by Lois Greiman
“Chrissy,” he managed through gritted teeth, and I hit him again.
He dropped to his knees just as two doors burst open.
“LAPD!” Rivera shouted.
“Stop it! Just stop it!” Elaine was crying, and I thought, though I wasn’t quite sure, that she was threatening David with a nailfile. But I was never quite sure because just about then I passed out.
29
Maybe there’s no such thing as happily ever after. Maybe okay for now’s the best you get.
—Mr. Howard Lepinski,
after three months of therapy
I RESTED THE NEXT couple of days. Elaine called my mother. Told her everything was peachy and that she definitely didn’t have to come down even though I’d had a bit of a mishap. Meanwhile, she stayed with me every minute of the day, fetching ice cream, cleaning my toilet, and making me realize I’d enjoy having a full-time slave. But all good things must come to an end and when Solberg dropped by to pick her up, I knew the fairy tale was over.
I stood on my little stoop as she gave me a careful hug, but even before she’d driven off, Rivera arrived. He parked illegally across the street and got out, all lean lines and terse movements.
He was carrying a bag that said Chin Yung and a six-pack of Pabst, but I refused to get excited, since my last gift had been short on roses and long on spines.
“Guess what I brought you,” he said when he was close enough. His eyes were all dark and solemn and made me wonder if he’d been worried about me, if he fantasized about the night we almost did it in the vestibule and if he regretted caring that I’d been drunker than sin.
“A porcupine?” I guessed.
He gave me a look.
I nodded a little nervously toward my front yard where the cactus was looking staunch and formidable behind a trio of rocks I’d given it for company.
He surveyed the wreckage of my yard. “No way roses were going to survive here.”
“I could grow roses if I wanted to.”
He grunted. “I light candles for the cactus every night.”
“Sentimentality,” I said. “The multifaceted Lieutenant Reebler.”
We stared at each other. There was a colorful swelling on my forehead and a scrape on my jaw, but he didn’t seem to be looking at that. My hormones cranked up another notch.
“You going to ask me?” he asked.
I stared at him a couple more seconds and sighed. “Okay. Why were you watching my house?”
His eyes were dark and brooding. And damned if dark and brooding isn’t sexy. He glanced across the street as though he could see into my neighbors’ living rooms, could detect crimes through the airways.
“Invite me to come in,” he said, “I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me here.” I guess I was still mad at him about the rejection, despite the fact that I knew it was for the best . . . and that he’d possibly saved my life.
“I’ll share the porcupine,” he said, lifting the bag, and then I caught the whiff of egg foo young. I’m not cheap but I can be bought.
I shoved the door open and followed him inside.
He was wearing jeans. The snug kind. I steadied my breathing and went to fetch dinnerware. Had he not been there, the boxes might never have exited the bag before the contents were consumed, but I’m a classy broad when I have company, multicolored bruises et al.
Either he had secretly gone through my cupboards or he was good at guessing where to find glasses. He set the beer on the table, but memories of my last encounter with alcohol convinced me to pour myself a glass of milk. A minute later, the tantalizing aroma of Chinese cuisine was teasing my olfactory system.
I refrained from inhaling the box, took a few ladylike bites, and said, “Well?”
“Originally I thought you were banging Bomstad and had probably killed him. God knows everyone else wanted him dead.”
I thought about that for a moment as I masticated. “Originally?”
“Yeah.”
“How long is originally?”
He shrugged, still eating.
“How long—”
“Till I saw you in your pajamas.”
Had he been attracted to me even then? I wondered, heart palpitating. Had he found me so irresistible he refused to believe I could possibly be guilty?
“I figured anyone with so little pride in her appearance couldn’t have been screwing the Bomb.”
I might have kicked him out then, had I not been afraid he’d be vengeful enough to take the entrées. “I have pride in my appearance,” I said instead.
“You wore a donkey shirt.”
“That was not a donkey shirt. That was Eeyore.”
He stared at me blankly for several seconds.“Uh-huh. Anyway, once I learned you were connected with Hawkins I needed to keep you around.”
“Why?”
“I’d been looking at the good doctor for a long time.”
I stared at him, but couldn’t quite stop myself from eating. It was going to take a while to get over hospital food. “Shall I assume you thought he might be guilty and neglected to warn me, or that your sexual fantasies run contrary to the norm?”
“He was a link,” he said. “Between Stephanie Meyers and Bomstad. But I couldn’t clinch it.”
“So you used me as bait.”
He snorted. “Bait!” He was scooping up fried rice as he glared at me. “I all but handcuffed you to your kitchen sink to keep you out of the way.”
Was I wrong to find that image erotic?
“You wouldn’t back the hell off,” he added.
“You could have told me David was a suspect.”
“And let you botch my whole mission?” he asked, and poured himself a beer. “You were dangerous enough the way things were.”
“I was not dangerous.”
“You just about got yourself killed.” He lifted his gaze to mine. Darker than hell. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Twice.”
“You could have told me someone had tampered with my brakes. At least then I wouldn’t have thought you were trying to kill me.”
His eyes almost smiled. “You couldn’t have really believed that.”
