Divorced, Desperate and Delicious

“I hate telephones.” Lacy blurted out the first thought that sped through her fogged brain. She dropped the receiver and leaned on the counter for support. She didn’t dare look at Chase; if she did, she might throw him down on her kitchen floor, crawl on top of him and treat herself to that triple scoop of sex she’d imagined earlier.

  Triple? Who was she kidding? She’d never had a double dip of sex. Either multiple orgasms were a myth or she’d had two of the worst lovers in Texas. Kathy and Sue swore they weren’t a myth, the Internet swore they weren’t a myth, Redbook and Cosmo swore they weren’t a myth. Why hadn’t she ever had a multiple orgasm?

  “They come in handy sometimes,” Chase said hesitantly.

  Lacy jerked her gaze up. He looked as if he’d just suffered a terrible blow. “What comes in handy?” Multiple orgasms?

  “Telephones,” he answered, his tone unsure.

  “They cause trouble,” she said. “Prank calls, mothers . . .” Blinking, she stared at the square tiles at her feet. Her red painted toenails stood out against the white ceramic. The next thought zipping through her turned-on brain was that she had never had sex on the floor before. She wasn’t certain how the image of red toenails against white tile led to floor sex, but that was where it took her. “Unwanted calls come in all the time. Phones are bad.”

  “Like horny ex-husbands?” His tone brought her gaze up.

  “Alexander Bell should be shot.” She glanced back at her toenails and her thoughts careened back to sex. She’d had sex in only two places: a car and a bed.

  Think about something else, an inner voice screamed. Think about anything else but Chase Kelly, sex, and . . . telephones.

  Her mind searched for a topic and landed on one easily enough—chocolate mint ice cream. Sweet. Creamy. Temptation at its best. Then she stared at Chase. Temptation at its better-than-best. She couldn’t accept what he offered. Ice cream, her inner voice screamed, think ice cream!

  She could turn down ice cream. Oh, she loved ice cream, especially chocolate mint, but she could walk away from it without shaking. Okay, maybe she shook a little, but nothing like she shook now.

  “Lacy?” His voice sounded closer.

  She looked at him, her gaze going straight to his mouth. His beautiful, sexy mouth. He took another step closer. If he touched her again, she’d melt like ice cream. Her heart ping-ponged around in her chest “Turn the steaks in fifteen minutes,” she said, then zipped away before she caved.

  Lacy?” His footsteps sounded next to her, but she didn’t look at him, Looking at him created major problems. He could stay here, because she didn’t want him to wind up dead, but she was going to have to walk around with blinders on.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Nothing to talk about.” We almost had sex, but we didn’t. Okay, they hadn’t really almost had sex. They’d touched a little, and not even where it counted. And she’d been on the phone the whole time. She hated phones.

  Then she wondered if this qualified as phone sex, ménage à trois phone sex? Probably not. Which meant she’d never had phone sex. Just call me the no-sex queen.

  She kept walking. When she passed the fireplace, she spotted the photos of her mother and grandmother on the mantel. She refused to be like them. Refused, refused, refused.

  “Please, Lacy,” Chase said.

  Samantha, her gray tabby, stood outside the bedroom door. The feline heard Chase’s voice, saw them heading down the hall, and in a snap she darted back inside, probably to hide under the bed.

  Hide? Lacy shared the cat’s plan. A good plan, blast it. Why did people look down on the art of avoidance? A lot could be said about spending days under the bed. Just ask Samantha. Sometimes, confronting the issues hurt more than bumping your head on the bottom of box springs.

  “Can’t we talk?” His question hung in the air.

  Sure they could talk. She could confront Chase Kelly instead of hiding. Something told her that if she turned around and said, “Look, Buster Brown, I’m not going to have sex with you,” he’d nod and give up the teasing and flirting. Let’s face it, she wasn’t the type of woman who drove men crazy. She was like a plain vanilla wafer: good on occasion, but boring on a regular basis. Brian had proved that with that cute little professor in their first year of college, and then Peter with his secretary.

  Sure, men looked at her. Eric, the vet, and Hunky, the FedEx man, enjoyed looking. But men were like dogs. Whenever only one bitch graced their presence, dogs went after her, even if that bitch was just a vanilla wafer. Dogs would eat anything.

  Ice cream. She needed to think about ice cream. She could walk away from ice cream.

  “Lacy. Talk to me.”

