Dirty (18 page)

Since sex was out of the question, no offense to Mary Jane’s favorite dildo but I preferred the old fashioned method of sexual satiation, a bath would have to suffice.

I twisted the faucet to the on position and set the temperature at the hottest I could tolerate and finished peeling off my clothes.
 
I stuck a toe in to check the water.
 
Hmmm.
 
Perfect.

When I would have climbed in I realized I needed a real drink to complete my escape.
 
I wrapped a towel around my nude body and hurried back to the living room.
 
I didn’t bother with a Coke or even a glass.
 
Just the bottle of Jack Daniels.

I sat the fifth on the floor, shed the towel and slipped into the always dependable hot water.
 
A hot bath, like work, never let me down.
 
It would fully relax my muscles without all the emotional baggage that sometimes went with sex.

And, I picked up the fifth by its neck, there was always JD.
 
I screwed off the cap and took a long sip.
 
The liquor burned all the way down but I knew the discomfort would be well worth it.

A scarce few minutes later and I was feeling damned good.
 
Maybe too good.
 
I screwed the cap back on the bottle and pushed it out of reach.

I might be a jerk magnet but I was no lush.

Or so I thought.

It was dark when I awoke.

My senses slowly came to life.
 
I blinked to focus.
 
Shuddered.
 
It was cold as hell.
 
Abruptly I realized the
it
making my body temperature plummet was water.
 
I’d fallen asleep in the tub!

I was out of the water and shivering like a wet Chihuahua in two seconds flat.
 
I dried my skin as fast as I could and wrapped a clean towel around me.
 
It didn’t help.
 
My teeth chattered and nothing short of a five-alarm fire was going to stop it anytime soon.

If I’d ever done anything so stupid, that didn’t involve sex, my mind had blocked the memory.
 
I grabbed the fifth and went in search of some proper nourishment.

I flipped on the hall light as I made my way to the living room.
 
Along with the cold that had invaded my bones, I was suddenly starving.
 
I needed food.
 
The pasta I’d had for lunch was long gone.
 
I put the fifth under the kitchen sink and considered the probability of finding anything I wanted in my fridge.
 
Slim to none, I’d wager.
 
The only shopping I’d done last weekend had been for that black mini I’d purchased for my big (and last) date with a felon whose name I refused to allow back into my thoughts.

On the off chance that I could be wrong I pulled open the fridge door and peered inside.

A cup of yogurt.
 
Bunch of grapes.
 
If I just had some cheese I might actually scrape up a meal.

The crash of breaking glass sent me flattening against the closest wall.
 
Instinct told me to take cover, but there was none handy.
 
The door of the fridge slowly closed, then sealed with a vacuuming hiss.

The wail of the alarm jerked my hesitant limbs back into motion.

In a low crouch I moved cautiously into my living room.
 
The crash, breaking glass and a distinct thud, had come from there.
 
Behind my sofa I found my Birkin and fished out Shorty.
 
The .38 in hand, I surveyed the dark room and saw nothing except the flashing red light that indicated the alarm had been triggered...like the whole neighborhood couldn’t hear it.

The cops would be here any minute.

I crept toward the nearest lamp.
 
Needed some light on the situation.
 
The only one I’d flipped on after waking up was in the hall and it hardly provided any illumination this far away.
 
A twist of the table lamp’s switch sent a pool of golden light over my sofa.
 
I blinked once, twice, three times before I recognized the cause of the ruckus.
 
A rock about the size of a sub sandwich roll lay on the floor near my coffee table.
 
Broken glass spread around it like strewn condiments.

The thud of the door bursting open had me lunging to my feet and twisting simultaneously to meet the threat head on.

My aim leveled on the first thing that moved.

Dawson.

Son of a...

My attention abruptly shifted downward at the same instant I felt the towel settle across my bare feet.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to stand back and consider what’s truly important.
 
As I sat on the floor behind my desk, where no one could see me, I allowed the vivid images from last evening to flash one after the other through my mind.
 

I cringed and resisted the urge to curl into the fetal position.
 
My head throbbed like a bomb about to implode.

Dawson had seen me
naked
.

Oh God.

I jerked open the bottom drawer on my left and grabbed the two-pound bag of pure courage I kept stashed there for moments just like this.

With a handful of crunchy chocolate M&M’s in my mouth I forced my brain to analyze the moment.
 
Had to face it sooner or later.
 
I had gotten to the office before anyone else this morning, even Hobbs.
 
After closing my door in the universal do-not-disturb manner, I tried, really tried, to get on with my day.
 
But I couldn’t get past that moment when I realized Dawson was the one kicking down my front door...and then the fucking towel had dropped.

I laughed disdainfully.
 
What were the odds?

How many times had I walked around the house in nothing but a towel?
 
Not once had it fallen loose.
 
Then again, I didn’t generally do the whole crouch, rush, rise, twist and adopt the firing pose routine while wearing one either.

I told myself over and over that it didn’t matter.
 
We were both adults.
 
But I just couldn’t get the look on his face out of my head.
 
