Blood Orchid

21

Holly had hardly gotten home when the phone rang.

“I’ve got some perfect steaks and a couple of bottles of sensational red wine,” a male voice said. “You want to join me for dinner?”

“I don’t know who this is, but yes,” she replied.

Grant laughed.

“I’ll do almost anything for a good steak.”

“Really?”

“I saidalmost. ”

“Oh. Seven o’clock? We’ll catch the sunset.”

“I don’t know how to break this to you, but your house faces east, and in this part of the world the sun sets in the west.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Those words exhibit a good attitude. Remember them. See you at seven.” She hung up, fed Daisy, and took her for a walk, almost as far as Grant’s house. It was a good-looking contemporary of wood and stone, not very Florida-like. It suited him, at least from the outside. She walked slowly back to the house, thinking about the evening ahead, while Daisy frolicked in the dunes. By the time they were home, she had made her decision, at least tentatively.

Tentatively meant that, after showering, washing and drying her hair, and dressing fetchingly in short shorts and a low-cut T-shirt that showed a lot of belly, she put her diaphragm in her purse instead of in its final resting place. As an afterthought, she tossed in a condom, too. “Brazen,” she said aloud, checking the mirror for signs of wantonness. Then she walked back down the beach to his house.

She could see him through the sliding doors, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, barefoot, fixing something in the kitchen. She tiptoed up the stairs from the beach to the deck and rapped sharply on the glass, making him jump and drop a salad fork. He opened the door.

“An undercover agent must be alert at all times,” she said. “I could have snuck in, jerked down your shorts, and tattooed you before you even noticed.”

He flung an arm around her and kissed her lightly on the lips. “And what would you have tattooed on me?”

“KICK ME, I’M FBI,” she said, “in great big letters.”

“Thanks a lot, but you can jerk down my shorts anytime you like.”

“In your dreams.”

“Let me get you a drink, and I’ll start dreaming.”

She spied a cocktail shaker on the wet bar next to the kitchen. “I’ll get you one.” She found a bottle of vodka and some Rose’s sweetened lime juice, filled the shaker with ice, added six jiggers of vodka and two of lime juice. She put ice cubes in two martini glasses and swirled them around, then shook the shaker until her hands hurt from the cold. She dumped the ice from the now-frosted glasses and strained the pale, green liquid into them. “Tie that on,” she said, handing him one.

He tasted the drink. “Oh, God, can I have another?”

“Easy, kiddo, we don’t know yet whether you can handle that one.”

He took a gulp, half emptying the glass. “Let’s find out.”

“What are you fixing?” she asked.

“A Caesar salad,” he replied. “I do it the old-fashioned way, in a wooden bowl, with a fork.”

“What else do you do the old-fashioned way?”

“Almost everything, especially…”

“Not in a wooden bowl with a fork, I trust.”

“If that’s what rattles your chain.”

She pretended to think about that. “No bowl,” she said, “but maybe a fork, and I get to hold it.”

He handed her a fork, and without another word pulled her to him and kissed her.

She leaned into him, finding what she’d expected, and she was astonished at how quickly her blood rose. She was already wet.

He put his arms tightly around her, pulled her to him, then lifted her a couple of inches off the floor and started walking toward a big sofa in the living room.

Holly went along for the ride, snagging her purse from the bar as they passed it.

Grant dumped her gently onto the sofa and, still kissing her, shucked off his shirt and shorts, while Holly helped him with her clothes. They were both naked in seconds.

“You mind if we skip the foreplay?” he asked, running his tongue over her nipples.

She opened her purse and took out the condom. “Skip it faster,” she said, stripping off the wrapper and sliding it onto him, in the process spilling the contents of her purse onto the floor.

He glanced down. “Do you always take a Walther PPK to bed?”

“Only when fucking an FBI man,” she said, guiding him into her.

The next ten minutes passed at fast-forward, with no subtleties or anything else except straight sex, enthusiastically conducted. He came seconds before she followed, and they were both noisy about it.

“My God,” he said, rolling over on his back next to her. “I wasn’t expecting that so soon.”

“I was,” she said. “Try to keep up, will you?”

“I thought I did keep it up.”

“You certainly did, Junior G-Man. Now I’m hungry.”

They visited the powder room together, sponging each other clean and dry, then headed for the kitchen, still naked. Grant turned on the built-in restaurant-style grill and turned to the salad. “I need my fork back,” he said.

“Dammit,” she said, handing it to him, “I forgot to use the fork.”

“Don’t worry about it, I have enough holes in me already.” He separated a couple of egg yolks and dumped them into the wooden bowl.

She fingered a scar on his back. “This must have been one of them.”

“Key West,” he replied. “I wasn’t running fast enough. Fortunately, I had a partner in the bushes with a sniper’s rifle.”

“He was a little late, wasn’t he?”

“Believe me, we had a serious discussion about that later.”

“Just like the FBI to be a tad late when it counts.”

“You won’t get an argument from me about that.” Using the fork, he mashed some anchovies, then whipped them into the egg yolks with some Dijon mustard and some chopped garlic. Then he added olive oil slowly, until he had a smooth dressing. He added torn Romaine leaves, tossed them well, and Holly sat down to a table already set with a bottle of the Far Niente Cabernet waiting, breathing. Grant tossed the steaks onto the grill before sitting down.

“When was the last time you had dinner naked?” he asked, shoveling salad into his mouth.

She rolled her eyes in thought. “Well, let’s see; that would have been… never.”

“No kidding? Well, you certainly do it well, for a first-timer.”

“Funny, that’s what my first lover said.”

“What else did he say?”

“Modesty prevents me from telling you.”

“That’s what I like, a modest girl,” he said, reaching across the table and tweaking a nipple.

“Careful, buddy, or we’ll never get to the steak. You better marshal your resources for a while.”

“I’m marshaling, I’m marshaling,” he said, serving the steaks.

When they had finished their steaks and a bottle and a half of wine, she took a deep breath and sighed. “That was wonderful,” she said. “Is there a bed in this house?”

“You betcha.”

“Don’t tell me, show me.”

And he did.