  She ignored him and kept moving. Oh yeah, she could tell Chase to stop and he would. But she wasn’t going to tell him to stop. Not because she wanted to be persuaded. She wasn’t going to be persuaded. But because . . . Let’s face it. Even vanilla wafers needed their egos stroked. So for the next day or so—surely this couldn’t go on for more than that—she would let herself feel wanted. But she couldn’t look at him, and he definitely couldn’t touch her anymore. So he wouldn’t actually be stroking her ego, only boosting it up without touching it, of course.

  “Where are you going?” His voice came from somewhere over her shoulder. The voice of temptation. A mental image of her and Samantha huddled under the bed, both trembling, came to mind.

  “To take a shower,” she answered. A very cold shower. She’d never experienced sex in the shower. The image of steam and moist male body parts fitting up against damp female parts filled her mind. I wish you would talk to me.” He sounded way too close.

  “And I wish you were ice cream.” She stepped into her room and slammed the door.

  • • •

  Zeke left the condo and hightailed it back to the hospital. His hands shook when he took the keys from the ignition. He shook with rage, he shook with remorse that he fought to deny. He hadn’t wanted to kill Stokes the first time.

  He’d involved the man so there would be a witness to Kelly paying off the drug dealer. But Stokes hadn’t wanted to buy Kelly’s guilt. The whole time they were together, the man just kept praising Kelly, insisting Zeke had read him wrong.

  All that praise for a freaking suicidal maniac. Zeke had blown a gasket, and he knew that no matter how well he’d set it up, Stokes would give Kelly the benefit of the doubt.

  So, Stokes had done this to himself. And if the man had just died the first time, Zeke wouldn’t have had to see the hope in his wife’s and sons’ eyes. Grief he could handle, but hope got to him. Maybe because Zeke knew all about hope. He’d hoped his wife would have given him a second chance, he’d hoped his kids would understand when she didn’t, he’d hoped to make sergeant seven years ago.

  A lot of hope, and now here he was, feeling something akin to hopelessness. He walked down the hall of the ICU. Somehow Zeke had to make sure that when Stokes left ICU, the place he’d be going was the morgue.

  He would have hired someone to do it for him, but he didn’t have time. So he lingered around the waiting room to hear a few of the precinct guys say that Stokes still hadn’t come to. Zeke stopped outside the ICU’s double doors. From the small glass window he could see the nurses manning the station. He wondered how in the hell he was going to take Stokes out before Stokes came to and brought the whole freaking police force down on him.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to think. When he opened them again, he noted that the nurses’ station faced away from the small room where Stokes lay. If he just went in, maybe he could—

  “They’re not allowing visitors,” a deep voice said from behind him.

  Zeke turned and faced Jason Dodd. The man looked at him as if he were something disgusting stuck on the bottom of a shoe. Suspicion burned Zeke’s gut. What did Dodd know? Could Kelly have told Dodd something before he’d gone undercover? Or could Kelly still be alive and was he now communicating with his ex-partner?

  “Somebody needs
to get to Stokes and get his statement so we can collar the bastard who did this,” Zeke said.

  “They can get it after he recovers,” Dodd replied, his stare dark with accusation.

  “If he recovers,” Zeke said. “We need a statement before—”

  Dodd’s eyes grew colder. “Stokes is going to make it. Believe me. I know that in here.” He thumped his chest.

  “Didn’t take you for a man of faith,” Zeke said.

  “I’m not really. I just know people usually get what’s coining to them. Stokes doesn’t deserve this.”

  Zeke raised an eyebrow. “What about Kelly? Should he get what he’s got coming?”

  “I think whoever shot Stokes should rot in hell, and I’ll be happy to help him get there.”

  The weight of Dodd’s words landed on Zeke’s chest. Dodd knew something. Damn it to hell, he knew something. But for some reason the man wasn’t acting on it. Why? Something didn’t make sense.

  As soon as Zeke cut the corner of the hall, he jerked out his cell phone and punched in Bruno’s number. “Meet me in thirty minutes in the alley behind Westwood Apartments,” he said. “I got another job for you.”

  • • •

  Chase stared at the stove and listened to the popping and hissing of the broiling steaks. The hearty aroma filled the kitchen but his thoughts didn’t play on food. At least not steaks.

  She wished he was ice cream. What the hell did that mean? Did it hold some sexual connotation? Or was she wishing he’d melt into a puddle so she could mop him up or feed him to her animals?

  Why had she run out like that? Had he taken her game too far? Had his being here messed up her screw-the-ex-husband night? He had a long list of questions and felt certain of only one thing: Lacy Maguire was sexually frustrated. And instead of him helping her out, she’d managed to get him into the same condition.

