Kitabı oku: «His Baby Bonus», sayfa 3
Chapter Three
Beau groaned.
Gracie was crying. Big ’ol messy Southern belle tears just a little too over the top to be convincing.
When she got to the point in her show where she gazed up at him, batting long, tear-fringed eyelashes glinting in the light spilling in from the parking lot, he yanked the hand cuffed to her to his free one, flooding the now-silent room with bawdy applause. “Woo-hoo!”
He threw in an ear-splitting whistle, too.
“You’re a beast,” she spat, trying to roll over, taking him along for the ride.
“Hey—my arm doesn’t bend that way, thank you very much.”
“And I wasn’t crying for your entertainment pleasure, thank you very much!”
“Look, lady, how about we agree to disagree and call it a night?”
“I would, but I’m cold. I can’t sleep without my faux mink throw.”
“So you’re wanting me to uncuff you long enough to go get it?”
“Yes, please.”
He sighed. Ran his palm over the day and night’s stubble on his jaw. “Tell you what, you want that ratty old thing that bad, I’ll be happy to walk outside with you to get it from my trunk.”
“But I’m tired and my ankles are swollen.”
“Me, too—on both counts.” He stood, yanked her arm sideways to allow himself the range of motion needed to jerk the spread off the extra bed, then the blanket. After lying down beside her, then covering them both, he growled, “Night.”
“I’m supposed to just lay here flat like this? I don’t have enough pillows, and when my head isn’t high enough, I always wake with heartburn.”
“Here,” he said, yanking his own pillow out from under his head to awkwardly ram it under hers.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
After a few moments’ blessed silence, Beau was finally nodding off when she sighed.
Instantly, he was awake. “What?”
“I’ll never be able to sleep like this. If only I could—”
“Roll over.”
“What?”
“If I have to tell you again, I’ll roll you myself.”
She rolled, his arm flailed up at an awkward as hell angle, and because above all he was a gentlemen, not about to have this very pregnant woman accuse him of not having gotten adequate rest on his watch, he somehow managed to fall asleep.
Staying asleep was a whole other matter.
“Quit,” he mumbled when something kept rubbing his wrist.
“Huh?”
“Whatever you’re doing, knock it off.”
“I’m just laying here, trying to—”
“That! That little movement right there suspiciously close to Chinese water torture.”
“That?” She giggled. “That’s the baby, silly. She’s a night owl. Watch…” She flicked on the wall-mounted lamp on her side of the bed, then rolled onto her back and flung off the blanket. “Just keep your eyes on my belly, and—there! Did you see that?”
“Damn, that was pretty cool. Will he do it again?”
“She. And probably. Just keep watching.”
He or she did do it again—and again.
Watching that all-too-familiar show did something to Beau. As did seeing the wisp of a smile curving the corners of Gracie’s lips. She was proud of this baby—and she had a right to be. As he’d thought many times with Ingrid, having something that big moving around in your gut didn’t look all that comfortable.
“Does it hurt?” he asked with the next alienlike rise in her stomach.
“Not at all,” she said. “More like tickles.”
Well, that was good news.
“I hope this turns out right for you,” he said.
“Me, too.”
He made the mistake of meeting her big, blue stare, shimmering with unshed tears. A mysterious something in his own gut told him this time, her emotion was the real deal. And he hated that he was the one making her cry.
In the vast majority of his experiences with women, usually it turned out the other way around. Them making him cry. Not that he’d actually boo hooed—just that he’d felt miserable enough that if he’d been of the crying persuasion, the night Ingrid dumped him for that stodgy partner of hers would’ve been a legitimate tear-worthy occasion.
It turned out the child she’d carried for the past seven months, the child he’d been celebrating as his own for the past seven months, wasn’t really his, but her partner’s.
After that, how many times had he wished life’s tables could be turned? That he could be the one causing angst in a relationship? But now, even though this could hardly be called a romantic circumstance, he didn’t like the thought of Gracie for real crying one little bit.
A duo of tears slid down her left cheek. Purely on reflex, he brushed them away.
“You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Lips pressed tight, he shook his head.
“That sucks,” she said. “But I guess you’re just doing your job.”
“Trying,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, I’m not enjoying this any more than you.” In fact, being forced up against her like this, her lush curves spread before him like a veritable smorgasbord of womanhood, his assignment was growing harder by the second—quite literally. As best he could, he shifted his fly, trying his damnedest to ignore the canyon of heat scorching his legs, chest and shoulder where their bodies touched.
