Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Linda Howard

  “Hold my place,” he told me, bending his head to give me a firm, warm kiss that involved some tongue. “When I get back, I want to pick up where we left off.” Then he was gone, firmly closing the front door behind him. A few seconds later I heard the Avalanche roar to life and the wheels bark a little as he shot away from the curb.

  Sighing, I went over to the door and locked it. Without him here distracting me, maybe I could think of some way to simplify my immediate future. Breaking a leg might work, because then the wedding would be put off until the cast was gone. Breaking his leg sounded even better. But I’d had enough of pain; I wanted to concentrate on the good stuff, on getting married, settling into our routine together, having a family.

  Instead I had to concentrate on playing marriage counselor, a job for which I wasn’t remotely qualified.

  Manipulation, on the other hand…a little emotional blackmail here, a little guilt there…I could do that.

  I called Mom. “Where’s Jazz living now?” I asked. I didn’t explain the problem to her—she was, after all, Sally’s best friend. This was between Wyatt and me, our own private bone of contention.

  “With Luke,” Mom replied. Luke is the third Arledge son. The kids were refusing to take sides, which was annoying Sally and Jazz, who both felt misunderstood and completely justified in their actions. “I gather Jazz is putting a crimp in Luke’s style.”

  Luke was also the wildest of the Arledge bunch. I don’t mean wild as in drugs and getting into trouble, I mean wild as in definitely not tamed, uninterested in settling down, and with a social life that should have already caused permanent damage to his back. He wouldn’t be at all happy to have his father living with him.

  Why on earth had Jazz picked Luke to live with? Any of his children would have opened their homes to him. Matthew and Mark were both married and had families, but they also each had guest bedrooms, so the arrangement wouldn’t have been horrible. John, the youngest, was working toward his master’s degree and lived in a rented house with two other graduate students, so maybe living with him wouldn’t have been so great. Tammy had been married about a year, and she and her husband had a large house in the country, but no children, so there was plenty of room there.

  On the other hand, if Jazz wanted to make Sally fret about what he might be doing, living with Luke was the way to do it.

  That gave me hope, because if Jazz was trying to make Sally jealous, then he hadn’t walked away from the marriage. He was mad as hell, though.

  Luke would be more than willing to help, I thought. If Jazz was cramping his style, he’d want his father out of there, and what better way to accomplish that than by helping me? I was doing a good thing here; who wouldn’t want to help?

  I looked up Luke’s number in the phone book, then thought better of the idea and called Tammy instead. Caller ID makes being sneaky more complicated, and I didn’t want Jazz to see my name on Luke’s phone. Therefore, I needed his cell number.

  When Tammy answered I explained what I was trying to do—though not why—and she thought it was a good idea. “God knows we haven’t been able to get anything accomplished,” she said wearily, meaning her and her brothers. “Mom and Dad are so stubborn, it’s been like beating my head against the wall. Good luck.” She gave me Luke’s cell number, we chatted for a while longer about the different arguments that had been used against her wayward parents, then hung up.

  When Luke answered his cell phone, I went through the explanation again. “Hold on,” he said, then I listened to a variety of noises that ended with the sound of a door closing. “I’m outside now, where I can talk.”

  “Jazz?” I asked, just to make certain. I didn’t have to elaborate.

  “Oh, yeah.” He sounded weary.

  “He won’t be suspicious because you’ve gone outside to talk?”

  “No, I’ve done that a lot lately.”

  “Is he seeing anyone? Making noises about actually filing for divorce?”

  “Nada. For one thing, he can’t live with me if he’s going to cheat on Mom. And for another, he gets sick to his stomach and throws up when he starts talking about them not ever living together again. This whole fu—” He caught himself before the f-bomb exploded. “—situation is stupid. They love each other. What the hell this standoff is accomplishing is beyond me.”

  “They’re showing each other how upset they are,” I explained. I sort of understood it, except they were going to extreme lengths to make their separate points.

  “They’re also showing the world that they’re idiots.” Luke was definitely not a happy camper.

