Bluer Than Velvet. Mary Mcbride

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      For a moment after that everything was absolutely quiet. Jerome sprawled on his back, motionless, three feet from his empty shoes. Swat knelt, his knees sunk deep in tar bubbles, his knife nowhere in sight, and blood from his broken nose pouring between his fingers.

      Sam stood there for a moment, silently looking from boy to boy, flexing both hands, before he muttered a curse and turned toward Laura. To her amazement, he wasn’t even breathing hard, and still looked cool and collected, as if he’d merely swatted a pair of pesky houseflies rather than putting two of the Devil’s Own completely out of commission.

      Then, suddenly, his gaze flicked beyond her toward the parking garage. His expression darkened perceptibly.

      Oh, God! What now? The rest of the Devil’s Own? Laura wondered, looking frantically in the same direction only to see that the big silver Cadillac and the little red Toyota they’d been watching so diligently all night were nowhere in sight. The elderly Lothario and his young tootsie had apparently escaped unseen, not to mention unphotographed by that stalwart shamus, Zachary, S. U.

      “Great. That’s just great.” While Sam growled, he held out his hand for Laura’s and pulled her to her feet.

      It was only then, when she stood up, that she realized she was shaking, wobbling pitifully in her tarstained high heels. “Wh…what do we do now?” she asked.

      Sam had reached down for the blanket and was snapping it smartly into a small square. “Now,” he said, “we haul these two clowns down six flights of stairs and deliver them to the guys at the Fourth Precinct.”

      He handed her the folded blanket, and when she took it with her trembling hands, Sam didn’t let go immediately. “It’s okay,” he said softly, his eyes warm in the moonlight and steady on hers. “It’s all right now, Laura. It’s all over. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

      All she could do was work up a weak, wobbly smile. “Thanks.”

      Sam smiled. “Hey, you hired me to protect you, right? I’m just doing my job.” He angled his head toward the parking lot, then added glumly, “Well, one of them, anyway. It looks like we’re all through here, so after we get rid of these jerks, we’ll go get that tall, cold drink I promised you.”

      Laura managed a feeble, grateful nod. “C-could you make it Scotch? A d-double?”

      The Ten-Gallon Hat, on Highway Z, was a hole-in-the-wall that billed itself as a roadhouse. By day it looked more like a one-story cement block warehouse, but by night its miles of neon tubing made it look bigger and brighter and a lot more fun than any place else in the county. Sam had spent a lot of time here after Jenny’s accident, but he didn’t remember having any fun.

      It was two-fifteen in the morning but the band was still playing when Sam ushered Laura across a floor strewn with peanut shells and discarded beer caps to a small booth in the back, where he hoped her outfit wouldn’t attract too much attention. At least not the sort that would require further use of his bruised knuckles.

      Lynette, one of the two overworked waitresses in the place, took their order without her usual chitchat, but she still managed to give Sam a few meaningful looks and whisper, “It’s nice to see you with a date, hon.”

      “She’s not a date,” Sam responded gruffly.

      “Coulda fooled me,” Lynette whispered back before she disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor.

      Then, after their drinks came, along with more meaningful looks, they sat quietly awhile. Laura played with the swizzle stick in her double Scotch and water, while Sam rolled his cold beer bottle across the back of one hand and then the other, trying not to wince.

      It had been the first time in his dubious career as a private investigator that he’d had to use his fists. Part of him was glad to know he hadn’t lost much speed, but the rest of him—his aching knuckles, mostly—was protesting vehemently.

      “Thank you, Sam.” Laura’s voice floated over the music and across the scarred tabletop. “For defending me.”

      “No big deal. I told you. It’s what you’re paying me for.” He took a long pull from the beer bottle. “Anyway, it was pretty stupid of me to take you to that part of town and put you in harm’s way like that. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Probably just too used to working alone.”

      Too used to being alone, he added to himself.

      “Well, I don’t suppose these clothes helped any, either.” Her gaze fluttered downward for a moment. “I can only guess what kind of babe good old Jerome and Swat thought they’d discovered up there on the roof.” She gave a tiny shrug then. “Will they go to jail?”

      “If I press charges,” Sam said.

      Her eyes widened. “If?”

      “I’m going to assume they learned a pretty good lesson tonight.”

      “Sure.” Laura snorted. “They probably learned that they ought to use guns next time instead of knives.” She sipped her drink, then said, “And speaking of learning, where did you learn to throw a punch like that?”

      “I did some boxing in college, then later in the Marine Corps.”

      “I’m impressed.”

      “Don’t be,” he told her. “I wasn’t all that good.” He touched a finger to his nose, where an unexpected left hook had left a small, but permanent detour in the cartilage. “This used to be a lot straighter.”

      Even though she’d barely made a dent in her Scotch, her smile already had a slightly inebriated tilt to it. It went well with the blue velvet dress, Sam decided. She went well with the blue velvet dress.

      “I have a confession to make, Zachary S. U.” she said as she traced the rim of her glass with a fingertip.

      “What’s that?”

      “I thought I had made a big mistake about hiring you. I was even thinking, earlier tonight, about asking you for a refund, and hiring somebody different. Somebody, um, well…better.”

      He raised an eyebrow. “And?”

      “I know now I didn’t make a mistake.” She leaned her head back against the booth’s battered wooden frame, then let out a long sigh as she closed her eyes. “I feel safe with you.”

      She wouldn’t have, Sam thought, if she knew the direction in which his mind was tending while his gaze roamed unhindered over her relaxed face and figure. About all that separated him from Jerome and Swat right that moment was a willingness to obey the law. That and the fact that they were in a public place. Otherwise…

      Otherwise what, for God’s sake?

      He jerked upright and squared his shoulders, then downed the last of his beer and put the bottle down with a solid thump, loud enough to cause Laura’s eyes to pop open.

      “It’s time to go,” he said, already sliding out of the booth. “Come on.”

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