“Good,” she said, casting him a sarcastic smile much more indicative of the woman who’d locked him in a storage closet. Thank God. If she’d maintained her softer side, he’d have been in real trouble.
“Ready for some sleep?” she asked.
Yeah. Oh, hell yeah.
She turned off the light, pulled the blanket back up over her. He braced himself for her roll, and sure enough, there it was. With his arm back up at an awkward angle, his other elbow digging into his ribs, Beau closed his eyes and sighed, telling himself he’d slept in worse places at far worse angles.
Finally, finally, he’d drifted off to dreamland when—
“Marshal Beau?”
“Yes?”
The light switched on. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’M NOT LEAVING MY CAR,” Gracie said. Around ten the next morning the two of them stood in a chilly drizzle just outside her cabin.
She breathed deeply of fresh-washed, conifer-scented air, vowing today would be a great day. A normal day. Marshal Beau couldn’t keep her cuffed forever. All she had to do was sit tight and plan another escape and she’d soon be back on her way.
Marshal Beau pulled the cabin’s door shut. Gave her that look she was beginning to know and love. The one that said he was counting to ten in his head in a futile attempt to keep from strangling her. She knew the look because for the vast majority of the time they’d been together, she’d been doing the same with him.
“Ms. Sherwood, I’ve called a tow truck, and your car will be safely garaged back in Portland. Your belongings are in the back of my vehicle. I’m doing everything I can to be reasonable. Hell, I spent the whole night with my elbow up my ass trying to make you comfortable, but—”
“You don’t have to be crude. I’m used to being around more refined men.”
He snorted. “Oh, so let me see, all of the sudden, your convicted murderer, drug-dealing, scum of a husband is a great guy because he—”
Pa-ching!
“Shit!” he hollered, roughly grabbing her upper arm. “Get down.”
“Why? What was that?”
“A bullet. Attached to a gun with a silencer. Come on.” Crouching behind shrubs, he pushed her in front of him, then pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and started firing.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
“Oh my God, oh my God…” Gracie chanted the phrase over and over. “I didn’t think any of this was real. That you were somehow just making it all up to get your way, but—”
“Please,” he said, lacing the fingers of their cuffed hands, then giving her a squeeze. “Keep it together for me a little while longer.”
“I can’t, I can’t, I—”
He kissed her. Hard. Fast. “You have to. Come on.”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
“See that black SUV?” He pointed five cabins down.
“You kissed me,” she said, fingertips to her lips.
He shook his head.
“Y-yes, yes, you did.”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
“For cryin’ out loud, woman, it was just a kiss. It was the only way I could think to get your attention.”
“You could’ve just slapped me,” she hissed, still reeling from the shocking pleasure of him pressing his lips to hers.
“You’d have rather I—”
Pa-ching!
“W-what about the SUV?” she asked.
He fished for something from his front jeans pocket, then pulled out a tiny key. “If I let you loose, promise to do the smart thing and run for that car?”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
She swallowed hard and nodded.
He unlocked the cuffs, and even though their hands were free, he squeezed her fingers again. “On three,” he said.
She nodded.
“One…Two…Go!”
Gracie ran for all she was worth, her marshal close on her heels, firing back.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
In the car, heart pounding, Gracie hunched down in her seat.
Seconds later, Beau hopped in beside her, slamming his door and starting the engine simultaneously.
“You okay?” he asked, revving the engine, throwing a rooster tail of gravel up behind them as he sped from the lot.
Afraid she couldn’t speak past the wall of terrified tears blocking her throat, she nodded.
Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
“Beau! They’re following! Hurry!”
“I’m doin’ the best I can, darlin’. Put on your seat belt. I’d do it for you, but…”
Yeah, she could see he was kind of busy.
He careened onto a side street.
Seconds later, made a sharp right.
“Dammit,” he mumbled. “They’re still back there.”
“At least they’re not shooting.”
Pa-ching!
“You were saying?”
“ON THE BRIGHT SIDE,” Gracie said with a weak chuckle thirty minutes later, her breathing just now slow enough that she could speak without hyperventilating. “At least we lost my ex-husband’s associates.”
Stopped on the shoulder of a dirt road winding through forest so thick they might as well have been in a tunnel, her marshal thumped his forehead against the steering wheel. “Unfortunately with my cell not having a signal, we’ve also lost ourselves.”
“Hey—you were the one driving. All I did was sit here screaming.”
He’d had his eyes closed, but opened one long enough to glare at her. “Thanks.”
