Page 49 of Secret Agent Santa

“Easy guess.”

“I like that, too. I like all kinds of music.” She held up the fork with a few strands of pasta dangling from it. “What do you think? Al dente?”

“Hasn’t been long enough.” He pinched the steaming pasta between his fingers anyway and dropped it into his mouth. “Too chewy. You can rip up that lettuce and dump the rest of these vegetables in there, though.”

She made the salad while he hovered over the stove. “I suppose longtime bachelors learn how to cook, learn how to use the microwave or go out to eat a lot.”

“My mom taught me how to cook a few things, but I definitely know my way around a microwave and I have every take-out menu from every restaurant within a five-mile radius of my apartment.”

“Your apartment.” She plunged a pair of tongs into the salad. “My God, I don’t even know where you live. Where do you hang your hat when you’re not gallivanting around the world or pretending to be someone’s fiancé?”

“Chicago.” He bumped her hip with his in the small space of the kitchen to get to the pasta.

“But that’s where you grew up, right?”

“Is that a surprise? Wouldn’t you have stayed in Florida where you grew up if your mother hadn’t married Correll?” He grabbed the handles of the pot and lifted the boiling pasta from the stove. “Watch out.”

She scooted over and he dumped the water into a colander in the sink. “Yeah, but my childhood wasn’t...” She put two fingers to her lips.

“A nightmare?” He shrugged. “The one person who made it a nightmare is in prison...again, so Chicago isn’t so bad. I’m not sure about retiring there, but I’ll go back once this is over.”

Once this is over. Maybe once this was over, she’d return to Florida with Ethan. Maybe Mike would want to flee to a warm climate to escape the Chicago winters once in a while.

Reaching around him, she opened the fridge and took out the Italian salad dressing they’d bought earlier.

Mike put the finishing touches on the pasta, adding a couple of sprigs of fresh basil, and they sat side by side at the counter to eat their lunch.

“Mmm.” She twirled her fork in the fettuccine. “This smells good and it looks almost too pretty to eat.”

“Maybe I’ll open a restaurant when I retire.”

She stabbed a tomato. “You’re too young to retire completely. Would you want to work as a security contractor?”

“I’m done, Claire.”

“You thought you were done when you took this job, didn’t you? You figured you’d be reassuring some woman with an overactive imagination and then you’d be going home to Chicago.”

“That about sums it up, but now that I’m here, now that I’m in this with you, I’m in it all the way.”

They finished their meal and both reached for the plates at the same time. “I’ll do this. Check the message board.”

She poured herself a glass of water and sat back down on the stool, pulling the laptop toward her. “It went to sleep. I need you to log in again.”

He leaned over and punched several keys. “It’s all yours.”

She sucked in a breath when she saw a response from Einstein. “It’s here. He’s good with it. He’s already in Queens and he remembers where the 629 Club is. Ten o’clock okay?”

“That’ll give us plenty of time to drive down and then catch a subway into the city. He knows enough to watch for a tail, doesn’t he?”

Raising one eyebrow, she said, “His uncle is Tamar Aziz. He’s been watching his back his whole life.”

Mike turned from the sink, the dish towel wrapped around his hands. “And you know for sure Hamid has nothing to do with his uncle’s activities.”

“I’m positive. I told you, Hamid is the one who told me to look closely at the right eye of the man who murdered Shane.”

“Wait. You never told me that before. How’d he know about the coloboma?”

“He wouldn’t say directly, but I’m pretty sure he got that particular bit of information from his uncle.”

“All right, then.” He smacked the towel against the counter. “Looks like we have a date to listen to some jazz.”

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