Read Online Burn (Michael Bennett 7) by James Patterson - Free Book Online Page A

me as he tucked a napkin into his Roman collar.
    A moment later, Mary Catherine, Jane, and Juliana, who’d all apparently been working their fingers to the bone, came in, carrying the beautifully prepared feast. In addition to the roast, there was a mountain of mashed potatoes to rival Everest, I noted with amazement.
    “I have just died and gone to Irish heaven,” I said to Mary Catherine as Jane set the gravy boat down in front of me like a sacrifice. “What’s the fancy occasion? Please tell me we had a visit from the Publishers Clearing House people.”
    “No occasion, really,” Mary Catherine said with a little smile as she sat. “Call it the First Supper.”
    “The First Supper?”
    “It’s the first chance we’ve had since we got back home to have a real supper together,” Mary Catherine said. “I thought we should celebrate.”
    “I like the way you think,” I said as I forked pot roast onto my plate.
    “Eh-hem,” Seamus said loudly as he put his hands together and closed his eyes.
    I reluctantly put my fork down and followed suit along with everyone else. After a second, I peeked, scanning all the cute, solemn faces around me, and smiled.
    It’s good to be home , I thought for the second time that evening.
    “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen,” Seamus said.
    “Especially the gravy,” I said.
    “Amen,” everyone agreed.

CHAPTER 17
     
    AFTER OUR HOME-RUN DINNER, Mary Catherine and I left Seamus and the big kids to do the dishes while we went out for a walk.
    First stop was all the way down at Seventy-Ninth and Amsterdam, at this ice-cream place I was addicted to called Emack & Bolio’s. We got the ice cream to go and took the slow roll back to the apartment through Riverside Park.
    It was a beautiful night, a little cool but clear, with a three-quarter moon shining up the silky surface of the Hudson off to our left. On the right were Riverside Drive’s famous whimsical, grand, rambling apartment buildings straight out of a New York fairy tale.
    You couldn’t have asked for a more romantic moonlit stroll, which was precisely why I’d brought us this way. Mary Catherine and I had our ups and downs in the relationship department, but like I said, lately we’d become closer than ever.
    As we walked, I glanced at Mary Catherine’s elegant profile beside me, the elfish upturn of her tiny nose, the pale of her throat. It was almost embarrassing how much I was feeling for her. Like a damn teenager.
    She busted me staring at her a second later.
    “Can I help you, Mike?” she said, smiling.
    “I was just wondering how your exposé was going,” I said between bites of my peanut butter Oreo.
    “My what?” Mary Catherine said.
    “Don’t be coy with me, Mary Catherine,” I said. “I know you’re working on your nanny diary. I mean, that’s why you’ve stayed on all this time, isn’t it? To reveal all the juicy Sex and the City truth that is working for the family of a Manhattan single-dad cop with double-digit adopted kids?”
    She gave me a playful shove as she rolled her eyes.
    “Fine. You got me, Mike. It’s true,” she said with a mischievous smile as she spooned up her raspberry chip frozen yogurt. “In fact, just today I wrote a really juicy entry. Do you want to hear it?”
    “Yes, very much so,” I said.
    “Hope you’re ready,” she said. “It goes, ‘Dear Diary, I must tell you this. Today I went down into the steamy basement of my handsome employer’s luxury prewar coop.’ How’s that for a start? Juicy enough for you?”
    “Oh, yes. Very mysterious and provocative,” I said. “Especially the handsome employer part. Please, by all means, keep going.”
    “‘Upending the spilling sack in my aching hands, I stood there breathless, having never in my life experienced such a heaving sea as the one bared before my eyes. There they were in front of me. Fifty shades of