Читать книгу Calling His Bluff - Amy Jo Cousins - Страница 8

Two weeks later, she was still feeling that kiss. She’d nearly rear-ended a canary-yellow VW Bug at a stop sign because she was daydreaming about the taste of his mouth.

It wasn’t fair.

She’d been waiting her whole life for someone to match the slow roll and tumble in her stomach that she’d felt when she was twelve and her brother’s best friend kissed her on the lips.

It was so unfair that the first and only person to make her feel that way again was that very same boy, now all grown up and far more dangerous than when he was fifteen.

Not to mention the whole “still married” thing.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t run into some good kissers in the years bookended by J.D. Damico. He wasn’t the first man to cup his hand against her cheek and slide his palm around to the nape of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair along the way. And he wasn’t the first man to grab the front of her jacket to pull her even closer. Or to pause for a moment, his mouth hovering over hers, to nip at her bottom lip.

But that mouth. Damn. The moment his lips pressed to hers it was like someone had slid a hand up her thigh and whispered, “Lie down with me.” And the sudden wash of wanting him was a sharp cramp that left her breathless. His tongue in her mouth was a tease. The moment had passed too quickly, leading her to do some tugging of her own. She’d wrapped her hand behind his neck to pull his mouth back down to hers.

A horn blasted behind her and she stepped on the gas without thinking. Slammed on the brakes and waved the car with the right-of-way through the intersection, making the “Sorry!” face at the other driver, who flipped her off. She stopped thinking about the kiss for ten seconds and managed to get across the four-way-stop intersection and into the itty-bitty parking lot that scraped alongside the veterinary clinic where she worked.

She bumped the medical bag on her hip up against the metal plate at the back entrance so that the security scanner could read the card in the outside pocket. The door unlocked with a beep. She appreciated the high-tech setup at this clinic, but she would’ve put up with just about anything to get out of her previous clinic, from padlocks on the doors to gas lanterns for light.

She didn’t know what it was, but something about her attracted older married men who were too self-aware to indulge in a midlife crisis by having an affair with a twenty-two-year-old blonde bombshell. It was as if they took one look at her and thought, “Hmm, the calm, quiet brunette in the corner there, what about her? Looks studious but pretty. No one could accuse me of going for flash there. And then maybe I can still get the Porsche.”

She had only fallen for that with her first boss because he hadn’t gotten around to mentioning the fact that he was married until six months into their relationship. She’d needed a new job fast, particularly since things ended so badly. After she “accidentally” dropped a fifty-pound bag of dog kibble on his foot, he threatened to call the cops. She threatened to call his wife. She had avoided even speaking to her second boss whenever possible, only to find herself being chased around the examining table mere months later by another man having a midlife crisis, who promised he could help her “lighten up.”

Blech. Now she worked for a woman, which was the selling point that had brought her on board. That and the off-street parking.

She really did have terrible luck with men. The first man she’d fallen for had broken her heart without even knowing it, and things had gone downhill from there.

Sighing, Sarah headed into the bathroom that doubled as an employee locker room. She spun the dial on her locker with one hand while she started stripping off her winter gear with the other. She grabbed her last clean lab coat, crammed her coat, hat, scarf, gloves, boots and medical bag into the too-small locker and bodychecked the door shut. She wouldn’t need any of it until this afternoon’s house calls.

She spent half of each week making house calls—a stroke of genius on her boss’s part. There were plenty of wealthy pet owners in Chicago’s Gold Coast who were willing to pay top dollar for the convenience of not having to cart a pet off to the vet’s office and spend the morning in a waiting room.

Although the pet owners were asked to have little Fluffy or Killer confined to an easily searchable area like the bathroom, she did spend a fair bit of time on her hands and knees peering under king-size beds and trying to coax out spooked animals. Still, it was a growing part of their business. Soon she might not need to put in any hours at the clinic except to do paperwork or the follow-up on complicated cases.

This afternoon, she even had an appointment in the warehouse district. It would probably wrap up early, so maybe she would drop by J.D.’s to make sure he was following her instructions with the kitty. Give him some pointers on what to do when the kittens started coming. Bring him a bottle of wine to replace the one they’d split the other night.

Maybe jump him where he stood when he opened the door.

He was the one to push you away, she reminded herself. He’d backed off halfway through a kiss that had been seriously blowing her socks off, looking startled, like he hadn’t meant to take things that far.

Yeah, she was ready to show him just how far they could take things.

