4 The Housewife Assassin's Relationship Survival Guide

by Josie Brown

  I tilt my head to gauge the distance I’d have to throw the letter opener in order to pierce this jerk right between the eyes.

  As if reading my mind, Jack answers, “We thoroughly understand, Major.”

  Then he yanks me up out of the chair and hustles me out the door, catching the letter opener as it slides out of my sleeve.

  Spoil sport.

  “Donna, quit squirming! I’m spreading more of this aloe goop on the carpet than on your back.”

  “I can’t help it! Every time you touch my skin, it burns like hell. And besides, the stuff is ice cold.”

  “Things could have been worse.”

  “Oh? How so?” I turn over to face him.

  The private plane sent by Ryan Clancy, our boss at Acme Industries, isn’t as plush as Lynch’s, but it will do. At least the six-hour flight home gives Jack and me one thing: time alone together, without other operatives, let alone our children, and the sideshow acts inherent with raising three kids.

  I can think of one very good way we could take advantage of it. Unfortunately, I’m too sore to follow through.

  So yeah, I have a right to be grumpy.

  Gently but firmly, Jack shoves me back down onto the floor of the plane. His hands are large, but they are also gentle as they massage the lotion into my shoulders. “For starters, Carl could have pushed you out of the plane, and we would have never found your body.”

  I shrug. “He needed a different kind of fall guy. Or I should say, fall gal.”

  “I’m sure it’s his short-term goal, but he wants you around for the long haul.”

  “What do you mean by that?” My question comes out in a blissful sigh. Jack’s palms circle slowly down my back, kneading muscles still sore from the hours they laid dormant in an outdoor chaise.

  “If he kills you, he’ll miss the fun of torturing you, one head game at a time.” Jack’s thumb finds a tight muscle and digs into it. For me, release comes with a groan of pleasure. “Donna, you may not want to admit it to yourself, but he’s still in love with you.”

  I sit up with a yelp. “Bite your tongue!”

  “Hey, I call it as I see it.” His smile fades. “Not that I can blame him.”

  I shudder at the thought. “I guess that’s one good thing about being under surveillance. Carl can’t go anywhere near me unless he wants to risk getting caught.” I hesitate, then murmur, “So, when did Valentina contact you?”

  His hand, which has been stroking my lower back, pauses for what seems like an eternity. Finally he mutters, “Just last month. She called Acme’s secure line, which I’d given her before my ‘untimely demise.’ With Carl in custody, she felt safe enough to come back into the fold. And she insisted on testifying against him.”

  “Congratulations for turning her.” He can’t see my face, but he can read my voice: Bullshit.

  “You’ll never believe that she didn’t know the storage unit holding the heat-seeking missile was booby-trapped, will you?”

  “No, I won’t. I think she knew someone from Acme was going to be blown to smithereens when that door opened. And my guess is she was hoping it was going to be me, not you.” I can’t help but mutter, “I presume she hightailed it out of Guantanamo the moment she heard Carl flew the coop. She’s right to lay low—and as far away as possible.”

  “Acme promised her safe haven in return for her testimony. We’re following through. You know better than anyone Carl has a long memory. After what she said about him, he’ll be out for blood.” Jack’s hands, which have been moving slowly up my spine, stop short. “Is your interest based on your conviction that she still has feelings for me?”

  I shrug. I’ll never tell him I already know the answer to that. A long time ago, she told me that she envied me: not for Jack’s love, but for Carl’s obsession.

  So no, I don’t need to know if she has feelings for him. What I really want to know is if he still loves her? Does he care about her?

  Does he know she’s carrying a baby? And if so, does it deepen his feelings for her?

  If I come out and ask, will he lie to me?

  I find my answer in the way Jack reaches for my waist.

  A shiver goes up my spine. I love to feel his hands on me.

  And his arms around me.

  And his cock inside of me.

  The sooner the better, sunburn be damned.

  He must feel the same way, because he’s lifted me up onto my knees.

  Pleasure is his thick thumb and forefinger probing me.

