Old Flame Read Online Free Page B

nut-brown hair parted in the middle, and wearing black Nike sandals and a T-shirt bearing the rhinestone-studded inscription SURROUNDED BY MORONS tucked into her jeans, Allie looked more like a hippie graduate student who had just aced her orals than a high-powered advertising mover and shaker.
    “We nailed it,” she said, picking at her Cobb salad. “When I hit them with the campaign, there was a room full of smiley faces.”
    The restaurant had very tiny tables crowded next to each other, very large plates, very tiny portions stacked very high in the middle, and a fine sprinkling of soot for seasoning. Although it was an unusually warm day, the angle of the sunlight bore traces of winter.
    A young couple sitting inches from us were having an animated and highly distracting discussion about a band performing at some club. She wanted to go, he didn’t. He thought they sucked. She, not so politely, said he did. It was boring. I wanted to hear about Allie’s triumph.
    “About an hour into it,” she continued, “I thought we were dead. The account exec was doing his marketing mambo. A lot of talk about positioning and competitive thrusts, whatever the hell that means.”
    “Sounds salacious.”
    “Would that it were. At the very least, we would have had their attention.” She speared a piece of lettuce. “I swear I heard light snoring.”
    “And then you took center stage.”
    She smiled. “Yes I did.”
    “And saved the day.”
    She leaned over and planted a little peck on the tip of my nose. “That too, and not a moment too soon. Then it was the research folks’ turn, and once again ennui washed over the conference room like a red tide.”
    “You’re quite the wordsmith.”
    She impaled another lettuce leaf and dipped the tip in the dressing. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
    “Did you reignite their interest by showing them your discreetly positioned butterfly tattoo? It certainly helped clinch the deal with me.”
    “I would have if I thought it would help.”
    “Hussy,” I said.
    “No,
adwoman,
” she shot back. An eyebrow rose fetchingly, and just the shadow of a smile crossed her lips. “I might arrange a private showing later on this evening.”
    “Have you no shame?”
    “Nope.”
    “Another reason why I’m attracted to you. But the problem is, I’m doing homework with DeeDee and, after that, meeting Luce and Cherise at Neon. It’s Cherise’s birthday. It could run late.”
    Luce Guidry was my ex-partner, and Cherise Adams, also a cop, was her wife.
    “Cherise’s birthday I could understand, but homework with DeeDee?” Allie said. “She’s enrolled at Stuyvesant, for Godsake. Tell me you’re kidding.”
    DeeDee Santos was a latchkey kid who lived two flights down from me. Her father, fast of fist and slow of mind, boarded frequently at a variety of criminal holding facilities. Her mother, somewhere in the Dominican Republic, was no help. And DeeDee was left to navigate Hell’s Kitchen’s shoals alone. One day we connected, and we have been pals ever since. During one particularly rough spot in both our lives, she’d even temporarily moved in with me. Now she still lived with me whenever her father was incarcerated, and attended one of New York City’s premier public high schools. So far, things had worked out.
    “I resent the disparaging tone of your question.”
    “Do you! OK, what are you helping her with?”
    I took a sudden interest in the haphazard way the French fries were piled on my plate and moved them around to more esthetically satisfying positions with my fork.
    “She might have mentioned something about quadratic equations,” I said.
    “If she needed help with thug-nabbing, that I could understand, but you wouldn’t know a quadratic equation from a newt.”
    “
Au contraire!
A newt is a tiny lizard that eats bugs. A quadratic equation is simply a second order polynomial equation in a single variable
x.
”
    She stared at me with one eyebrow