Making the mistake of gazing out her window, Gracie found the woods looking tall, dark and spooky—like one of those Bigfoot documentaries on The Travel Channel. Primeval ferns lined the road, and the only sound aside from a faint whoosh high in the Douglas fir, western red hemlock and Sitka spruce was the occasional rapid-fire hammer of a woodpecker somewhere in the gloom.
Far off thunder rumbled.
Gracie shivered.
Goose bumps covered her forearms, which then made her have to pee. Bad.
Not a good thing considering there wasn’t a rest area, gas station or McDonald’s anywhere in sight.
“I really have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
This time, Marshal Beau didn’t even open one eye. He just sat there. Stone silent. Like the moss-covered boulders on the side of the road.
A sprinkle of fat raindrops hit the windshield, only worsening her need to pee.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “I’ve reeaally got to go. I’m sure this is too much information, but the baby’s sitting on my bladder. I can only hold it for like twenty more seconds—tops.”
Still nothing.
“Are you even listening to me?” She gave his shoulder a nudge. After which, he grunted before reaching for his side, revealing a dark, sticky substance all over the back of his navy marshal’s jacket. It was on the seat, too. Smudging the black leather.
Hands to her mouth, she shook her head.
Had he been shot?
But when?
How could she not have noticed? He hadn’t been bawling with pain or anything. He’d just driven her to safety, all the while he’d been sitting there bleeding to…No.
No bleeding to death in such an already creepy location. Especially when it was her fault he’d been shot. The whole time she’d been running from him, convinced he was only lying to get her back to Portland to testify, he’d been telling the truth—that she, and her baby—were in danger.
The thought all at once made her hot, queasy and a little light-headed. But then she looked at the brave man beside her who’d saved her life, and asked, “What’s wrong with you? How can you just calmly be sitting there when you’ve been shot? Help me get your jacket off so I can see how badly you’re hurt.”
“I’m fine,” he said, wincing while she slipped off his windbreaker. It had been chilly that morning outside the motel, but she’d suspected he’d put it on more to hide his shoulder-holstered gun than because he’d been cold. Beneath the jacket was a shamrock-green T-shirt touting the Santa Clara Lucky Clovers, the right side of which was covered in a dark stain.
Getting a woozy Beau out of the driver’s seat and around the front of the car was no easy feat.
Sucking her lower lip, she gingerly raised his shirt over his head to find a bloody mess. But thankfully it looked like the bullet had only grazed him. Nevertheless, his poor, bruised skin resembled a tenderized flank steak.
“How bad is it?” he asked in a scratchy voice.
“If we can manage to prevent it from getting infected long enough to get you to a doctor, odds are you’ll survive. Got any bottled water?”
He nodded. “In the back.”
“Okay. Looks like the bleeding’s long since stopped, so let’s get you washed up and laying down on the passenger side. Guzzle that water, and we’ll find the nearest town and a doctor.”
“W-what about you?”
“What about me? I’m not shot.”
“You going to run again?”
“Give me some credit, Beau. You could’ve been killed protecting me. Yes, more than anything in the world, I want to attend the Culinary Olympics, but not at the cost of someone’s life.” Especially not his. What he’d done for her might all be in a day’s work for him, but…
She was suddenly so overcome with emotion, she couldn’t even think, just gaze at him like some dopey starstruck teen. It felt as if only just now had she really, truly seen him. His darkly handsome, whisker-stubbled profile and eyes as deeply brown as the forest around them.
Gracie’s mouth went dry.
Marshal Beau was hot.
Marshal-Beau-without-his-shirt was in the realm of ripped Matthew McConaughey!
“Thought you had to pee?” he asked.
“I do. But at the moment, um—” she licked her lips, turning her attention back to his wound instead of his looks “—getting you squared away seems a tad higher on my priority list.”
Okay, in her current nurse capacity, seeing how ogling the patient was highly unethical, she tried cleaning Beau’s wound as quickly as possible with the few supplies available in the mini first-aid kit they’d found in the trunk. She’d washed off most of the blood with water, then daubed at the wound with disinfectant.
“Damn, woman!” he said with a flinch. “Whose side are you on?”
“Sorry. This is harder than it looks.” The cleaner she got his wound, the better it looked. Meaning, the less she worried. Meaning, the more time she had to peruse his pecs. And his abs? Oh my…
She licked her lips.