  Longing comes with every kiss: on my lips, down my neck, on my nipples, and roaming down, to my pubic mound.

  His kisses build my expectation. By the time he enters me, the anticipation is unbearable.

  As he pulls me close, I ache with unbound desire and relieved that I am safely back in his embrace.

  Ecstasy is found deep within me, with each of Jack’s thrusts. When we orgasm, I arch up into him. Our spasms leave him shuddering inside me.

  We lay there for a half hour before he whispers, “I love you, Donna. Always and forever.”

  “Works for me,” I murmur.

  What I don’t say out loud is that I’ll never doubt him again.

  We’re still sleeping when the plane skids to a stop, back home in Orange County.

  Then reality sets in. The fridge is empty. The laundry is sky high. My children need help with their homework.

  And Carl is on the loose.

  First things first. Lose the ankle bracelet.

  That’s easier said than done.

  Chapter 3

  Six Very Broad Hints You’re Dating a Serial Killer

  When it comes to our love lives, we presume we have great instincts as to whom we should date. Wrong! Here are six very big hints that the new man in your life may in fact wish to cut it short:

  Hint 1: Instead of emails, he sends love letters…but the words are cut out of old magazine headlines.

  Hint 2: He insists on being a gentleman and opening the car door…well, in his case, the car’s trunk.

  Hint 3: Instead of cufflinks at the bottom of his sleeves, he keeps a knife up his sleeve.

  Hint 4: After every meal out, he rubs down his fingerprints on all shiny surfaces.

  Hint 5: All pictures of his previous “girlfriends” are pinned on the wall of his living room, as part of a montage made up of “Missing Persons.”

  Hint 6: He likes to entertain you in his basement, where the grand tour includes a coffin which, as he puts it, “I built especially for you. Go ahead, and get in. I want to make sure it fits…”

  Big bonus hint: Break up immediately.

  Even bigger bonus hint: Run. Fast and far away.

  “Donna Stone, I’ve been ringing your doorbell for the past ten minutes,” shouts Penelope Bing, Hilldale’s queen bee mean mommy, from my front stoop. “What in hell are you doing up on your roof?”

  I peek out from behind my chimney. “Oh! Um…cleaning the gutters, of course!”

  It would be too rude to tell her the truth: that I presumed my roof was the only place left to hide from her.

  It’s been a week since we got home, and still no clearance from the Feds. At the same time, Penelope and her posse—Tiffy Swift, and the unfortunately named Hayley Coxhead—have been relentlessly hunting me down. My guess is that they’re trying to recruit me for one of their many harebrained projects.

  Just how the heck did she find me?

  Ah, I see now: Tiffy is waving to me from her upstairs guest bedroom, beside the high-gauge telescope she has set up in the bay window.

  “Well, come on down. Have you forgotten it’s your month as Hilldale’s Welcome Ambassador?”

  Whenever Penelope drops her baton of verbal abuse, her number one lackey, Hayley, eagerly picks it up and beats me over the head with it. “We have three new neighbors! None of them have received their welcome baskets. How are they going to know where to shop without a Hilldale Chamber of Commerce directory?”

  I shrug. “Goo
gle maps?”

  Penelope shakes her head in disgust. “Donna, you may have been raised without any social graces, but we refuse to let it reflect on the rest of us.”

  Then I guess a SWAT team holding me spread-eagled on the ground and detonating the welcome basket in case it holds an incendiary device won’t leave a great impression, either.

  But that’s the dealio, should I go beyond the perimeter of my yard with this house arrest bracelet on my ankle.

  Not that I can say that to Penelope. It would be the scandal of Hilldale.

  Penelope sighs mightily. “My God, Donna, get with the program! In fact, we’ve already done the hard work, putting the gift baskets together. All you have to do is deliver them. Even a trained monkey can do that.”

  From where I sit, I’m within reach of few loose Spanish tile shingles. Should they fall on Penelope, the worse she’d suffer is a concussion.