Down, girl. It was just a kiss. And he’s married, maybe.

“Who am I seeing first?” she called out as she walked down the hall to the front desk. The day’s clients were already tangling and yowling in the small lobby.

“I put them in exam room two. They were freaking out the rest of the clients.” Jackie, their nurse-receptionist, smacked a new patient file into her hand and grimaced.

“Who?” There was little that shook the normally unflappable Jackie after two decades of animal handling. She’d seen, or stepped in, almost everything. “Is someone foaming at the mouth?”

“No, thank god,” Jackie said. “Mr. Thompson and his seven-foot boa constrictor. Apparently the snake doesn’t like cages, so it’s just, you know, crawling all over him. People were practically scooting out the door to keep their distance. Yuck.”

“No snakes for you, Jackie?” She flipped open the file.

“Nothing that moves on dry land without feet. The snake ate Mr. Thompson’s son’s guinea pig, Squeak, this morning.” For the first time that morning, Jackie grinned. “He asked if we could get it back.”

Sarah bit her lips together. Always avoid making fun of the clients, she reminded herself, at least on the premises. “I assume you told him there would be no Squeak retrieval today.”

“I’m not sure he believed me. I did inform him that he was sure to see the guinea pig again, just probably not in a form his kid would want to play with.”

“And?”

“I think he finds my sense of humor lacking.”

“No kidding. So what’s he here for?”

“Aside from a second opinion on the possibility of squeezing Squeak out whole from either end of the snake? Apparently the little fluff ball put up quite a fight.” Jackie didn’t share Sarah’s sense of propriety. Her eyebrows wiggled. “The long and skinny one took a couple of hits to the snout. Needs a little patching up.”

“Ah, the glamour. TGI Friday.” Sarah laughed out loud and shook her head as she stepped into the exam room. Who was she kidding, having a mental flirtation with J.D. Damico? The man spent most of his time with the glitterati of Hollywood, and she would spend most of her morning bandaging a boa.

Besides, J.D. had been nothing but a horrible tease to her when she was a girl. She shouldn’t get her brain all twisted into knots over him. No doubt he’d just been yanking her chain when he kissed her.

Anyway, knowing J.D., he was probably already planning on skipping town. Halfway renovated loft condo or not.

Hours later, Sarah bruised her knuckles for the third time, whacking them against J.D.’s armored tank of a front door. He can’t be gone already, she told herself.

Could he?

Even as a kid, he’d barely waited to turn legal before throwing everything he owned in the back of a rattling gray Chevy Citation and hitting the road for freedom and adventure, aka anything that got him away from his parents. She was pretty sure the only reason he’d stuck around for as long as he did was that he didn’t want to disappoint her mother, who asked about his homework every day when she checked on her own children. If J.D. could have offered himself up for adoption, he’d have done it in a heartbeat. But still, the moment he was legal, he’d made a break for it.

Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Sarah, she scolded herself. Not even shoot-from-the-hip J.D. would throw a pregnant cat out on the street in the middle of winter. Plus, it would be pretty hard to sell that condo in its present “a bomb just exploded” condition. There could be a million reasons why he’s not home, you loon. Just because the man doesn’t have a nine-to-five job doesn’t mean he never leaves the house. Even artists need to hit the store for toilet paper and toothpaste every now and then.

Or he could be out with his ex. Correction, not so ex.

Or worse, maybe he’s locked in with her and they’re not answering the door.

She had stopped pounding on the door while berating herself, and in the silence she heard the faint inquiring mews of a cat.

All of a sudden she felt incredibly stupid.

What was she doing here?

The man obviously did not need her help any longer. Although he’d been desperate for help with the cat, it wasn’t as if he’d picked up the phone the next day to call her. He hadn’t even bothered to thank her for messengering over some supplies the next morning. She’d sent kibble and vitamins and a brush, for crying out loud. Showing up on his doorstep was more likely to seem flirtatious than professional.

She bumped her elbow against the neck of the wine bottle sticking out of the medical bag that hung at her hip, a fine pinot noir she’d picked up at a neighborhood wine shop earlier in the day. She pressed her lips together and remembered that she’d slicked a coat of plum gloss on them before stepping out of the car. Had unearthed a dusty comb from the depths of her bag and run it through her straight hair, too.

Likely to seem flirtatious?

Good grief.

She had to get out of here before he came home and found her camped out on his doorstep. And then say a prayer in gratitude that this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where the neighbors minded each other’s business.

