“Oh please, Charlie is the least likely to be swayed when it comes to medicine.”
“Really?” Will asked, standing up and walking over to him. “Carly, everything is completely normal. You need to be looked after for medical purposes…To which Carly responds with…Oh, just like a typical male to think he needs to take charge and tell us all what to do. It’s like when Will convinced you that you needed to buy a house with him. You told him you weren’t ready, but did he care? Men never take our feelings into account.”
“Charlie would never fall for that,” Nathan shook his head.
“And then Charlie would argue that moving into a house is nothing like making this medical decision. And then Carly would respond with, If you want to think that Will taking over your life and deciding that you needed a house, and to be married, and to have a baby is nothing like my husband deciding I need to be watched over like a toddler, then you really have let him change you.”
“Boom,” Andrew grinned. “He nailed it. That’s Charlie Manipulation 101.”
“Charlie or Carly?” Robert asked.
“Either way. They’re both manipulating each other, but Carly will win in the end because she has the trump card. She knows that Charlie can’t stand for a man to rule over any part of her life.” Andrew nodded, thinking it all through. “I would give it a day—max, before Carly turns Charlie, and even less time for the rest of them. Lorelei might hold out longer, just because she hasn’t been manipulated by you guys before.”
“No way Carly can get Kat on her side,” Eric argued.
“Oh please, after the way you stalked her around town when she was pregnant, there’s a chance that she’ll side with you for a whole day,” Robert said. “Andrew’s right. All the women are vulnerable.”
“She’s already gotten to Sofia,” I admitted. “She probably crumbled the minute she picked Carly up from the hospital.”
“The point is, we’re going to have to watch her discreetly, which is something you guys aren’t too good at,” Jack interjected. “Talk to everyone in town. Joe, no Facebook posts. Carly will be expecting that.”
“And she won’t find it odd that everyone is staring at her, just waiting for her to drop dead?”
“Hey,” Josh snapped at Joe. “That’s my wife. A little sensitivity, please.”
“Sorry, waiting for her to keel over from a seizure. Does that make it sound better?”
“You’re an ass.”
Corduroy stood up, holding up his hands to calm down the bickering. “Alright, the point is, we have a woman walking around town that doesn’t want our help, but needs it. Now, how are we going to get through the next few months, watching her, but not watching her?”
“More patrols,” Will suggested.
“Sure, we’ll just forget all the real police work and follow her around in our car all day,” Jack said sarcastically. “The point is, we can’t do any more than we already are. You can’t hire a nurse to watch her every move, but you already have her thinking that Sofia’s on her side. We’ll use that.”
“How are we going to use that?” I asked incredulously.
“Easy, sex.”
“Now, just wait—”
“Not us, just you,” Jack corrected. “You can get any information you want through sex. You just have to do it the right way. And since you’re closest to Sofia, and it would be morally abhorrent for any of the rest of us to try and get the information through sex, you’re the most likely candidate.”
I flinched back in surprise. “You want me to trick my wife into sleeping with me for information?”
“If you have to trick her, I think you may have other problems,” Jack pointed out.
“Of course I don’t have to trick her, but sleeping with her for information is just wrong.”
“But Carly using your wife isn’t?”
I looked at Josh, hoping he would help me out, but instead he stood and slapped my shoulder. “Looks like you’re going to have to take one for the team. I’m sorry, but someone has to do it.”
“This is so wrong.”
“It’s only wrong if you don’t give her a happy ending,” Andrew said. “Trust me, I was sleeping with Lorelei for how long, just to gain information.”
“You were sleeping with her because you thought she was going to kill you.”
“That’s not completely true, and I resent the implication that I can’t woo a woman for any reason other than pleasure.”
“Christ,” Eric rubbed his forehead. “I never should have gotten you that thesaurus.”
“Why can’t we just use our lethal weapon— Jack,” Robert asked. “He’s already harassing everyone. It gives him the perfect reason to drag Carly down to the jail any time one of us thinks she’s overdoing it.”
“Great idea,” Nathan nodded. “So, she can have a seizure in the jail cell.”
“No, the point is to contain her,” Robert reiterated.
“Yes, I see where you were going with that, but stress can also bring on seizures. So, dragging her down to the police station may not be the way to ‘contain her’, as you like to call it.”
“So, we should just go about life as is,” Josh said.
“Well, if you don’t want to stress her out more, I wouldn’t follow her around town or drag her down to the jail anytime you think she’s pushing it,” Nathan argued. “Just treat her like a normal person.”
“Wait, so we got dragged down here in the middle of the work day for us to be told that we’re going to proceed as normal?” Eric asked. “I was supposed to meet with a client this morning.”
“I cancelled a surgery, so thanks for that,” Nathan sighed.
“Wait, that’s it?” I asked, feeling like this whole thing was just a bit anticlimactic.
“You still need to seduce your wife,” Jack grinned. “I know it’ll be difficult, but we have faith that you can do it.”
“Fine, then I need someone to watch Amelia tonight.”
“Why?” Robert asked.
