The Newlyweds (9 page)

Hell, he couldn't wait for tomorrow night.

A
lthough they did hear a few potentially helpful things while mingling with the Children's Connection contingent at the symphony the following night, the main thing Sam learned was that he'd been right without even realizing it—he didn't like Antonin Dvorak the composer any more than he'd liked Bernie Dvorak the schmuck. But, as had been the case in third grade, he hadn't been allowed to change his seat tonight, either. Of course, his seat at the symphony was considerably better than his seat in Mrs. Doolittle's class had been. Because back then, his third-grade crush, Melissa Gordon, had sat clear on the other side of the room from him. But tonight, Bridget Logan sat right at his side, in the privacy of the elder Logans' box at the symphony.

Not that he had a crush on Bridget Logan, he was quick to remind himself. He was just a little preoccu
pied by her tonight, that was all. But, hell, how could he not be preoccupied by her when she was wearing a dress like
that?
He still wasn't sure what was keeping the black strapless number aloft, since it completely exposed her shoulders and a good portion of her back. Especially with her auburn hair swept up in that fancy 'do. And what shoulders. He hadn't been able to help noticing them as he'd contemplated the dilemma of the gravitational pull on her attire. What a back. He hadn't been able to help noticing that, either.

Especially after he, at one point, in an effort to help her steer her way through the crowd, inadvertently opened his hand over the small of her back, only to discover too late that the gesture left his bare flesh pressing against hers. She'd jerked forward upon the contact, making him realize she must have felt the same jolt of heat he had. Either that, or his hands were a lot colder than he realized. After that, he'd been careful to keep his hands to himself. His fingers twitched every time he recalled the episode, though. And he'd recalled the episode whenever his mind had strayed from the symphony performance. Which was often.

Like, for instance, now.

He closed his eyes in an effort to banish the skin-on-skin memory, but that only brought it into sharper focus. So he opened his eyes again, but that left him gazing at a stage full of black-clad musicians who cared a lot more about the music they were playing than he did. So Sam let his gaze wander along with his mind. Unfortunately, with the lights low, he could see little in the cavernous auditorium. Until his gaze roved to his right, where Bridget sat in her black dress and naked shoulders, her only adornment a simple pearl choker encircling her throat.

And then, out of nowhere, a very vivid, very graphic scene exploded in Sam's brain, one that featured Bridget Logan wearing that pearl choker and nothing else. Unless you counted the way Sam's naked body was wrapped around hers, in which case she was fully dressed. Because in his vision, his body pressed into hers from head to toe…and then some.

And, good God, where had that indecent image come from? he asked himself as he snatched his gaze away from her and focused on the darkness again. Man, show him a little flesh, and suddenly he was ready to make a meal out of the woman who owned it. He'd obviously gone way too long without satisfying his baser instincts if he was thinking about Bridget Logan in such a way. Hell, just how long had it been, anyway, since he last…?

His eyes widened when he tallied the number of months. Oh, surely not, he thought. No man could go
that
long without a sexual encounter of some kind. But another quick calculation only confirmed the number. Jeez, no wonder he was having these thoughts. He had to start thinking about something other than work. Like going out immediately and getting—

“I love this part,” Bridget said then, interrupting his thoughts, not so much because she spoke, but because she leaned close to him to murmur the words softly into his ear so that no one else would be disturbed by them.

But Sam sure was disturbed. When she leaned over the way she did just then, he was surrounded by the scent of her, something soft and sweet and seductive, and the whispered words were made even more poignant as a result. Also made poignant was the way her bare shoulder brushed against his upper arm. Even
through the double layers of his suit jacket and dress shirt, he fancied he could feel the heat radiating from her skin and seeping into his own. And then, just like that, those graphic images of the two of them naked and wrapped around each other kicked in again, and Sam was once more overcome by the need to go out immediately and get—

“The way the music swells here is so thrilling,” Bridget whispered, pressing her body even closer into his.

