Drop Dead Gorgeous Read online

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, thinking. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly—gee, wonder why that was—but it seemed to me I couldn’t leave Lynn in the lurch again. She had a life outside of Great Bods, and though she’d been great about covering for me, I couldn’t take advantage of her or I’d end up losing a top-notch assistant.

  I wrote all of that down, explaining it to Wyatt as best I could. I was getting tired of all that damn writing.

  To my surprise, he read my explanation, then simply studied my face for a while. I don’t know what he saw there, maybe that I really needed to go to work, or maybe on reflection he agreed with me that the risk to Great Bods might not be that high. “All right,” he finally said. “But I’m going to put someone with you at all times. Sit here, and I’ll go clear it with Chief Gray.”

  He could have pulled a fast one on me, he’s done it before, but I sat there. When he came back, he got his suit jacket from the hook on the back of the door and said, “Let’s go.”

  I got my tote and stood, my expression asking the question for me.

  “I’m your bodyguard for the rest of the day,” he explained.

  I was happy enough with that.

  Chapter

  Twenty-three

  Lynn was mightily relieved when I showed up for work not only on time, but a little bit early. Wyatt hadn’t mentioned my lack of a voice when he’d called her that morning, and she was concerned enough that I couldn’t even whisper that when she left work she went to a health-food store and brought back a selection of teas that were supposed to help soothe an inflamed throat. She even offered to stay late and help me, but I sent her on her way. Wyatt was there if I needed anyone to talk for me.

  All in all, it was a nice, normal day at Great Bods. No white Malibus parked across the street; no blond psychos pitched firebombs through the front door. It was my kind of day, just the buffer I needed to help me get my feet back under me. Still, I felt as if I were balanced on the edge of despair, and I kept giving myself pep talks, pulling myself back. Yes, my home had burned, but no one had been killed. Yes, I’d lost all my personal possessions, but, hey, my hair hadn’t caught on fire. Yes, the viciousness of my unknown stalker and would-be killer was frightening, but now I knew what she looked like and I was majorly pissed at her, so when I saw her again I intended to go for her—unless Wyatt had me locked in some stinky squad car again.

  I had a hard time letting go of my resentment over that.

  He prowled around like the cop he was, constantly checking the street, the parking lot, walking around the building. I commandeered one of my second-shift instructors to answer the phone for me and that turned out to be a godsend, because when I mentioned, via pen and paper, that we were looking for an assistant assistant-manager, she became very excited and asked if she could train for the job.

  Well, who knew? She, her name was JoAnn, was actually my least popular instructor, because her attitude was all business. On the other hand, she was also one of my most knowledgeable instructors. She had no office experience at all, but I really liked her manner on the phone. When she didn’t know what to do, she sounded as if she did, kind of like a politician. I would definitely talk to Lynn about her.

  Whether it was the herbal teas or giving my voice a complete rest, by the end of the day swallowing seemed to be easier. I was so hungry I was nauseated, though, so JoAnn went to a hamburger joint and picked up a burger and fries for Wyatt, and a nice thick milk shake for me—strawberry, my favorite. The cold felt just as good on my poor throat as the hot tea had.

  It was Thursday, almost one week to the hour since my first run-in with the wacko on wheels. I was supposed to have gotten the stitches out of my hairline today, I remembered. I reached up under my wing of hair and felt them. They felt stiff and dry, and the skin surrounding them was prickly with the new growth of hair.

  How hard could it be to remove stitches? I’d had them removed before and it didn’t hurt, at the most stinging a little, so it couldn’t be any big deal. I had manicure scissors in my office, and tweezers in the first-aid kit. I needed those stitches out. I needed to put that episode behind me. Yes, I’d gotten a great new haircut out of the deal, but overall it had been a bummer.

  I took my supplies into the ladies’ room with me, only to discover my hair wouldn’t stay back out of the way; it wanted to swing forward in that great curve Shay had shaped it into. I didn’t have any hair clips but I did have a couple of scrunchies in my office. I zipped out of the ladies’ room into my office, grabbed a scrunchie, and zipped right back out. Wyatt saw me and called out “Hey!” but I waved at him and kept on going. He probably thought I had an urgent need for the ladies’.

  Except he walked in while I was snipping through the third stitch.

  “Holy hell!”

  I jumped, which is not a good thing when you have sharp little scissors aimed at a newly healed laceration. I scowled at his reflection in the mirror, then tilted my head again so I could see exactly where the next stitch was.

  “Oh, fuck,” he muttered, coming to stand next to me. “Stop, before you stab yourself with those things. I would ask what you’re doing, but I can see what you’re doing, I just don’t know why. Weren’t you supposed to see a doctor for this?”

  I nodded, and went for that stitch again.

  He closed his hand over mine. “Give those to me. God. I’ll do it.”

  I let him have the scissors, but smirked and shook my head.

  “You don’t think I can do it?” he asked, challenged.

  I shook my head again, absolutely certain he couldn’t.

  He found out why a second or two later, when he realized there was no way his big fingers would fit into the small holes of the scissor handles. Frustrated, he stared at them, and in triumph I retrieved them and went to work again. Okay, so it was a very small victory. It felt good anyway. I hadn’t had many victories lately, and I was feeling deprived.

  So I snipped the stitches, and he used the tweezers to gently pull the pieces of thread out. Tiny beads of blood formed here and there, so I opened one of the antiseptic pads from the first-aid kit and blotted them off. They didn’t reappear, and that was that. Removing the scrunchie I’d used to hold my hair back, I swung my hair and beamed.

  “Whatever it takes,” he muttered, then reverted to cop and pushed open the door of each empty stall in turn, until he had inspected all six stalls. He just couldn’t help it, I guess.

  I closed up right on time at nine, and JoAnn stayed to see what was involved in securing the place for the night. With her help the process went, well, twice as fast—duh—and we were ready to leave at nine-twenty. Wyatt checked outside before we left.

  Once again I took a circuitous route, with Wyatt following me. But I wasn’t going home, I thought with a pang. I would never go there again, or at least it would never be home again. I would have to go see it, something in me demanded I do that. I guess it’s like viewing the body at a funeral, to build a final memory, a closure. You’d think our brains would understand death and let it go at that, but nope, we need to see that dead person and replace the live memory with the dead memory. Or something like that.

  If Wyatt and I got married, his house would be my home from this very day on. If we weren’t going to get married, I needed to know pretty damn quick so I could make other arrangements. When I could talk again, we had to have that conversation.

  Damn, I had to get things moving! If we did get married, it would be in twenty-two days. Just three weeks! And I hadn’t even picked out the fabric for my gown yet! Plus I still had to talk to Monica Stevens, and Sally, and get Jazz and Sally back together, and somehow replace my lost stuff—I didn’t have enough days left!

  As some friendly advice, I don’t ever recommend trying to organize a wedding while dealing with a homicidal stalker. It just gets too complicated.

  Wyatt had briefed me on how to shake someone following you, so before we got to a place he’d picked out ahead of time—a service st