Thanks to Angie for the beta!

Chapter 6

An exhausted Laura tiptoed around the darkened apartment having arrived far later than she'd intended. She'd sent Remington - she winced because using that name was taking some getting used to - home much earlier. The pallid tinge to his skin, exhausted glaze to his eyes and growing irritability were but three reasons he'd been wise enough not to question. And she'd only relegated him to paperwork, not something he enjoyed on a healthy day, while she began the legwork needed to solve this newest case.

But it had taken on a life of its own and Laura had spent all evening trying to track down leads which might locate the frantic husband's missing wife and infant son.

When she slipped into bed with a deep yawn, she tensed as a long-fingered hand curled around her waist and pulled her close.

"Any leads?" His voice was raspy.

She relaxed after a long moment and rolled onto her side, snuggling closer. Her body ached. Her eyes hurt. All she wanted to do was sleep. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"Laura."

His arm tightened and she rested her head on his shoulder. He was healing well but she knew there was still pain when any firm pressure was placed on his chest. Too many times he'd attempted to lie on his side with his arm around her only to give up because it hurt too much. Eventually, she simply rolled him onto his back and settled herself against his side.

"I can't find them. They just - vanished." She leaned forward and kissed a lightly stubbled cheek. "Mr. Abalian is beside himself. And he's paying the agency a small fortune to find them. I hate not having anything good to report."

"Let me help."

"The doctor said -"

"No sex. Ridiculous, by the way. I feel fine." He hugged her close. The hand at her shoulder trailed a teasing path as far down her arm as it could reach. She curled her fingers around his when they met at his stomach.

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. The itch was growing unbearable especially when he wore only pajama bottoms to bed. The heat that radiated off his bare skin drew her like a moth to a flame. She was just as ready as he to disregard the doctor's 'suggestion'.

The strain in his voice was evident. "But that's not what I meant."

"If you think you'll be okay tomorrow-"

"I made it through half the day."

"I'm glad you did." She had missed him after she'd sent him home. They'd worked as a team for a long time now and she really did relish his contributions, no matter how unorthodox they could sometimes be.

And his mere presence at the agency calmed and invigorated her more than she'd previously been prepared to admit. His voice, that tone he reserved just for the privacy of their offices, where she could easily imagine what lay beneath the fine tailored exterior and even that haughty demeanor he reserved for clients; she hadn't realized how much she'd come to enjoy, depend on him even, until he wasn't there.

It was ridiculous. He'd only been out of the office for the afternoon. She justified her reaction by convincing herself she was just worried about his health.

Despite the feathered skim of his fingers against her shoulder, her eyes drooped and her body relaxed even further into his embrace. A smile slanted across her face when she felt his lips ghost over hers in a goodnight kiss.

By the time noon came around, he was anxious, frustrated – and sore. Papers and files littered his desk and he scowled at a folder in his hand.

The door between their offices clicked open and he noticed Laura poke her head in and scan the unusually cluttered scene with a critical eye.

"This case is - perplexing to say the least." He brushed a frustrated hand through his mussed hair and leaned back to look at her. The motion caused a twinge in his chest that he covered with a hopeful, "Lunch?"

"I don't think I've ever seen you so buried in paperwork." She didn't bother to keep the amused grin off her face.

"Leads, dead ends, statements from the maid, doorman, driver, friends, neighbors," he shuffled a file from one spot on his desk to another. "And yes you have - when you conveniently forgot to tell me you were training for a triathlon." His eyes narrowed but there was no malice in the tone. "You can't possibly have forgotten that."

The phone rang and he pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. Interrupted. Again. He snatched it from its cradle. "Yes, Mildred?"

He held the phone out as if it would bite him and glanced at Laura with pity. "Your sister. Again. Shall Mildred tell her you're indisposed?"

He would have laughed if not for the horrified expression on Laura's face. "Yes. Yes. Tell her we're working on a case. Very important. Can't talk about it. Have no time."

He waved his hand to stop the flood of excuses. "Mildred, tell her Mrs. Steele is not in and you'll give her the message." He replaced the phone and crossed his arms, gently, over his chest.

A harried Laura met his reproachful gaze. "Oh don't look at me that way. We don't have time."

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "Since when don't you have time for your sister?"

Exasperated with a little sheepish thrown in for good measure, she hissed, "Since I got married and didn't tell her!"

