Fourteen

"Don already talked to all the specialists at UMC. They've seen the test results, and they don't know what to think either. I think the family figured Tom has seen almost everything in almost fifty years of practicing medicine, so they wanted him consulted. But Tom is stumped, too. For now, anyway."

"My money's on you," Thora said, smiling.

 "I know you'll figure it out. You always do."

 "I don't know, this time."

Thora moved closer, then leaned down and kissed Chris's forehead. 

"Turn back around," she said softly. 

"Toward the monitor."

It seemed an odd request, but after a moment he turned and faced the screen.

Thora began to rub his shoulders. She had surprisingly strong hands for a lithe woman, and the release of tension in his neck was so sudden that he felt a mild nausea.

"How does that feel?" 

"I almost can't take it."

Her hands worked up the sides of his neck and began to knead the bunched muscles at the base of his skull. Then she slipped her fingertips into his ears and began to massage the shells, working steadily inward with increasing pressure. Before long he felt like sliding out of the chair and onto the floor. 

One of Thora's hands vanished, but her other moved down into his polo shirt, the palm circling his pectoral muscles with surprising force.

"You know what I was thinking?" she said. 

"What?"

"We haven't tried to get me pregnant in a while."

No remark could have surprised him more. 

"You're right." 

"Well…?"

She slowly spun his chair until he found himself facing her bare breasts. Normally, they were porcelain pale—her Danish blood—but like her friends, Thora had recently become an addict of the tanning salon, and her skin glowed an uncharacteristic burnished gold, with nary a line in sight.

"Kiss them," she whispered. He did.

She a made a purling sound deep in her throat, a nearly feline expression of pleasure, and he felt her shift position. While her fingers played in the hair at the back of his neck, he worked delicately but steadily at her nipples. 

They were infallible sources of arousal, and soon Thora was breathing in shallow rasps. She bent her knees and reached down to see if he was ready. Finding him hard, she unsnapped his pants, then knelt and tried to pull them down. He raised his hips for her, then sat back down.

Without delay Thora lifted her gown and sat, wrapping her strong legs around his waist and the chair back. Chris groaned, nearly overcome by her urgency, which he had not experienced in some time. 

But tonight Thora was the woman he had fallen in love with two years ago, and the power of this incarnation pushed him quickly toward climax. She gazed into his eyes as she rode him, silently urging him on, but at the last moment she planted both feet on the floor and thrust herself up and off him.

"What?" he cried.

"That's not exactly the ideal position for bringing a new generation into the world," she said, her eyes teasing him with mock reproach.

"Oh."

Taking hold of his penis, she pulled him over to the leather sofa, then lay down on her back and motioned for him to mount her. 

After staring at her long enough to engrave the image in his mind, he did. As Thora whispered lewd encouragements in his ear, the interview with Alex Morse rose inexplicably into his mind. 

Their conversation had a surreal quality now. Could such a thing be possible? Had someone pretending to be a patient actually lied her way into his office and then accused his wife of murder? And before the fact? It was crazy—

"Now," Thora told him. "Now, now, now…"

Chris thrust deep and held the contact, letting Thora take herself over the threshold. When she cried out, her nails raking his shoulder blades, he let himself go, and a white glare burned away all ambiguity.

As he came slowly back to the present, Thora strained upward to kiss his lips, then fell back, sweating despite the steady flow of air-conditioning. Chris drew out and lay beside her on the cold leather.

"You can get up if you want to," she said. "I'm going to stay here a few minutes. Let things take their natural course."

He laughed. "I'm fine right here." "Good answer."

They lay in silence for a while. Then Thora said, "Is everything all right, Chris?" 

"Why do you ask?"

"You seemed distant today. Did something happen at work?"

God, did something happen. "Just the usual." 

"Is the new house bothering you again?"

"I haven't even thought about it."

She looked disappointed. "I don't know if that's good either."

He forced a smile. "The house is fine. It just takes a while to turn a country boy into a city boy." 

"If it's possible at all."

"We'll soon find out."

Thora pulled damp hair out of her eyes. "Oh, I forgot. I wanted to ask you something."

 "What?"

"Laura Canning is going up to the Alluvian this week. She asked me to go with her."

 "The Alluvian?"

