“You definitely did. And you asked me to say ‘I’m the captain now.’”
“OK.” He bobbed his head from side to side and grinned. “I’ll admit there was a bit of an unexpected turn-on to the whole starchy white shirt with the captain’s dealies on the collars.”
“Seriously? Rook, my uniform turned you on?”
“I rarely see you in one. Certainly not in bed.”
“This is sounding like role-play. Was I role-playing and didn’t know it?”
“Not at all. Unless you liked it.” He chuckled. “Nothing wrong with something to keep it all interesting and playful.”
“We need that?”
“Need? Absolutely not. But it’s good to keep it fresh, right?”
“It’s not fresh?”
“I seem to have found myself digging a hole.” He felt her appraising stare, which only made him keep digging, “It’s very fresh. Although occasionally—only occasionally—you have to admit you have been a bit…preoccupied.”
“Like in the elevator?”
“Definitely not preoccupied in the elevator. Or most of the time. This is coming out all wrong. All I’m saying is that I want to make sure that when we get married, that we…”
“Keep the spark?”
“Well said. Yes. The spark.” He shifted gears as fast as he could. “Let’s have breakfast. I made coffee.”
“Great,” she said, “I’ll have it with my cake.”
“Look at you, Captain Cake-for-Breakfast.”
Nikki arched a brow. “Keeping it fresh.”
He pretended to be wounded by her jab and moved off to the kitchen for cups and plates.
As they finished, Rook ran a forefinger around his plate to collect rogue icing and said, “We should have this baker do our wedding cake.”
That only made Nikki start to panic about how far behind they were in their wedding plans. Both had long before agreed on August, which was still four months away, but with all his work and all her work, so far they hadn’t reserved a venue for the ceremony or the reception, or planned the honeymoon beyond discussing the what-ifs of Venice, Nice, and Portofino. For two high-functioning, big-career planners, this was sheer madness. “At the very least,” she said, “we should settle on the weekend so we can send out some save-the-dates.”
“I totally agree.” He offered her his icing finger, which Nikki waved away like Sabathia rejecting a sign from Stewart. “Otherwise, some of the guests on my tentative list are going to get locked into commitments.” He dragged the frosting across his tongue and began to enumerate a few of his invitees. “Sir Paul has got his Out There tour. Annie Leibovitz is constantly booked. Bono said to name the date, he’ll drop what he’s doing, but I don’t want to press our luck, especially if it’s one of his charitable things. Lena Dunham’s writing her memoir—another? George Stephanopoulos is working every day of the week—he’d have to invent a new day, as it is…” Rook noticed that Nikki was staring pensively at a blue balloon that had sagged during the night. “Am I hogging the conversation? You have a guest list, too, I know.”
“Well, let’s see. There’s my dad and his new girlfriend. And his sister, Aunt Jessie.”
“Jessie. Have I met her?”
“Twice.”
“Right. She’s…You sure it’s Jessie?” Heat’s phone buzzed. “It’s very inconvenient the way people always die when we’re trying to have a conversation.”
Reading Nikki’s expression after she answered, he slid a pen and one of his spiral reporter’s notebooks across the blue tablecloth toward her. This was one end of a case call he had witnessed many times: a series of uh-huh, uh-huhs, her nodding head with its angel’s face tautened by earthbound realities.
“Detective Ochoa,” she said after she hung up, although Rook already had identified the voice from the call spill.