love spell

I nodded. “Right, then.” We started around the suspect circle of attractions, moving slowly and trying to blend into the crowds. When a couple of rowdy kids went by, one chasing the other, I put an arm around her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of my body so she wouldn’t get bowled over.
She exhaled slowly and did not step away from me.
My heart started beating faster.
“Harry,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“You and me . . . Why haven’t we ever ...” She looked up at me. “Why not?”
“The usual, I guess,” I said quietly. “Trouble. Duty. Other people involved.”
She shook her head. “Why not?” she repeated, her eyes direct. “All these years have gone by. And something could have happened, but it never did. Why not?”
I licked my lips. “Just like that? We just decide to be together?”
Her eyelids lowered. “Why not?”
My heart did the drum solo from “Wipeout.”
Why not?
I bent my head down to her mouth and kissed her, very gently.
She turned into the kiss, pressing her body against mine. It was a little bit awkward. I was most of two feet taller than she was. We made up for grace with enthusiasm, her arms twining around my neck as she kissed me, hungry and deep.
“Whoa,” I said, drawing back a moment later. “Work. Right?”
She looked at me for a moment, her cheeks pink, her lips a little swollen from the kiss, and said, “Right.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “Right. Work first.”
“Then dinner?” I asked.
“Dinner. My place. We can order in.”
My belly trembled in sudden excitement at that proposition. “Right.” I looked around. “So let’s find this thing and get it over with.”
We started moving again. A circuit around the attractions got me no closer to the source of the energy I’d sensed earlier.
“Dammit,” I said, frustrated, when we’d completed the pattern.
“Hey,” Murphy said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Harry.” Her hand slipped into mine, our fingers intertwining. “I’ve been a cop a long time. You don’t always get the bad guy. And if you go around blaming yourself for it, you wind up crawling into a bottle or eating your own gun.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “But . . .”
“Heh,” Murphy said. “You said but.”
We both grinned like fools. I looked down at our entwined hands. “I like this.”
“So do I,” Murphy said. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”
“Beats me.”
“Are we just that stupid?” she asked. “I mean, people, in general. Are we really so blind that we miss what’s right there in front of us?”
“As a species, we’re essentially insane,” I said. “So, yeah, probably.” I lifted our hands and kissed her fingertips. “I’m not missing it now, though.”
Her smile lit up several thousand square feet of the midway. “Good.”
The echo of a thought rattled around in my head: Insane . . .
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, hell’s bells.”
She frowned at me. “What?”
“Murph . . . I think we got whammied.”
She blinked at me. “What? No, we didn’t.”
“I think we did.”
“I didn’t see anything or feel anything. I mean, nothing, Harry. I’ve felt magic like that before.”
“Look at us,” I said, waving our joined hands. “We’ve been friends a long time, Harry,” she said. “And we’ve had a couple of near misses before. This time we just didn’t screw it up. That’s all that’s happening here.”
“What about Kincaid?” I asked her.
She mulled over that one for a second. Then she said, “I doubt he’ll even notice I’m gone.” She frowned at me. “Harry, I haven’t been this happy in . . . I never thought I could feel this way again. About anyone.”
My heart continued to go pitty-pat. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I feel the same way.”
Her smile warmed even more. “Then what’s the problem? Isn’t that what love is supposed to be like? Effortless?”
I had to think about that one for a second. And then I said, carefully and slowly, “Murph, think about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how good this is?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“How right it feels?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“How easy it was?”
She nodded energetically, her eyes bright.
I leaned down toward her for emphasis. “It just isn’t fucked-up enough to really be you and me.”
Her smile faltered.
“My God,” she said, her eyes widening. “We got whammied.”


Side Jobs, Love Hurts, page 320-232