He smelled good, too. Like mossy, musky woods. Sweat, leather and dust. U.S. Marshals had been around a long time. A hundred years earlier, one may have ridden through this very spot. Gracie had no problem visualizing Marshal Beau shirtless on the back of some buck-wild black stallion, gun holstered low on his hips, a beat-up leather cowboy hat shading his sexy brown eyes while he forged his way up a perilous mountain path.
Mmm…If she hadn’t been so intent on getting away from her evil ex and to the Culinary Olympics, maybe she wouldn’t have tried quite so hard to escape Marshal Beau back when their journey had first begun.
“Grace? You ’bout done?”
She fell out of her trance to find her fingers had wandered to his shoulders. Truly yummy shoulders capable of—well, since she was for the moment a medical professional, let’s just say they were nice!
“Uh-huh,” she said, back to bandaging.
“Good. We should get going. This place gives me the creeps.”
“You’re not a nature boy?” she teased, packing up the supplies, then handing him three ibuprofens and another water bottle.
He eyed the medicine. Handed it back. “I’m good.”
“Take it,” she said. “Please. It’ll make me feel better.”
He shrugged before downing it.
“So what’d nature ever do to you?”
“Nothing. I grew up on the Oregon coast. Me and my sister and two brothers were always outside, but I don’t know, I always just feel more at peace in big cities. I like knowing there’s life all around me.”
“There’s life here.”
He laughed. “Yeah, bears, mountain lions and those buzzards that’ve been circling ever since we left the car. They’re probably hoping to make me into a bird buffet.”
“Oh, they are not,” she said with a light swat to those pecs she’d been admiring.
Grinning, Beau covered her hand with his. “Just can’t keep your hands off me, huh?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I was hitting you.”
“Uh-huh. Likely story.” He winked.
As hot as her cheeks felt, they must be red as the redwood trunk that’d fallen onto the shoulder of the road.
“You ready to go?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Hand me the keys.”
“I’m driving. You’re resting.”
“Come on,” he complained. “I’m—whoa.” He used her arm to brace himself when that first step back into the car had him nearly toppling.
“Less talk out of you,” she scolded. “More water into you. You’re probably dehydrated.”
“Yeah, but—”
“You always this lousy at relinquishing control?”
“Yep.”
Why didn’t that come as a surprise?
Chapter Four
Gracie had wanted to drive back the way they’d come, but just before he fell asleep, Beau—still shirtless, making the drive that much tougher—told her to keep going straight. The dirt road wasn’t in that bad shape. Surely it went through to somewhere. Odds were that if they went back, they might have unwanted company.
The gas gauge was on empty, and it was a dicey last few miles until spotting a real live blacktop road. From there, thank God, a small town with a gas station were just a few miles further down yet another twisting mountain road.
Good thing miles earlier she’d peed behind a rock, otherwise, she’d have never made it!
Killing the ignition in front of the station’s only two tanks, Gracie’s limbs felt quivery with relief.
As if on cue, clouds parted to make way for warm, early afternoon sun.
“Where are we?” her marshal asked, waking only to catch her in the act of helping herself to his wallet.
“Gassing up. Need anything?”
He tried easing upright, and winced. “A new body that doesn’t hurt.”
“Sorry.” And she was. If she hadn’t been so stubborn about leaving her car behind to be towed back to Portland, he wouldn’t have been shot. “I’m fresh out of bodies, but I can get you some yummy powdered sugar doughnuts.” Since the start of her pregnancy, she’d worked hard to eat as healthy as possible, but something about being shot at called for massive doughnut consumption!
He made a face. “Thanks, but I’m well enough to make the trip inside on my own.”
“Great. But just in case, you’re going to wait for me to help. And you need a shirt, too.”
“I thought I was in charge here?” he said with a weak smile. A smile that did wonders for her knotted stomach. He really would be okay.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She swiped at a few silly tears. Jeesh, pregnancy hormones. Made a girl cry over every little—and not-so-little—thing.
His latest groan sounded more like the mental anguish she’d identified during their previous verbal battles. Only this time, she wasn’t battling. “What is it with you women? I ask what’s wrong, and you say nothing. Yet next argument, first thing you’ll throw in my face is how—” He raised his voice to a feminine falsetto. “I was crying and you just ignored me. Didn’t even ask what’s wrong.”
Sniffling, she said, “I need to pump the gas.”
She’d turned when he shot his hand out to grab her wrist. “Level with me. You’re thinking of running again, aren’t you?”
