She gasped. “T. Larry, that’s terrible.” Then she smiled. “But I sort of like that name. You’re getting very good at making up names.” Nuzzling her nose in his ear, she added, “We overheard everything you said to mean old Ryman. I’m so proud of you for taking the leap and throwing your job in his face. Can I be your secretary in your new company?”
“You’re going to be a helluva lot more. How about my partner in every way?”
She beamed with that gorgeous, lopsided smile. “For the rest of my long, long life, T. Larry.”
He pulled back enough to gaze into her eyes. “Do you really believe that or are you just saying it for me?”
“I might still get scared once in a while, but you’ll be there to whup me upside the head when I need it.” She worried her bottom lip. “Won’t you?”
“Hell, yes, I’ll be there.” His heart soared, then nose-dived. “What about your birthday?”
She took a deep breath. “Birthdays don’t have to be scary, either.” She stopped to take his hand and hold it to her cheek. “In fact, I’m looking forward to having many more after this one.”
Warmth spread from his touch on her cheek. Twenty-eight wasn’t a number either of them had to fear anymore. And if she did have the occasional fright, he’d be there to help her through. “Since that’s the case, don’t you think you ought to know my first name before you see it written on our marriage certificate?”
She pulled back, stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “You’re going to tell me what the T stands for?”
He pulled her once more into his arms and leaned down to whisper into her ear. He had other games he wanted to play with Madison. This particular one was over.
“Oh, T. Larry,” she murmured with such awe, such joy. “Can I tell everyone?”
He shuddered at the closeness, then gave her everything he had. “Go ahead.”
She took his hand, dragging him to the door, and opened it to face the throng milling in the hallway outside.
“I’d like to introduce…” Madison looked up at him, eyes shining with almost tears. He slipped his hand to her waist and tucked her beneath his arm to a deafening round of applause.
Turning her high-wattage smile on her audience, Madison shushed them with a fluttering of her hand. “I’d like to introduce Tuttle Laurence Hobbs. And, because you’re all so special and you’re all going to follow him to his new firm, you can call him King Tut.”
Be sure to watch for Jennifer Skully’s next romance,
coming to HQN in October 2006.
And now for a sneak preview,
please turn the page.
CHAPTER ONE
JACK DAVIS FOUGHT DOWN the air bag and scrambled from the cab of his truck. The woman he’d rammed into was already out of her sporty red mini-SUV and on her hands and knees looking beneath the vehicle.
“What are you doing?” Jack swallowed the epithet he’d been about to use. His mama taught him politeness regardless of the circumstances.
Traffic flowed slowly through the lanes on either side of them. For once, he could appreciate the slowness of a Silicon Valley rush hour. Jack turned to the gold Cadillac that had rear-ended him when he’d slammed on his brakes. The Caddy’s driver hadn’t moved yet, though his air bag had deflated.
Jack ran back. An old guy, with numerous fragile bones. Squatting by the closed window, he shouted through. “You okay?”
No answer, but at least the old man’s eyes were open, and he’d turned his head. Jack whipped his cell phone off his belt and punched in 911.
With the call made, he opened the door slowly, and held the man back against the seat when he tried to move. “Just stay put until the ambulance gets here. They need to check you out. Feel like anything’s broken?”
The old man shook his head, but would he really know? His eyes couldn’t seem to focus on Jack’s face. Jack stood.
That’s when he saw her. The woman, the other driver. Her butt in the air, short skirt barely covering her essentials, she looked as if she was trying to crawl under his truck. “What are you doing now?”
Stalking back, he grabbed her arm and pulled her out.
Still on her knees, she stared up at him with the bluest, most freaked-out eyes he’d ever seen.
“Didn’t you see it?”
“See what?” he asked as calmly as possible. She’d started to worry him.
“The body. It fell off the overpass right in front of me. I ran over it.”
She was young, midtwenties or so. Blond hair, blue eyes, and, from his vantage point as she knelt beside his truck, nice…nice everything.
Despite being batty.
“I didn’t see a body flying off that overpass, ma’am.” Jack struggled to retain that ingrained politeness.
She bit her lip, then looked through his legs at the Cadillac. “Maybe it’s under there.”
Jumping up, she tipped sideways on her high heels, recovered and rushed around him to peer beneath the old man’s gold car.
She leaned into the open door of the Caddy. “Did you see that man fall off the overpass?”
The old man shook his head. He still hadn’t spoken, and Jack was anxious about him. “You could have killed someone slamming on your brakes like that.”
She sucked in a breath, her breasts expanding in her tight black sweater. “Oh my God, I didn’t…are you all right?”
“Fine. Thanks for asking.” He didn’t point out she should have shown the concern before she crawled under his truck.
She put a hand on the old guy’s shoulder. “What about you?”
He smiled up at her blissfully. And nodded.
“I’m so sorry. But the body just fell right in front of me.”
Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. “There is no body.”
She stared at him with guileless blue eyes. “But I saw it.”
He didn’t know why he was trying to convince her, but he walked to the front of her car, leaned down to look under it, did the same with his own truck—ah, Jesus, the crushed bumpers and tailgate made him wince—and finally the Cadillac. Then he spread his hand. “Nothing here.”
Sirens sounded in the distance. Behind them, traffic was stacking up.
“Nothing back there, either,” he said when she looked at the stream of cars with blinkers on, trying to merge around them.
She stared back at the overpass. She’d skidded several feet beyond it. “But I saw it. It was a vision. A premonition.”
Oh man. She was schizo, a type with which he’d had far too much experience. “Don’t tell the cops about any visions you had.”
She tipped her head to the side. “But how am I going to explain about slamming on my brakes?”
“Tell them you saw a dog in the median lane, probably got trapped out there, then made a run for it.”
“But that would be a lie. Dogs don’t fall out of the sky.”
Neither did bodies. He’d always considered himself a patient man, but he had his limits. “Have you been drinking?”
Her pretty blue eyes widened with horror. “It isn’t even nine o’clock in the morning.”
“If you tell the cops you had a vision, they’re going to test you for every illegal substance known to man. You have that much time?”
She passed a look from the now-crushed rear of her little red SUV to the crumpled front of the gold Cadillac to the old man still sitting dazed in the front seat. “All right. A dog.” She tipped her head again. “Did you see it? Just in case they ask.”
“I didn’t see anything but your rear end.” Especially when she was kneeling down by the side of her car. Now that was a vision.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-0615-4
DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
Copyright © 2006 by Jennifer Skullestad
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