  A few minutes later, Chase cut off the steaks and turned up the potatoes; then he found some salad makings in the vegetable bin. “Eat the tuna and buy a gallon of milk,” the fridge said.

  “Like I’m going to listen to you.” He slammed the fridge door and took a knife to the carrots. Then he diced celery and tore the lettuce into shreds, taking his sexual frustration out on the vegetables. He could have sworn she’d been enjoying herself, that his touch had been welcomed.

  Stepping back, he scowled at the minced salad. He should be trying to get a handle on what Zeke wanted instead of thinking about Lacy, her ex-husband, and that red nighty.

  Fabio pranced into the kitchen. He dropped his chew toy and his triangle-shaped ears stood at attention.

  Chase frowned down at the beast. “At least I’m not taking it out on you,” he told the dog. “But just for the record, I shouldn’t even like you. You’re godawful ugly, you got me in this mess, and you growled at me this morning.”

  Fabio’s ears dropped. Chase shook his head. Now he was talking to refrigerators and dogs.

  The shower had stopped ten minutes ago and she hadn’t come out. He glanced at the clock. Five more minutes and he was going in. She had every right to feel any way she wanted, but he deserved to know what he’d done wrong. Didn’t he?

  Okay, maybe he didn’t have any rights. He’d forced himself into her house, managed to scare her half to death, handcuffed her to her bed, and . . . and . . . He had no rights.

  The dog whimpered. Chase knelt down and looked the animal in the eyes. “She still loves him, doesn’t she? Peter treated her like dirt, and she still loves him.”

  Fabio flopped down and rested his pugged face on his paws. His bug eyes glanced up as if offering condolences.

  “Hey, it’s no skin off my nose,” Chase said. “I’m not in this for the long haul. Believe me, I’m a short timer.”

  The dog sat up, cocked his head at a strange angle and studied Chase. Like Yoda in the movie Star Wars, the dog seemed to possess infinite wisdom.

  “It’s not as if I don’t like her,” he explained. “She’s gorgeous, sexy as hell, and when she smiles and laughs, she makes everything around feel brighter . . . better. It’s just—”

  He heard the bedroom door open. Standing, he leaned against the fridge. The nervous tickle in the pit of his stomach brought about a sense of déjà vu that he didn’t understand.

  “Steaks done?” She scooted around him without meeting his gaze. Tension hung in the air like dense fog.

  “Yeah,” he answered and studied her. She wore a pair of jeans that hung low on her hips. Her shirt, a fitted white blouse, came just below the waist and clung to her breasts.

  With the top two buttons left open, he got a glimpse of her bra strap. So she’d armed herself with underwear. Good. Then he remembered the red panties he’d seen in the bedroom. His gaze lowered to her hips and full-color images started appearing in his head.

  “Potatoes?” She poked her head into the oven.

  “Done. I think.” He tried not to stare at her backside and attempted to understand the odd feeling making his gut tight. He understood what made things below the belt feel tight but the other, vaguely familiar and unwanted, emotion concerned him.

  She turned to the counter, eyeing the lettuce he’d neglected to put back in the fridge. “You made a salad?”

  He half expected her to nag him for not cleaning up after himself. “Yeah.” He pointed to the bowl of beat-up vegetables beside the stove top. The uncomfortable emotion stirred his gut again.

  “Good.” She reached for the glasses on the counter and went to the fridge. The refrigerator gave up ice and the clanking noise of it falling into the glasses sounded somehow angry.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” The apology fell out of him unexpectedly. As soon as the words left his lips, the meaning of that déjà vu and the emotion came raining down on him.

  They were arguing—well, not out-and-out arguing, but having a male/female spat. The one where the woman was mad about something and the man remained clueless to the reasons. And although he wanted to ask what he’d done, he knew that asking would make matters worse, because women just expected men to know things. Didn’t women know that men didn’t know shit?

  He hadn’t had a spat with a woman since . . . since Sarah. He never argued with Jessie. He went into her apartment, they talked about sports, the weather, her cat’s kidney problems. He cooked dinner. They ate, had sex, and he left. Twice a week like clockwork. It was easy and uncomplicated, even if he did occasionally worry about the cat.

  He looked at Lacy Maguire. Lacy was complicated. She had an ex-husband, talking appliances, pets, and a red nighty tucked away somewhere in her bedroom.

  In the back of his mind he realized that Jessie had those things, too—with the exception of talking appliances, of course. He just hadn’t seen Jessie or her baggage as complicated.

  “You want me to go?” He let out a breath. “Let me make a call, and I’ll be out of your hair.” He reached for the phone.

  Chapter Eleven