Unscrewed (2 page)

“Damn it, McMullen. What the hell’s going on in there?”

“Nothing.” My voice was raspy with post-traumatic exhaustion.

“Open the door or I’m breaking it down.”

I peeked past the bathroom door to where Harlequin was having some sort of ecstatic seizure in my entryway.

“McMullen.”

“Just wait!” Damn barbarian. He didn’t deserve a push-up bra. Should have worn a horned helmet and a pelt. “I’m coming.”

A moment later Rivera was pushing his way past Harlequin into my vestibule.

“You okay?” His voice was clipped. His eyes scanned my house, expecting desperados behind every table leg. If he pulled out a Glock, I was going to kick his plum-shaped ass onto Opus Street, but apparently all was safe, because he shifted his devil-dark attention back to me with slow deliberation.

I resisted squirming like a pubescent tuba player.

“Of course I’m all right,” I said.

His lips hitched up a quarter of an inch. He has a scar on the right corner of his mouth. I don’t know how it got there but there have been more than a few occasions when I’ve fantasized about giving him a matching one on the other side.

“Of course,” he repeated, and reached down to absently fondle Harlequin’s ears. “It’s not as if a high-class broad like you would get yourself into some kind of trouble.”

I resisted rising to the bait. “The dog missed you,” I said. It just so happens I
am
a high-class broad, even if we were standing two millimeters apart and the smell of him was reminding me that I needed more fruit in my diet. USDA orders.

He straightened, still watching me with undiluted attention. When Rivera focuses, it sometimes seems like the rest of the world has taken a sabbatical. “I thought maybe there was some maniac with a shoe bomb and a mother complex holding you for ransom or something.”

“I try to keep maniacs confined to the vestibule,” I said.

He laughed with those Spanish black eyes. I felt weak in the ovaries. Harlequin was pressed up against his thigh like a love-starved groupie. For a second I wondered if there was room for two of us.

But before I could determine the answer to that age-old dilemma, Rivera raised a hand to my face. I held my breath. Was he going to kiss me? Was I ready? I could feel my temperature shoot off the charts. My mind was racing. It was too early. Or maybe too damned late. And I didn’t want to faint. Or seem too easy. In which case I probably should have worn a skirt that was bigger than my thumbnail and a blouse made of some sort of opaque material instead of—

Holy crap, he was leaning in. His dark charisma hit me like a hot wind.

“Is that toilet paper?” he asked.

My mind slammed to a halt. I stumbled backward, slapped my hand to my left ear, and felt the filmy tissue on my fingertips. It did indeed seem to be toilet paper. I just managed to refrain from sliding under my linoleum.

“I cut myself shaving,” I said, backing away. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“In the vestibule?” he asked, but I had already retreated to the sanctity of my bathroom.

My face was as red as Mexican hot sauce when I looked in the mirror, but at least there was no more toilet paper adhered to my ear. I patted my cheeks with a little cold water, calmed my breathing, and took a look at my hair. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. I plied it with a pick just to give myself some time to think. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change back into pants…and a parka. Something to assure Rivera I had no intention of sleeping with him, that I hadn’t even noticed that he smelled like something you’d spread on pancakes. Or…I could barricade myself in the bathroom and slide a note under the door.

Go away. I’m working toward the celibacy world record.

I closed my eyes and paced. Water, or something similar, splashed against my shoe.

Shit!

Probably.

Luckily, or possibly because my toilet rebels with the regularity of Old Faithful, I keep a bucket and rags under my sink. Squatting was not a simple task in the Post-it-Note skirt, but I managed.

I could hear Rivera mumbling something to Harlequin, who seemed to be concurring in a series of hums and whines.

Two seconds later I was running water into the plastic pail. Cramped from squatting, I put the bucket near the toilet, spread my legs, and bent from the waist to clean up the floor.

“McMullen—”

I squawked and spun around.

Rivera was standing in the doorway, brows raised, gaze pinned to where my ass had been, half exposed in my cleaning lady imitation. He skimmed his eyes down the length of my legs. It took about half an hour.

“What?” I rasped.

A smile twitched his lips. Then he stepped inside and closed the door firmly behind him.

2

I
FELT AS if the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs by a Power Vac. The world seemed to waver a little around the edges as Rivera stepped close.

My bathroom wasn’t big enough for a pair of pimentos. He was bigger than a pimento. I hoped.

Harlequin whined from the far side of the door. I may have done the same.

“What are you doing?” Rivera’s voice was deep and smoky.

“I just…” I nodded toward the bucket. “I had a little…trouble…” Breathing. What the hell? I was a trained professional. A licensed psychologist. And he looked as tasty as a raspberry truffle.

