Red Blooded Murder. Laura Caldwell

practically gotten me killed, and I vowed never to take another job with him, but I needed the cash in a fierce way. With luck, he could get me something that could minimally bridge the cavernous salary gap between my profitable days of yesteryear and my intriguing, but nonetheless impoverished, future in TV.

      I tried to catch Jane’s eye to thank her for that opportunity. Despite the miserable salary she’d told me I’d be making, I was thrilled in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. There was nothing like a wedge of opportunity to make the whole sky open up.

      But Jane was leaning in close to the writer. His gray hair looked whiter than it really was because of the smooth tan of his skin. His brown eyes were decorated with lashes longer than normally seen on a man. He had one of those overly handsome indents in the center of his chin, but that, combined with the gray hair, somehow gave him the look of an intellectual. The other guy had disappeared. Neither Jane nor the writer seemed to care. They were completely intent on their conversation. And clearly flirting.

      Right then, Jane unbuttoned her suit coat and slipped it off. It seemed that all the men in the bar paused to look at her at that moment. The black blouse she wore underneath was held by only a thin velvet band around her neck. The fabric was gauzy and fell in soft folds around her breasts. Jane seemed too entranced by her conversation with the writer to notice the attention, but then she glanced up and swept the room with her eyes, drinking in all those gazes. She looked at me, and she winked.

      I laughed, tossing my head back. It was as if I could feel the laughter burbling up inside me, and by releasing it I was letting go of all the tension of the last six months—all the deep, troubled talks with Sam about why he hadn’t trusted me to tell me what he’d done, why he’d taken off from the city, leaving me blinking like a newborn, unattached and unsure.

      When I looked back at Jane, she and the writer were talking low, staring at each other’s mouths.

      As I watched them, Theo bent toward me and kissed my neck. Just like that.

      Instead of pulling back and saying, Hey, excuse me, what are you doing? I tilted my head to let him do it again. His tongue flicked gently against my skin. I let my head fall back farther. It didn’t occur to me to care that a strange man (a child, really) was kissing me in public. Nothing mattered but that moment. I turned my head to him and met his mouth with mine. I expected rough; I expected insistent; I expected demanding. But Theo was nothing like that. He kissed patiently, like someone with lots of time to get where he wants, and very sure he’s going to get there.

      My cell phone vibrated in my purse, but I ignored it. I shifted my body in the booth, touched Theo’s silky hair. It fell on my cheeks as he leaned over me.

      A minute later, the phone vibrated again. Our bodies were so close by that time, the sensation traveled from me to him.

      “Want to get that?” he said into my mouth.

      “No.”

      His tongue flicked against my lips and he put his arms around me, scooping me, as if I were a small and tiny creature, even closer into him.

      Once again, that phone.

      “Hold on,” I mumbled. I extricated myself and opened my bag. Sam, cell, the display read. I clicked Ignore, then looked at the caller ID list. He’d called three times.

      Despite the fact that Sam and I were just dating now and it was legal for me to be kissing a total stranger, a little guilt sparked inside me. Then paranoia hit. Was Sam here? Had he seen me somehow? Was that why he was calling?

      I swiveled my head around.

      “What’s up?” Theo asked.

      The place was packed now—lots of guys with gelled hair, lots of women in dresses and stiltlike sandals. No Sam. “Nothing,” I said.

      “You sure?”

      “I’m sure.” I stuck the phone in my purse, annoyed that everything in my world had been focused on Sam lately. I wanted tonight to be about fun, about celebrating a new job (and maybe another one tomorrow when I met with Mayburn). I looked at Theo’s mouth—deeply curved at the top, sloped low at the bottom, wide and yet masculine. I licked my lips, glanced up into his eyes. They were on my mouth. I leaned forward and bit his bottom lip. He pulled me back into him, and soon we were making out once more.

      The phone buzzed again. And again. And again.

      I groaned, pulled away and yanked the phone from my purse. Sam, cell. I felt a pang of panic. What if it was an emergency? “Hello?”

      “Hey, Red Hot.” Sam said, his nickname for me. The sound of it softened me, made everything disappear—the bar, Theo, the bottles, the people. They all vanished as if pulled into a hole, deep and black.

      “Hey,” I said.

      “Where are you?”

      It all filled back in then—the booth, the crowd. Suddenly the music’s bass seemed to pump louder, harder. “Some place on Damen.”

      “Who are you with?”

      “Jane. You know, Jane Augustine?”

      I looked over to the end of the booth, but Jane was gone. Probably in the bathroom.

      From behind, I felt my hair being lifted up, then replaced with a mouth, wet and questioning on my nape. I almost moaned.

      “Come over,” Sam said.

      “I can’t.”

      “Why?”

      “It’s late.”

      “Exactly, so come over.” A pause. “I miss you.”

      Theo was suckling the skin on the back of my neck now. I thought to warn him that I was a redhead, and redheads acquired hickeys very, very easily, but I couldn’t exactly say anything while I was on the phone with Sam, and the fact was I didn’t want Theo to stop. Not even a little bit.

      For a moment, I was suspended there, hearing Sam say sweet things—how he missed me, how he loved me. And at the same time, I was feeling those persistent lips on my neck, sucking something of me into the room, some part of me that had been veiled until now—a part that enjoyed a dark lounge in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, a part whose whole body responded to the boy with long hair and tattoos, a part that reveled in the off-kilter and the fresh and the surreal.

      “Iz?” Sam said. He’d stopped talking, I realized, and I hadn’t said anything.

      “Yeah, sorry, I’m here.”

      “Come over.”

      I was torn in two then. One part leaned toward my old life, toward Sam, the other pushed back into Theo, thrilled with the new. The truth was, the new was a stronger pull, if only because I’d been living in the past for so long and I was tiring of it. Sam and I spent hours and hours trying to piece together what had happened between us. Once a week, we talked to a therapist about our “communication patterns.” Now I wanted, just for a moment, levity and life, fun and frolic.

      “Sam, I told you earlier that we couldn’t get together. I told you I had plans.”

      Theo’s arms slid around my waist. He whispered in my free ear, “Get off the phone.”

      “Sam, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

      “Don’t bother.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “I’m sorry, but I’m sick of this, Iz.”

      “So am I!” Exasperation crept in, messing with my levity.

      “I know I caused you a lot of pain. But it’s in the past, and at this point, it’s your hang-up.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “I’ve been talking, and I’ve been explaining, and I’ve been telling you how much I adore you, but you just won’t let it go.”

      “Are