“What was I supposed to think? You obviously had feelings for Meyers. You hated Bomstad. They had a thing.” I shrugged.
His lips twitched. “What about Hawkins’s wife? How’d you tie her in?”
Was he laughing at me? I don’t like to be laughed at. “You hated David, too.”
“So you deduced that I killed his wife? No wonder you jumped me in your hallway, seeing’s how highly you thought of me.”
I fiddled with my noodles. “I did not jump you,” I muttered. The following silence was painful. “Exactly.”
He laughed.
“Well forgive me for not guessing that L.A.’s most respected psychologist was a murderer.”
He gave me a somber nod in concession, though I suspected he still felt like laughing. Damn him. “As it turns out, Hawkins wasn’t the one who messed with your brakes.”
“What?”
“It was his fiancée.”
“I knew it!” I couldn’t have been happier. Not even if he’d brought dessert.
“Her name’s Mary Ellen Ensign. From Elkhorn, Alabama.”
“You’re shittin’ me!”
His lips quirked up a half-inch. “Sometimes I wonder who you really are.”
I ignored that. Obviously I was the classy Christina McMullen, Ph.D. “So what are you saying? She was a nobody from nowhere, met David, and decided to make herself into his dream girl?”
“It was a little more complex than that. She was boinking Bomstad . . . and a half a dozen other guys by the sound of it. The Bomb told her about David. She says she was immediately attracted to him and didn’t suspect anything out of character. Personally, I think she found out about his escapades and decided she could blackmail him for all he was worth. But once she met him her plan expanded. I don’t think she expected him to off Bomstad, but she sure didn’t want you messing
up her plans. Thus, the brakes. And the attack at the bar.”
“She sent that goon to . . . to . . .”
“She swears she just wanted to scare you. Warn you to mind your own business.”
I chewed, ruminating. “So she was the one in Bomstad’s house.”
He took another bite and nodded. “Seems the Bomb had some video of her and him together.”
“He filmed them in bed?”
“Unthinkable, isn’t it?”
“And others?”
“Uh-huh.”
He waited, watching me, and the truth dawned like fireworks in my head.
“That’s his diary! The videotapes.”
“It was recorded into the middle of an Oscar-winning little flick called Cum and Get It. Took two days to find it even after talking to Ensign. I never thought I’d get tired of porn.” He ate some more noodles and glanced at me. “Maybe I should have let you in his house after all. Could have saved me some time.”
I gave him a look, pushed my plate aside, and chose a fortune cookie. “Your loss.”
His eyes were all sultry again. “Almost,” he said, and suddenly my fingers weren’t working very well.
“Well . . .” I focused on breathing for a minute. “I’m glad it’s all over.” I managed to break open the cookie and read the little message. Generally, I think they should be called “random nonsense cookies,” but this one made sense.
“What’s it say?”
I cleared my throat. “Says I’ll embark on an intriguing new adventure.”
He raised a brow. “Really?”
I could feel my insides heat up. “I think it means my career,” I said. “I’m considering a change.”
“Yeah?”
“Forensics,” I said.
“Intriguing,” he said. “But career changes can be tricky, and I think you have enough problems already.”
“Problems? Like what?”
“Celibacy,” he said and caught my fingers in his. “I think we should take care of that little celibacy problem before you worry about anything else.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said, but my tongue felt swollen. “It’s a choice.”
“Really? I thought it was more like a sentence.”
“Maybe for you.” I considered bolting, but he still held my hand, and I remembered how his chest had looked. “For me it’s . . .” He skimmed his fingertips over my knuckles. I swallowed hard. He raised his gaze to mine. “An intelligent decision.”
“So the other night when you tore the buttons off my shirt—”
I cleared my throat. “I may have been a bit tipsy.”
“Yeah?” He skimmed his fingernails up my forearm. I shivered down to my bone marrow. “Is that the reason for the milk?”
“Osteoporosis,” I said. “It’s a serious problem.”
He leaned in. My toes curled. “Not as big as celibacy.”
“I told you,” I breathed, “it’s not a problem, it’s—”
But in that instant he kissed me, and for a while there were no problems at all. And maybe that’s as good as it gets.
About the Author
Lois Greiman is the award-winning author of over fifteen novels, including romantic comedy, historical romance, and mystery. She lives in Minnesota with her family and an ever-increasing number of horses.
You may write to her at Lois Greiman, PO Box 16, Rogers, MN 55374 or visit her online at www.loisgreiman.com.
Don’t miss Lois Greiman’s
next sassy mystery starring
cocktail-waitress-turned-shrink
Christina McMullen.
Unplugged
BY
Lois Greiman
Available in March 2006
from Dell Books
Read on for an exclusive sneak peek— and look for your copy at your favorite bookseller.
Unplugged
by Lois Greiman
On sale March 2006
“Matrimony and fire fighting. They ain’t for cowards.”
—Pete McMullen,
shortly after his first marriage
“YOU MARRIED?”
I hadn’t known Larry Hunt thirty-five minutes before he popped the question. But the fact that he was scowling at me as if I were the devil’s handmaiden suggested our relationship would never work out. The fact that he was sitting beside his wife also posed a problem for our connubial bliss. Weighing all the signs, I guessed they’d been married for about twenty-four years.