  I bypassed that comment, not wanting to get into the question of idiocy. Personally, I was on Sally’s side. Luke wanted his parents to work things out, but he was a guy; he probably thought his mother was taking interior decorating too seriously. I’m not sure it’s possible to take decorating too seriously, but I’m not a guy.

  “Has Jazz said anything that might hint how he wants this to play out? Does he want Sally to apologize, or just call and ask him to come back?”

  “In a way, this is all he talks about, but he doesn’t say anything new, you know? It’s the same thing, over and over again. He was trying to do something nice for her and she blew up in his face, wouldn’t listen to reason, then she went crazy, etcetera, etcetera. Anything useful there?”

  Only that Jazz still had no appreciation for how hard Sally had worked collecting and refinishing her antique furniture. “Maybe,” I said. “I have an idea, anyway. How about your mom? What has she said? What’s your take, as a guy, on this whole thing?”

  He hesitated, and I knew he was struggling to be fair, to not take sides. Luke’s a nice guy, despite his hot sheets. As far as I was concerned, his sheets qualified as community property, and by that I mean an entire community. When he finally did settle down, I thought I should probably advise his chosen love to burn all his sheets, because that kind of nasty can’t be boiled out.

  “I kind of see both sides,” he finally said, pulling my thoughts away from laundry problems. “I mean, I know Mom worked really hard refinishing the furniture, and she loves antiques. On the other hand, Dad was trying to do something nice for her. He knew he was clueless about decorating, so he went to an expert, and he paid a small fortune to have their bedroom redone.”

  Okay, this was interesting; my vague idea was getting firmer. I also had an ace in the hole I could pull out if my idea didn’t work.

  My phone beeped to let me know there was an incoming call. “Thanks, this has been a help,” I said.

  “No problem. Anything to get him back home.”

  We said our good-byes and I flashed to the incoming call. “Hello.”

  There was a pause, followed by click, then a moment of dead air, then finally the dial tone. Puzzled, I checked the Caller ID, but since I’d already been on the phone the call hadn’t registered. Mentally I shrugged; if whoever it was wanted to talk, he or she could call back.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon being bored out of my skull. I didn’t have anything there I was dying to read, and it was Sunday, so of course there was nothing interesting on television. I played some games on the computer. I looked at shoes on the Zappos website, and bought a pair of snazzy blue boots. If I ever took up line dancing, I was set. I looked up some sea cruises, just in case we ever had a chance for a honeymoon, because so far this year it didn’t look possible. Then I looked up birth control, to see how long it would take my body to return to normal after I stopped taking the Pill, because if possible I wanted to time my babies so I’d have them in months that had pretty birthstones. Mothers have to think about things like this, you know.

  My interest in online things exhausted, I tried to find something on television to watch. Frankly, I’m no good at being a lady of leisure. The prolonged inactivity was eating at me, making me feel as if my muscles were getting cramped and stiff. I couldn’t even do yoga because bending over wasn’t a fun thing to do right now; the increased pressure
made my head throb. I did some tai chi instead, flowing and stretching, which relieved some of the cramped feeling but still didn’t give me the high I got from a really hard workout.

  Wyatt still wasn’t home by supper, but I hadn’t really expected him. I’ve been involved in crime scene investigations, and nobody gets in a hurry, which I guess is a good thing when you’re gathering evidence and taking statements. If he made it back by bedtime, he’d be doing good. I nuked a frozen dinner, and called Lynn while I was eating to assure her I would be back to work tomorrow. She was relieved, because Sunday and Monday are her normal off days. After pulling double duty on Friday and Saturday, she needed the rest.

  And since Mondays are always long days for me—I both open and close at Great Bods, meaning I’m there from six in the morning until nine at night—I needed my rest, too. Even though I’d been doing nothing but lying around for three days, I was tired, or maybe that was because I’d been doing nothing but lying around. At eight o’clock, I went upstairs and took a shower, then carefully dried my hair.

