Unfortunately I own nothing of the original "Peter Gunn" TV series and make no monetary profit. Peter Gunn and Edie Hart are the creation of the brilliant Blake Edwards. I'm merely borrowing them for my own enjoyment.

This story takes place immediately following "Edie Finds a Corpse" S1 EP22. It follows up on my earlier story 'Oh Brother! My Brother'.

Oh, No! Not My Parents

Chapter One

Moonlight and shadows danced across the bedroom ceiling, giving Edie Hart something to keep her mind entertained as she lay in bed unable to sleep. She was back in her own apartment, freshly painted and still smelling faintly of latex and enamel and turpentine. She'd found the small bathroom especially nice, the cream and light yellow that covered everything including the cabinets and vanity taking on a new vitality with several fresh coats of paint. Even so, she had been avoiding that little room as much as she could all day, unable to keep the image of that man out of her head, that dead man with his brown hair plastered to his head by the water of the shower and his clothes soaked to the point that they stuck to his body. Which was silly when she took time to gather her thoughts. That had been in the bathroom of apartment No. 3 downstairs, not in her comfortable No. 15 at the top of the second floor landing.

She felt weird in the realization that she'd discovered a dead body. Certainly that was a Pete thing. It certainly wasn't her thing. And even though she'd spent the last couple of nights at Pete's place she still couldn't get the entire episode out of her thoughts. Which got her wondering where Pete was. He'd been conspicuously absent from Mother's this evening and she'd ended up taking a cab home to her own apartment, despite offers of a ride from both Emmett and Barney

A sigh escaped her as she turned over onto her left side, a position from which she'd be able to see the PI should he try to sneak into the bedroom without waking her. He didn't need to worry about that though, she certainly wasn't going to sleep. She had tried the old standby of counting sheep, which hadn't worked. Then she'd gotten up and made a nice hot cup of chamomile tea and taken it to bed along with a couple magazines from the pile her friend Sheila Bell had given her when they'd met for lunch the previous week. A Photoplay feature on Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood's marriage didn't hold her interest and the "complete mystery novel" she turned to in Cosmopolitan had her rolling her eyes and snickering and tossing it aside. Another sigh. She punched at her pillow and pulled the covers up around her shoulders and wondered where Thomas was hiding. Even the little ginger-haired cat seemed to have deserted her in her moment of crisis. Like man, like cat.

She must have finally drifted into a half-sleep, wakening again some time later to the movement of the mattress dipping, the warmth of a body curving against her back and the solid strength of an arm slipping around her waist. She smiled drowsily against the pillow.

"Pete."

"No." The PI's lips were warm against the back of her neck as he placed a kiss there, his breath tickling her ear and his chest shaking with silent laughter. "Fred the milkman," he teased into the early morning grayness surrounding them. The sun hadn't risen yet but a tiny bit of orange and red somewhere on the horizon allowed the merest hint of light to slip through the half-open blinds of the bedroom window, attesting to the beginning of a new day.

The woman twisted to face him, his arms tightening around her to gather her close to his bare chest, and his lips sought hers in a hard kiss. Edie's arm curved around his shoulder when he finally released her lips, her fingernails scraping his skin, and she uttered a low laugh.

"Fred the milkman never learned to kiss like that."

His hand drifted to her thigh and found its way beneath her nightgown and she lifted her hips to help facilitate it's removal. He kissed her again, rolled until she was beneath him and then pushed up on one elbow, his lips caressing the curve of her cheek and trailing along her jawline, his hand feathering along her side and touching upon delicious hills and valleys.

"You certainly are the eager one, Mr. Gunn," Edie murmured, an obvious smile in her voice as her hands roamed his shoulders then moved upward, her fingers weaving into his short hair to pull his face to hers for yet another kiss. Much more involved than the previous ones, it was some minutes before he finally lifted his head to look down at her flushed face.

"What do you expect? I haven't seen you since yesterday morning." His tongue tickled the sensitive shell of her ear and left a damp trail along her neck and paused at the little pulse that throbbed at the base of her throat.

"And who's fault is that?" she invited, her voice holding that guileless tone with which he was so familiar. He shifted his weight a little and she failed to contain a gasp at the hard touch of him against her inner thigh. "I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Where were you?" A sublime weakness spread throughout her body as his hands and mouth continued their exploration.

"I, um... I had a client."

He paused in his ministrations, managing to contain a smile at her raised eyebrows and the green-eyed question lurking in the blue depths beneath.

"That's nice," she eventually said.

The PI couldn't help but laugh at the skepticism in her voice.

"Turn off that suspicious mind of yours." His lips tilted in a perceptive smile. "Believe it or not it was Augustus Taylor, the curator at the Museum of History. You remember him – a prim and proper elderly fellow wearing a monocle and carrying an old pocket watch with a chain at least a mile long? He led the tour of that Egyptian exhibition you dragged me to last summer."

"I didn't drag you, it was your idea," she contradicted. "You were trying to impress me with your intellectual sophistication and savoir-faire."

"My what?" he chuckled.

His cool lips found her breast, eliciting the immediate frisson of pleasure to which Edie was well accustomed, along with the onset of goosebumps. Her toes tingled, her knees melted like jelly and she distinctly felt her heart skip several beats.

"Did you save the day?" she somehow managed to ask.

"In a manner of speaking."

"That's nice," she said again. She offered up a slow smile and trailed her index finger in a feather-light touch from his belly button up to his collarbone and then laced her hands around the back of his neck. "How about saving my day?"

"In a manner of speaking?"

"Speaking is definitely not what I have in mind..."

