by Lucy Score
He was so cocky. Literally. Very literally.
She arched under him, and he ran his scruffy jaw over her cheek before nipping at her lower lip.
This was the best Thursday morning Riley had ever experienced.
But hang on. She didn’t have best Thursdays. She didn’t wake up with hot, naked men in her bed.
“Wait, what about the whole contagious monogamy thing?” she asked. It was more of a gasp as he was rocking steadily against her. A promise or a threat of what was to come. She. She was about to come.
“I’ll risk it,” he murmured, lowering his head to take her mouth.
This time, he was the one moaning. Only it was more of a yawning sound than a moan. And then a weird coughing gagging noise. Followed by a wet sneeze.
Nick pulled back. “Holy shit.”
“Oh my God!”
Big brown eyes peered at them inches from their faces.
“I forgot I had a dog,” Riley admitted.
“Buddy, I will buy you a year’s supply of dog biscuits if you go back to sleep right now,” Nick bargained.
But Burt wasn’t having it. He put his front paws on the mattress, tail wagging.
“I think he has to go out,” she observed.
Burt gave a happy bark, his whip-like tail wagging harder.
Nick dropped his forehead to hers. “I’m trying really hard not to hate him right now,” he admitted.
In apology, the dog gave Nick’s waist and ribs a slurp.
“Ugh. Gross,” he complained.
She couldn’t quite smother her laughter. Nick helped by shoving a pillow over her face. “Come on, jerk dog.”
She surfaced from the bed. “I’ll take him,” she said.
He paused and looked down. “Good call.”
The man was totally naked, and his impressive, enthusiastic cock was standing at attention. She lost every train of thought her brain had ever had. Burt barked again, bringing her back to the reality of his doggy bladder.
She felt woozy and fevered. Still staring at the sex god before her, she wrestled on a mismatched pair of flip-flops. She tripped over her own feet and then the dog. Nick smirked at her as she fixed her gaze on him through the gap in the closing door, determined to soak up every second of the view.
Down the stairs she and Burt went, leaving the morning seduction behind. There were signs of life on the second and first floors. Someone was frying bacon in the kitchen. Someone else was watching the morning news at twice the acceptable volume.
Mrs. Penny’s door was still closed, and Riley imagined the elderly vigilante was catching up on some much-needed sleep.
Outside, she realized she didn’t have a dog leash or a doggy bag. She was entirely ill-equipped to parent a dog. Fortunately, Burt didn’t appear to require much parenting. He bounded over to the neighboring lot and did his business. A whole giant mound of it. Followed by a streaming river of it.
Riley made a mental list of dog accessories she needed to buy on her lunch hour. Her lunch hour. Damn it. She had work today. It was a beautiful summer morning. There was a beautiful naked man waiting for her upstairs. But she had to turn her back on both man and dog and go proofread garbage in the windowless offices of SHART.
There was something very wrong with this picture.
Burt bounded back to her, looking proud of himself. A good dog mom would have offered him a treat. A good dog mom would have had treats.
She heard a sharp, shrill whistle and looked up. Nick, still shirtless, was leaning out of the third-floor window. “Move that cute ass, Thorn. Gotta pick up the Jeep, and I need coffee.”
Burt barked and trotted toward the back door.
Riley sighed.
“How do you feel about dog-sitting?” she called back.
He laughed and shook his head. “Anything for you, Thorn.”
She showered and changed in record time. The three of them entered the kitchen, scenting the air.
“Good morning, Riley,” Gabe beamed from the stove. “And who is this handsome beast?” he asked, leaning down to pet Burt.
“I’m Nick. We’ve already met,” Nick said.
Riley rolled her eyes and gratefully took the breakfast sandwich Gabe handed her.
“What the hell is that thing?” Mr. Willicott demanded, peering at the dog over his upside-down newspaper.
“This is Burt,” Riley said, knowing it was useless to tell her neighbor anyone’s name.
“He is a dog,” Gabe added helpfully.
Burt trotted over to sniff at Mr. Willicott’s empty plate.