“You lookin’ for J.D.?” a woman’s voice called out.

Lovely.

“Uh, no.” But she clearly was. God, she hoped she hadn’t been spotted pounding on his door like her pants were on fire. The two women standing on the sidewalk sported four-inch stilettos and skirts that weren’t much longer. Both sported extravagantly dyed fake-fur jackets and matching Easter-egg colored blunt-cut wigs.

Well, neighbors came in all different shapes and sizes, she guessed. And some didn’t live on your street, so much as, well…work there.

The women were still watching her, eyebrows arched and hips cocked to one side.

“Yes, well, I was just, you know, checking to see if he was home. I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

God, she felt like an idiot.

The taller of the two women smiled at her. “I know whatcha mean, honey. Almost all the guys who come see me just happen to be in the neighborhood, too.” Her companion snorted a little. Sarah was pretty sure she was laughing. “Did he stand you up?” the first woman asked, jerking her chin at J.D.’s door. “And after you brought the wine, too.”

The sensation of being smashed on a slide and examined under a microscope grew stronger. Heat raced over her face as she concentrated on not stuttering.

“No, we’re not…you know,” she waved her hands in front of her chest. The women looked at her as if they knew very well indeed. This was getting worse. “I’m just a friend.” Skeptical looks. Her voice squeaked higher. “His veterinarian. He’s got a cat?”

She hated it when her voice rose up at the end of perfectly simple sentences, making her sound like a teenybopper looking for approval. It was a habit she’d almost completely eliminated. Except when she got nervous.

Getting busted by a couple of hookers in a transparent attempt to put the moves on a guy, who had made it clear by the simple fact of not calling that he was uninterested in repeating the mind-blowing kiss they’d shared, made her nervous.

Go figure.

“Yeah, I saw that cat,” the shorter woman was nodding. “Took him half the morning to corner that damn thing in the alley. Man must be awful lonely to chase a mangy cat that hard. Maybe you should stick around with that wine.”

Strange. J.D. clearly didn’t want an animal. Why would he have rescued a stray at all? It was difficult to come up with an explanation that made sense, particularly given that she was still in the middle of the most peculiar conversation of her life.

“But you should put some lipstick on, honey. You’re too pale,” the first woman advised.

Excellent. Now she was getting makeup tips. And she was already wearing lip gloss, damn it.

Her feet were stiff with cold, her nose was starting to run and she’d had her fill of humiliation for the day. It was time to go console herself with a decent meal and some company that didn’t charge by the half hour. Maybe read a nice, sedate, nineteenth-century novel.

“Either of you ladies like pinot?” Time to hit the road.

* * *

Her attempt at cheerful self-deprecation lasted all of fifteen minutes. Until she got a ticket.

More precisely, three.

With her forehead resting on the steering wheel of her car, Sarah gave serious consideration as to whether her day could possibly get any worse.

Then she remembered that Officer Dubinski, rhymes with Buttinski, had offered to take her down to the station, in cuffs of course, if she thought that would improve her mood, and decided it could indeed be worse.

But it was just that she had car insurance. The insurance card itself maybe wasn’t the first thing you came across in the explosion of crap that fell out of her glove compartment the moment you opened it, but it was in there somewhere. And she hadn’t thought there was a time limit on finding it.

And she had stopped at the white line. But that last tap on her brakes must have happened just as the tires hit a patch of ice, because the car had slid forward a foot or two before coming to a complete stop.

And she knew that her passenger side rearview mirror was cracked. Some idiot parking his car must have clipped the mirror the night before, but the dealership said they had to order the part since her Jeep was so old, and it wouldn’t be in until Monday. She couldn’t work without her car.

It just seemed so unfair that she hadn’t done anything wrong and was in all this trouble anyway. When she tried to explain that to the officer, he’d flashed a palm in her face to stop her monologue. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can tell your side of it in court, lady.”

Now he was sitting in his cruiser, parked behind her, and she was too nervous to pull away from the curb. She was so angry her hands were shaking. She’d probably step on the accelerator and drive right into a parked car. But after it became clear that the police officer was more than capable of out-waiting her, she finally shifted her car into drive and pulled away from the curb. Her gaze jumped to her rearview mirror every two seconds until the cruiser finally got off her tail.

Now she didn’t want a meal. Or a book. She wanted to skip town. In lieu of that, she’d settle for some sympathy, damn it, for J.D. not calling her and for the hookers and for Officer Buttinski. And maybe a couple stiff drinks. She knew just where to go to get them.

