Excerpt

Sunlight poured onto Sari Siegel’s face in the airless porch of their second-story apartment jutting out over Broadway. As she burrowed into her pillow Tim’s arm tightened about her waist and he drew her close, clasping her small round buttocks and draping his thigh across her hip. The sweat from the copper hair on his chest tickled, and he moved his hand to her glossy hair, sweeping it aside to nuzzle her neck.

She squinted at the alarm clock on the dresser across the narrow room. At a quarter to eight she could already hear Saturday-morning traffic in the street below, and the air was so arid her nostrils twitched. Her gaze wandered to the faded poster of the dove on the cracked wall above the dresser. END MASS MURDER IN VIETNAM. A relic from junior high school days, but it reminded her of home. Beneath it the lab manual for her biology class lay facedown beside a marbled composition book whose binding had not yet been cracked.

She looked at Tim’s arm, which had crept back to her waist. The silky hair was so red it glinted, but the T-shirts he’d worn framing houses over spring break had left his biceps and shoulders paper-white next to hers. His long limbs and fiery hair were an odd match for her petite build and olive complexion, but they fit together perfectly in bed. Breathing his familiar scent, she molded herself to his groin. When his fingertips began stroking her breast she blinked once and then her eyes fell shut. He knew what she liked, she never had to say.... As he entered her, a single thought shimmered in her head: One week from today she would be Mrs. Timothy Scott.

The phone rang twenty minutes later w