“What are you doing here?” Gabe asked Nick with polite disdain.
Nick slung his arm around Riley’s shoulders. “Spent the night with my fiancée after she called needing some help.”
“You were in need of help?” Gabe looked crestfallen. “I am always available, Riley.”
Great. She’d snagged less than four hours of sleep, realized her life was a meaningless repeat of terrible days, and managed to hurt her friend’s feelings. She threw an elbow into Nick’s ribs. He grunted.
“You’ll be helping me after work with more training,” she promised. “You can even make me go for a run.”
Gabe brightened. Nick looked annoyed.
“Good morning,” Lily trilled, wandering into the kitchen in a paisley caftan.
“Morning,” Riley and Nick said together.
Lily’s gasp had the caftan falling off one of her shoulders to reveal that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “I’m so happy to see you, Nick! Does this mean your sexual performance improved over the first time, and we’ll be seeing more of you?”
“Why does everyone think I’m bad in bed?” Nick wondered.
“You seem like a selfish lover,” Gabe answered.
Riley choked out a laugh.
“Aren’t you going to defend me?” Nick asked her.
Riley noticed that Lily’s eyes were riveted on Nick’s crotch. The woman looked a little flushed.
“Everyone can keep their noses out of my sex life,” Riley said, pushing Lily into a chair and fanning her with Mr. Willicott’s newspaper. She couldn’t take chances with her neighbors and gravity.
“Oh my goodness! Who is this handsome devil?” Lily asked as the dog shoved his wrecking ball-sized head in her lap.
“This is Burt. I found him last night,” Riley told her. “Do you mind if he stays with us for a while until I figure out what to do with him?”
“I’ve always wanted a timeshare dog,” Lily said, smushing Burt’s face in her hands. The dog was big enough—and probably hungry enough—to eat her in two bites. Instead, his tail swished back and forth on the tile floor.
“What the hell are you going to do with a horse? I hate horses. Refuse to live with ’em,” Mr. Willicott said, glaring at the dog.
“Oh dear,” Lily sighed. “I suppose we should take a vote. Tonight at dinner.”
“I’ll keep him with me for the day,” Nick promised Lily, flashing her his dimples.
“Well, aren’t you a sweetheart, Nick?” Lily was clearly susceptible to dimples.
Riley thought she saw Gabe roll his eyes, a very un-spiritual-advisor-like thing to do.
She hid her smile and poured two coffees into cups and secured the lids.
“We better get going,” Nick said, accepting the coffee she handed him.
“See you all later,” Riley said. “Thanks for the sandwich, Gabe. That was very thoughtful of you.”
“It was my honor,” Gabe said.
“Kiss ass,” Nick muttered under his breath.
She thought she heard Gabe whisper “disappointing lover,” but couldn’t be sure.
35
8:31 a.m., Thursday, July 2
Nick swung into the minuscule back lot of his office and glanced at his passenger. Burt was now bathed, wearing a bright red collar that the dog had picked out himself and holding a stuffed pig in his mouth.
Nick had found a pair of shorts and two matching
sneakers in the back of his SUV and sweet-talked his way into a pet supply store before its official opening. He’d enjoyed a brief relationship with the owner back in high school, and she’d been happy to load him up with supplies for his “fiancée’s” new dog.
She may have taken advantage of him, he thought, considering the haul he now had to unload.
There were two bags of toys in the back seat, another of treats and accessories—who knew dog dental hygiene was a thing?—and a forty-pound bag of organic kibble guaranteed to settle digestive issues.
“Come on, Burt,” he said to the dog. “We’ve got work to do.”
Together they climbed the back steps of the building to the second floor.
His apartment was a 700-square-foot one-bedroom unit. It was in decent shape but a little on the soulless side. A lot of beige on beige. He’d never gotten around to hanging shit on the walls or putting his laundry away. He also hadn’t bothered with furnishing the place beyond simple functionality. The bed was king-sized. The leather couch had two built-in recliners and faced a flat-screen TV that he still felt he should have gone bigger on. And that was about it. No throw pillows. No books. No art.