Of course, in classic Chicago style, all the open parking spaces on the residential streets had been blocked with buckets, brooms and folding chairs by people who wanted to save the spaces after going to all the work of digging them out. She spotted one last unclaimed gap on the block, only to watch as it was stolen from her by a jerk in a Hummer who definitely had a tiny penis.

That was it. She’d had it.

Her tires skidded as she slalomed halfway into a spot blocked by two green plastic lawn chairs and slammed on the brakes. She was out of the car in two seconds, and she had a chair in each hand moments later. She was about to pitch them onto the parkway when she came to her senses.

Did she really want a rock through her windshield?

Two minutes and a quick search of her med bag later, the chairs were stacked neatly just off the curb and a hot pink Post-it that broadcast her apology was anchored to the seat with a chunk of ice. So sorry—Emergency! Leaving soon & will put the chairs back! Her Jeep was parked neatly in the stolen space.

She was still risking that her car would get attacked with a shovel, but if she had to drive around the block for one more minute, she was going to lose her mind. Or commit vehicular suicide.

Finally, she’d made it. The one place where she knew everyone would be on her side. She’d managed to wrap up early enough that it was still before five, so there shouldn’t be anyone around except for her favorite people. She yanked open the door to her brother’s pub, the original Tyler’s, and prepared herself for some sympathy.

“…I just felt sorry for Sarah because she was always mooning around about some guy she liked.”

This was not happening to her.

* * *

“I was just yanking her chain.”

It was a good thing he hadn’t actually sat down yet, J.D. thought, as he took another step back from the long wooden counter in front of him.

Tyler had both hands flat against the bar. He looked about two seconds away from hopping it and coming after J.D. with fists swinging.

“You kissed my sister?”

He couldn’t blame the guy. When you ask your friend to check up on your sister, you don’t really mean it in a carnal way.

“I asked you to talk to her, Damico. Tell me if you thought she seemed a little off. I didn’t tell you to put the moves on her.” Tyler wasn’t smiling at all. The man seemed pretty pissed, actually.

“Hey, I was doped up on pain meds when you called. Plus, I haven’t seen Sarah since she was a kid. I wouldn’t know if she seemed a little off if I talked to her all day.”

“Yeah, well, see with your eyes, not with your hands.” When Tyler yanked at the bar rag hanging from his belt and started polishing the counter in front of him like it was inspection time at the barracks, J.D. figured it was probably safe to sit down. Which was necessary, because after five days without crutches, his leg still ached like a son of a bitch. “Sarah doesn’t need her chain yanked by the likes of you. Dude, you don’t even know if you’re still married.”

Maybe not so safe yet.

“No way. I paid. I got the papers. Only one married here is you, bro. Thank god.”

He glanced reflexively over his shoulder when he heard the gentle creak of a hinge and shivered as a small gust of cold air hit the nape of his neck. He hoped whoever it was would take the heat off him. The petite blonde who came barreling through the front door of the pub, two small children hanging off her hands, fit the bill.

J.D. shook his head and smiled at the sight of the classic Gold Coast beauty, blond hair up in a twist and designer suit hanging flawlessly on her small frame. She definitely merited a second glance. Even though she was married to his best friend.

Grace kicked off her high heels, which skidded to a stop at the base of the jukebox, and walked across the spotless hardwood floor of the bar in her stocking feet.

J.D. had been out of the country when she conned her way into an under-the-table waitressing job at Tyler’s pub, using a fake name while she hid out from some cold and manipulative family members. It didn’t surprise him much that she’d fallen for Tyler. Women always did sooner or later. What did surprise him was that his buddy had fallen just as hard.

“I’ll trade you your children for a glass of pinot grigio,” Grace suggested to her husband. She threw J.D. a grateful glance as he scooped two-year-old Isabelle onto his lap, pulling out one of the baseballs he always had on hand somehow to start a tame game of underhand toss with four-year-old Daniel. “Thanks.”

“My children, huh? Were they that bad?” Tyler asked as he poured the wheat-pale wine into a glass and swirled it. He took a sip, nodded and passed it to his wife, who took a rather longer swallow before answering.

“I should never have told Chef Paul about Take Your Kids to Work Day.” Paul was her partner in the crowning jewel of her restaurant conglomerate. Grace narrowed her eyes. “He just happened to be working on a new dessert menu today.”

