Foul Play by Janet Evanovich

watering. I don’t suppose you’d allow me to use your shower?”
    Amy unlocked her front door. “Not only will I allow you to use it—I’ll insist upon it. Just pitch your clothes out into the hall. Do you want me to wash them or bury them?”
    â€œI leave that decision up to you.”
    Amy decided to wash them. Twice. She stood for a minute in the laundry room, listening to the clothes agitate, feeling oddly wifely. There was a big, gorgeous naked man in her shower and a pair of navy briefs in her washer.
    â€œI like it,” she said out loud, and she wondered if she was in love. She thought she’d been in love with Jeff. What a bummer that had been. She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t remember what Jeff looked like.
    â€œSad,” she said. “Really pathetic.”
    Jake padded into the laundry room wearing a royal blue towel wrapped low on his hips. “What’s pathetic?”
    â€œI was thinking about this person I used to know, and I couldn’t remember what he looked like.”
    â€œWas this person important to you?”
    Amy straightened the boxes of detergent on the shelf above the washer. “I used to think so. I was engaged to him.”
    She took a long, hard look at Jake in his towel and was surprised to find she wasn’t nervous. Two days ago she’d almost faintedat the sight of his chest, and now she was ogling him practically in the buff without so much as a change of heartbeat. Well, maybe there was a slight change of heartbeat, but she wasn’t panic-stricken. She supposed washing men’s underwear made one much more worldly.
    Jake crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. Engaged. A mysterious emotion shot through him. Jealousy? It was ridiculous, but it rankled him. He made an effort to keep his voice steady and light. “What happened?”
    Amy smiled. “I used to find this story very embarrassing. Now I find it kind of funny. As you already know, I’ve never actually…um, you know.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIt isn’t as if it was planned. I didn’t set out to remain a virgin all my life. I didn’t even have any grandiose romantic or moral ideas about saving myself for marriage. It just never seemed right. For a while there I was afraid I had some physical defect or maybe a hormonedeficiency. I mean, you’d think that by the time you were twenty-six years old you’d have gotten the urge to make mad, passionate love to some man.
    â€œAnyway, the year I got out of college, when I was teaching first grade, I decided it was time for me to fall in love and get married. Looking back on it, I guess Jeff was smarter than I was, because after we’d been engaged for two months he gave me an ultimatum. Something to the effect that he had no intention of ever buying a suit without first trying it on.”
    Amy laughed at the expression on Jake’s face. “Don’t look so horrified. Jeff might have put it a little crudely, but he did me a favor. A marriage ceremony wouldn’t have made any difference in the way I felt about Jeff. I wasn’t in love with him, and I didn’t want to share my body with him.”
    Amy made an expansive gesture with her arms. “Well, how about some lemonade?”
    Jake followed her into the kitchen, enormously pleased that she’d never wanted another man, positively gloating over thefact that she wanted him. She did want him, didn’t she? “So, why did this change from embarrassing to funny?”
    â€œBecause…” Amy paused with her hand on the refrigerator door. “Because…” She stuck her head in the refrigerator to hide the blush staining her cheeks.
    Because she’d finally found the right man. Because suddenly her hormones were working overtime, and she had demanding sensations in body parts she’d previously suspected might be missing nerve endings. Because not