But at least he didn’t have piles of dirty underwear and porn.
While Nick deposited the pet supplies on the couch, the dog took a sniffing tour of the kitchen, which was minimally stocked with convenience food and takeout menus. If the zombie apocalypse happened, he’d be one of the first to starve to death.
“What? It serves its purpose,” he said to the dog when Burt eyeballed him judgmentally.
After he quit the force, Nick had meant to start looking for a house. Get a mortgage. Mow a lawn. Buy a beer fridge for the garage. But the business had sucked up all of his time since then. He was growing a reputation, employing people. So what if his home bore an unsettling resemblance to Dickie Frick’s? Just because they were both into big TVs and didn’t do dishes or blankets or scented candles didn’t mean Nick was heading down the same path. A guy could be a bachelor without turning into a lonely, old, perverted sleazebag. Right?
Burt cocked his head at him.
“Don’t get comfortable,” he told the dog. “We’ve got shit to do after breakfast.”
Nick ripped open the bag of kibble and poured some into a shiny new bowl. Lifestyle judgments forgotten, Burt trotted over and wolfed down the food before moving his massive face to the matching water bowl.
A brisk knock at the door had the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck standing up. Burt lifted his head, letting Niagara Falls stream from his mouth to the linoleum floor.
Nobody visited here. Certainly not before nine on a weekday morning.
Tucking the Glock he kept in the utensil drawer into the back of his shorts, Nick eased up to the door.
“Yeah?” he called.
“Santiago?”
The visitor didn’t sound like a cop. Nick opened the door.
Two people in cheap suits and sunglasses stared back at him. One was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a slicked-back ponytail. The other was shorter, rounder, and had hairy knuckles. They looked like a knock-off version of the Blues Brothers. Burt stuck his head out the door and gave a deep “boof.”
“Holy shit. ’Zat a lion or a pony?” the short one asked.
“Hey there, boy,” the lady said, crouching down and offering Burt her hand. The dog sniffed suspiciously and then plowed into her, giving her face a slobbery kiss.
“Uh, sorry,” Nick said, pulling Burt off the woman.
She stood up and brushed the dog hair off her suit. “No problem. I got three just like ’im at home.”
“What can I do for you two?” Nick asked, wrestling Burt back inside. The dog shoved his face between Nick’s leg and the door frame.
“Fat Tony wants a word with you,” the short one announced.
“He does, does he?” Word certainly traveled fast.
“Yeah. You can leave your pony and that piece you got in your pants here,” the guy said.
“I’ve got work to do,” Nick said.
“This’ll just take a minute,” the dog lover assured him. “He’s down in the car.” She hooked her thumb in the direction of a shiny black Escalade idling in the alley.
Nick pretended to be annoyed even though they’d just saved him a trip to the casino. He sighed and made a slow-motion show of removing the gun and putting it on the kitchen counter.
He shut the door in Burt’s hopeful face. The two stooges sandwiched him on the walk down the flight of stairs.
The tall one knocked on the tinted back window, and the door opened.
The short one gestured for Nick to get inside.
“Nicky, my friend.”
Fat Tony was no longer fat. After weight loss surgery four years ago, he’d lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off by taking up speed walking. The guy did a few laps of his 110,000-square-foot casino every day before work. However, Skinny Tony didn’t seem to instill the same mixture of fear and respect that Fat Tony did. So the original moniker stayed even as the waistband of Tony’s shiny sharkskin trousers shrunk.
“Tony. How’s the wife?” Nick asked, settling onto the cream-colored leather next to the man.
“Eh. You know neurosurgeons,” he said, offering Nick a cup of dark, thick espresso. “She’s been making me do these Sodukey things to keep me ‘sharp.’” The man’s air quotes were accented with a black onyx pinkie ring and a shiny gold watch. “I keep telling her there ain’t nothing dull about Fat Tony.”
“Women,” Nick said in male camaraderie. He took the coffee.