I had tried to last night, but a few more shots from that fifth of JD had knocked me unconscious before the memory was fully evicted.

I stared at the bag in my hand and wondered why women were predisposed to move from one compulsion to another when under stress.
 
If alcohol didn’t do the trick, surely chocolate would.
 
I had probably added three pounds to my ever-widening ass in the past twelve hours alone.

I shoved the vile bag back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
 
Okay, so I drank myself into oblivion last night and now I sat, hidden behind my desk, with a wad of M&M’s dissolving in my mouth in an attempt to make myself feel better.

I’m human.

The single most overused excuse on the planet for doing the absolute wrong thing.

My eyes rolled so far back in my head I could see the roots of my hair—which, by the way, still needed a touch-up.
 
Yeah, right.
 
I’m not merely human.
 
I’m a woman.
 
Forty-five in female years (which is about a hundred and thirty in male years—bastards).
 
It wasn’t so much the fact that Dawson had seen me naked that drove me absolutely bonkers.
 
It was the idea that he had been exposed to certain unveiled details. Like my face without the aide of make-up and the stretch marks on my abdomen. And, of course, my damp, matted hair.
 
There was a reason the gossip rags paid big bucks for candid shots of celebrities out of star disguise.
 
Not to mention the cold water had ensured my nipples stood as erect as a Ken-size penis.
 
(Ken should be so lucky...or maybe it was Barbie who’d be lucky.)

Why did I care what Dawson had seen?

Now that part was solely because I’m a woman.

I pushed up from the floor and smoothed a hand over my white mini.
 
I picked it specifically because it showed off my surveillance on the beach tan and made me feel waaaay better.
 
Beneath my tight white jacket I wore my favorite pink camisole.
 
The stiletto sandals were an amazingly realistic looking pair of Jimmy Choo knock-offs.

I checked for chocolate on my teeth and reapplied my lip gloss.
 
Scrutinized my hair.
 
Determination roared inside me.
 
By God maybe Dawson did see me naked without my usual female veneer in place, but that didn’t diminish how damned good I looked this morning.

I tossed the gloss and compact back into my Birkin which sat on the floor next to my self-esteem emergency resuscitation drawer.
 
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.
 
It was an amazing thing what a dose of chocolate could do for one’s confidence, as well as a hangover.
 
My head hardly hurt at all now.

A light rap on my door drew my attention in that direction.
 
Apprehension had my heart ramming against my sternum.
 
I squared my shoulders and kicked it back down.
 
I was a woman.
 
If I could bear a child or stare down an armed bail jumper, I could damn sure face this head-on.

I didn’t have to bother with come in, the door opened just far enough for Hobbs to poke his head into my office.
 
“Is it safe to enter?”

If Hobbs weren’t the best assistant in the business I would have fired him then and there.
 
But he was the best.
 
My professional life would be a living hell without him.
 
I didn’t know how he did the things he did, didn’t want to know how.
 
I only wanted him to keep doing them.
 
For that reason alone he would live long and prosper—despite my frequent ponderings as to whether I should kill him or not.

“Don’t waste my time, Hobbs,” I said, copping an attitude that screamed of borderline personality disorder, as I shuffled my messages.
 
I’d returned most of them that morning.
 
The rest could wait.

He pranced up to my desk, his gaze flitting about the room, refusing to light on mine.
 
“Any idea who would have wanted to throw a rock through your window?”

No, I hadn’t forgotten about the rock or my broken window.
 
The cops had shown up shortly after Dawson’s dramatic entrance.
 
I’d managed to get a robe on in the nick of time.

The rock had been bagged as evidence.
 
(Lucky for me I’d had some gallon size freezer bags left over from a school project I’d done with my son nearly a decade ago or one of the patrol cops would have been rushing down to the 7-Eleven.)
 
My statement had been taken and the promise that an investigator would call given.

I felt confident the rock, which had come from the neglected flowerbed in my own yard, would reveal numerous clues.
 
Like the soil type in my yard.
 
The GreenChem man had recommended lime to neutralize the acidic soil years ago.
 
I doubted the diagnosis had changed since scarcely any weeds, much less anything else, grew there to this day.

The glass company had promised to get the window repaired first thing this morning.
 
I could only hope.
 
Alita was housesitting for me until that was accomplished.

I sat down in my chair and screwed a smile into place.
 
“I have no idea, Hobbs.
 
Maybe some kid in the neighborhood.”
 
I shrugged.
 
“A dare maybe.”

Hobbs picked a piece of nonexistent lint from his crisply pressed J.Crew button-down shirt.
 
As usual, he looked perfect.
 
I hated him.
 

“I wondered if perhaps it was a warning of some sort,” he noted casually.

I couldn’t say I hadn’t considered that possibility myself since God and everybody else had been warning me off the Disposable case.
 
Which made about as much sense as the rock now lying in a lab waiting for analysis.
 
The case was a decade old.
 
No one appeared to know anything about it, which was way more than I knew.

“Well, if whoever did it hoped to make a point, it was lost in translation,” I groused.
 
There was no discernable message, nothing.