This time Sam couldn't help glancing over at her. And when he did, his gaze fell to the creamy shoulder pressing against him, then lower still, to the curve of her breast where it bloomed from the front of her dress. It rose higher as he watched her, because she sighed heavily at something, the soft, pale flesh pressing tighter against the black fabric of her dress. And suddenly, Sam felt his own flesh press tighter against the fabric of one of his own garments.

“The sheer magnitude of it is just staggering,” Bridget murmured, this time reaching across herself to curl her fingers over Sam's upper arm. She was wearing elbow-length, black satin gloves with her dress, and where Sam had initially thought them a bit excessive, even for formal attire, suddenly he considered them to be profoundly erotic. Especially when her fingers curled even tighter into his arm. And especially when she whispered excitedly, “It fills you so full, until you think you just can't take anymore, and then it just steals your breath away from you.”

Sam closed his eyes tight and wished she had phrased her musical critique a little differently than she had. Because words like
swells
and
thrilling
and
fills you so full
and
can't take anymore
—and, hell, all modesty aside,
even
magnitude
—sounded way too sexual in his current frame of mind, and they only served to remind him of just how much he needed to go out immediately and get—

“And then everything inside you begins to rush so deliciously,” she added, sounding a little short of breath.

Oh, it certainly does,
Sam agreed.

“Pulsing and thrashing.”

Yep. That, too.

“And then it explodes into a crescendo that leaves you feeling so exhausted and satisfied by the experience.”

Not to mention badly in need of a cigarette.

Gee, maybe classical music did have one or two things to recommend it, Sam thought as Bridget leaned even more eagerly into him. Maybe he should look into subscribing next season.

The impression was only heightened after the symphony and the conductor took their final bows and the lights in the auditorium went up, because then Sam could see Bridget clearly. And judging by the stain of pink on her cheeks and the bright shine in her eyes, he suspected she'd been…
moved
by the music in much the same way he had been. Maybe it had been a while since she'd enjoyed a sexual encounter of some kind, too, he thought then. In fact, maybe he wasn't the only one who was thinking about how he needed to go out immediately and get—

“—laid tonight,” he heard Bridget saying, bringing him back to the matter at hand. Sort of.

“Uh, what?” he asked, certain he must have misheard her, thanks to the din of the departing crowd below their box. And also thanks to his own wishful thinking.

She gave him a funny look, and he wondered if the bright auditorium lights revealed too much in his expres
sion, too. “I said, ‘I can't believe how beautifully they played tonight.'”

“Oh,” he said, realizing he had indeed misheard. Dammit. “Yeah. Yeah, they did. Play beautifully, I mean. Tonight, I mean.”

She sighed with much disappointment. “You weren't even listening, were you?”

He shook his head guiltily. “I guess I, um, sort of had my mind on something else.”

She eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, and for that moment, he feared she could see right through him, straight into his brain at the very thoughts he'd been having all evening about her naked shoulders and back and how great they'd be if they were paired with nothing but her black gloves and his own naked body.

Aloud, though, she only said, “The case?”

He nodded, even more guiltily. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, the case.” Because he had been thinking about the case. In a roundabout, naked shoulders, not-really sort of way.

She nodded, too, as if she understood, something he sincerely doubted. “I know. It's been on my mind tonight, too.”

Not the way it had been on his, he'd bet.

“But we're doing everything we can,” she reminded him.

Well, not quite
every
thing, he thought.

“In the meantime, we might as well try to enjoy ourselves.”

Oh, he had been.

“Mom and Dad have invited us to the house for a drink on our way home,” she added.

Which meant they wouldn't be enjoying themselves
the way he'd envisioned earlier. Ah, well. Couldn't have everything, he supposed.

“But I told them we'd probably just go on home,” she added. And for some reason, the way she said
home
made it sound, well, homey. And, strangely, the thought of returning to the big Tudor mansion that didn't belong to them actually kind of
felt
like going home to Sam.

