Blown Away

BLOWN AWAY

Stephanie Julian

Blown Away

Stephanie Julian

Published by Stephanie Julian

Copyright 2012.
Stephanie Julian.

Cover by
Melyssa
Najouks

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ebook
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected]

All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

The bleating phone woke Jimmy DeMarco out of a deep sleep.

He snapped upright, banged his head on the gooseneck lamp on his desk,
then
swatted the phone off the desk in his attempt to answer it. Amazingly, he caught it just before it hit the ground.

“Hello.”

“Mal?
Mal, is that you?” A giggle and a hiccup followed. “I’m not sure I dialed the right number. But that can’t be right. I’m a genius with numbers. Everyone says so.”

Jimmy’s eyes snapped open, his brain a little slower to follow. The voice was female and familiar. It wasn’t his sister, Janey, and it wasn’t her best friend, Andrea. That left about twenty female cousins but since he heard no trace of a South Philly accent, it had to be…

“Merrianne?”

She snorted. “Of course it’s me. Let me in, Mal. I need to talk to Janey.”

Jimmy glanced at his watch, swearing when he saw it was almost two a.m. “Merri, it’s Jimmy.
Mal’s
not here. Do you know what time it is?”

“
Whadya
mean he’s not here? He works here. I know he works here. I’ve seen him. Let me in, Mal.
I’ve got to talk to Janey.”

Jimmy heard it then, a faint thumping. Merrianne Simmons, a former coworker of his sister’s fiancé, Mal, was outside banging on the front door.

Shit
. The cops would be here in minutes because she was going to set off the security alarm. Clutching the phone in one hand, he took the stairs two at a time, making his way from the basement lab to the first floor of DeMarco Investigations.

Sprinting for the front entrance, he got there in seconds, remembering just in time to disengage the security system.

When he swung open the door, Merri smacked him on the chest with her free
hand,
hard enough to knock him back a step.

The girl might look like a creampuff, but she packed one hell of a punch.

“Oh, crap. I’m sorry.” She cocked her head to the side, cat-green eyes trying to dissect him. Or, more likely, bring him into focus. “Wait. You’re not Mal.”

Swaying on unsteady legs, she reached out with one hand, two slender fingers extended to poke him in the chest.

Gasping, she drew her fingers back as if she’d been burned. “
Jimmy
?”

He grinned at the stunned amazement on her face. “In the flesh.” He grabbed her hand before she could back away and pulled her through the door. “Oh no you don’t. Come on and get in here before the police show up.”

He had to tug hard because she kept retreating.

“Jimmy?” Shock made her eyes widen even more and her pretty mouth rounded. “No, no, no. You’re not supposed to be here. I mean, Janey says you’re always here. She says you need to get a life. She told
me
that too and apparently she’s not the only one who thinks so. But I didn’t think I’d actually see
you
. You never come out of the basement.”

Keeping a firm grip on her, he continued pulling until she was through the door. He didn’t think she even noticed as she rambled.

And slurred her words.
She was drunk. He could smell the alcohol now, sweetly enticing. Completely at odds with the Merri he… Well, he couldn’t say knew, because he didn’t really know her all that well.

An NSA code-lab team leader, Merri was
Mal’s
former coworker. She’d been up to visit Janey and Mal several times in the past few months since they’d gotten engaged, but Jimmy hadn’t spent that much time with her.

He’d been busy.

You’re always busy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So sue him. He didn’t take vacations because his brain never stopped long enough for him to really relax. The only time he actually shut off was when he ran.

But he had
noticed
Merri.
And lusted after her.

Now his brain came to a full stop as he stared at her.

She had such a pretty face. She looked like the All-American girl next door, from the pretty green eyes to the pale skin dusted with freckles and gorgeous strawberry-blonde corkscrew curls. His fingers actually twitched with the desire to sink into them.

And that mouth…

An image of wrapping those curls around his fingers and pulling her close so he could kiss those full lips rose to the top of his brain and refused to leave.

Too bad she was too drunk to realize how badly he wanted her.

She blinked up at him, eyes huge. He didn’t kid himself that she just couldn’t take her eyes off him. She was probably too drunk to see straight. Or realize she was staring.

Each time they’d met before, she’d seemed extremely shy, barely meeting his eyes when they spoke. And he’d forced himself not to ogle her because he didn’t want her to think he was a jerk.

But now, he realized pretty wasn’t strong enough to describe her.

Beautiful.
Sweetly sexy and—

Swaying on her feet.

“Merri, how long have you been drinking?”

Her nose crinkled and he could practically see the gears working in her brain. “Is that a trick question? Do you mean when did I actually have my first taste of alcohol or when did I have my first drink today?” She hiccupped. “Or is it yesterday? I don’t even really like alcohol although I just discovered raspberry schnapps. That is so very…yummy.”

Jimmy sighed but couldn’t fight his grin. Her expression was priceless. The girl had an IQ to rival Einstein’s but the look on her face right now said she wouldn’t be able to add two and two.

He couldn’t believe she’d managed to get from Maryland to Philadelphia, much less at two in the morning and in one piece, as drunk as she seemed to be. He let his gaze roam over her until it snagged on a tear in her jeans, just above her knee.

“Damn, Merri. What happened? Are you hurt?” He went to his knees to check the wound and found it still bleeding. Careful, not wanting to hurt her, he picked at her jeans just above the tear and tried to ease it away from the gash on her thigh.

From above, he heard her draw in a sharp breath then felt her warm hand grasp his shoulder, as if she’d become unsteady.

When he looked up, she wore an expression he couldn’t decipher. He didn’t have Janey’s ability to read people, so he stuck with what he knew.
Problem solving.
He stood and she pulled back her hand as if she’d been burned.

He took one step back and held up his hands. He didn’t want to scare her, but he did kind of tower over her by at least half a foot. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me what happened.”

She swallowed audibly.
“N-Nothing.
Really.
I caught it on a loose screw on the train.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You took the train?
This late at night?”

The face she made at him perfectly expressed her disdain for his question.
And made him bite his lips to keep from laughing at her.
“I may be a girl but I am
not
incapable of taking care of myself.” As if to prove her point, she took a step away from him.
And nearly tripped over her feet.

Jimmy grabbed her arm before she could go down, smothering another smile. “Yeah, I can see that. Why don’t we find you somewhere to sit down for a few minutes?”

“No, don’t wanna sit. I’ll just get a cab over to Janey’s.”

She pouted and heat flared in his gut. Whoa.
Definitely not the time for that.
He pushed the thought away with difficulty.

“No can do, sweetheart. They’re in New York on a case.”

“Really?”
She blinked several times and he watched her process that information for several seconds before her expression began to crumble and she sniffled. “Oh. Well…”

Aw hell, she was going to cry.

He froze, which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Yes, he was a card-carrying geek, complete with the requisite love of comic books, superheroes, and an overachieving IQ.

But even his family acknowledged that he had a way with females. He could coax smiles from crying baby cousins and sullen teenagers, and he never had a problem picking up single women looking for a night of no-commitment fun.