Red Blooded Murder. Laura Caldwell

she single?”

      “Not really. She recently got back together with a guy named Wyatt.”

      “Well, imagine this is right before they got back together.”

      “Sure.” Maggie was perennially single, so it wasn’t hard to imagine.

      “So Maggie is flirting with one of this guy’s buddies, and you and this guy who has the hots for you, you’re just talking, and he buys you a drink. You’d accept that drink, wouldn’t you?”

      “Sure, and I’d buy him one, too. I’d probably buy for the whole group.”

      “Definitely.” Jane was talking faster now, her voice excited. “And you think this guy is cool. I mean, he’s definitely good-looking, and he’s super smart. He’s got this great job, doing … I don’t know … something that takes brains like running a hedge fund. You’re having an amazing conversation. Nothing wrong with that, right?”

      “No, there’s nothing wrong with talking to someone.” I took a couple sips of my tea. I was suddenly exhausted. The night with Theo hadn’t allowed more than three hours of sleep. Not that I was complaining.

      “You really have a great connection with this guy,” Jane continued. “You start to think about how attached you feel to him, just from your conversation, and you realize you haven’t felt that connected to Sam, not in the same way, for a while. Not that you don’t love Sam, but you don’t always feel in sync with him.”

      I blinked a few times. I knew what she was talking about. “But you can’t feel connected to anyone a hundred percent of the time, so of course you’re going to feel connected to other people sometimes. Other guys.”

      “Absolutely. So you’re feeling this connection, and it’s exhilarating. It’s literally making you feel more alive to have this conversation. The drinks are flowing, and your Maggie is gone for the moment, but you don’t care, because you feel safe with this guy. He’s married, you’re married. The bottom line is you just think he’s wonderful. You’re thinking that maybe you could introduce him to Sam and they could be friends, or maybe you could set him up with one of your other girlfriends. He’s that great of a guy.”

      “Okay, Jane, I got it. What’s your point?”

      “My point …” She scooted forward in her seat, her long torso stretching toward mine. Her black hair swung over her shoulders and hung in two gleaming sheets along the sides of her face.

      “You want to know my point, Izzy?” She leaned closer. She smelled warm, like a cinnamon apple. I could see a few delicate lines that cut through the puff of her bottom lip.

      Her voice was hypnotic; I was waiting to find out where she was taking me. “Yeah,” I said.

      “My point is …” She leaned even closer so that our faces were only an inch apart. “What if …” I could feel her soft breath near my mouth. “What if he moved toward you, just like this? What if you could feel the heat from his body and his mouth when he spoke to you? You know what I mean?”

      “Yeah.” I didn’t move. I felt as if I was holding my breath, waiting for the end of the story.

      “No one is around.” Jane was now speaking her words in my ear. “It’s loud and it’s buzzing in that bar, and the more you talk, it just seems like the two of you, no one else. You know what I mean?”

      “Yeah.” In my peripheral vision, I saw the front window of the coffee shop over Jane’s shoulder, but I wasn’t truly seeing. I was in South Beach at that bar.

      “So what if … what if right at that moment, he stopped talking …” Jane halted for a second, turned her head a fraction of an inch. Her mouth was near mine. “And what if he kissed you?”

      We stayed there, Jane’s lips close to mine, and for a second I wondered if she was going to kiss me, just to prove her point. And though I had never thought of kissing a woman before, it didn’t seem a terrible prospect. In fact …

      I let myself drift, far away from my mind, which had been so sure of what it wanted and how it would act only minutes before. I closed my eyes. I parted my lips for just a second.

      “See?” Jane said. “See? You would have done it!”

      My eyes bolted open. “No, I wouldn’t.”

      She sat back and slapped her knee. “Yes, you would. You would have kissed me.”

      “Bullshack,” I said, trying out one of my swear word replacements. Then to really make my point, “Bullshit.” I picked up my mug and drank a few gulps of tea.

      “Fine, then you would have kissed that guy in South Beach.”

      “No.” But the way she’d told the story, she might have been right. In a moment like that, I might have slipped. “If I did,” I said, “I would have felt awful. It would have been cheating to me.”

      “No, that’s not cheating. Kissing or making out, especially in a situation like that, is not cheating.”

      “It is.”

      She sighed. “You know how many of your friends who are in relationships do stuff like that?”

      “None that I know of.”

      “None that tell you.”

      I laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” But the truth was I felt like a farm girl led into town for the first time. Was she right? Was this one of those things that everyone believed except for me? Was I some innocent, as Jane said? Someone behind the times?

      “You won’t tell anyone about me … you know, about me being red-blooded, will you?” She smiled then dropped it.

      “No way. I’m a vault.”

      “Good. You’ll be the only one in the news business.” She glanced at her watch. “I should get going.”

      I felt as if I had missed some amorphous opportunity, one that would have allowed me to connect with Jane, and I regretted it. “Hey, Jane. I’m sorry.”

      She shook her head, silent. She picked her phone off the table, looked at it, then bent down and tossed it in her bag. She straightened up and smiled.

      “That’s your anchorwoman smile,” I said. “I’ve seen it.”

      She laughed, her own personal smile returning, one that was natural and made the sides of her eyes crease just a little. She reached across the table and lifted my hand, giving me a little squeeze. Her fingers were smooth but firm. “I’m glad we’re going to be working together.”

      “Me, too. Hey, Jane, don’t I need to do something this weekend, like rehearsals?”

      She shook her head. “Just the on-air people. But be ready for trial-by-fire on Monday.” She took a silver cigarette case out of her purse. Opening it, she pulled out some bills and put them on the table. “I’ve got to get out of here. Zac has had enough time to cool off. Time for damage control, and then I have to get to the station.”

      “Will you and Zac be okay?”

      She gave a hard, short laugh. “A few months ago, I would have said ‘yeah.’ Zac knows I’m red-blooded. And he still loves me.”

      “What’s happened over the last few months?”

      She gathered her wrap made of taupe-colored cashmere, her eyes downcast. “He’s been getting sick of it. I mean, who can blame him? It’s just that we had an understanding before, and now he’s not … Well, he’s not so understanding anymore.”

      Elegantly, Jane swung the wrap around her shoulders, then released her deep black hair, letting it fall around her like a shiny shawl. She stood. “I forgot to ask you—what happened with Theo last night?”

      I said nothing, and in that moment, Jane must have read my face.

      She