  While Wyatt was gone and I could concentrate, I got my pad of paper and sat down to work on my list of his transgressions. I thought of all the things he’d done to annoy me, but “Laughing at my idea of tantric sex” just didn’t have much punch. The sheet of paper remained disturbingly blank. Good God, was I going soft? Losing my touch? Making lists of his transgressions was one of my greatest ideas of all time, and now that I couldn’t think of a thing to write down I felt the same way Davy Crockett must have felt at the Alamo, when he ran out of bullets—sort of “Well, shit. Now what?”

  Not that this was at all the same thing, because Davy Crockett died, but you know what I mean. Not only that, just exactly what else do you expect when you decide to fight to the death? You die. That’s what the part about “fight to the death” means.

  Big duh, there. Not to take anything away from ol’ Davy.

  I looked down at the paper and sighed. Finally I wrote, “Threatened to piss on me.” Okay, so that was more funny than annoying. I chuckled just reading it. This wouldn’t do at all.

  I started to tear off the sheet and start fresh, but in the end decided to leave it. Maybe I just needed to prime the pump, and I had to start somewhere. Next I wrote, “Refuses to negotiate.”

  Oh, man, this was pitiful. He’d actually done me a favor by refusing to negotiate over the last-name issue, because now he owed me. I scratched out that item.

  How about, “Takes the fun out of our wedding by putting too much pressure on me”? Nope, too long.

  Inspiration struck. In big letters, digging the pen into the paper, I wrote: MADE FUN OF HAVING A PERIOD.

  There. If that didn’t nail his ass to the wall, I didn’t know what would.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  I woke up when Wyatt got into bed beside me. He had his own key to my place, and the code to the security system, so he didn’t have to wake me to get in, but he definitely woke me when he pulled me close against him because his skin was cold. The red numbers on the clock read 1:07.

  “Poor baby,” I murmured, rolling over to hold him. He wouldn’t get much sleep; he was usually at work by seven-thirty at the latest. “Is it that cold outside?”

  He sighed as he relaxed, lying heavily against me. “I had the air-conditioning in the truck on high, blowing in my face to keep me awake,” he muttered. His hand slipped over the T-shirt I was wearing. “What the hell’s this?” He didn’t like for me to wear anything to bed; he wanted me naked, maybe for easy access, maybe because men just like naked women.

  “I was cold.”

  “I’m here now; I’ll keep you warm. Let’s get rid of this damn thing.” He was already pulling the hem of the shirt up, preparing to tug it over my head. I caught the shirt and took over the job, because I knew exactly where those stitches in my head were. “These, too.” He had my pajama shorts down around my thighs before I got the shirt completely off, sitting up in bed to strip them the rest of the way down my legs. Then he lay back down and pulled me close again. He sort of automatically ran his hand over me, cupping my breast and thumbing my nipple, before reaching between my legs; it was as if he was reassuring himself all his favorite parts were still there even if he hadn’t been able to avail himself of them. Then he sighed again, and went to sleep. So did I.

  My alarm went off at five. I tried to turn it off before it woke him, but didn’t succeed. He groaned and started to throw the covers back, but I kissed his shoulder and urged him down on the pillow again. “Just go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll reset the alarm for six-thirty.” He’d have to grab something to eat from a fast-food joint on the way to work, but he needed the sleep.

  He muttered something that I took for agreement, burying his face in the pillow, and he was asleep again before my feet hit the floor.

  I had put my clothes in the bathroom the night before, thinking he might be really late getting in, so I dressed in there. I didn’t need makeup today, since I’d be in Great Bods all day; I brushed my hair but left it down—I wouldn’t be working out today, either. The concussion headache wasn’t quite gone, damn it. I’d really hoped it would be.

  When I was dressed, I took my toothbrush and toothpaste with me downstairs, to brush my teeth after I’d had breakfast. The automatic timer had turned on the coffeemaker and coffee was waiting for me. I had a quiet twenty minutes at the table, eating breakfast and drinking coffee. Then I brushed my teeth in the downstairs half-bath, poured the rest of the coffee into a big travel cup, and prepared the coffeemaker again and re-set the timer for Wyatt. I dropped an apple in my bag for lunch, grabbed a sweater, and was out the side door that opened into the parking portico. Well, almost. I had to stop and re-set the alarm, because Wyatt was a fanatic about things like that.

