…love is the only four-letter word which nobody knows what it means…
Monroe D. Underwood
I arrived at my office at dusk.
My office was the third booth at Wallace’s Tavern.
It still is.
Wallace brought me a bottle of Old Washensachs.
He said are you as bushed as you look?
I said I’m too bushed to discuss it.
I sat there nipping at my beer and thinking about Brandy Alexander.
There was just no telling when she would pop up.
Or where.
I’d met her the previous December.
Then she had slipped out of my life for six months.
She had made a pair of memorable appearances in June and that had been it until now.
And already she was gone again.
Brandy owned Confidential Investigations downtown.
She was a crackerjack operative with a wealth of CIA training.
She still handled certain CIA assignments.
She had saved Betsy’s life in December.
She had saved mine in June.
She was fire and ice and she was brilliant.
She had the tawny body of a cougar.
She had the grace and reflexes to go with it.
And the claws.
She was dynamite in or out of bed and she was undoubtedly the most beautiful brunette on the face of Planet Earth.
She was the only thoroughly practical female I’d ever met.
She didn’t believe that people should own people but she saw no evil in occasional short-term loans.
She was in love with me.
She admitted it frankly.
She had never asked if I loved her.
I had never told her that I did because I didn’t know how Brandy looked at love.
I had never told her that I didn’t because I knew how I saw it.
I would explain this.
But I’m married.