“We can visit with your parents for a while, if you want,” he told her. “Sounds good to me.” And he was surprised to discover he was telling the truth. It did sound good. Anything that involved Bridget and her naked shoulders and black gloves sounded good. Hell, even without the naked shoulders and black gloves, it sounded good. Though, mind you, he liked the naked shoulders and black gloves part, too. Especially the naked shoulders. A lot.

“No, I'd rather go home,” Bridget told him.

And, of course, so would Sam. Anything to be alone with her. Not that he should be, he reminded himself. Not with all the naked thoughts he'd been having tonight.

“I'm kind of tired,” she added.

And he told himself he should be relieved. Because if Bridget was tired, it was a sure bet she'd be taking herself and her shoulders right to bed. Without Sam.

So why didn't he feel relieved at all?

They chatted with her parents as they waited for the crowd below to thin out some, and Sam discovered to his surprise that he liked Terrence and Leslie Logan. Leslie reminded him a lot of Bridget, in looks, if not in personality. Leslie was more outgoing than her daughter, more engaging. She was clearly more people-oriented than Bridget, and had honed her social skills to a fine point, though her sociability was clearly natu
ral and not manufactured. Terrence, too, was gregarious, though where his wife spoke more about their friends and local goings-on, he tended to focus more on business. It was from him that Bridget had gotten her no-nonsense approach to work, Sam could see.

When the crowd had dispersed, they all stood, and as Terrence Logan helped his wife into her evening jacket, Sam held Bridget's gold velvet wrap for her. The shawl didn't seem like it would be enough to keep her warm in the chilly April evening, but what did he know about fashion and practicality? And as he settled the shawl on her shoulders, he tried not to notice the puff of sweet perfume that greeted him. Though, truth be told, he couldn't help but notice it. It was more intoxicating even than a nightcap at her folks' house might be.

At the beginning of the evening, Sam had driven himself and Bridget the three blocks to the Logan estate and had left their borrowed Mercedes there, so that the foursome could drive to the symphony together in Terrence's car. So now Terrence drove them all home in his roomy black Jaguar, which left Sam and Bridget sharing the back seat, something Sam hadn't done since he was in high school. Back then, he hadn't minded taking the back seat, because it had offered its hormonally enthusiastic adolescent occupants the perfect opportunity to make out. As a grown man, however…

Oh, who was he kidding? Spending his evening rubbing elbows—and more—with Bridget in a dress that defied gravity left him feeling much the same way as he had back then. Hormonal and enthusiastic. Good thing her old man was sitting in the front seat instead of one of Sam's high-school buddies. Otherwise, he would have been putting the moves on her like nobody's
business. And remembering the way she'd looked after the lights came up, he halfway thought she wouldn't have discouraged him.

And, man, this case was getting weird.

Somehow, Sam managed to keep his hands to himself during the drive home, and after saying their farewells to the elder Logans, he and Bridget drove the short distance home…or, rather, back to the house that belonged to someone else where they happened to be cohabiting for their job and felt in no way comfortable.

And they spoke scarcely a word to each other the entire way.

The tension between them was back. Somehow, though, he knew it was there for a different reason this time. At least it was for him. He could only take so much of Bridget in a strapless gown before he started to notice things about her. Like how great she looked in a strapless gown. And like how much he wanted to see the rest of her out of the strapless gown.

Damn, he hoped this plan of hers worked, and that they flushed out their perp soon. Because the last thing he could handle was an attraction to a woman he neither needed nor wanted, a woman who wouldn't even have been in town if she hadn't been assigned to duty here.

Sam wheeled the borrowed Mercedes into the big three-car garage, then flipped on the security system after they entered the house. He still couldn't believe there were people who lived this way every day. Who spent more money on their cars than some people spent on their homes, and who had to purchase sophisticated alarm systems to protect their expensive possessions. If anyone broke into Sam's house, the only thing they'd find
of any value would be his collection of beer bottle caps from around the world. Here in this house, though…