“No,” she said. “What I’m thinking is that being shot at scared me to death. You nearly dying was…” She shook her head, hating it that again she felt like bawling.
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve had worse cuts shaving.”
“Yeah, well, outside of a few paring knife incidents, that’s the worst I’ve ever seen. And, I don’t know…” She flopped her free hand at her side. “Suddenly this all seems much more real. Like before we’d been shot at, it was all just a cat and mouse thing between you and me.” There was no one else at the store except for a lone teenage male visible through the window. He stood behind the checkout counter reading a paperback.
For some reason beyond her comprehension, Marshal Beau released her wrist to instead hold her hand. The thoughtful gesture filled her with unexpected peace. His gentle, reassuring squeeze made her feel worse about having tried to escape him.
Holding on tight to her marshal, Gracie said, “If I worked at it hard enough, all this time I thought I could pretend my ex hadn’t really killed all those people. I wasn’t really about to have a baby with only, like, nineteen bucks in checking and no roof over my head when my landlord finds out I can’t make this month’s rent. If I studied hard enough, practiced enough, I’d go to the CAI competition and win the grand prize and me and my baby girl would live happily ever after.” She laughed through messy tears. “That’s what I get for reading too many romance novels. After a hundred or so, you start believing everyone has happy endings. You know, that we’re somehow entitled. But now that I’m on the verge of being a parent, it’s about time I got used to the fact that that just isn’t the case.”
“What happened to you?” Beau asked, shifting in his seat to get a better look at the once unstoppable hellion who’d now been reduced to a quivering mess of nerves. “A couple minutes ago, you were on fire. Bossing me something fierce. Now, you…I don’t know. You just seem defeated. Like you’ve accepted the fact your ex won, and the rest of your life’s in the crapper.”
“You think it’s not?” she said with a heart wrenching sniffle.
“There are other cooking competitions, right?”
“No. I mean, sure, but not like this one. Other competitions have prizes like pretty crystal bowls and statues, but a hundred grand? Not even close.”
“You know, Gracie, if this is just about the money, I’ve got a little socked away. We could maybe work out a—”
They both jumped when a horn honked behind them.
Nothing to worry about, though. Just an impatient cowgirl granny behind the wheel of a one-ton Ford hauling a cattle trailer.
“Guess I’d better get to work,” Gracie said, releasing Beau’s hand to climb out of the car and return to the pump.
“Let me gas up,” he said. “You be in charge of snacks.”
“But, Beau…” Too late, he was already out of the car, kneeling at her feet. Tying her left sneaker?
“Can’t be too careful,” he said. When he finished, he took the fuel nozzle from her small hands.
BEAU DROVE THE CAR from the pumps into a parking spot alongside the store, wincing while pulling on a gray T-shirt he’d fished from his duffel bag.
Inside the small, but well-stocked country grocery, he found Gracie weighed down with half the store. Mayo, shaved deli ham, lettuce, tomatoes, whole wheat bread, a bundle of carrots, salt and vinegar potato chips and milk. All of which she then piled into her latest find—a midsize foam cooler. Chuckling, Beau asked, “Think you’ve got enough?”
“Of what?” She peered at the cooler’s contents. “Can you see something I’ve missed?”
“How about those mini-doughnuts you seem to like?”
“Whew, thanks,” she said, hustling around the end of the aisle to grab a sack. “I have been craving those for the last thousand miles.”
“Technically we’ve probably only been about fifty.”
“Yeah, but when you can’t go much over twenty miles an hour, it feels more like a thousand.” She flashed him a gorgeous smile. One that lit her inside and out, giving Beau the sick feeling he was dangerously close to once again falling under a woman’s spell.
Hand to his chest, grinning right back at her, he said, “I stand corrected. A thousand miles it is.”
“Thank you.” For his agreement, he earned another of her hopelessly pretty grins, then, glancing back to her mountain of food, she asked, “You are paying for all this, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Just checking.” He shook his head in amazement when after she’d gotten the confirmation on who was footing the bill, she dumped her current load on the front counter, then went back for more—this time for stuff like cream, flour, cheeses, butter and spices.
Before she again wandered off to the store’s nether regions, Beau asked, “Grab me a couple fried chicken drumsticks and potato wedges from the deli, would you?”
“Sure,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be at the pay phone. The boss likes it when he knows where to find the witness, but my cell’s dead.”
She nodded. “You should have something more to drink. What do you want?”
“Surprise me.”
“’BOUT TIME you called in,” Adam said.
