Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Landish, Lauren

  “Potty break and refills first, then we’re ready,” she says to stall.

  “Aww, so scared you’re gonna piss yourself?” Cole teases.

  “Nope. Need to puke because you make me sick,” she retorts. Several people laugh, including Bryan, though he tries to hide it from Cole.

  “Fine. This round’s on me, next one’s on the losers. That’d be you.”

  His smack talk falls on Heather’s back as she heads toward the bathroom, but she does shoot him a middle finger of acknowledgement. Meanwhile, Cole calls out to Don, the bartender, “Three pitchers, please, one for the Meg-a-dicks, one for Chaos Control, and one for us.” That’d be his not-cute nicknames for the professors and us. “Oh, get Bossy Boots a cranberry vodka too.”

  Huh, that was actually nice of him to remember that Heather not only doesn’t drink beer, but to remember her preferred poison. Maybe there’s a bit ‘protesting too much’ in their banter?

  Pretty-boy Cole and rainbow-haired Heather?

  I’ve heard of stranger pairings, but not too many, honestly. Before I can ponder that too much, the door swings open, slamming back against the wall.

  Zoey’s entrance is just that, an entrance. Spotlighted and framed by the door, she looks adorable in pink, fuzzy, skull-printed pajama pants, a yellow tank top, purple Ugg boots, and an oversized black cardigan pulled tight around her.

  Her hair is piled on her head and she has glasses on. She’s the ultimate in nerd-geek-hot, and I just want to scoop her up again and cuddle and nuzzle her until she’s soft for me, and then when she’s nice and warm, ravish her like a wild animal.

  “Oh, shit.” I see her mouth and immediately make my way toward her. Even now, I can see how wide her eyes are behind the lenses.

  “Zo! You’re here. Thank fuck.”

  “Blake, what’s going on?” she asks, looking shell-shocked. She definitely was not expecting something social. Still, her eyes scan me, and I know she’s looking for some injury or illness, an emergency situation she’s the cause of.

  “Come here, please. I’ll explain,” I say, taking her hand and pulling her toward our table. “How’s your ankle?” I ask, noting that she’s walking with no obvious sign of pain or difficulty.

  She mumbles ‘fine’ but stops short because the Anarchists are looking at her like their hope and savior, along with a healthy dose of curiosity over this supposed ringer I’ve called in at the last moment. “Zo, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Zoey.”

  Zoey wiggles two fingers in the tiniest of waves, nerves wafting off her.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” I explain before she can freak out and run like a cheetah with a rocket up its ass. “Remember I told you about trivia nights being serious business? We need you.”

  “What? Trivia? You said it was an emergency! That you needed help!” she hisses.

  “Shh,” I urge, putting my hand over her mouth, “Not so loud.”

  Above my hand, her eyes have gone steely cold, but I remove my hand slowly, begging her with puppy dog eyes to hear me out. “It is an emergency. I do need your help. We’re up against our biggest rivals, The Estates.”

  “And biggest jerks,” Heather adds, coming up to the table. She sticks her hand out, “Heather. You must be Zoey. Let’s do this.”

  Heather doesn’t give Zoey a chance to say yes or no, just assuming she’s on board. “All right! We’re ready.”

  “Finally,” Cole sighs with a dramatic eye roll. “Don’t have all fuckin’ night.”

  Everyone heads to the far edge of the bar where the team stations are set up, which is just a simple table with a plastic chicken that screams when you squeeze it instead of a buzzer. Trivia nerds, we make jokes about choking our chickens.

  Zoey pulls on my hand as we get close. “Blake!”

  I turn to face her fully, gripping her hand back. No running, no fear. I’ve got you. “Zo, please?” She sighs reluctantly, but her lips are turning up ever so slightly in the smallest smile. I smile back. “Did I mention that you look beautiful? And we’ve got beer? And the best nachos in existence?”

  “You’re buttering me up with compliments, nachos, and beer? That sounds suspiciously like a date, Mr. Hale,” she says, giving me a one-brow lift of her own.

  I shake my head, totally playing innocent. “Nope. No preplanning. Still not a date. This is a rescue mission with thank-you-for-saving-my-ass food. C’mon.”

