Divorced, Desperate and Delicious, Page 4

“Mother, I’m standing here wearing nothing but a towel and I refuse to discuss my sex life with you!” Lacy Maguire’s grip on the purple phone tightened. Why had she answered the call? She could still be chin-deep in jasmine-smelling bubbles, drowning her frustrations and watching on her tub’s DVD player The Little Mermaid peeping at Prince Eric.

  “We’re not discussing your sex life. You don’t have a sex life,” her mother said, her tone a mix of humor and snideness.

  “I’m not talking about this.” Lacy glanced at the flat-screen sixty-inch television left on for the cat’s entertainment. While the TV remained on mute, an anchorwoman stood in front of the local police station and a picture of a man’s face, not an altogether unpleasant face, took up half of the screen. The words Armed and Dangerous? appeared beneath the picture. Lacy started to hit the volume when she heard frantic barking in the backyard.

  “It’s not natural!” her mother insisted.

  Neither was talking about sex with her mother. Lacy attempted a conversational U-turn: “I got a postcard from Mimi.” Then she tugged the towel higher around her breasts and peered out the window at the gloomy February day. The song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” played over her home sound system.

  Pressing her nose against the cold glass, she spotted her poodle/Boston Terrier mix running in circles by the shed. “Mom, Fabio is having a fit in the backyard. I should go see what he’s terrorizing. It could be another rabid raccoon.”

  “It’s probably a stray cat. And you can’t adopt another one. You know what they say about a woman with more than three cats.”

  “What do they say?” She jumped at the change of subject. Pulling at the door, she grunted when she realized the deadbolt was locked and her keys were in her purse. Dropping onto her hands and knees, she slapped open the doggy door. “Fabio, come here!”

  Her mother’s high-pitched voice carried through the line. “Any woman with more than three cats is destined to be an old maid. The fact that you named that mutt ‘Fabio’ is proof that you need a man in your life.”

  “I can’t be an old maid. I’m divorced.” Just like you. Like I swore I’d never be. Lacy mentally pushed the delete button on that thought and poked her head out the doggy door. A cold, rain-scented wind whipped her hair into her eyes. “Fabio, come to Mama!” The dog, his Velcroed reindeer horns sagging, shot her a glance but continued to howl and run in circles. Whatever he’d found, pride echoed in his bark.

  Lacy nudged the phone back to her ear just as her mother said, “Of course I remember. Why do you think I’m calling you? I know how hard ex-anniversaries are to take.”

  Lacy began backing up, wishing she could reverse time. Five minutes back and she would never have answered the dad-burn phone. Five days back and she’d have never agreed to do the Christmas card photo shoot for the Pet Magazine Group. Five years back and she would have never married Peter.

  Finally drawing her head out of the doggy door, she plopped down, the hardwood floor cold on her naked rear. “Mom, can I call you back later?” In a couple of years, maybe?

  Her mom kept talking. “It usually takes me about a month to rebound. And the best—”

  “With six ex-anniversaries, that means you’re depressed half of the year. Why, it barely gives you time to hunt down your next victim. I mean husband.” Lacy frowned, knowing the comment would bring repercussions. Her mother’s “divorce record” had sensitive subject stamped all over it. But so did Lacy’s non-sex life.

  “Don’t get cute with me, Lace! Is that Christmas music? Are you doing a Christmas shoot? Are all photographers weird? Tell me you didn’t put up a tree this time. Why couldn’t you be something normal? Martha’s daughter works at Wal-Mart and she has a sex life.”

  “I’ll put my application in tomorrow. Sex is a nice company benefit.” Lacy glanced down the hall where the reflection of Christmas lights danced against the wall. It was a prop. And the music and candles, well . . . it put her in the spirit. “Do you ask everyone about their sex life?”

  “No! She just happens to be pregnant.” Her mother’s voice mingled with another bout of Fabio’s serious come-see-what-I-found barking.

  “Mom, Fabio needs me. Gotta go. Kiss-kiss.” She mimicked her mother’s voice.

