Page 69 of Lawbreaker

He brushed back stray wisps of her pretty hair. “I have to go downtown for a meeting in the morning. When’s your next voice lesson?”

“Not until next week,” she said. “My instructor is going out of town.”

He smiled slowly. “Okay. How about lunch? I should be free by eleven or so.”

“Lunch.” She grinned at him with her heart racing. “Okay.”

He touched the tip of her nose. “I’d kiss you good-night, but too many people are trying not to look.”

“I left my glasses on the back porch,” Mrs. Murdock called. “Can’t see a thing.”

“You don’t wear glasses,” he pointed out as she sailed past them into the kitchen.

“Complaints, complaints, and here I’m doing my best to portray an ostrich!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Murdock,” Odalie called after her.

“You’re welcome, dear, any time.”

He glared after Murdock and turned back to Odalie. “I’ll text you when I’m on the way.” He hesitated and frowned. “I don’t have your cell number.”

She dug out her phone and handed it to him. He dug his out of his pocket and handed it to her.

They put their respective numbers into each other’s phone and handed them back.

“Okay, then. Sleep tight,” he said softly.

She smiled up at him. “You, too. Night.”

“Good night.”

She turned and started to walk away. She heard him say something, so she stopped and turned. “What?”

He was just looking at her and smiling. “Angel,” he said softly. “If there are angels, and I’m sure there are, you look like one.”

She smiled back, radiant, and walked on to the car.

“I’m not going to ask a single question,” Stasia promised when they were back in Odalie’s apartment. “So you don’t need to think up excuses for your hair looking like birds built a nest in it.”

“All my hairpins fell out at once,” Odalie said, tongue in cheek. “I have no idea how it happened. Magnetic storm? Poltergeists? It’s a puzzlement!”

Stasia just laughed.

She tried to sleep but it was impossible. Her stubborn mind went over and over again that passionate interlude among the orchids in Tony’s office. It was a new experience to be lonely for someone. Not since a crush on a boy in grammar school had she felt anything remotely like it.

She tossed and turned, looking at the clock occasionally, only to repeat the exercise over and over.

It was one o’clock in the morning when her cell phone buzzed. She stared at it in her bedside table.

She didn’t know anybody who would be up this late back home unless it was an emergency. But when she pulled it out, there was no voicemail. There was a text. She stared at it in disbelief and managed not to laugh out loud.

It was from Tony.

Are you as wide awake as I am?

She lay back in the bed, reading the bright display in the darkness of the room. She typed back.

Of course.