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TRILOGY NO. 108:

JUST DESSERTS

CAT JOHNSON

TRILOGY NO. 108: JUST DESSERTS

Published by Linden Bay Romance, 2007

Linden Bay Romance, LLC, U.S.

ISBN Trade paperback ISBN # 978-1-60202-029-0

ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 978-1-60202-028-3

Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

PDF, PRC & HTML

Copyright © CAT JOHNSON, 2007

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The work is protected by copyright and should not be

copied without permission. Linden Bay Romance, LLC

reserves all rights. Re-use or re-distribution of any and all

materials is prohibited under law.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons,

living or dead, or business establishments, events or locales

is coincidental.

Cover art by
Dan Skinner and Beverly Maxwell

This book is dedicated to you, the readers.

Some of you I’ve known all or most of my life—my

mother, my Aunt Suzy, my mother-in-law and the real Grace

and Donna, my best friends since fifth grade who graciously

allowed their names to be used for fictional personas that

appear in not one, but two of my published works. And

Whitney who does the best damn dramatic reading of a sex

scene I’ve ever heard.

Other readers appear in the most unexpected forms, such

as the booklovers among the deployed troops I’ve ‘met’

through Books for Soldiers, in particular SSG Sean Abbott

of the U.S. Army and GySgt Gary Z. Crowley of the USMC.

You are my muse.

Whether we are the best of friends or have yet to meet,

the truth is that without you, the reader, I would just be some

crazy woman who spends far too much time on the

computer.

May you all find the path that leads to your own happy

endings.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

Cat Johnson

“I have to pee.”

“Well I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait. If we leave, we

might miss something.”

Donna Angelo sighed and wiggled a bit in the passenger

seat, trying to get comfortable as her bladder felt near to

exploding.

Her co-worker Jade glanced at her, then raised the

binoculars back to her eyes. “You really shouldn’t have

gotten the grande-sized coffee.”

“Cops always drink coffee on stakeouts in the movies

and on television. I was only trying to be authentic, and I

didn’t want us to fall asleep.” Donna did note that Jade had

barely touched her own coffee, which explained why
she

didn’t need to find a bathroom.

Donna raised her own pair of binoculars and trained

them on the darkened apartment window. She and Jade had

been sitting in the parked car since nine that night. A quick

look at the dashboard clock told her it was now well past

midnight.

She sighed. “Maybe he really was tired and went to bed

early like he said on the phone.”

Jade blew out a loud breath and leaned back in the seat,

laying the binoculars in her lap. “Something is up, Donna.

Not just tonight, but for weeks now. He’s lying to me. I can

tell. After eight months of being with someone, you just

know. He canceled our lunch date this week. Last week, his

cell phone rang when I was with him and he went into the

other room to answer it. He’s never done that before.

And…” Jade hesitated before continuing, “I hacked into his

email account and there is a new contact in his address book.

It has to be a woman, her email address was
designergal
.”

“Jade, you didn’t!”

She nodded her head, looking slightly ashamed. “I

know. I shouldn’t have. But now I am absolutely crazed. I

have to know for sure if he’s cheating on me. There is

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evidence, Don. I’m not totally making this up.”

Donna nodded in the dark. “I believe you. I’m just

saying that maybe tonight he actually was tired and wanted

to go to bed early.”

“But we always spend Saturday nights together, even if

we only stay in and watch television. I sleep over at his

apartment. We have a late breakfast Sunday morning. We

spend half the day in bed and…well, you know.”

Donna nearly laughed. In the far recesses of her brain,

she remembered what it was like to ‘you know’ with a man.

She hadn’t done
that
in a long time.

She glanced at her friend and coworker in the dim light

of the car. Jade could have been the model for the Barbie

doll with her long curly blonde hair, huge deep blue eyes,

perfectly perky small high breasts and legs up to her armpits.

If a guy would cheat on Jade, what kind of chance did Donna

have to land and keep a man in her life? Women like herself,

with boring brown hair, normal blue eyes that required

contact lenses or glasses to not be legally blind and okay but

not spectacular bodies were a dime a dozen.

Donna’s single status was something she’d have to

worry about later, though; the far more urgent issue being

that she still had to pee. “Jade. There’s been no movement in

his apartment for over three hours. He was home when you

called at nine and no female under sixty has entered or left

the building since we’ve been here.”

“He still might not be alone. What if she got here before

we did and she’s in there with him?” Jade picked up the

binoculars again. “I guess we won’t know until tomorrow

when she leaves.”

Tomorrow! Agreeing to participate in this stakeout had

sounded like fun in the beginning, but it was looking less

and less so as the moments passed and Donna’s bladder

stretched…

“Jade. You don’t really intend on sitting here until

tomorrow morning, do you?”

To Donna’s massive relief, Jade shook her head. “No.

