“Damn it, Drummond, I’m sorry.”

“What is it about me that always makes you so mad?”

“You don’t always make me so mad.”

“The hell you say. Every time you look at me, your face turns red and you look like you want to break something.”

She walked right up to me. And she did the strangest damn thing. She reached up, pulled my head down, and kissed me. Not one of those puffy, wimpy, dry pecks either, but a glandular, wet, lingering one. On the lips, too.

I froze. She pressed her slim body against mine, and I froze more.

She finally pulled back, then looked up into my eyes, like she was searching for something. What, I didn’t know, but my eyes were blinking madly, because I was utterly, unconditionally confused. Just a few hours before she’d been ready to strangle me, and now she was pressed up against my body in a most tantalizing way. The woman was like a typhoon spinning out of control. What in the hell was going on?

“What was that?”

“What do you think it was?”

I gave her an awkward, silly smile. “I guess it was a, uh, a kiss, but I-”

But before I could get that thought out, she did it again. Only this time, I pulled her tightly against me and all our curves and angles and hollows and lumps fitted together. I can be gulled and suckered as easily as the next guy, but I swear I felt some real heat and electricity here. Her arms were wrapped tightly around my neck, and her hips were grinding against my lower body in a way that was pleasantly beguiling, which is a courtly way of describing a biological response one doesn’t bring up in mixed company.

I ran my fingers lightly down the middle of her back and felt her body tingle and shiver like a cat’s. I heard heavy breathing, only maybe it was me, because my own lungs were starting to make that happy heaving motion that lets your head know the rest of your body’s in the mood to do something naughty.

Now here’s something you’d probably never in a million years ever guess about me. When it comes to fragile emotional situations, I’m like… well, hopeless. I’m afflicted with the romantic equivalent of the bull-in-the-china-shop disease. I can’t help myself. I always say the wrong thing at the right moment. I’m brusque when I should be ticklish, blunt when I should be discreet, wisecracky when I should be mushy. In matters of the heart, I’m Dr. Kevorkian.

I felt this irrepressible need to say, “Hey, what the hell is this? Lesbians don’t kiss like that. Lesbians don’t rub their hips against guys that way. Lesbians don’t flush and tingle and get body purrs when guys caress them.”

I didn’t, though. I was about to, except suddenly someone was rapping knuckles on the door. I was saved by the bell, or the knock. Whatever.

Katherine hastily stepped back, rearranged her dress, unmussed her hair, and took a few deep breaths. I just leaned against the wall and watched her. I was too stunned to move. I was utterly bewildered.

She opened the door and Imelda barged in. She took one look at Katherine, then at me, still pressed against the wall, and her eyes suddenly got real narrow and her lips twisted at an odd angle.

But all she said was, “Time to leave for the judge’s office. You got everything you need?”

Katherine smiled demurely. “I think so. Major Drummond and I were just debating whether he should come along.”

“ ’Course he should,” Imelda huffed. “Allie, too. She’s been workin’ hard. Let her taste the moment.”

Katherine nodded at Imelda like this was what she’d intended all along. Her eyes were glued on me, though. “Drummond here seems to think he shouldn’t be there. I was just trying to persuade him that I might need his military expertise.”

Imelda whirled at me with a fierce glower. “You got some problem with that?”

I said, “No, uh, absolutely not. I’d be only too pleased.”

“Good,” Imelda announced, then departed, whistling through her teeth; an unconscious gesture of hers whenever she encounters something she can’t quite put a finger on.

Katherine walked past me, provocatively brushing her body against mine. “Come along, Attila.”

CHAPTER 37

The look on Eddie’s face when he saw Allie enter Carruthers’s office made it worth the trip. He got to his feet like a good boy when the introductions were made, but for once the smooth bastard was running a little short of charismatic polish.

Eddie’s shorter than I am, and Allie’s taller than me, so she positively loomed over him. He stared up at her in shock. Also, Eddie’s one of those guys who spends a lot of time in the gym buffing up for the opposite sex, but Allie nearly forced him to his knees when they shook hands. She made it seem effortless, but you could literally hear the knuckles and bones in Eddie’s hand cracking. He had tears in his eyes when she let go.

I actually caught Eddie wiping his hands after he shook with her, and that really pissed me off. Allie saw it, too, and the look on her face reminded me of the way she’d glanced at me the first time I’d met her, that first night in Katherine’s hotel room. I can’t say I was real proud of that.

As for Carruthers, he never blinked an eye. He treated Allie respectfully, like the smart, upright, hardworking attorney she was. My estimation of him bounced up a few more notches.

He gruffly told us to have seats. He spent a moment overviewing the situation, noting that the trial was set to convene in sixteen hours and that some four hundred international journalists were now in country. They were lounging around every bar in Seoul, eagerly waiting to broadcast this intriguing and momentous trial to every breakfast table and living room in the world. He noted that all the appropriate preparations had been made. A special detachment of MPs had been flown over from the States to provide security. Army officers from peacekeeping and military assistance outposts had been plucked from the remotest corners of the globe in hopes of collecting a large enough assemblage of potential board members who weren’t tainted by the blizzard of publicity that attended this case. He noted the case was being heralded as the trial of the century, bigger than O.J.’s even, because so much seemed to weigh on the outcome; because some ghastly crimes had been committed; because the fate of an entire alliance stood on the brink; because important laws stood to be changed.

Eddie squirmed in his seat, because what Carruthers was not too faintly intimating was that a postponement at this stage was unthinkable.

Then Carruthers searched each of our faces and concluded, “All that notwithstanding, Major Golden has asked for a postponement.”

Katherine immediately barked, “On what grounds?”

Eddie said, “On the grounds that two key prosecution witnesses have mysteriously disappeared.”

Katherine shook her head like he had to be kidding. “I don’t get it. Two police officers have disappeared? I mean, please.”

Eddie shot forward in his seat. “I’m sure it’s just some silly mix-up. And I’m sure they’ll turn up within the next few days. All I’m asking for is an extension till Tuesday to get this straightened out.”

Katherine said, “And if they haven’t turned up by Tuesday?”

“Then I’ll go with what I’ve got.”

“I don’t see why you can’t go with you’ve got now.”

“Because the state’s case has been adversely affected by unforeseen circumstances. They were the two lead investigators, for God’s sake.”

“That’s your problem,” Katherine shot back. “You’re responsible for the accountability of your witnesses. I can’t help it if you misplaced them.”

I was enjoying this immensely. It wasn’t often that Eddie had to operate from a disadvantage. Come to think of it, I’d never even seen him at the fringe of anything remotely discomforting. Till now. He was actually sweating.