[For Dot] Valentine's Dea--Day

Oh, this day!

Bathed, deshabille, Phryne flung herself down on the white leather couch in her room and resolved not to get up for anything.

Now that she had a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket by her hand and a box of chocolate truffles, it was entirely plausible. After all, she had a stack of contemporary "classics" to keep her busy, and Phillip Roth would be more reliably entertaining than any young man. Or the mature one she'd put firmly to the back of her mind for the night.

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seemed to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise...

Yes. Much more reliably entertained, Phryne thought, and sipped at her champagne while she read on.

[For Jack] A post-Valentine's nightcap

Still in the grip of yesterday's affliction, Phryne retired early and dismissed Dot for the evening. Distress in no small part due to not having been able to find a rational cause for the lust outbreak, she sought to distract herself with a mystery novel. But the inspector had none of Jack's cleverness or finesse, and she soon found herself wandering aimlessly from one room of her suite to the next.

That was the other part of the distress, she was woman enough to admit. Jack. It had hurt unbelievably to see him kiss another woman. Even knowing the truth of why, the mental image made her chest ache and her jaw clench. It was uncomfortable for more reasons than one.

"Fie," she muttered, turned on her heel and called room service (which usually amounted to one of the bartenders cashiering the nearest available person to roll the cart to her room).

An hour, a cocktail, and a long soak later found her draped over her sitting room couch with another novel (this one with a female sleuth) and another cocktail, dressed to please herself and no one else.