple of expressways, got off what he called “the turnpike,” and they ended up in a divine shopping center with a huge Barnes & Noble. Like a piece of iron drawn by a magnet, Sara started for it, but Mike caught her arm. Instead, he pulled her into a Sur la Table.

Sara’d seen the catalogs but never one of their stores. For a moment she just stared at the shelves full of beautiful cookware. Mike
lifted her hands, put a basket in them, and said, “Think pie making.” When she came out of her trance, he directed her toward the back, where she filled her basket three times. An obliging saleswoman took everything to the counter.

They packed the trunk of Mike’s car, then went to a restaurant called Brio for dinner.

“You still owe me a home-cooked meal,” Sara said, “because I made it into the shower first.”

“For a shower like that, I owe you a thousand meals. Here, taste this.” He held out a forkful of sea bass marinated in lime juice.

After dinner they went to a Bed Bath & Beyond.

“No flowers and no pink,” Mike decreed as soon as they walked through the door.

“And no brown plaid. Or racing cars or men kicking each other.”

“Agreed,” he said, and they set off.

They settled on off-white sheets and had fun putting their heads on the pillows and trying them out. But when they started kissing, they almost fell to the floor. If it hadn’t been for a curious little boy rounding the corner, they might not have stopped.

Laughing, they took their two big carts to the checkout. They had to stuff the backseat with the linens, as the trunk was full.

“No room for groceries,” Sara said. “And there’s nothing for breakfast.”

“That’s all right. I never eat before I work out.”

“If you tell me where to go, I’ll get groceries while you’re at the gym, and we’ll have breakfast when you return.”

Mike gave her a look that she couldn’t read and said they’d go to the store together.

Turning away, Sara hid her smile. It seemed that he liked shopping with her.

When they got back to the apartment, they hauled in all
their purchases. Mike put the stereo together—the TV was being delivered—and Sara put the linens through the washer. They both opened the cookware bags and stored things away to the music of Eric Clapton. As they danced around each other, Sara was pleased to see what a good dancer he was.

“Learn undercover?” she asked.

He pulled her into a classic waltz pose and began leading her around the room in graceful moves. “Drug lord’s wife. Lessons.” As he held her in a dip, he said, “I helped her practice.”

He pulled Sara up and went into a tango to the sounds of “Cocaine.” “I persuaded her to testify against her husband.”

“All because you helped her dance?”

Mike turned them toward the other end of the room. “And because I accidently let her find her husband in bed with their kids’ two nannies.”

Sara laughed as he lifted her arm and spun her around.

When the song was over, he turned off the stereo. “I have to get up early. What do you say we go to bed?” The look he gave her made her knees weak.

“Uh, sheets,” she managed to say. “Dryer.”

If there were an Olympic event for speed of dressing a bed, they would have won. Mattress pad went on, then bottom sheet. Mike didn’t like the way Sara tucked in the corner of the top sheet, so he quickly redid it.

“Something else you learned undercover?” she asked.

“No. Hot little nurse.”

She threw a pillow at him. He dodged it, grabbed it midair, then tackled Sara on the bed.

When he started kissing her neck, she said, “It seems a shame to make a wet spot on our new linens.”

Mike picked her up and put her on the floor on the blue and
gold rug. “I happen to know,” he said in his deep voice, “that this rug cost eighty thousand dollars.”

“Really?”

“The rug importer wanted a favor.” Mike kept kissing. “And this was his gift to the launderer.”

“Twenty to life?” Sara put her head back, so he could get to all of her neck.

“No, just life.”

She pulled back to look at him and at Mike’s shrug she knew the man was dead. She wasn’t about to ask who killed him for fear Mike would say he had. “It’s a very nice rug.”

“Yes, quite pleasant,” he said as he moved on top of her. “And oh, so very useful.”

Afterward, as they lay together, Mike started laughing.

“What’s that about?” she asked as she slipped her nightgown on.

“I was just remembering that I told the captain I didn’t know how to please a ‘good girl.’ I had no idea that all of you want the same thing.”

“And I told my mother you were gay.”

Smiling, they fell asleep, entangled in each other’s arms.

In the morning, Sara was sound asleep when Mike threw back the cover. She didn’t stir.

“You have to get up,” he said.

Vaguely, she heard him, but she didn’t move.

“Sara, my dear, you’re going to the gym with me.”

She buried her head under the four pillows they’d bought.

“Up!”

She didn’t budge.

Mike put his hands on her waist and pulled her out of bed. When Sara made no effort to wake up, he hung her over his arm like a wet towel and carried her to the bathroom where he set her on the side of the tub.

He held up a plastic shopping bag. “These are for you. Put them on. You have ten minutes.”

“I don’t want—”

Mike left the bathroom.

“I hate exercise,” she muttered as she picked up the bag. It was full of workout clothes, including sneakers, all in her size.

Sara grimaced. It seemed that yesterday while she’d been happily enjoying their time together, Mike had been deviously, underhandedly, and sneakily planning to make her go to the gym with him.

When she left the bathroom, her hair was pulled back, and she was wearing dreadful black leggings and a blue tank top with a ghastly sports bra under it.

When Mike blinked a couple of times in appreciation of the shape of her, she was sure she had him. “Are you telling me that I have to go to a gym because you don’t like the way I look?”

“You look great today, but four years from now you’ll hit thirty, and things will start falling. Think of it as prevention.” He handed her a bottle filled with water and put his arm around her shoulders. “Look, if you hate it, tomorrow you can stay home and turn into mush. But today we’re going to the gym. And who knows? Maybe you’ll like it.”

Sara started to reply but then he opened the front door and she saw that it was still dark outside. She turned back toward the bedroom but he caught her. Chuckling, he got her to the car.

Sara was
not
laughing. “So when did you connive to buy all this?”