Dave pulled food from the refrigerator and lined it up on the counter. Lettuce, roast beef, mustard, horseradish, tomatoes, provolone cheese. He took two rolls from a bakery bag and sliced them. “Smitty and I dragged your bed out and cleaned up the room, and there wasn’t anything unusual there.”

“How about the third floor?”

Dave piled roast beef on the rolls. “We didn’t do much to the third floor. We just made sure nothing else was going to crash down on you.” He slapped on cheese and tomatoes. “Still, I think we would have noticed if something extra was lying around.”

Kate took the sandwich from him. “Boy, this whole thing is pretty creepy, huh?”

“Mmmm. And why do I get the uncomfortable feeling you’re enjoying it?”

“It’s curious. Sort of exciting.”

“It could be dangerous.”

She’d had the same thought. She liked to think of herself as a fairly bold person, but she wasn’t foolhardy. After weighing the dangers, she made a decision. “That’s why I’m sleeping with you tonight. You don’t mind, do you?”

He almost dropped his sandwich in his lap. “Sleeping with me?” Oh, wonderful response, Dave. Lord, he was such a cluck!

“I didn’t mean with you. I meant here. In your guest room. On your couch.”

“Sure. I knew that was what you meant.”

Kate grinned at him.

He grinned back. “You sort of caught me by surprise.”

“We could let Elsie think we were sleeping together, then she wouldn’t be insulted.”

Her suggestion fueled the fantasy he’d started months before, and he thought about the zipper running the length of her dress and how easy it would be to slide that zipper down. Oddly enough, tonight it evoked old-fashioned family images. A husband lovingly helping his wife to dress while children waited to go on an outing. Or a husband breathlessly easing the dress from his wife’s shoulders, letting it fall of its own weight, rustling as it dropped to the floor in a crumpled pool of black and white material. The fantasy was so powerful it almost made him dizzy. He could hear the zipper move along its tracks, see the look of expectation on her face. Feel his heart pounding in his chest.

The latter was no figment of his imagination. The prospect of Kate sleeping under his roof had his pulse racing. He knew it was nonsense. Kid stuff to have these romantic notions. She wasn’t going to come creeping into his bed in the middle of the night. It was too soon, and they both knew it. Nevertheless, the need was there, humming below the surface, an itch that wouldn’t go away.