  At our table, Heather is gripping the chicken, which is already making a quiet whine sound.

  “In this corner, we have The Estates,” the Trivia Master says up front, and a few cheers and more jeers go up in the small crowd. And by crowd, I mean the other three teams because nerd events don’t usually draw in spectators. “And in this corner, Anarchy Authority.”

  We cheer for ourselves, Zoey clapping along uncertainly.

  A bell rings, and it’s on like Donkey Kong.

  Fortunately, we get Musical Genius, but Gabe, our go-to music specialist is not so current on his Soundcloud rappers and he misses two consecutive questions.

  Heather chokes the chicken for a third time in a row, and Gabe seems more certain of his next answer, calling out, “What is Pentatonix, Alex?”

  “My name’s not Alex. It’s Jameson,” the Trivia Master corrects Gabe again.

  Heather hits Gabe with the chicken, making it whine loudly, and then she growls at him, “Do not piss off Jameson. He’s the referee, man.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Gabe says. “I’ll be good.”

  “Wow,” Zoey says, eyeing Heather in awe. “Girl boss, for sure.”

  “Yeah, she’s something,” I agree.

  “I want to be her when I grow up,” Zoey adds, and I laugh, pulling her into my side.

  I whisper into her ear, “You are all grown up, and perfect just the way you are.”

  Before she can argue, I turn my attention back to the competition, but I feel Zoey’s eyes on me for a long moment after that. Hopefully, she’s mulling over my words and starting to believe them herself.

  We keep playing, somehow managing to answer enough questions about music, cars, and TV stars correctly that we end up in a tie with The Estates.

  Jameson adds some spice to his delivery, “Okay, people, it all comes. Down. To. This. Moment. Estates, are you ready?”

  Cole squeezes his chicken. “Anarchy Authority, ready?”

  Heather wrings her chicken extra-hard, threatening to strangle Cole with the move, but I don’t think he’d mind her choking his chicken. “Last question for the win . . . what serial killer was the first convicted on the basis of forensic genealogy?”

  “Oh!” Zoey exclaims and then quickly covers her mouth with her hands. I look at her eyes, which are bright blue with recognition.

  “Choke the chicken, Heather,” I growl, my eyes locked on Zoey’s. Ca-cawwwwwk!

  “Anarchy Authority?”

  All eyes are on Zoey, who looks terrified now.

  “It’s okay, just answer,” I whisper.

  It takes her a prolonged heartbeat, but she leans forward and says clearly, “Joseph James DeAngelo, a.k.a. The Golden State Killer.”

  Every head turns toward Jameson to see if she’s right because we have no idea.

  Jameson’s smile grows as he checks his answer card. “Correct! The winner of the loser bracket is . . . Anarchy Authority!”

  “We won!” I shout, bending down to wrap my arms around Zoey’s thighs and lift her high.

  She squeals in surprise, her hands going to my shoulders, but I’ve got her. I won’t let anything happen to her, or to me, or to anyone else. Right now, I feel ten feet tall and bulletproof as everyone claps and cheers.

  Professor Adams comes over to shake Heather’s hand. “Good showing tonight. Never seen people so excited about third place.”

  He laughs and Heather shrugs. “As long as we’re not the losers. Those guys have to buy the drinks.”

  She says the last part loud enough for Cole to hear and he grimaces. But he hol
ds a hand up to Don and spins a finger through the air to order another round.

  “Come on. I promised you some nachos, Ringer.” I lead Zoey back to our team’s table, where everyone’s chatting and congratulating each other on their correct answers. Now that the competition is over, even Cole has toned it down and is talking like a normal human being.

  “Great job, Zoey! You can play with us any time,” Heather tells her.

  “Thanks,” Zoey says haltingly. “Though I didn’t realize I was playing tonight. I thought I was rushing in for an emergency, hence the running out of the house without getting dressed.”

  She gestures to her outfit and Heather shrugs. “You should see what I wore for the Halloween Trivia Bash. Girl, you look almost normal compared to that outfit.”

  “What was your outfit?” Zoey asks, and Heather laughs.