“And?” After a couple of decades, J.D. could read his friend’s face at a glance. Tyler loved listening to his wife, even when she was like this, a little cranky, a little frustrated and in dire need of five minutes to vent before she could relax. He shook his head.

“Have you ever seen a couple of toddlers after they’ve taste-tested three cakes, two ices and a torte?” she asked. “It’s like having two overgrown hamsters on speed, only you’ve lost their exercise wheel, so they just keep running around the room.”

Sure, Grace was a sweetheart, no question, and a beautiful woman, but Tyler was grinning for crying out loud. Charmed to his toes by her cheerful kvetching. And J.D. had to admit that once he might once have envied the joy his friend took in his family. After all, hadn’t he spent most of his childhood wishing his own family was normal?

Yeah, well, he’d been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt. It wasn’t until after you got home that you found out that the colors of your new purchase bled into mud the first time you tried to throw it in the wash. Thanks, but no thanks. It was abundantly clear to him that he’d do better to keep his romantic entanglements to an emotional minimum. It would lower his chances of getting kicked in the teeth, at least. Or of busting his other tibia. Playing honorary uncle was enough.

J.D. was watching Daniel dive headfirst under a table, chasing the baseball after a missed catch, when he noticed that Grace and Tyler had stopped talking.

He glanced over his shoulder.

She must have lunged over the bar at him. Grace’s hands were wrapped around her husband’s neck as they shared what looked like a mind-blowing kiss. Feeling like a Peeping Tom, he turned back to the kid.

But he couldn’t block out their voices.

“Think your mom will want to babysit tonight?”

“She can be bribed.”

Tyler’s voice was husky and Grace’s laugh scraped low in her throat. Okay, so maybe he could understand the appeal of that, but Grace was one in a million. J.D. decided he’d wait for their conversation to start up again before he turned around. After a couple of minutes, though, the wait was getting ridiculous, so he settled for calling out to the ceiling, “Jeez guys, get a room, will ya?”

Daniel trotted over and rested the baseball, clutched in his two small hands, on J.D.’s thigh. “Yeah, Mommy. Get a room.”

The kid would probably be using that phrase again. He giggled as his parents yelled at J.D.

“Thanks a lot, Damico.” Grace wadded up a bar napkin and bounced it off his head with a precision throw.

He winked and grinned. “Any time, Grace. That’s what’s so nice about being ‘Uncle’ J.D. I get to hand them back to you just when they’re getting impossible.”

“I should be so lucky.”

But she belied her words when she grabbed her daughter off his lap and proceeded to torment her by blowing raspberries on her round belly. J.D. slipped his camera out and framed the shot in an instant, shoving his Nikon back in his pocket before Isa could stop giggling. He kneaded his thigh when his hands were empty again. Losing the cast had been frigging awesome and the therapy was helping, but he still ached. “Wanna babysit tonight?” Grace asked him.

“Not now that I know what you two plan on doing with your free time. I don’t need the mental pictures, thank you.” He grabbed one of the juice-filled sippy cups Tyler had set on the bar and passed it down to Daniel, who was waiting at his knee like a terrier. J.D. figured the boy was old enough for a real cup, no lid, but he’d learned from past experience that unless he wanted to take responsibility for mopping up any spills, he’d better keep his mouth shut.

“Besides, I’m off in a couple hours.”

“Let me guess. Malaysia? No, you’ve been there. Zanzibar?”

“Been there, too. Nice island. Spice trade. Big carved wooden doors everywhere. Excellent beaches.”

“So?”

“Vegas.” He tilted his head back to take another swallow of his beer. “The film I worked on might, uh, win some kind of MTV award.”

“My buddy, the rock star.”

“Shut up, Tyler. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

Grace was swaying with Isa and pelting J.D. with questions about whether he’d meet U2 and what he’d be wearing. J.D. tried to explain that it wasn’t what it sounded like. It was not a big deal. The film had won an MTV technical award of some kind. The director must have had some kind of belated guilt attack about the whole thing with Lana. Either that or the fact that his coffee table book of photographs had driven a surge of interest in the film had apparently gotten his name on the invite list for the ceremony. Which was, with various other non-flashy awards, being conducted a month before the main show and would probably involve wine from a box and a choice between underbaked chicken and overcooked steak.

“It’s just an excuse for a party, really,” he explained. “Everyone gets dressed up, drinks too much and pretends for a night that they’re as famous as the people on the other side of the camera.” Time for a change of subject. “So where’s your little sister, Tyler?”