“You trying to seduce me, McMullen?” he asked.

“Whaa—” My huff sounded like I was clearing a blow horn, but he was still gazing at me, chocolate eyes bedroom-soft and felonious grin off-kilter. “No. I…No. My toilet—”

It occurred to me through a foggy sort of unreality that no sentence should begin with the words “my toilet” when a man was looking at me like this man was looking at me, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself, to catch my breath, to function with a modicum of normality. I love normality.

I cleared my throat and reached for my professional voice. “My toilet overflowed.”

“I missed you,” he said, and shifted closer. Our thighs brushed. His were hard.

“I was just…” My hormones were jumping like Mexican beans and had begun shouting obscene suggestions. But the last time I listened to my hormones I’d been accused of petty theft and threatened with a restraining order. Long story. “…cleaning up,” I said.

“Looked like you were practicing for a pose-off.”

“My septic system is…” I felt light-headed and overheated. Maybe I was wearing too much clothing. He sure as hell was. “Ummm…somewhat out-of-date.”

He shifted a half inch closer. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “Legs look good, though.”

Maybe I would have commented, but I was concentrating on breathing. And there was a commandment I was trying rather desperately to recall. It went something like…thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass. “I didn’t want to get it on my shoes.”

“Shoes look good, too. I like the bows.” He propped a hand against the wall behind me. He was so close I could taste him. My insides twisted up like silk undies.

“Hope I didn’t…” Drooling would be bad. I shouldn’t drool. “…get them dirty.”

“Damn things should be registered as lethal weapons.”

I was beginning to pant. “The shoes?”

“The legs.” He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. Jesus God, he was going to kiss me. The last time I’d kissed a guy…Ahh, hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d kissed a guy.

“Rivera!” I gasped.

“McMullen…” he murmured.

I tried to be strong, or conscious. “I don’t think we should—”

He kissed the corner of my lips. Something below my waist whimpered. Might have been the dog. Kinda doubt it.

“Let’s skip dinner,” he said.

I opened my mouth, but even my stomach failed to object. Maybe I was temporarily dead. This was heaven. The celestial toilet rested against my left knee.

He slipped his hand behind my neck. My brain went limp.

“Damn,” he said, “you’ve been driving me crazy ever since you killed Bomstad.”

A few cerebral cells bumped around, trying to work out the meaning of life, or how to remain vertical. “I didn’t kill Bomstad.” My voice sounded kind of breathy.

“Used to believe that,” he murmured, eyes half-closed, head tilted the slightest degree. “But one look at you in this alleged skirt probably stopped his heart.” He shimmied his hand down my back to the skirt in question. I shivered to my toenails and let my head rest against the wall behind me.

“How’s
your
heart?” I asked. I sounded funny, like someone had taken sandpaper to my larynx.

“Last physical said my heart was pretty good.”

I swallowed. “What’d they say about your other stuff?”

The left corner of his mouth hitched up a tad. “Other stuff’s feeling pretty good, too.”

I couldn’t argue. It was pressed up against my thigh.

“Kinda out of practice, though,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Use it or lose it.”

I was so damned weak. Even the memory of my past seventy-six beaus couldn’t convince me to kick and run. “Wouldn’t want that.”

“I could make dinner…afterward.” One of his thighs was between mine, kind of cradling me. “If I live that long,” he added, and kissed me.

I kissed him back. He had one arm on each side of my head, holding me up, locking me in. If this was torture…

His hand moved to my breast. I locked my knees to keep from falling into the toilet, or climbing him like a spider monkey. He kissed my neck. His lips were firm and warm. I was vibrating with need just like the heaving-breasted women in the romance novels I’d been reading since I was old enough to hide under a blanket with a flashlight. His chest felt like sun-warmed marble against my palm—just like a romantic hero, all brawny and sexy and…

The vibrating near my crotch was joined by a tinny, almost recognizable melody.

Now, that was something different. Even Danielle Steel hadn’t thought of that. I pushed him away, glanced down. “Is your…” I began. I was hardly panting at all. Excellent. “Are your pants singing?”

He chuckled. “Cell phone,” he said, and slipped his hand around my waist.

“And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”

“Believe it,” he said, and shifted so I could feel the full length of him against my hip.

“Shouldn’t you…” I might have gasped a little. “…answer it?”

“No.” His hand was under my shirt. His phone was still ringing. Either that or my thighs had started to harmonize.

“Catchy tune.” I couldn’t quite identify it, but it seemed wise to fixate on it lest I take him down like a grizzly on a salmon and swallow him whole. “Carly Simon?” I guessed.