  The morning was cold enough that I needed the sweater. I shivered a little as I went down the steps, using the remote to unlock the car. The normal routine was comforting, a signal that things were indeed normal again, or getting there. I’ve been injured plenty of times; cheerleaders get hurt as often as football players do. It’s always a pain in the ass. I’ve learned to be patient, because even though you can do stuff when you’re injured, that doesn’t mean you should—additional stress on an injured muscle or broken bone slows the healing. Since I always wanted to get back to performance level as quickly as possible, I’d learned to do exactly what I was supposed to do—and I hated every minute of it. I wanted to be at Great Bods, overseeing every little detail. The place is mine, and I love it. I wanted to be exercising, using the muscles I’ve worked so hard and so long to build and maintain. Besides, keeping myself in shape is great advertising for Great Bods.

  There was almost no traffic on the streets; even in summer, opening Great Bods at six in the morning meant driving to work in the dark. In the middle of summer the sky would be beginning to lighten just about the time I arrived to unlock, but the drive itself was always in the dark. I kind of liked the emptiness of the streets, the early-morning quiet.

  As I pulled into my parking space in the employee parking lot in the back, the motion sensor lights came on. Wyatt had installed those himself, just last month, after meeting me here one night and noticing how dark it was under the long awning that protected the employees’ cars from the weather. I still wasn’t used to those lights. They seemed unnaturally bright, as if I were standing on a stage as I unlocked the back door. I had a small LED light on my key chain that I’d always used before to see the lock, and to me it was perfectly adequate. Wyatt, however, wanted the place lit up like a runway.

  The darkness under the awning had never bothered me. It had, in fact, concealed me from Nicole Goodwin’s killer when she was murdered right there in the parking lot. I hadn’t argued against having the lights installed, though—I mean, why would I?—and was glad when Lynn confessed she felt safer locking up at night, knowing those lights would come on the second she opened the door.

  I unlocked, then went through the b
uilding turning on all the lights, setting the thermostat, starting the coffee both in the employee break room and in my office. I loved this part of my day, seeing the place come to life. The lights reflected in the polished mirrors, the exercise equipment gleamed, the plants were lush and healthy; the place was just beautiful. I even loved the smell of chlorine in the lap pool.

  The first client arrived at six-fifteen, a silver-haired gentleman who’d had a mild heart attack and was determined to stay in shape and stave off any more attacks, so he spent some time on the treadmill every morning, then swam laps. Whenever he paused to chat, he’d tell me what his blood pressure and cholesterol levels were down to, and how pleased his doctor was. By six-thirty, three more clients had joined him, two employees had arrived, and the day was in full swing.

  While Mondays were usually busy days for me, the added paperwork after missing two days kept me hopping. The headache rebounded a little so I tried to limit how much I moved around, but when you’re the one in charge you can’t just sit in an office.

  Wyatt called to check on me. So did Mom, Lynn, Siana, Wyatt’s mom, Jenni, Dad, then Wyatt again. I spent so much time on the phone assuring everyone that I was fine that it was almost three o’clock before I had time to eat my apple, by which time I was starving. I also needed to go to the bank and make a deposit, which should have been done on Friday. Things were a little slow right then, or as slow as they were going to get; the lunch rush was over, and the pace wouldn’t pick up again until the after-school and after-work crowd arrived to work up a sweat, so I multitasked by going to the bank and eating my apple at the same time.

  I admit, I was a little paranoid about watching for Buicks that were driven by women, but I think that’s understandable. There was no way I could recognize the psycho bitch, but I wanted to give any possibles a wide berth. And because I was watching, things I likely wouldn’t have noticed before got on my nerves, like the woman in the white Chevy who stayed on my bumper for a couple of blocks, or the one driving a green Nissan who changed lanes right in front of me, forcing me to slam on my brakes, which jarred my head and forced me to call her a fucking mongreloid. I hate when that happens, because people who aren’t paying attention think I’m throwing off on people with Down Syndrome. Thank God my windows were up, you know?