  “I came as a full-on, ball-busting, leather- and latex-clad dominatrix . . . with a pink tutu,” Heather says matter of factly.

  “To really paint the picture, you have to know the whole outfit was pink. It was like Pink Panther kink or ballerina BDSM,” Trey says. “By the way, welcome, Zoey. I’ve heard a lot about you. And by that, I mean daily analysis during morning workouts with this one.” He tilts his head toward me with a smirk. I’m not mad at being thrown under the bus, though. If anything, he’s pitching my case that I’m serious about Zoey for me.

  The welcome is echoed around the table, and Zoey looks on, stunned. Absolute acceptance, that’s what these people offer. We all come from different walks of life, have different educations and knowledge, and work different jobs, but at the end of the day, we all accept that we’re trivia nerds.

  That’s enough for us.

  Zoey’s smile is surer as I pull a chair out for her and she sits down with my people. They could be her people too . . . if she wants. If she trusts that everything will be fine and she won’t shower some cursed rain on our lives just by hanging out with us.

  I sit down too and lay an arm around the back of her chair, claiming her.

  I lean over to whisper in her ear, “Did I tell you that you look beautiful?”

  She smiles softly. “Maybe you did.”

  But that light in her eyes says she knows good and well that I did.

  But I’m happy to say it again and again because she does look gorgeous, especially in pajamas. And in scrubs or jeans, and most definitely in nothing, but that’s only been in my imagination so far.

  “Did I tell you thank you for saving my ass tonight?”

  “You definitely did not.”

  “My mistake. Thank you, Miss Walker, for saving us in this most important battle.” I pitch my voice, mimicking a medieval knight and offering a formal bow of my head.

  Zoey grins. “Battle? Not exactly the life or death emergency I thought I was walking into.”

  “No, not life or death. Much more important than that. This was a battle for honor and bragging rights,” I declare, still sounding like Sir Lancelot. “Our very reputation as trivia nerds depended on you.”

  “Well, I guess I’m glad I read that article about using genetic genealogy to narrow down suspects in unsolved case files.” Her lip quirks on the left, that tiny tell that means she thinks she’s said something off-putting.

  “Do you know how sexy that sounds?”

  “Unsolved case files?”

  “No, that you read,” I tell her honestly. “I love a woman who reads—who wants to learn, understand, and experience things beyond whatever life offers. It’s sexy. Your mind is sexy.”

  Zoey tries to hide it, but I see the smile on her pink lips. A full one that I cherish. “Can’t say I’ve heard that one before. Usually, people think my mind is the three Ds—dark, deadly, and dangerous—constantly filled with plans for ungodly acts.”

  “I’m thinking of some ungodly acts right now,” I tease, rubbing my thumb along her shoulder where her cardigan has dipped down to expose a few inches of bare skin.

  “Blake,” she sighs in warning.

  Or want?

  I lean closer, slowly getting into her space, and she tilts her head, lifting her chin.

  Our breath mingles for a split second before becoming one, her lips soft beneath mine. She tastes like possibilities and hope, and I instantly become hard beneath the table.

  This woman is driving me insane. I reach up to cup her jaw for more, and she yields to me, giving in to this fire that’s been building.

  Finally. While I’m lost in Zoey, I somehow realize that it’s gone quiet around us, and not just in that ‘tuned out everything else’ way, but actual silence.

  I smack her lips once more and smile, opening my eyes to find that my friends are all watching raptly. Even Cole is flashing that too-white smile. “Hey, Heather, I got a few questions right too. Don’tcha think I deserve a ‘good job’ too?”

  “Good job, Cole,” Heather deadpans. “You have my permission to go spank your monkey.”

  The banter between the two of them has taken the attention off Zoey and me, which I’m thankful for because she looks as shell-shocked as I feel.

  Trey says, as casual as can be, “Hey, Blake, I forgot to tell you, Serena says hi.”

  I glance his way, knowing Serena didn’t say a damn thing because I saw her after our morning jog not twelve hours ago. But the shit-eating grin on his face tells me he said what he said for a reason, to remind me that he thinks Zoey could be my Serena.