“Sarah or Maxie?” Grace asked as she snagged a handful of pretzels from a bowl on the counter.

“He better be talking about Maxie.” In response to his wife’s look, Tyler said, “J.D. has already seen plenty of Sarah.”

A man had to defend himself. “Hey, the whole thing was your idea.” He turned toward Grace. “It was your husband’s idea to have me check her out, and now he’s pissed because I gave her one lousy kiss.”

“I asked you to check on her, not ‘check her out,’” Tyler retorted with air quotes.

“Stop!” Grace threw her hands in the air. She pointed at her son. “You, go to the kitchen and ask nicely for some tortellini and broccoli. You can pretend to eat the broccoli if you go now.” Daniel went. Grace passed her youngest back to J.D. and ducked behind the counter to pour herself more wine. Propping her elbows on the bar, she rested her head on her interlaced fingers and grinned at J.D. “You, tell me about that kiss. No, wait. First things first. Why were you checking her out?”

“On, checking on,” Tyler protested. “I wanted J.D. to see if he could feel her out.” As he snagged the baby from J.D.’s lap, he gave his friend a sharp look and said, “I said out, not up, buddy. Don’t get any ideas. I told him how we’re a little concerned about Sarah.”

“Worried sick and not a little pissed off is what he means,” Grace added in a helpful and pleasant tone of voice. J.D. knew that Grace and Sarah had formed a close bond from day one. The two women joked that they didn’t need to bother with the “in-law” part of the phrase “sister-in-law” since they were already sisters, separated at birth. “We’ve been trying to get her in on the planning for Susannah’s birthday, but she’s been blowing off all our calls.” He knew that the Tyler kids went all out for their mom’s birthday every year. It was a family tradition that he couldn’t imagine Sarah skipping out on, but maybe she’d been busy with work. “Plus, it just wasn’t like her to miss Daniel’s birthday last week.”

Or maybe it was serious.

“She forgot her godson’s birthday?” Shoot, he could find her right now and tie her to a chair until she explained what was going on with her.

“Well, not exactly. I mean, she sent over a gift and a card, but she made up some excuse about why she couldn’t make it to the party. We haven’t seen her in weeks. If she blows off Susannah’s party, I’m calling the police.”

J.D. settled back into his seat with a sigh. She’d remembered the boy’s birthday, hadn’t she? She came from a terrific family, but everyone needed a break from time to time. With a family like his, that break was better made permanently. All the same, he could see why Tyler and Grace were worried. Sarah had always been the responsible, quiet one, despite her unbelievably bad taste in high school boyfriends. She’d dated a kid who was busted for stealing equipment from the AV club in the hopes of making a porno, after breaking up with a guy who was caught taking bets on the football team. What were the odds?

Still. The memory of an ace of hearts etched on smooth skin flashed before him. Maybe he didn’t know Sarah as well as he thought he did. Maybe none of them did.

“What did Aunt Sarah send you for your birthday, buddy?” he called to Daniel as the boy wobbled back into the room clutching a bowlful of pasta. Spotting a disaster in the making, he scooped the kid up and deposited him in a chair, pushing his bowl away from the edge of the table.

“A book ‘bout dinosaurs.”

J.D. shook his head, reassured. That was Sarah. If the girl wasn’t trying to splint the broken leg of a squirrel, she was sitting somewhere with her nose in a book.

“I don’t know. All I can say is that she seemed fine to me. Better than fine,” he added with a grin.

“Watch yourself, buddy.”

“Aha, which brings us back to that kiss,” Grace lunged for the topic as if it were one of her children about to run off a cliff. “C’mon, J.D., fess up. Pretend you’re a girl and give me all the gory details.”

“The man is wearing a ponytail,” Tyler said as he swooped his baby girl through the air on a roller coaster ride before handing her off to Grace.

J.D. tugged on his hair where it was tied back with a leather cord. He was starting to think that this entire conversation was a remarkably bad idea. “What kind of details?”

“Was it good?” Grace, cool and classy woman that she was, looked like she was about to start breathing heavily and maybe drooling. She bounced her daughter on her hip. “Did she enjoy it?”

Tyler stuck his fingers in his ears and started humming “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

“Aw, Grace, I was just fooling around. I don’t know if she enjoyed it or not.”

“Well, did she stick her tongue down your throat or just sit there like a bump on a log?”