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me, Lace! I’m not—”

  Lacy hung up, risking her mother’s wrath. Karina Callahan, mother to one, a divorcée to six and counting, considered hanging up on someone a federal offense. She had left a couple of husbands for that very reason. No doubt, Lacy would pay for the crime later, but right now she had a dog situation, her naked buns were drawing a chill through the rest of her body, and today was her fifth wedding anniversary. Or it would have been, if eighteen months ago Peter hadn’t decided to play Pin the Secretary to the Elevator Wall.

  Scrambling to her feet, she tossed the phone on the blue recliner. The chair, equipped with a massager, heating pad, and a mini refrigerator, had been the only thing she and Peter had fought over in court. She’d been determined to keep it, not because she liked it, but because Leonardo, Samantha, and Sweetie Pie did.

  Peter liked it, too, but he had his secretary to keep him massaged and hot.

  She glanced up just as Leonardo, her red tabby, sashayed into the room. His Santa hat cocked over one ear reminded Lacy that she needed to finish the shoot. She would have been done by now if Samantha hadn’t gone on modeling strike and taken refuge under the bed, sending Lacy to hide her frustrations in the tub.

  Leonardo balanced on his hind legs, sending the hat’s white puff ball dangling around his stiff whiskers. He eyed the phone in his chair and cut his accusing green gaze to her.

  “Sorry.” Lacy grabbed the phone and tickled the cat’s chin.

  Fabio’s ear-piercing bark drew Lacy’s attention again. She dropped the towel and the phone in a different chair. Naked, she skirted around the coffee table and opened a gift bag containing an oversized pink T-shirt—a Valentine’s gift from her friend, Sue.

  After donning the Pepto-Bismol-colored shirt, she found her keys, unlocked the door, and darted out to rescue Fabio’s latest victim. Probably another Texas-size cockroach. Fabio took pride in his roach conquests. And at these sizes, he had a right to be proud.

  • • •

  Big Bruno heaved in a gaspy breath. “You don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  Zeke gritted his teeth and stared out at the bank of the lake. They’d walked for almost an hour and found nothing. Bruno, holding his side, wheezed and huffed. How was it that he could dance for hours, but after walking a mile, he couldn’t breathe? Zeke curled his hand into a fist, wanting to hit something. Wanting to hit Chase Kelly.

  “I sure as hell don’t want to go down for killing a cop. I got—” Bruno inhaled deeply “—plans, you know. A talent scout is coming to Houston next week for that new reality show. I got a spot to perform. If I make it, I’ll be on . . . TV and everything. I’ll go straight then. No more illegal crap. Did—”

  “Shut up!” Zeke swung around. “And stop breathing like that!”

  “Have a ’tude, man,” Bruno said, and swiped at the sweat dripping down his dark brow. Thirty degrees and the man was sweating. Zeke’s patience teetered on the edge. In a few more months, he would have been out. Retired with honors, and almost enough money to make the last twenty years worth the effort. But no! Things had to get screwed up. That damn snitch had to start nosing around. And he’d given Kelly enough evidence to ruin everything.

  “He’s not here.” Bruno picked up a rock and flung it into the water with a splash. “I bet the fall killed him. Probably hit his head on a rock. I don’t think my shot got him. Like I told you before, I don’t mind wounding someone, breaking an arm or a leg, but I don’t kill folks. Especially not cops.”

  “Where’s his damn body, then?” Zeke spit out.

  “Maybe it got caught on the bottom.”

  Zeke dragged his fingers through his thinning hair. His hands shook with rage. “No!”
He kicked at some loose rocks. “Chase Kelly is a lucky son of a bitch. He made it out alive, and damn it if he didn’t get away.”

  “But he’s not here,” Bruno whined. “And he’s shot. Just how far could he get?”

  Zeke looked down one side of the waterway and then the other. Chase Kelly could take him down. He couldn’t let that happen. “We’ve got to find him. He’s got to die and he’s got to die today.”

  • • •

  “Fabio, come here, boy.”

  Chase heard the voice and knew he should try to run. Only, it hurt too much to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to live. But then, he’d already made that choice, hadn’t he? He’d chosen to live.