  Hell, maybe he’s right, but I’ll never know if she won’t at least go out with me. But we can go at the snail pace speed she needs, especially if it leads to kisses like that.

  “Serena is Trey’s wife,” I explain to Zoey before giving Trey a meaningful look. “Yeah, man. Tell her hi too.”

  Message received, loud and clear, and I’m not arguing anymore. I settle back into my chair, one arm thrown around Zoey, to order us some nachos.

  Dinner and drinks, but still not a date.

  Chapter 12

  Zoey

  Work is quiet. Quiet as a tomb, as it were.

  I haven’t had a call out in two days, which is rare but possible. County policy is that anyone who dies in a hospital or under the care of a doctor doesn’t need my services unless foul play is suspected. So no foul play, and nobody dying at home or from traffic accidents is good, for me and county residents, but . . . well, I could really use a distraction right now.

  My brain is on a playback loop, showing me Blake’s happy smiles at trivia night a few days ago. He’s got this light inside him, a purity that shines golden and bright, drawing people to him like a beacon of joy.

  But he’s not all ‘good boy’.

  Oh, no, I heard him talking shit with the other teams, dishing it out just as hard as Heather, and that’s saying something.

  And I noticed how he automatically laid his arm on my chair as soon as we sat down. It made me feel protected, something I’d deny needing or wanting, but in that moment, with a roomful of people looking at me, I welcomed Blake’s strength at my side.

  My nerves had been screaming, reminding me to not get too close, to not spill the beer pitcher and set off a chain reaction where someone slipped in the liquid, fell, and hit their head, and to definitely not mention what I do for a living so nobody got grossed out and gave me that look of horror.

  I hate that wide-eyed, mouth gaping look of disgust.

  But I’d also realized that while Blake was tuned in to my jangling nerves and doing that arm-wrap thing for me, he was also doing it for himself. He was warning off the other guys and ready to defend me if the evening went the way it did at the beer barn.

  Yeah, he’s good, but he’s also this wholesome version of alpha.

  And I like it, which is dangerous.

  I also liked the good morning texts he’s sent me the last two days, and the completely wrong, but somehow funny, memes he sent, one about iZombie and one about Survivor, accompanied by a note that they made him think of me.

  So yeah, my dead, dark heart is t
hreatening to come to life, and that’s a bad thing for us both.

  Distraction? I need a big one.

  As if I conjured it, the requested distraction magically appears. Not in my morgue office but in my email with a happy little alert ding. Seems the state lab finally got around to my blood tests. I open up the results of Richard Horne’s second blood tests, reading each line carefully and mentally comparing them to the previous report.

  I was expecting them to be different, confirming some sort of contamination in the sample or error in the processing, but these results are nearly identical to the previous ones, with only slight variations that can be accounted for by the use of a different machine.

  For all intents and purposes, they’re the same. Which means that Richard Horne had oddly high levels of heavy metals in his body when he died. And that’s weird, even for me.

  “Hmm,” I ponder out loud, knowing there’s no one to hear me, as I spin in my chair. “What causes heavy metal levels and a heart attack?”

  My mind is racing ahead, already contemplating possibilities and dismissing them in rapid-fire succession. I stare at the report until the black numbers blur and my eyes unfocus, which is how Jeff and Alver find me—frozenly staring off into space.

  “Zoey?” Jeff says, and I startle, jumping and making a squeaking sound.

  “Oh, shit, Jeff. You scared me.”

  Jeff looks to Alver, who shrugs in answer like he’s seen me do weirder things before. Truthfully, he has. Though he hasn’t said a single word about catching Blake and me in that oddly questionable position, and I certainly haven’t had the guts to explain.

  “You didn’t hear the door?” Jeff asks.

  I look past him as though I’ve never seen the door before and shake my head. “No . . . I was thinking.”

  He looks dubious, his mustache twitching as he purses his lips. “That’s what we’re calling daydreaming now?”

  Alver snickers but covers it with a cough, and my spine finds some steel. As if either of them has the right to complain about that. Jeff’s the sheriff, and more than once, I’ve caught him ‘pondering’ a case in his office. And Alver sometimes likes to ‘give something a good think’ with his eyes closed and his hands laced over his stomach.