It was true. The man was shrewd enough that no criminal charges had ever stuck to him. They’d all rolled off him like oil on sharkskin pants. Even as a cop, it had been hard to take offense. The guy was just plain likable.
“Speaking of. I hear you got yourself one finally,” Fat Tony said.
This being big news was getting to become old news to Nick. “I do. She’s making an honest man out of me.”
“Good for you. I always say a guy ain’t got nothing if he don’t got a woman forcing him to do good shit.”
The man was a sage. And his wife, Dr. Mrs. Fat Tony, was the driving force behind the casino boss’s generous support of nonprofits. There was a reason the pediatric wing of the hospital was named the Anthony and Elizabeth Martucci Pavilion.
“Thanks. She’s a great girl.”
“I’ll be expecting a wedding invite,” Tony told him, taking a dainty sip of espresso.
Nick congratulated himself on not breaking out in hives. “You can count on it,” he fibbed. “So what can I do for you?”
“I’ve kept my eye on you since you left the force, Nicky.”
Well, that wasn’t a comforting thought.
“You and me, we always got along even when you were trying to bust me for stupid shit, didn’t we?” Tony continued.
Nick nodded. “We did.” After all the murders, rapes, and assaults, a guy making some coin on the side and evading taxes wasn’t exactly a high priority to Nick. Not when there was so much other ugliness out there.
“I’m legit now,” Tony said proudly. “Well, mostly. But your old pal Weber seems to think I’m still dabbling.”
“That sounds like him,” Nick said.
“He’s looking at me for Frick’s murder.”
“I might have heard that rumor.”
Fat Tony put down his cup and saucer with a snap. “It wasn’t me, Nicky. Yeah, the shithead owed me twenty Gs on the horses. But he paid it off. We both moved on.”
“When did he pay it off?” Nick asked.
“Two weeks ago,” Fat Tony said. “And before you ask, I don’t know where he got the money.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with that idiot getting shot.” He sliced a ringed hand through the air.
“Why tell me? I’m not a cop anymore.”
“I’m hiring you, Nicky.”
“Hiring me to do what?”
“Prove I didn’t whack Frick the Dipstick. I don’t trust that smug Weber shit to figure it out on his own. There’s something fishy going on with the cops in this town.”
“Heard that rumor, too,” Nick said, rubbing the back of his neck. A payout from Fat Tony would be nice in the company coffers. But he had a hunch it might not be exactly ethical to take on two clients for the same case. Especially if it turned out that Fat Tony had pulled the trigger.
Damn that Riley Thorn. Her morals were rubbing off on him. “Only problem is, I’m already working the case. Frick’s family hired me to find out who pulled the trigger.”
“I’m a businessman, Nicky. I got no beef with you double-dipping if it keeps my ass out of an interrogation room.”
“You have an alibi for the night Dickie was killed?”
Fat Tony snorted. “I got an alibi for every night of my life.”
Nick raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. Reflex. The wife and I were at the casino for my ma’s birthday party.”
Fat Tony’s mother was a semi-famous singer from the ’60s. She wore feather boas to the grocery store and got a Christmas card from Tony Bennett every year.
“Got surveillance footage—undoctored this time—of us there until two a.m. Hell, even got the mayor as an eyewitness.”
“What about the Blues Brothers out there?” Nick asked, nodding to where Tall and Short leaned against the brick of the building, hands in their pockets.
“I wouldn’t send those two to do any dirty work. He faints at the sight of blood, and she gets winded after a flight of stairs. I can get you the whereabouts of my crew, but it’s a waste of my time and yours. I had nothing to do with this.”
“One more question. Are you Frick’s silent partner in the bar?”
“Do I look like the kind of man who would put his name on that shithole?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I’m a classy guy, Nicky. Ain’t no way I’d partner with Frick on a dump like Nature Girls.”
“Do you know who the partner is?”
“I didn’t know there was a partner,” Fat Tony insisted. “Who the hell would be stupid enough to go into business with that moron?”