  Oh, he’d denied it at every mandatory shrink visit he’d made in the last two years. Denied it to Jason, his ex-partner, who’d gone ape on him because Chase took so many risks.

  In truth, he hadn’t set out to get himself killed. Not to say that if the opportunity had knocked, he wouldn’t have invited it in to discuss things over a beer. Yet when the Hereafter stared him in the face, he’d found something in himself he’d thought had died along with Sarah: his will to live.

  “Fabio!” the dog’s owner called out again.

  Picking up a rock, Chase tossed it toward the yapping dog. The ugly mutt looked like that Star Wars character Yoda, but with reindeer horns and a perm gone bad.

  Grimacing, Chase stood. The last thing he needed was to have to explain himself to some civilian. If what Zeke had said was true, the local news would have Chase’s face plastered on TV screens across Texas.

  Sucking air into his battered lungs, he knew he needed to contact someone, but who would believe that Zeke, a twenty-year HPD veteran, had gone bad? Hell, Chase still had a hard time believing it.

  His gaze zipped around the property. The slight clearing in the pine thicket had a storage shed that backed up to a house and looked promising. He needed a place to catch his breath—a place he could think things through, away from the icy wind. He needed to figure out what damn book Zeke wanted.

  Chase eyed his bloody shirt. The bullet had only grazed his shoulder. While it hurt like hell, the bleeding had stopped. Still, he could use a painkiller. His entire body throbbed from his leap off that bridge. Or was it from Bruno’s fist? Running his hand over his ribs, he didn’t think any were broken, but they sure as hell felt loose.

  “Jeez.” He almost tripped over his own feet. Having been undercover for almost a week, he’d hardly closed his eyes. And for the last hour he’d pushed himself harder, running on a tank of adrenaline that had just run dry.

  Hearing approaching footsteps, he started to move. His pain shot from high to higher. Staggering behind the shed, gun in hand, he collapsed against the splintery planks of the small building.

  “What is it, Fabio? Don’t get your outfit dirty.”

  The cold wind slapped against Chase’s lake-soaked clothes. He listened and mentally created a mug shot of a person who would own such a strange animal and would dress it in reindeer horns in February. Christmas, maybe, but February?

  “Fabio, I don’t need another cockroach in my collection.” The voice and footsteps sounded too young to belong to the blue-haired old lady he’d conjured up in his mind.

  Chase’s knees buckled. The cold nipped at his bones. He leaned harder against the shed wall. Now wouldn’t be a good time to pass out. The dog’s owner would probably call an ambulance and the police, and he’d be stitched up and hauled off to jail before he could say uncle.

  No, before he faced his fellow officers, he needed to think of a way to prove his innocence. Or rather, a way to prove Zeke’s guilt. Zeke wouldn’t take him down without a fight.

  “Fabio!” the voice called. “Mama’s tootsies are cold. Not to mention other body parts.”

  The dog barreled around the shed, bouncing and barking, his red cloth horns flopping. The footsteps drew nearer. Chase braced himself. Damn, he didn’t want to do this. Involving a civilian meant trouble.

  “For Pete’s sake, come on. Let’s—” The brunette’s mouth fell open. Her pale blue eyes grew as wide as quarters.

  Chase registered her features. Damp black hair dangled in ringlets just above her shoulders. His gaze lowered. While her height was average, nothing else about her fit that word. Her big shirt hung, but swayed enough to give him an idea of what was below. Breasts, body, curves. At the end of that shirt extended a pair of nice legs.

  As she danced from one bare foot to the other, the edge of her shirt flipped from side to side. He swallowed, his interest level climbing. And his reasons for not passing out were now altogether different.

  His eyes stayed focused on the hem of the shirt. Was she naked beneath—? She squealed and yanked the hem down to mid-thigh. With the shirt pulled taut, he could read the words printed in large black letters across the front: Divorced, Desperate and Delicious.

  Chase blinked. He was shot, wet, cold, and beat up, but he wasn’t dead, and he recognized delicious when he saw it.

  Chapter Three