"You know, that hotel in Greenwood. Up in the Delta. The one the Viking Range people remodeled. It's supposed to be stunning. You practiced up in the Delta for a while, didn't you?"

He laughed. "My patient base couldn't afford that kind of place."

"They supposedly have a terrific spa up there. People fly down from New York to stay there. Morgan Freeman has that blues club in the Delta, you know, and he's stayed at the Alluvian."

Chris nodded. He liked Morgan Freeman's work, but he wasn't into picking spas based on where Hollywood actors went. He wasn't into spas at all, to be honest. He broke all the sweat he needed to while maintaining the twenty acres of land around his house.

"If you don't want me to go, I won't," Thora said, seemingly without rancor. "But this is Ben's last week of school, and he always asks you for help with his homework anyway. I don't have the patience."

Chris couldn't argue this point. 

"When are we talking about?"

"A couple of days from now, probably. We'd just be gone three nights. 

Then right back home. Mud packs and champagne, a little blues music, then home."

Chris nodded and forced another smile, but this one took more effort. It wasn't that he didn't want Thora to have fun. It was Alex Morse's voice whispering in his head: Is your wife planning to be out of town anytime soon?

"Chris?" Thora asked. "Tell the truth. Do you want me to stay home?"

He recalled her face as she made love to him, the unalloyed pleasure in her blue-gray eyes. Now she was lying on her back on chilly leather so that his sperm would have the maximum probability of impregnating her. 

What the hell was he worried about? "I think I'm just worn-out," he said. 

"Between work and rounds and working on my project—"

"And baseball practice," Thora added. "Ninety minutes a day in eighty-five-degree heat with a bunch of wild Indians."

"You go up to the Delta and chill out," he said, though he had never associated the words Delta and chill in his mind before. 

"Ben and I will be fine."

Thora gave him an elfin smile, then kissed him again. 

"You stay right here."

He stared as she jumped up and ran to the studio door, then disappeared through it. She reappeared a moment later, holding both hands behind her back.

"What are you doing?" he asked, feeling strangely anxious. "I've got a surprise for you. Two surprises."

He sat up on the couch. 

"What? I don't need anything." 

She laughed and moved closer. 

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She brought her right hand from behind her back. In it was a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

 His mouth watered at the scent of them—until Alex Morse's warnings sounded in his head. 

Before he had to make a choice about eating the cookies, Thora held out a cardboard tube like the ones she used to carry blueprints for the new house. Chris forced a smile, but the prospect of discussing the Avalon house did not please him in the least.

"I see that frown," Thora said, setting the cookies beside him, then perching her perfect derriere on his knees. 

"You just wait and see."

She removed a sheet of paper from the tube, unrolled it, and spread it across her nude thighs. Chris saw what appeared to be plans for a new building behind the seven-thousand-square-foot house that was now nearing completion. A rather large building.

"What's that?" he asked, groaning internally.

 "A private gym?" Thora laughed.

 "No. That's your new studio."

His face flushed. "What?"

She smiled and kissed his cheek. 

"That's my housewarming present to you. I had our architect consult with an expert in New York. You're looking at a state-of-the-art video production studio. All you have to do is select your equipment."

"Thora…you can't be serious."

Her smile broadened. "Oh, I'm serious. They've already poured the foundation and run the high-tech cabling. Very expensive."

This was almost too much to absorb after what Chris had endured today. He wanted to get up and pace the room, but Thora had him pinned to the couch. Suddenly, she tossed the plans and the tube onto the couch and hugged him tight.

"I'm not letting you slip back here every time you want to edit your videos. You're stuck with me, understand?"

He didn't. He felt as though he had swallowed some sort of hallucinogen. But then, if Alex Morse had not visited his office this morning, none of this would seem anything but a wonderful surprise.

"I finally surprised you," Thora said in an awestruck voice. "I did, didn't I?"

He nodded in a daze.

She took a cookie from the plate and held it to his lips. "Here. You need your strength."

 "No, thanks."

Her disappointment was plain. 

"I actually made these from scratch." 

"I'm sorry. I'm really not hungry. I'll eat some later."

She shrugged, then popped the cookie into her mouth. "Your loss," she said, her eyes twinkling as she chewed. "Mmm…almost better than sex."