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Cat Johnson

You’re right. That won’t do any good. She could live in his

building, maybe that’s how he met her. They could stay

inside all weekend and never come out.”

Donna didn’t add that if Jade’s boyfriend Daniel did

have another girl in there, whether she lived in the building

or not, they still might not come out all weekend if they were

busy doing ‘you know’. That thought quickly fled as Jade

flung open the car door and declared, “I’m going in.”

Donna scrambled out her own door. “You’re what?”

“If I press my ear against his apartment door, maybe I’ll

be able hear if they are…” Jade pressed her hand to her

stomach. “God, just the thought of him with someone else

makes me ill.”

“Then don’t go up there. Let’s go home.”

Jade shook her head and looked back at Donna. “I have

to know. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I’ll come. You shouldn’t go through this

alone.” Besides, maybe there would be a bathroom along the

way somewhere.

They entered the apartment building’s front door without

having to be buzzed in, thanks to a broken lock, and crept up

the emergency stairs all the way to the fourth floor because

Jade insisted they could not risk being seen in the elevator.

Donna didn’t argue since by the time they reached Daniel’s

apartment door she was too out of breath to say much of

anything.

She braced one hand on the hallway wall and attempted

to slow her racing heart as Jade kneeled on the floor with her

ear pressed to the door.

“Why are you kneeling to listen?”

Jade put one finger in front of her lips and hissed out a

‘shhh’. “I don’t want them to see me out the peep hole.”

Donna didn’t exactly get the wisdom of that theory. If

Daniel and whoever were doing what Jade imagined them

doing, Donna doubted they would be spending a whole lot of

time manning the peephole.

“Oh my god! I think I just heard a moan.” Jade grabbed

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Trilogy No. 108: Just Desserts

Donna’s hand and pulled her down. “You listen. See if you

hear it.”

Trying to ignore the unsanitary things that might be

lurking there, Donna knelt on the stained and dingy carpeted

floor near the door. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Keep listening. I distinctly heard something,” Jade

whispered.

Donna pressed her ear closer to the door but that served

only to block out all sound. Maybe they should go get a

drinking glass, wasn’t that supposed to work for

eavesdropping through walls? A stethoscope might help, but

where could they find one of those at this time of night?

Her pondering of where the nearest all-night store

carrying medical supplies might be located was interrupted

by a deep, masculine, “Ahem.”

Both Jade and Donna let out a yelp of surprise. Donna’s

heart rate began to race again as she turned and looked up at

a long jean-clad leg that ended at the waist with a belt and a

very mean and official-looking holstered gun. “Uh oh,” she

whispered to Jade.

The stranger’s brown eyes bore into them both in turn.

“Can I help you two ladies?”

Jade rose from her knees, but remained speechless. She

would obviously be no help.

“We…ah…lost her key,” Donna stood herself and

supplied quickly. She’d always been a fast thinking liar,

especially in her teen years. Things like
I forgot my purse at

the party, Mom, so I have to go back
when in reality it was a

football player waiting there for her, not her purse. Or the

infamous,
my new friend Stephanie and I are going to the

beach for the weekend.
Stephanie was actually Stephen her

college boyfriend but her parents never suspected a thing.

Especially since she perpetuated the lie down to the tiniest

detail, including having her brothers take fake phone

messages from the phantom girl.

Still staring, the man raised a dark eyebrow. “You two

live here?”

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Cat Johnson

“Well, actually, no…not exactly. Her boyfriend lives

here and he gave her his key. But I think I lost it tonight

when I went in her purse to borrow her lipstick,” Donna

rambled, hoping to distract the guy from the obvious truth,

that they’d both had their ears pressed to the door when he’d

stumbled upon them.

Donna watched Jade cringe at the lie. This guy was

probably an undercover cop if the gun was any indication

and here she was lying to him. But there was no fear they

would spend the night in jail for this silly little escapade,

right? Really, what could they be arrested for? Public

kneeling? Door listening?

“Why don’t you knock?” the man with the sexy, deep

voice asked.

Jade, pale and wide-eyed, finally spoke and dug them

deeper into the lie. “Um, because he’s not home.”

“Maybe he is. There’s one way to find out.” The tall

man took a step closer toward Daniel’s apartment, fist raised

to knock.

“No!” Jade cried and threw her body in front of the door.

He paused and waited, looking at her with interest.

“If he is home I don’t want to wake him up so late,” Jade

supplied what Donna thought was a pretty good lie for an

amateur.

“So then how do you intend on getting inside without the

key?” the gun-toting man asked, crossing his arms across the

very nicely developed pectoral muscles evident beneath his

black sweater and open leather jacket.

Donna swallowed and wrestled her gaze up from the

wall that was his chest. “We don’t need to. We were just

going to surprise him, that’s all. But if we can’t, we can’t.”

She managed a casual shrug and was about to grab