The visceral memory of that kiss slammed into him and his stomach dropped like he’d just crested a hill at high speed. She damn near climbed me like a tree was what he wanted to say. At first she hadn’t moved and he thought that he’d crossed a line, that he’d pushed the teasing too far this time and pissed her off. But then her mouth had melted beneath his and a second later he’d felt her hands gripping his hair as fiercely as his own were pulling her up higher against him.

Even Lana showing up in Chicago with her fantasy that they were still married couldn’t block that memory, although the hassle of dealing with his ex-wife’s efforts to track him down and lure him back as some kind of career move had complicated his life enough to be distracting.

He’d avoided thinking about that kiss ever since that night because each time he did, he relived the entire thing in every snatch-your-breath-away detail, and he wasn’t comfortable with the fact that its impact hadn’t faded at all in two weeks. To recover, he kept forcing himself to strategize about how to convince Lana that that door was closed for good.

Thank god Tyler was humming.

“She definitely didn’t just sit there.”

Grace’s “Excellent!” was drowned out by Tyler’s “Dude, that’s my sister!”

“Shush.” Grace stopped her husband’s mouth with her palm. “So tell me, what’s the plan?”

“Plan? There is no plan. It was just one lousy kiss!”

Tyler chorused, “That’s right! No plan!” and punched a fist in the air as he poured water from the soda gun into Daniel’s sippy cup one-handed. J.D. shook his head and said, “The last genius step of this plan gave me these—” he yanked up a sleeve to show off the scratches where the damn alley cat had nailed him “—and still poops in my house.”

“Hey, I just thought you’d borrow a cat. Not go all Great White Hunter on me.”

“Yeah, well, give me a couple of painkillers and I come up with all kinds of great ideas.”

“It was just an excuse to get her over there. I asked J.D. to talk to Sarah. The two of them always got on like secret pals when we were growing up,” he explained to his wife.

“Okay, A, that was a decade ago.” The door creaked open, drafting cold air inside. J.D. was grateful for whatever customer would put this conversation on hold. “And, B, I just felt sorry for Sarah because she was always mooning around about some guy she liked.”

“Mooning around?”

The new arrival’s voice was female. And deadly.

Yeah, he had a feeling that his gratitude that someone had walked in on this conversation was going to be very short-lived. He gritted his teeth, smiled and prepared to take his punishment like a man.

J.D. swiveled around on his stool in slow motion, but not even one hundred and eighty degrees gave him enough time to figure out a way to take back the words that had just come out of his mouth.

“Hey, Sarah. You look, um…” Scary, would have fit neatly at the end of that sentence. Her eyes were slits and her heeled boots clicked sharply on the floor, measuring out a straight line that brought her slowly closer to him, step by precise step. “So, figures of speech are funny things, aren’t they?”

“I was mooning,” the words were ground to a powder between clenched teeth, “over you,” she stabbed him in the shoulder with a pointed finger he was pretty sure she wished were a knife, “you jackass.”

“Right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Sorry about that. Didn’t notice at the time. Won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right about that.” She turned to her brother. “And you! Is it too much to ask for a little sympathy around here? I’ve had an awful day.” She waved Tyler off before he could even open his mouth. “My car was hit by someone last night who didn’t leave a note, surprise, surprise. Today, two hookers told me that I should try to get a little color in my face if I want a man, and Officer Buttinski wrote me three, count ’em, three tickets because he’s got the heart of the Grinch at the start of the movie. And you—” a hand flung out like the finger of death in J.D.’s direction “—you ask for my help and then kiss me? And you can’t even call to say thanks or explain the damn kiss? So I come here for a little comfort, a little empathy, and what’s the first thing I hear when I walk in the door? ‘I felt sorry for poor, moony Sarah!’”

* * *

She stood in the middle of a silent room.

Even Daniel was staring at her, jaw dropped, head braced back and a little to the side, as if braced for the next bombshell to explode. She did a mental review of her outburst and grimaced.

“Sorry ‘bout the language, kiddo,” she whispered at him. He grinned.

The answer to her challenge, when it came, was completely unexpected.

J.D. rose off his bar stool, tugged on his stub of a ponytail for a second, and then held his hand out to her in a gesture that Sarah’s boiling-over brain was having a hard time understanding.

“Sounds to me like you need to get out of town for a bit. If I say thank-you and promise to explain the next time I kiss you, do you wanna go to Vegas tonight?”

Well, that cleared things up. Not.