Rolling my eyes toward the ceiling, I shook my head. “Because if I’m going to fall down on my sword and sleep with my wife for the cause, I need to do it the right way. I can’t have Amelia on my mind at all.”
“She shouldn’t be anyway,” Corduroy laughed.
“You know what I mean. You’re always thinking about something else. Did I just hear her wake up? Did I put her bottle in the fridge or leave it out on the counter? Did I buy the diapers today?”
“You think about diapers during sex?” Robert asked.
“I think about all kinds of things. I can’t shut my mind off,” I said. “Don’t tell me none of you have thought about if that green thing in the diaper was part of her shit or something else.”
Josh laughed slightly. “Not during sex. Maybe you’re not the man for the job.”
I flipped him off and grabbed Amelia’s things. This was such a waste of time.
After arguing with Eric for the better part of an hour, I sent Amelia home with him so I could seduce my wife. This would be easy. I could totally do this and extract information from her.
She walked through the door an hour after I had everything set. I had candles spread out and flowers on the table. Hell, I was killing it. I would show the guys that I could pull off this one mission. I laughed at myself. I was beginning to sound like Derek.
“Hey, what’s all this?” Sofia asked as she walked in the door. The smile on her face was bright and beautiful.
“I figured you had a rough day with Carly, and I wanted to make sure you were taken care of.”
Her face crumpled slightly, like she was about to cry. Fuck, I already screwed up. I rushed over to her and pulled her into my arms.
“Not that you can’t handle it,” I rushed on. “You’re so strong and you take care of Amelia all the time. I didn’t mean to fuck this up.”
“No,” she said, swiping at her face. “It’s just so sweet of you. You laid out flowers and everything. Is Amelia already in bed
?”
“Eric and Kat took her for the night.”
She frowned. “Wouldn’t they take Alessa? I mean, Carly’s the one going through all this stuff.”
“Right,” I nodded, “but we all kind of figured that Carly would lean heavily on you, since she called you. So, I thought you could use a nice, relaxing evening.”
She leaned back, eyeing me warily. “Are you sure there’s nothing else going on here?”
I chuckled nervously, feeling a little hot. I pulled at the collar of my shirt, grimacing when it came away damp. “Is it hot in here?”
“No,” she said innocently. “Are you getting sick?”
“No,” I said quickly, not wanting her to think that we should just take it easy. After all, I had a job to perform. “We should move this into the bedroom. I have wine.”
She smiled and walked toward the bedroom, tossing a little wink over her shoulder. I laughed slightly, mostly awkwardly and hurried over to the counter where I had the wine waiting. Picking up the bottle, I swore to myself.
“Shit, is white wine supposed to be chilled?” I didn’t normally drink wine, so now I was out of my depth here. “Fuck it.”
I snatched up the two glasses and the bottle of wine, then headed for the bedroom. Stopping just outside the door, I took a deep breath.
“You can do this. You are a wily espionage. You take names and kick ass.”
“Babe?” Sofia said, practically standing right in front of me. I jumped slightly, then laughed, trying to find a way to brush off my erratic behavior.
“Hey, quiche girl!”
“What?”
“Uh…I totes can’t wait to Netflix and chill with you.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “What’s going on? You only revert to your Millennial talk when you’re nervous.”
“Nervous?” I chuckled awkwardly. “What would I have to be nervous about? I’m about to go have sex with my wife. It’s something we do all the time. It’s totes…totally fine.”
“Is this about the extra five pounds that I can’t lose? Because I thought you liked me with more meat on my bones.”
“Five pounds? Is it that much? I really can’t tell.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. “So you’re watching my weight?”
“What?” I tried to sound cool, but it came out all high-pitched and screechy. “Why would I watch your weight? I mean, if I did watch your weight, it would be to make sure you put on more weight.”
“More weight? Just how much do you want me to weigh?”
I scoffed with a mix of laughter and nervous chuckling. “Baby, you could weigh three hundred pounds and I would still find you sexy.”
“So, you want me to put on weight.”
I didn’t know what the right answer was here. This whole night was going sideways. I was supposed to be seducing her, but somehow, we were now wrapped up in a discussion about her weight. There was no right answer. But telling her I didn’t want her to gain weight wouldn’t win me any points.
“Totally, babe. I love big women. In fact, the bigger the better. More cushin’ for pushin’.”
“Do you have some kind of sick fat fetish now? You want me to gain weight? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“No…” I thought about what I’d said again, shaking my head. “No, I don’t want you to gain weight, but even if you were five hundred pounds, I’d still love you.”
“You’d love me if I was five hundred pounds,” she said unbelievably. I nodded, trying to look convincing. “You’d love me if I was so fat I couldn’t get out of bed on my own? You’d love me if I ate more than all your brothers at every meal, and just really dug into all of Mary Anne’s tasty treats on a daily basis?”
“Well, let’s face it. You already do. I’ve seen where the money goes,” I snorted.
She glared at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “So, now I spend too much money?”
I scratched my head, laughing slightly. “Um…you know, I think we should stop talking and do more love making.” I tried to sidle up next to her, but she scoffed and pushed away from me, walking over to the bed and grabbing a pillow.