He tried, and failed, to keep the surprised look off his face. "Laura…"

Defeated, she sank into the chair opposite his desk. "I didn't know how."

"That sounds ominously like you didn't tell her but she found out anyway." He shifted in his chair enough to lean forward without more than a twinge of pain.

"Amy Fogleson knew she was stirring up a hornets nest when she called my sister for confirmation because she couldn't get anything out of Mildred. She didn't even bother trying to get a statement out of you – or me." Laura scowled, the words rolling off her tongue like a litany of excuses. "Whatever did you do to that woman? She's like a bloodhound on a scent."

Steele muttered under his breath. The ambitious Spotlight News anchor had apparently not given up her crusade to unearth dirt on the mysterious Remington Steele. He'd have to pay her a visit. Sooner rather than later. "She hasn't run the story yet?"

"We'd be flooded with phone calls wanting confirmation if she had."

Steele thought for a moment and then clasped his hands, startling his pacing wife. "Well then, let's give her a scoop."

"What?"

"Mend some fences, so to speak."

"I'd rather crack one over her skull."

"Now, Laura, she's just trying to chase down a story, confirm a rumor," he trailed off noticing that humor was not going to temper his wife's ire. "I could pay her a visit."

"I need you on this case."

"More than you need to keep our marriage a secret from your family?"

Laura dropped her face into her hands. Her voice muffled, she managed yet another excuse. "The fee from this case alone will pay our expenses for the rest of the year…"

"So when we've solved this case, I'll whip up a gourmet meal and we'll break the news to them in person."

The horrified look on her face would have been funny if he hadn't been stung by the nagging feeling that she just didn't want to tell her family. "Laura…"

"We're too busy right now."

"Right."

She blurted out the rest in a barely coherent string of words that left no breath between them. "And – I-just-didn't-know-how-to-admit-that-I-got-married-and-didn't-even-invite-my-family, okay?"

It stung, but he did understand. She wasn't overly close to her family, but they would be hurt nonetheless to not have been invited. It wasn't as if Laura could mollify them by revealing the truth.

"We'll just invite them to dinner and-"

"Not until you're better."

He struggled to maintain a calm, neutral expression. "I'm capable of cooking a meal for your family, Laura."

Her suggestive glance instantly caused blood to rush south. "That's not what I meant."

He gifted her with the full wattage of his dimpled smile. "You think the fallout will somehow prevent us from consummating this marriage?" He rounded his desk and pulled her into his arms with a well-placed hand at her hip. Long, talented fingers slipped into her hair and effortlessly brought her mouth within centimeters of his. "Not a chance, darling. Not a bloody chance."

When their lips met, she melted into his embrace with a relieved sigh and he wrapped both arms around her to keep them both upright. When they parted, his eyes danced with expectation. "Let's solve this case, eh?"

Glassy eyes cleared and she sank into a chair. "I'm at a loss."

"Why don't I feel out some of the more - seedier parts of the city?"

Laura frowned and he could see the gears whirring behind her intelligent eyes. "Mr. Abalian hasn't given me any indication that he thought she'd been kidnapped." She began to pace again. He kept silent, waiting for her to catch his meaning. "There's been no ransom." Suddenly, she whirled, meaning understood. "You think she ran away?"

"I do."

"Why?" She pursed her lips in that way he found so irresistible. "There's no evidence that suggests-"

"That's exactly why. There's no evidence."

She shifted her weight, rested a hand on her hip and looked at him expectantly.

"What?"

"I'm waiting for a movie reference."

Steele searched his seemingly endless repertoire of celluloid knowledge. "Hmm. Woman on the Run. Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Universal Pictures 1950."

Laura snapped her fingers. "I know that one!" Her lips pursed in confusion. "But that isn't relevant. A man runs away because he's the eyewitness to a murder."

"Very good, Laura." He didn't even try to contain his pride. "But the wife suspects the real reason for him running is because of a troubled marriage."

"It's a stretch."

He smirked. "Aren't they all?"

When Laura walked back into his office at closing time, Steele was on the phone. He waved her in as the call concluded.

"Any luck?" She asked as she rested a hip against his desk.

He glanced at the notes he'd scribbled on various pieces of available paper. "Of a sort."

She extended her arms in exasperation. "Well, don't keep me in suspense."

"She's gone to Barcelona."

"Spain?"

"And not via the normal route."

Laura glanced down at his haphazardly scribbled notes. "Translate, please?"

