“None of which is your problem,” he noted. “Your focus is on finding out who did this.”
“Somebody has to stand up for the victims,” she declared. “It seems too often that, once you die, everybody else just moves on and forgets about you. You go to your slab in the morgue, and then you’re either burned all to hell or you get buried.” She shook her head. “Everybody picks up the pieces and moves on, as if these people never existed.”
“I don’t think that’s quite true,” he disagreed quietly. “But it is true that everybody else is left in a position of having to deal with the aftermath of that person being gone, so it isn’t as if they can do anything for them or to help them anymore.”
“Which is why it’s my job,” she stated, with a nod. “And some days it’s rewarding, and some days it’s just plain frustrating.” After her second cup of coffee, she smiled and added, “It’s been at least thirty minutes.”
He grinned like a kid and said, “Let’s go.”
And they carried their coffee a little closer to the shore; she stuck hers in the sand and walked straight out into the water. Almost immediately she sank beneath the waves and just let the current carry her. After a few moments she paddled her way back to the shore again and sat in the shallow part of the ocean, the water lapping up over her, crashing up over her shoulders, as she now held her coffee.
When one particular wave dumped into her coffee, she realized she had lost the last little bit. She moaned and cried out but was laughing too hard to worry about it.
Simon immediately snatched the cup from her hand, and she watched as he walked back to their table and refilled them both. He came back down with a big smile and suggested, “Nowmove maybe just a little bit up the shore, and that won’t happen again.”
She scooched backward, accepted the cup, and sat here, a big smile on her face. As far as evenings went, this one was perfect.
*
Simon didn’t wantto drop Kate off on her own, and, when he took her back to her place, she looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Are you coming in?”
He felt a spark of hope inside. “I was hoping so,” he replied. “But, if you’re really tired and need extra sleep, I don’t have to.”
“I am really tired, and I do need extra sleep, but it’s been such a beautiful evening,” she noted, “and I really don’t want it to end.”
On that note they headed up to her apartment. Every time he stepped in, the comparison to his own place made him wince. Hers was clean but almost sterile in a way, as if she didn’t even live here. Boxes were still parked off to the side that he contemplated every time he visited.
She caught his gaze once again, shrugged, and said, “I haven’t had time.”
“What’s even in them?”
“You know what? At this point I don’t know,” she admitted. “I could probably just pack them into the car, take them down to Goodwill, and never even miss that stuff because, if I haven’t opened the damn boxes in the last year, I’m pretty sure I don’t need whatever’s in them.”
“Isn’t there somebody who’s making a killing out of cleaning things out of closets and such?”
“Somebody is always making a killing off the latest fad, but, in this case, you’re not far wrong. I mean, if I haven’t even opened them—”
“But you never know. Maybe mementos of your mother or your brother are in there.”
She nodded. “That’s what the second-to-the-bottom one is, I think,” she noted slowly. “And you’re right. I do need to at least take a look at them, before I just get rid of them.”
“Or you could just move them to the next place as is,” he suggested.
She paused, then smiled. “I’m heading for a shower.”
“Is that an invitation?”
She looked at him, then grinned. “Beat you there.”
And, with that, she raced ahead. He burst out laughing and followed her. The sex was hot, perhaps the hottest he’d ever had, but tonight she was molten lava in his arms—whether it was the evening at the beach, feeling full, or just being completely relaxed for the first time in a very long while. She surged to his touch and melted all over him.
By the time they came out of the shower, he felt shaky and barely able to walk. He collapsed on the bed. “You nearly killed me, woman.”
“Good,” she whispered, as she took a towel and dried herself vigorously and then tossed it his way. “Roll over.”
He rolled over, and, to his surprise, she crawled in under the covers. “Just like that?”
She mumbled, “Just like that. When I said I was tired, I really meant it.”