Stalking Death Read Free

He dropped a hand on my thigh, worked its way up until it nestled against my body, and made a deep sound in his chest, somewhere between hunger and contentment.
    Even as I soaped his broad chest, smiling with anticipation, another part of my mind was already racing ahead, working on the problem at St. Matthews.

Chapter 2

    Andre lay on the bed like a male odalisque, artfully draped with a bit of sheet, watching me get ready to leave. He was reluctant to let me go. He didn't say anything, he wouldn't, it was just that by now we knew each other like the punchlines of old jokes. A word, a phrase, even a look could be shorthand for whole speeches. Sometimes, keying in to his moods was as simple as listening to him breathe.
    "Don't try to drive back tonight if you're tired," he said. "Find a motel." This from the man who would drive all night to be by my side if I needed him.
    "I'll try to make it quick. You know I will."
    "You're driving to New Hampshire to give this man a quickie?"
    "Andre..."
    "Yes, dear?" he said innocently.
    I threw his clothes at him. "Get dressed, will you. I can't stand the temptation."
    "I've married a woman who can't handle temptation?"
    "Where you're concerned, you're damned right you have. It would be easier if you were fat or ugly. Or dressed." I grabbed a fistful of underwear and shoved it in the suitcase. My hands hurt. I wondered if there was a job-related injury called trigger-blister, if you could get carpal tunnel from steadying a firearm. I'm a big, strong woman but Macho Man had chosen a cannon for today's exercise instead of some sweet, ladylike Barbie-pink Smith & Wesson.
    "Black lace underwear to sort out a confused headmaster?" he said.
    "Honey, darling, sweetie-pie," I said, sticking out my chest, "a bra this big in hot pink looks like a pair of beach umbrellas. And white is boring."
    He leaned back against the pillow, hands behind his head, showing off his arm muscles, his chest muscles, his rock-hard abs. "I like big girls out of their underwear."
    "Not out on the public street you don't. Not behind the wheel."
    "Good point," he agreed, reaching for his tee-shirt. "At least, not when they're you. Other girls?" He shrugged. "When I was a highway trooper, you wouldn't believe the things I'd see. Walk up to a car to check some girl's license and registration and she'd have her skirt up to here and her blouse unbuttoned down to there." He demonstrated with suggestive motions of the sheet. "I'd just lower my eyes and look away."
    "Oh, right."
    The phone rang. "It's your mother," he said, checking his watch.
    She was calling to complain that we still hadn't sent her wedding pictures, and I wasn't in the mood for it. I had to get on the road. "Tell her I'm not here."
    He picked up the phone. "Hi, mom."
    I could tell he was getting an earful. Didn't I understand that decent people didn't work on Sunday. They played golf or visited their mothers. Dusted the dracena or taught manners to their almost perfect children. But I was not letting her upset me.
    Andre murmured some soothing sounds and put down the phone. "Brace yourself," he said. "She wants to know if we have any good news for her."
    She, with her own history of miscarriages, shouldn't be hinting about pregnancy. I was getting a headache. She sends them, telepathically, to punish me for being such a rotten daughter. Even now, she was marching into my father's office in high dudgeon to tell my father, for the zillionth time, what an impossible girl I was. At thirty-one, I'm old enough to stop letting her give me headaches. Some of us are slow learners.
    I grabbed my toiletries bag, shoved it in and started zipping my suitcase. "Don't forget to pack a sweater," Andre said. "Warm socks. And your umbrella."
    I made my hand into a gun, and pointed it at his heart. "Don't start."
    "Can't help myself," he said. "You're too much fun to tease. And admit it. You do sometimes need looking after."
    "And you're just the man to do it."
    "You bet your