He drew back with a scowl, paused as if dragging his mind past the stark banks of lust and back into sanity. Then he dipped his hand into his pocket. Flipping open his phone, he pressed it to his ear, eyes searing mine. “Yeah.”

I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line, but his expression darkened toward dangerous. I was still leaning back against the wall.

“All right,” he said, and snapped the phone shut. The bathroom was as silent as my bedroom had ever been. A tic bounced in his jaw. His eyes were blacker than hell. “I’ve got to go.”

My ovaries growled. I may have done the same. “Now?”

“Yeah.” He shoved the phone into his pocket. It was matched by a bulge on the other side. Maybe he kept his nightstick there. “Sorry.”

I straightened, but I didn’t grab him by the shirtfront and demand favors of any sort. Instead, I smoothed out my skirt. “Everything all right?”

He glared at me from beneath heavy brows, but I’m not sure he really knew I was still there. “Trouble with the senator.”

“The…” I shifted my weight more securely over my three-inch heels. “Senator?”

He opened the door. Harlequin sprang inside, but Rivera didn’t seem to notice him, either. You’ve got to be pretty far gone to ignore a dog the size of a refrigerator.

“Dear old Dad,” he said, but even in my current state it would have been difficult to misread the sarcasm.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My brain was tumbling around in my skull like a sun-dried raisin. Seems like all my body fluids had been called to the front lines.

“Listen.” His voice was rough and deep, his dusky gaze fire-quick as it shot toward the front door and back, impatience stamped like a tattoo on his brow. “I’ll have to take a rain check.”

“No problem,” I said, drowning out the strident protests from belowdecks.

“You sure?”

“Of course.” I managed a nod. “Familial matters come first. You must attend.”

He stared at me for an instant, then kissed me once, quick and hard. After that he was gone, striding across the floor like RoboCop on steroids.

It took me a full minute to marshal my senses. But finally I teetered atop my heels, wobbled out of the bathroom, and traipsed into the kitchen. The freezer handle felt nice and solid beneath my hand. I refrained from ripping it off and pulled out a carton of Freaky Deaky Fudge ice cream. Frozen moral support.

I shoveled a spoonful into my mouth. It hit my overheated system like a garden hose on a forest fire…optimistic but ineffective. It didn’t matter, though. I wasn’t some teenybopper bent on steaming up the windows on my boyfriend’s T-Bird. I am woman. Hear me roar. Or moan.

Harlequin whimpered, possibly in sympathy. Possibly because I was eating and he wasn’t. I flicked him a chunk of Freaky. He caught it, swallowed, made a face.

I grinned at his expression. Everything was fine. So Rivera had left prematurely. It was no big deal. If I was ever going to have a grown-up relationship, I would have to learn to rise above minor frustrations and petty inconveniences.

I ate some more ice cream.

Rivera had issues to work out with his father. I knew that much from past conversations. Thus, it was really quite commendable that he was attempting to do so now…at 8:20…on a Saturday night…during the first viable date I’d had since the Clinton administration.

Another bite of Freaky Deaky made me feel a bit calmer. I didn’t want to rush this relationship anyway. We were adults. We both had obligations, careers, pasts. And I’d made the mistake of moving too fast before. A tsunami was mild compared to the catastrophic results of those disasters.

And it wasn’t as if Rivera wasn’t attracted to me. I had hard evidence to the contrary. I gave myself a Freaky Deaky salute for my cleverness and reminded myself there was no hurry. He’d be back. We’d talk things through like intelligent adults. Maybe I could help him unravel his tangled emotions regarding his father. Men often have mixed feelings concerning the patriarchic head of their adolescent years, especially….

“‘Like a Virgin’?”
The song title sailed from my lips on a glycogen wave. Rivera’s phone had been playing one of Madonna’s megahits.

I stood, spoon still loaded, glaring numbly at nothing.

Oh, yeah, I was all for talking things through, self-actualization, getting in touch with one’s inner child, and all that crap.

But what the hell did a
virgin
of any sort have to do with Lieutenant Jack Rivera? Wasn’t that particular song far more likely to herald a call from an old flame out of his sordid past than from the illustrious senator he hated like a father?

But maybe I was being overly suspicious. Maybe
all
the grim lieutenant’s calls were preceded by sexually suggestive songs that whispered breathily of being touched for the very first time.

Yeah. Sure. Made sense.

And maybe if Colin Farrell propositioned me with his crooning Irish accent and his soulful fuck-me eyes I’d tell him to take a hike. ’Cuz that’s just the way the world works.