Page 42 of Just One Look

He looked at her assessingly. More specifically, he looked at herhips.She said, “I can see what you’re thinking, you know. That there’s no way those are coming up. Here.” She opened a dresser drawer, pulled out a wine-colored pair without a word, and held them up. Brief, lacy, and gorgeous.

She wasn’t good at buying clothes. Shewasgood at buying underwear. You found your brands and your styles and your size, and once you knew it, you clicked the button on all the best colors. That was her kind of shopping. If you wore scrubs all day, you neededsomethingnice, and lingerie wasn’t fattening.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, yeh.” There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I think we can get those back.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Not what you expected.”

“No, and I spent some time thinking about it earlier today. Reckon there’s always room to be surprised.”

She stared at him. “You spent some timethinkingabout it?”

“Yeh. Course I did.”

“Ofcourseyou did?” She was doing the Jordan thing now, repeating everything he said.

“Pretty normal thing for a bloke to do, to wonder what style she wears. What, girls don’t do that when they meet a fella?”

She lifted her hands from her sides and let them fall. “No. We do not.”

“Oh. Pretty boring thoughts you must have, then.”

“We fantasize,” she said, trying not to laugh. “Of course we do. Just not about yourunderwear.”

“Oh. Huh. Well, let’s see what we can do about retrieving yours.”

* * *

Webster didn’t object a bit,Luka found, to having a baster containing a few tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide emptied down his throat, though he didn’t look thrilled afterwards. He trotted into the bedroom, and Luka grabbed him by the collar and said, “We’ll take the next part of this outside.”

Elizabeth came with him, of course, bringing a plastic bag with her like a woman who’d never heard, “Let me take care of this unpleasant task for you,” in her life, and when Webster eventuallydidcough up the undies in the furthest corner of the postage stamp of turf overlooking the motorway—could a house have both a brilliant and a terrible view?—she headed over there to clean up the result.

He said, “Reckon those are beyond washing.”

She said, knotting up the bag with zero visible reaction, which he guessed was normal for somebody who spent her days bathed in other people’s blood, “Stomach acid has a pH between 1 and 2. Water is 7. Battery acid is 0. Lace bathed for thirty minutes in stomach acid isn’t lace anymore. It’s just holes.”

“Good to know.”

“Also,” she said, as Webster got to work again in another corner of the yard, “he clearly ate two of them. Oh, no. Not the La Perla! Those were my favorites!”

They’d been black. He asked, “Were they lace, too?”

“Edged in lace,” she said distractedly, scooping them up. “On the top and bottom, and with a cluster of little pearls in the center. They werebeautiful.”The dog was trotting back up to the house like his job was done, and she started to run and said, “He’s going to go try to eat more, because I was trying things on. Stupiddog.”

He made it to the front door ahead of Webster, and then he closed the bedroom door a second before the dog got his big black nose in there. He’d seen the bras tossed on the bed, and Webster wasn’t eating those if he could help it. Those were special. Also surprising.

Elizabeth blew in the front door herself with some energy behind her, went to the sink, washed her hands, and said, “My beautiful underwear is now in the garbage can. I cannot believe this. I can’t …” And started to laugh. “This was supposed to be my bigdate.My big moment. Myreboot.”

“Thought we weren’t being romantic,” he said, but he was grinning, too.

“Well, I guess I just removed all doubt about that. How’m I doing?” She held out her hands from her sides, showing him her T-shirt and shorts. “Overcome by lust yet?”

He was laughing now, too. “I may have been, except for the stomach acid. It’s a bit hard to overlook the stomach acid.”

“Iknow,”she moaned. “That was so bad. Lord have mercy.”

“Nah,” he said. “Call that an icebreaker. We could still go have that dinner now. Even better. Nothing more romantic than eating by candlelight.”

Webster flopped in the corner with a sigh, his head on his paws, as if he was sorry that all the excitement was over. Meanwhile, Luka was right there beside Elizabeth—this had to be one of the smallest houses in Auckland—and she had her head tipped to look up at him. Not that far, because she was tall. He put out a hand, smoothed back a lock of that dark hair with two fingers, and said, “I like your hair.”

“That’s the only part I got to.” Her voice was a little breathless now. “Before the, ah, Webster incident.”

“Mm.” He wanted to kiss her. Why didn’t he? He couldn’t say. “You could go finish up, then, and I could make a few calls. Find someplace a bit cozier to take you.”

“I could,” she said, getting a little sauciness back, “if I had any underwear left.”

“You’ve got that pair you showed me,” he said. “Those worked.”

A tilt of her head, and, yes, shecouldlook at you out of the corners of those long, almond-shaped eyes with their deep blue irises. It was even more effective because he’d bet she didn’t even know she was doing it. He could see some more of those breasts rising and falling, too. She might be cool in the operating theatre. She must be, to do what she did. She wasn’t quite as cool here, and he liked it. She said, “I don’t have many clothes to choose from, but I’ll go do my best, shall I?”

“Yeh,” he said. “You do that. And I’ll make those calls.”