Beau shook his head. “What’re you doing back in Portland? Thanks for the backup.”
“How were we supposed to know where you were? Found your car’s transmitter on the side of the road near some speck on the map called Dotted Bluff. Aside from that, you might as well of vanished.”
“Tell me about it,” Beau said with a groan, leaning against the store’s sun-warmed, white cement block wall while relaying the night and morning’s events. “Boss around?”
“Yeah.”
“Well? Put him on.”
While waiting, Beau drummed his fingers on top of the pay phone. From this vantage he had a clear shot of Gracie and her ever-growing mountain of food. Damn, that woman could eat. He couldn’t help but stare at her full lips.
Yeah, he knew it was strictly against company policy, but he was starting to like the gal—a lot. He liked her spunk. The way, even now, after she’d finally come to her senses enough to realize she and the baby would be much safer with him than on their own, she was making the best of the situation by working her way through his cash.
“Franks, here. Logue, that you?”
“Yessir.”
“Where the hell are you?”
He sighed, gazing out at a fortress of trees. “Best I can tell, sir, the Middle of Nowhere. Vicente’s goons led us on quite a little chase. I took a few fast rights that led us out in the boonies.”
“But you’ve got Ms. Sherwood, and she’s in one piece, right?”
Well, if you didn’t count her obviously whacked mental state which must be the reason for why she was using his company card to buy out the store. She was currently loading up on eggs and yogurt. “Yeah, boss. She’s good.”
“Excellent. Get her back up here ASAP.”
“YOU HURTING?” Gracie asked Beau. He was back behind the wheel, studying a California map.
“No. Why?”
“You’re awfully quiet.”
“I’m trying to figure out where we are.”
She grinned. “Why didn’t you say so? The clerk said we’re fifteen miles from Bear Lake, where we’ll need to head south at the old T-rex slide in front of the abandoned drive-in movie.”
He snapped his map flatter. “Those would be directions to San Francisco, darlin’. Portland’s the other way.”
“Duh,” she said around a nibble of a mozzarella cheese stick. “But here’s the thing. If I go back, what am I really doing?”
“Ensuring your safety? Not to mention your baby’s?” He shot her a look before reaching over her to shove the map in the glove box, then to fasten her seat belt. “Damn, that hurt,” he growled.
“I could’ve done it myself. And you should let me drive.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. And what happened to your heartfelt speech about now that you’ve seen how much danger you’re in, you finally get that I’m right about you not going to your competition?”
Seeing how her mouth was still full of cheese, she shrugged. Bite swallowed, she said, “Yeah, but then you said I look defeated. And that’s not something I ever plan to be. The CAI competition is crammed with people. No way would Vicente be dumb enough to try anything, and even if he did, I’d have you there to protect me. Mmm…” She took another big bite. “This cheese is amazing. Great texture.”
“Have you forgotten that we were just shot at? I got hit.”
“Sure, but you seem fine now.”
“What if next time it’s you?”
“There won’t be a next time, because I have a secret weapon.”
“And that would be?”
“You.” She flashed him her biggest smile.
Eyes closed, he thumped his head against the seat back.
“No, really,” she said. “I’ve got the perfect plan. You dress up like my assistant. I’m sure we can get you a uniform on site. They have lots of pockets and stuff, so just in case there’s the slightest hint of danger, you could hide your gun in there and be ready for—” She bit her lower lip. “Well, you know. You’d be ready for—whatever.”
With his thumb and forefinger, he rubbed still closed eyes.
“If you’re not down with the uniform—worried it might affect your manly image—we can always ask the judges to allow you to cook in street clothes. It’s highly irregular, and just to let you know, they’ll probably nix the idea, but if it means that much to you, it’s at least worth a shot.” She used her eye teeth to open vacuum-packed baby carrots. “You’re not talking. Thinking about the plan? Embellishing? Making it a leaner, meaner—”
“Anyone ever told you, you’re nuts?”
“It’s not me who’s the issue, but my baby.” Patting her stomach, she said, “To you, this whole thing—my case—is just another day at the office, but Beau, this fiasco is my life. Our life,” she said with another pat. “I’ve trained literally years for this competition. I can’t sew or sing. I can’t—” she waved her hands “—I don’t know—paint a bedroom. But I can cook. I cook so well, the LA Times food critic called my basil cream sauce orgasmic. This competition isn’t just some lark. I’ve got a real shot at winning. But, Beau—” she put her hand on his thigh “—to do that, I pretty much have to be there, you know?”
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