  The thought is tempting enough that I nudge one with my toe—

  It stays put, but I go skittering down the roof instead. The only thing that saves me is a rain pipe, just within reach.

  I don’t know how much longer I can hang on when I hear Jack’s car skid into the driveway. At the same time Penelope and Hayley’s heads swivel in his direction, Tiffy’s telescope zooms in on him, too.

  He whistles a happy tune as he hops out. His shirt goes taut over his biceps as he rummages in the car’s trunk for his gym bag. Tall, dark, and too handsome for his own good, Jack is catnip to this pride of tiger moms.

  He rewards the women with a big smile. “Ah, two of my favorite neighbors! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Hayley nudges Penelope out of her lust-filled stare. “Unfortunately, Donna has once again dropped the ball on the deliveries of the Hilldale Women’s Club Welcome baskets.”

  “Tsk, tsk! What a naughty girl she’s been.” Jack’s lascivious tone conjures up all sorts of fun and games. Penelope blushes fifty shades of pink.

  In her dreams.

  He winks at me. “Donna my sweet, do you plan on being up there much longer?”

  “I should be down in a moment.” Make that a nanosecond. I’m barely hanging on by my fingertips.

  “No rush. Take your time. In fact, I insist on delivering the baskets, as long as Penelope and Hayley tag along to give me directions.” As innocent as he sounds, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

  Both women squeal as they run to the car. Hayley reaches the front passenger door first, but Penelope shoves her aside and jumps in first.

  “No! Don’t leave yet! Wait for me,” Tiffy squeals from the window. She’s out her front door so fast that you’d think her house was on fire.

  They wave at me as they drive off.

  I do the same. Big mistake. I needed both hands to stay aloft.

  Thank goodness, I fall into the pool.

  My security ankle bracelet is waterproof, so at least a Homeland Security SWAT team won’t come running.

  I needed to wash my hair, anyway.

  “When did you first start having sex?” Mary asks.

  Her question causes me to swipe the nail polish brush over her pinky toe, and the one beside it.

  It’s Day Eight of my lockdown. I was wrong to presume that time would pass quicker if I painted my nails a different color each day. Initially I was able to coerce both Mary and Trisha to join me for my daily pampering session, but yesterday Trisha dropped out, despite the fact that the colour de jour was Disney Villain’s Cruella De Vil.

  Her excuse: “Mommy, Cruella is a meanie. Besides, my toes miss being plain old pink.” That was her way of telling me I need a new hobby.

  Don’t I know it.

  Considering the subject at hand, I’m okay that today it’s just Mary and me. But let’s face it, she’s asked a loaded question. Girls have sex so much earlier than we did. (Well, than I did...) If I answer honestly, she may think I was a slut. Or a desperate spinster.

  Either way, I come off as a loser.

  The GPS security bracelet on my ankle, coupled with freshly painted toes on my left foot, hobble me as I stumble over to the French doors that separate the sunroom from the media room. I lied and told the kids the bracelet was from my doctor, to strengthen my ankle against some imaginary tendonitis.

  Now I have a bigger issue to fib about: Sex.

  I’m closing the doors so that my ten-year-old son, Jeff, and his pals, Cheever Bing and Morton Smith, can’t listen in on our discussion. If anything can tear them away from Minecraft, it’s a discussion about S-E-X by two people of the opposite sex, especially if one is Jeff’s older sister.

  I settle back down onto the couch and try to collect my thoughts before speaking. “I waited until I knew I was with ‘the one’.”

  I’m lying, of course. Who the hell knows a guy is “the one” when they’re seventeen? Or twenty-seven, for that matter.

  I guess the proof I guessed wrong was when Carl left me with three kids.

  But yes, I presumed he was “the one.” What I didn’t count on was his also being Public Enemy Number One.

  While Mary tries to find meaning in my dodge, I add, “Why exactly do you want to know?”

  “Because—” she pauses. “No reason. I was just wondering.”

  Ah, I see.