The small kitchen in the apartment belonging to Edie Hart was warm while the weather outside was cold. The chill in the air resulted from the arrival of a sudden nor'easter that had quickly formed in Canada and swept along the eastern seaboard the prior afternoon. Nevertheless Peter Gunn was decked out in nothing more than a pair of dark blue cotton boxers. And truth be told, the warmth he was experiencing wasn't totally the result of the heat being radiated by the oven, where a pan of muffins was baking, or by the pot on the stove where eggs had come to a rolling boil. The woman he'd left asleep in bed about an hour ago had a little bit to do with it too.

"Something smells good."

Pete emptied the final scoop of Folgers into the grounds basket and placed the lid on the percolator. He plugged in the pot and slid the lever to medium, his gaze straying toward the sound of Edie's voice.

She stood in the kitchen doorway in her nightgown and light blue robe, the latter loosely belted around her waist. Her blonde hair, in the new short style she'd surprised him with day before yesterday, was tousled and her face still flushed from sleep. First thing in the morning – Pete glanced at the clock on the stove, it was after noon already, well beyond the time Edie normally was up on weekdays – and half asleep, she was still the prettiest woman in the world to him.

"Honey banana muffins." He turned off the heat beneath the eggs, placed a lid on the small stainless steel pot and picked up a quarter-folded newspaper from the table. "The recipe was in the cooking column this morning. 'Six Simple Breakfast Ideas Made With Ingredients Found in Every Pantry'. Of course whoever wrote the article–" Pete peered at the piece in question. Mrs. Juanna Cooke? He wondered how long it took somebody to come up with that one. "–has obviously never seen your pantry or she wouldn't have made such a bold statement. I had to borrow half of what I needed from Mrs. Pilcher."

"Very funny." She frowned. Mrs. Pilcher was her neighbor in No. 17 at the other end of the second floor landing. She had an old-lady crush on Pete and never appeared the least bit perturbed at the frequent comings and goings of the handsome PI nor the odd hours he seemed to keep. "I hope you dressed for the occasion."

"I was perfectly presentable." His lips tilted in a small grin and he took the couple steps toward her and gave her a kiss. "And you should be happy I made it out alive."

"Your aim was a little off." She smiled sleepily and fought hard to contain a yawn that wouldn't go away, afterwards tapping a finger on her lips invitingly. "Try again."

He did, very efficiently and effectively, their lips clinging when he eventually lifted his head. His hands, which rested warmly at her hips, slid to cup her bottom and he brought her closer and let his eyes roam her face.

"Another ten minutes and I would have been in there dragging you out of bed."

"That would be a twist." A spark of amusement slumbered in her sleepy gaze and her fingers flitted nimbly along his shoulders before homing in on the back of his neck. "I had trouble getting to sleep," she admitted.

She didn't say why that was but Pete had become quite the expert at reading between her words. Before you showed up, she might have added. I was lonely without you beside me, was a possible excuse. The paint fumes were keeping me awake, perhaps. I couldn't stop thinking about that man in the shower, she could have said. He chuckled suddenly.

"What's so funny?"

"The odds of you being the one using that apartment when Harvey Austin and Virginia Pelgram decided to dump Gipson's body in the shower. Depending on Bartel's painting schedule it could have been any tenant in the building. But no, it had to be Edie Hart."

"I must be special," she offered with a cheeky smile, her fingers shuffling through his recently trimmed hair. She liked the short, neat manner in which it framed his ears and outlined the back of his neck.

"Very special," the good-looking PI emphasized, dropping a kiss on the top of her nose. "Special and wonderful and marvelous." His lips slanted into the indulgent almost-smile Edie had become so accustomed to and he repeated the words of a song she'd performed a few weeks earlier for the crowd at Mother's. "Too marvelous for words."

His lips found hers in a long, involved kiss that was on the verge of leading to more, but the harsh buzz of the oven timer brought them back to reality.

"Always with the interruptions," the blonde muttered somewhat crossly as Pete moved her aside and reached for a pot holder. She heaved a sigh and made a face as the sound of the doorbell echoed unexpectedly through the apartment, joining with the oven in an odd cacophony before Pete managed to silence the timer. "Now what?" she wondered aloud, then smiled broadly, amusement bringing a twinkle to her eye. "Ten to one Mrs. Pilcher rummaged through her cabinets and came up with another ingredient or two for those muffins." With a wink she turned and headed for the living room.

Pete cleared his throat loudly to gain her attention, motioning to her somewhat revealing nightgown and gaping robe. "You might want to..."

She wrinkled her nose at him and smiled mischievously, pulling the robe closely around herself and tying the belt more tightly before disappearing into the other room.

Pete removed the hot baking tin from the oven and absently began transferring muffins to a large plate, oblivious to the sound of the apartment door opening. Upon hearing a voice – and muffled though it was it sounded like that of a woman – his ears perked up. Lifting the lid from the pot on the stove, he searched a drawer for a big spoon to lift the eggs from the hot water, head tilted slightly to one side as he listened.

The visiting voice seemed to prattle on for a moment, the lilting tone striking a chord of recognition with the PI though he couldn't immediately place it. It was decidedly not the neighboring Mrs. Pilcher. Maybe one of Edie's girlfriends?

Edie's dulcet tone joined that of her visitor and brief laughter followed. Then a decidedly male voice chimed in, bringing further merriment. Pete's forehead puckered into a frown and he paused with the spoon wavering above the pot, the rising steam forming bubbles of moisture on the underside of the utensil. The man's voice triggered the same sense of odd familiarity as the woman's did and together they produced an association in Pete's mind that continued to try to elude him. He gazed out the kitchen window, looking past the sunny yellow curtains at nothing in particular, a mental connection slowly forming.

It couldn't be. Surely it wasn't.

Eyes widening fractionally, Pete lowered the spoon at an almost leisurely pace and set it gently on the counter.

He suddenly felt woefully under-dressed.

(Referenced Episode: "Edie Finds a Corpse" S1 EP22.)