But I’m not a psychic. I’m a psychologist.
Mrs. Hunt had called my clinic, L.A. Counseling, two weeks prior for therapy. As a result, Mr. Hunt now seemed to be wondering what the hell he was doing in some shrink’s office, and had decided to fill his fifty minutes by probing into my personal life.
According to the forms they’d completed, he worked for Mann’s Rent ’n’ Go. Judging by his slightly rumpled dress shirt and loosened tie, he had left his place of employment just minutes before for this inauspicious introduction to couple’s therapy. Judging by his attitude, I suspected what he really wanted to know was what made me think I was qualified to counsel him and his heretofore silent wife.
“No, Mr. Hunt, I’m not married,” I said.
“How come?”
If he hadn’t been a client, I would have told him it was none of his damned business whether I was married, ever had been married, or ever planned to be married. Ergo, it was probably best that he was a client, since that particular answer might have seemed somewhat immature and just a tad defensive. Not that I secretly long to be married or anything, but if someone wanted to lug salt downstairs to the water softener for me now and again, I wouldn’t turn down the offer. Even my thirty-seventh ex-boyfriend, Victor Dickenson, sometimes called “Vic the Dick” by those who knew him well, had been able to manage that much.
“Larry!” Mrs. Hunt chided. She was a smallish woman with sandpaper blonde hair and a lilac pantsuit. Her stacked platform sandals were of a different generation than her clothing and made me wonder if she had a disapproving teenage daughter who had taken it upon herself to update her mother’s footwear. Her eyes were sort of bubblelike, reminding me of the guppies I’d had as a kid, and when she turned her orbicular gaze in my direction it was pretty obvious she’d been wondering about me herself.
It’s not uncommon for clients to think a therapist has to be half a couple in order to know anything about marriage. I soundly disagree. I’ve never been a lobster, but I still know they taste best with a half gallon of butter and a spritz of lemon.
According to the data forms the Hunts had filled out before entering my cashew-sized office, Kathy was forty-three, four years younger than her husband of rumpled dress shirt fame. They both sat on my comfy, cream-colored couch, but to say that they sat together would have been a wild flight of romantic fancy. Between Mrs. Hunt’s polyester pantsuit and Mr. Hunt’s stiff-backed personage, there was ample space to park a Mack truck hauling a butt load of toxic waste.
I gave them both my professional smile, the one that suggests I am above being insulted by forays into my personal life and that I would not murder them in their sleep for doing so.
“You’re an okay looking woman,” Mr. Hunt continued. “Got a good job. How come you’re still single?”
I considered telling him that, despite the availability of men like himself, I had managed to retain a few functioning brain cells. But that would have been unprofessional. It would also have been untrue. Then again, it was five o’clock on a Friday evening, and I hadn’t had a cigarette for five days and nineteen hours. I’d counted on my way to work that morning.
“How long have you two been married?” I asked, deflecting his question with the stunning ingenuity only a licensed psychoanalyst could manage.
“Twenty-two years,” said Mrs. Hunt. She didn’t sound thrilled with the number. Maybe she’d been doing a little math on her way to work, too. “This May.”
“Twenty-two years,” I repeated, imbuing my
tone with a suggestive whistle of admiration while chiding myself for over-guessing. It was her pastel ensemble that threw me. What woman under sixty wears lilac pants? “You must be doing something right, then. And you’ve never had any sort of therapy before today?”
“No,” they answered in unison. By their expressions, I guessed it was one of the few things they still did in tandem.
“Is that because you didn’t feel you needed help or because—” I began, but Mr. Hunt interrupted.
“I don’t believe in this crap.”
I turned toward him, wondrously even-tempered, which shows how mature I’ve become. Five years ago I would have taken offense to that kind of remark. Twenty years ago I would have called him a moron and given him a wedgie. “Whyever are you here then, Mr. Hunt?” I asked, my tone a dulcet meld of curiosity and caring.
“Kathy says she won’t . . .” He paused. “She wanted me to come.”
So ol’ Kat was withholding sex. Uh-huh.
“Well,” I said, “as I’m sure you’re aware, you don’t have to tell me anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
I glanced from one to the other. Mr. Hunt beetled his brows. Mrs. Hunt pursed her lips. They didn’t really look like they’d be comfortable with much. Maybe a noncommittal, how-was-your-day kind of exchange—if no prolonged eye contact was required.
“And of course,” I continued, “everything hinges on your own specific goals.”
“Goals?” asked Mr. Hunt, and rather suspiciously, I thought. As if I were trying to trick him into mental health and conjugal happiness.
“Yes.” I swiveled my chair a little and crossed my legs. I was wearing a ginger-hued sleeveless sheath and matching jacket by Chanel. By purchasing it second-hand, I had still been able to afford my flax colored sling-back sandals for twelve dollars and ninety-five cents without taking out a second mortgage on my soul. The shoes matched the ensemble’s piping and did good things to the muscles in my lower legs. I looked fantastic. Who needs a husband when you’re wearing Chanel and look fantastic? “What are you hoping to accomplish with these sessions?” I asked.