  Mary is twelve going on twenty, and that freaks me out. Her quote-unquote steady is a cute kid named Trevor Smith, the captain of the Hilldale Middle School varsity basketball team. Right now, I want to break both his arms before he does something to Mary that he’ll regret, and she will, too.

  “Sex is different from love, Mary.”

  “Oh, Mom!” Mary rolls her eyes. “I know that!”

  “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. So, tell me: why are they different?”

  She stops to think about it. Then: “When you date, some guys only want to see how far they can get with you. You know…they don’t really treat you as a person.” She shakes her head sadly. “I don’t want to be that kind of girl.”

  I nod, but say nothing. Inside I’m doing a happy dance because she actually knows the difference.

  “But I think it’s exciting when a boy—a guy—is just as sweet on you as you are on him.”

  “I can see that.” I try to keep my tone nonchalant as I drench a cotton ball in polish remover and wipe off yesterday’s sparkly turquoise from Mary’s left foot. “But love is different, at different ages and stages of life. And so is dating. That’s why it’s smart to date more than one guy, so you have some other experiences for comparison. The good guys always show respect, and never push you to—to do anything that doesn’t seem right.”

  “Did you date a lot, before you met Dad?”

  “Yes, I’d dated some, but I wasn’t that experienced.” I’m sure the color of my cheeks is almost as dark and purple as the polish I’m applying to her nails. “I was twenty when we met, and I was in college. We married within a year, after I turned twenty-one.”

  “Did you feel you should have waited?”

  “No. At least, not at the time.”

  “But in hindsight, would you have liked to have had more experiences?”

  “Yes, I wish I had. It’s hard to know what’s right for you if you’ve had too few experiences, or have only experienced one relationship that is not really working for you.”

  Mary looks up sharply. “But Dad wasn’t wrong for you, was he?”

  Ah, yet another trick question. “Dad has changed a lot over the years. Then again, I have, too. “You see, Mary, not only must you both grow, you can’t have grown apart.”

  “When Dad was gone all that time, did you grow apart?”

  Her question rips a tiny tear in my heart. Does she suspect that Jack isn’t Carl Stone, her father?

  I search her face for the answer. What I see is innocence and curiosity.

  And trust.

  It’s why I can answer her from the bottom of my heart. “To stay in love, you need respect, and passion, and above all, trust. All the time I waited for him,
I trusted he would come home again.”

  Carl never really came home.

  On the other hand, Jack has proven to me he is worth the wait.

  Mary’s comprehension comes with a slow nod. “Mom, I think Trevor likes me as much as I like him, but sometimes I catch him looking at other girls, and that makes me jealous. So I don’t know about the ‘trust’ part. At least, not yet.”

  “To find true love at such a young age is a rare thing. If it’s real, he’ll wait until you grow into the woman you were meant to be, and he’ll grow up, too. You’ll stay friends, but have other friends as well: people who make you laugh, and who you can count on to be there for you, and who will prove their friendship through trust. If he stays your friend, he will be all that, and more.”

  Mary waits until her toes dry, then she kisses me on the cheek and murmurs, “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not ready for ‘that’ yet. I’m only asking because I know you’ll always tell me the truth.”

  The truth. Yes, it’s what we strive to know.

  I pray she never learns the truth about her father.

  “Besides,” she adds, “when the time comes, you’ll be the first to know.”

  She kisses me on the forehead then runs upstairs to do her homework.

  Lucky me.

  And no matter where that first boy hides, I will track him down.

  “I’ve got both good news and bad news,” Jack declares. “First some good news: I’ll be subbing for you in regard to welcome basket drop-off duty. Now, the bad news: your penance is to put the baskets together. But even better news is this: I’ve arranged for you to skip carpool duty for the next six weeks.”

  I look up from the couch. I’m so shocked by Jack’s declaration that my toenail polishing stops mid-pinky toe on the coffee table. “Oh, my God! You’ve made a pact with the Devil… I mean, Penelope? I’m almost afraid to ask what you promised her in return. It can’t be your ‘first born,’ since she views Mary as a lost cause. Let me guess: she wants to help you make your fourth.”