Orchids to Die For (Jim Morgan Adventure Series) Read Online Free

a hand-carved ivory coaster. He removed his shirt and was placing it on a chair-back when his home phone rang. It was after nine and a rarity for him to get calls that late. He entered the 777 codes, to insure a secure line, and answered.
    It was Ames, “Sorry to bother you this late John. But I thought this might be important to you. We’ve picked up on some overseas calls to Margolova. She’s placed a watch on Morgan.”
    “Ah, the plot thickens. Thanks, Arnold. He should be okay until he starts picking orchids.”
    “That was...is our thinking here, too, John. I just wanted you to know. I’ll talk with you again, soon. Goodnight John.” Ames yawned as he turned out the office lights. He had just worked a fourteen hour Sunday, and he loved every minute of it.
    The Senator hit the release button on his tape recorder, which would append a date and time to Ames’ call, drank his milk and went to bed with fond memories of his daughter, ones that floated easily in and about his brilliant mind.
     
    * * *
     
    Exiting Tommy Guns, both wearing fedora mobster hats, Jim pulled out a pack of Camels and put one between his lips, then offered one to Catherine. She started to take it and then announced, “I quit a few months ago, but you go ahead -- it doesn’t bother me. Morgan and his “Doll” made their way to the bugged Austin. They looked, cool. They made a handsome couple, and they both sensed it. They also knew this, that they were both having a surrealistically great time.
    Catherine looked into Morgan’s face with the full moon lighting up his smooth facial features and thought that his dangling cigarette gave him a bad boy aura, and -- it fit him. She tried to recall how many glasses of white wine she had consumed, and she felt that the ancient mystery of all romance was blooming full, right before her fantasy laden eyes, and she felt an unreal chill, a wave of uncontrollable energy dance through her body, and it made her physically shudder from her shoulders right down to her knees, “Jim Morgan. I must tell you, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had such a fun time.”
    Her hat brim was shadowing her baby blues, yet Morgan saw them sparkle in the darkness, and his senses screamed out from within his being that something very special was happening there – in their – here and now. And it made him smile deep and wide and he knew, right then, that love was once again entering into his life, and he felt an exceptionally strong compunction to kiss her – right there, in the parking lot, but he held back and asked her, “Hey, I’ve got an idea, want to take a walk on the beach?”
    Without hesitation, her dimples indented and she smiled out an exhilarated, “Yes!”
    They drove off, giddy, and made their way down to the 77th Street beach holding onto their fedoras and their mutual feelings of romantic expectations, “It’s a bit tricky to park around here, so -- hold on.”
    With an illegal U-turn and a dodge around a gated entryway, they pulled into a lakeside apartment complex. Morgan turned off the lights and parked with the engine still running. The view from the Austin was a spectacular cinema graphic sight; right smack in front of them was the full moon casting soft moonbeams that painted a whitish-yellow path across the water right onto the smallest wavelet lapping gentle on the beach sand.
    Catherine’s breath was whisked away with the beauty of the panoramic view, “Oh, this is simply awesome, Jim,” and she averted her view onto him, and said, very playfully, “You know you’re seducing me. Don’t you?”
    “Yeah.” He grinned and gave her a sharp wink, then asked, “Is it working?” And he watched her, as she smiled and kicked off her shoes in preparation for a budding lover’s stroll in the lakeshore night.
    They both heard the crash and turned their heads, simultaneously, back to where they exited Lake Shore Drive. Through the opening they drove through, they observed a green