“I think I’ll go to bed and you can take the couch.”
She shoved the pillow into my chest and then slammed the bedroom door in my face. I stared at the door, holding the pillow against me with the wine glasses and bottle still in my hand. I didn’t know what to do now. My night was a bust, and now my wife was pissed at me.
The door swung back open and Sofia narrowed her eyes at me. “And one more thing. I didn’t want to tell you this, but you’ve put on weight.”
“I have not,” I said defensively.
“Yes, you have. All those tasty treats I get you are starting to go to your gut. And I don’t think it’s sexy,” she said, just before slamming the door in my face.
I frowned. “That’s just mean.”
8
Corduroy
“Are we seriously doing this? We’re going to tell everyone in town to be on the lookout for Carly and her shenanigans?”
Jack looked up from his paperwork, his eyebrows raised. “What would you like me to do?”
“I’d like to know why you care all of a sudden. A week ago, you hated Carly and Josh. Now you’re scheming with him to keep Carly safe? I don’t get it.”
He leaned back in his chair, staring at me for a moment. “What if I told you that your little speech at poker night finally got through to me?”
“I would say you’re full of shit and something else is going on.”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me.
“Seriously? It finally sank in?”
He nodded. “I went by Josh’s garage the other morning and had a talk with him. I was there when Carly had her seizure.”
I frowned. “You didn’t…set it off, did you?”
“Did I give Carly a seizure? What the fuck do you think?”
“Hey, I’m not the one walking around town being an asshole to everyone.”
“Do you want me to tell you I regret it? That’s not going to happen.” He sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. “But you’re right. It’s bad for Brody. I need to find a way to move past this. So, I talked with him and I told him I didn’t blame him for Natalie’s death.”
“Whoa,” I said, taking a seat before I fell over. “You actually said that?”
“Well, it was either that or pull out my gun and shoot him. One of those would get me thrown in jail, and that wouldn’t be best for Brody.”
“I just can’t believe it,” I said, still shocked by this little revelation.
“Yeah, well, don’t count your chickens just yet. It’s not like I’m about to go grab a beer with him.”
“Why not? Isn’t the best way to get past something just to get back on the horse?”
“I just can’t. I still see her…just lying there in all that blood. And I know that it’s not his fault, but the minute he stepped back into my life, she disappeared.”
“Jack, that’s not how it happened. There was a psycho after Carly. If some guy had been stalking any other woman in town, and Natalie got in the way, would you blame the woman?”
“I never said it was logical. Look, I get that you want me to move past this, but I have to go at my own pace. It was hard enough to walk up to him the other day and tell him what I did. And on top of that, with Antonio in town…fuck, it just makes everything so much harder.”
“Yeah, I can’t say I’m thrilled to have him in town.”
Jack sighed heavily. “Whatever. We have to deal with it. It’s not like he’s in town all the time, so it should be fairly easy to ignore him.”
“But you went to get him the other day.”
Jack nodded. “Well, it’s not like I could ask one of Josh’s brothers to go talk to him.”
“You could have called me.” He didn’t say anything. “You know what I think?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I
think you wanted to go out there. I think you needed to prove to yourself that you could see him without wanting to kill him.”
Jack grinned and stood up. “Well, he’s alive, isn’t he?”
“So, I’m right?”
“We have to get to work on spreading the word about Carly. A lot of folks will be at breakfast right now, which is the perfect time to catch them. I’ll head to the diner. You head to the bakery.”
He shoved past me and headed for the door. “That’s it?”
I followed after him, but as I walked out of the station, he was already chatting with people and completely ignoring me. I made my way to the bakery, almost turning around when I saw Joe coming my way. But it was too late. He’d already seen me.
“What do you want, Baby Cortell?”
Joe frowned. “Baby Cortell? I’m not the baby.”
“Does it matter? Young and stupid, way too idiotic for the woman you married. If only she’d made the smart decision and chosen me.”
“Yeah, well, all the women gravitate toward the Cortell brothers. That has to tell you something.”
“It does,” I grinned as I continued to the bakery. “It tells me that I was lucky to get away.”
“Oh, and you’re doing so well with the ladies right now?”
“I have my eye on a few.”
“Who?”
I had no fucking clue. I honestly wasn’t looking to date anyone right now. But I wasn’t about to let him know that. “Don’t you worry about me and my love life. How’d it go last night with Sofia? Did you get anything useful out of her?”
He cleared his throat, shoving his hands in his pockets as we walked. I had the feeling that meant he’d gotten nothing.
“It didn’t exactly go as planned.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Only you could screw up seducing a woman. What’d you do?”
“It wasn’t so much what I did as what I said. I had no clue women were so sensitive.”
“Really? You’ve watched all your brothers get married, you’re married, and yet you somehow had no clue that women were sensitive?”
“Look, I got nervous, okay? I was worried about the espionage thing and I just started saying shit.”
Drawing Dead: A Small Town Romance (A Good Run Of Bad Luck) Page 6