"She's gone by boat."

She crossed her arms. "And by boat I assume you don't mean a luxury cruise liner."

He scrubbed his hands across his face and they fell to reveal a suggestive dimpled grin. "Now that would be the perfect way to honeymoon."

Laura stared at him. "What was Mexico?"

He was insulted that she even considered that a honeymoon. "Crowded."

"Ireland?"

He winced and rubbed his chest. "Painful." He stood and drew her into his arms, wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Spain. Third time's the charm?"

She tilted her head to receive his kiss and clung to him as he fit her soft curves against the hard planes of his body. When they parted, the desire he saw swimming in her eyes could have made a lesser man bend her over the desk and take her right then and there. But that sort of treatment wasn't for a woman of her caliber. She deserved a big bed, room service, candlelight, champagne; all the trimmings that he couldn't arrange in time for the wedding.

There would be time for christening every piece of office furniture later.

She left his arms with questioning, "So by boat you mean …? "

"She hired a smuggler to take her." Which made things more complicated and potentially dangerous.

"Of course she did."

He snatched a printout of Carolina's passport photo off his desk and handed it to her.

Laura's eyes lit on the crucial bit of information it contained. "She's gone home."

Steele smiled. Such a smart woman his wife. "Indeed she has."

She started for her office door. "I'll have Mildred book us two tickets on the next flight. You can fill me in on the way." As an afterthought, she returned, slid her hands up his chest and gave him a lingering kiss filled with promise. "Well done, Mr. Steele."

He stared after her as she slipped back into her office then yanked the phone off its cradle and hastily dialed. He rocked impatiently on his heels until someone answered. "Remington Steele here. I have an appointment for Friday that I simply must reschedule for today." He pursed his lips as the receptionist on the other end attempted to thwart his plans. "Yes, yes, I understand he's booked solid but something has come up. Leaving tonight. Not sure when I'll be back. You understand. So, I must see him tonight." She put him on hold. When she returned, he accepted her apologies with good grace, waited for her to finish, and then added, "He has rounds at Cedars? I can meet him there. Book me in. I don't care what it costs."

The moment they took their seats, he'd ordered a bottle of the aircraft's finest. There'd been a spring in his step since he arrived and she would have been blind to not see the barely restrained excitement.

"What shall we toast to?" Laura asked. She couldn't put her finger on it but it was there simmering beneath his skin.

The heat in his gaze was unmistakable. "Us."

They twined their arms, as was their custom, and sipped the refreshing bubbly.

He left her to wonder only a moment before he set his flute down and retrieved a folded slip of paper from inside his jacket pocket. His eyes danced mischievously. "Free and clear. Healthy as a horse." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Third time's the charm?"

Laura scrutinized that little slip of paper. "Forged?"

That megawatt smile was enough to melt her most prickly edges. "Nope."

"Bribed, then."

He affected the most affronted look she'd ever seen.

She leaned across the arm rest separating their chairs and gently kissed his cheek. "Your appointment wasn't until Friday."

"Really, Laura. Would I stoop so low?" He flipped open the letter, turned it over and pointed to the messy handwritten scrawl on the back. "Even at my most intoxicated, my handwriting has never been so appallingly illegible."

He was right. It didn't look anything like his elegant penmanship. It was messy and she couldn't even make out a few of the words. Definitely the work of someone in the medical profession.

He pouted prettily and she squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

He settled back in his seat and pulled her close, arm about her shoulders. "That's quite all right, luv. I expect you'll make it up to me. Repeatedly."

The suggestive quirk of his lips and twinkle in his eyes were not the kind of distraction she needed thirty thousand feet up. She pulled her briefcase from beneath the seat in front of her, pulled out their tray tables and spread out the case file.

"So your disreputable man tracked her here. What do we have to go on when we get there?"

"Check in. Hot shower, shag and a kip?" he offered with an eyebrow tango positively dripping with innuendo.

It was going to be a long, long flight. "Mind on the case, Mr. Steele."

Dimples appeared briefly when he pursed his lips and pouted.

She met his gaze with an unflinching one of her own until he dropped his eyes to the open file and muttered, "Spoilsport."

"Have heart, Mr. Steele." She leaned close, her voice a seductive whisper. "The sooner we finish this case, the sooner we can embark on that long, long, long awaited third time." She winked at him. "I've heard it's a charm..."

TBC

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