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  Now I had to deal with Wyatt.

  “Well, yeah,” I managed to gasp between voracious kisses. What, you expected me to lie?

  “Then it’s a good thing I have enough to handle you.” He’d unsnapped my jeans and was peeling them down.

  He did; oh, he did. He knew it, too, and proved it once again. At least he got me to the couch that time, instead of simply taking me down to the floor as he’d done on more than one occasion.

  And then he lingered, stroking in and out, looking down at my body as he clasped my hips between his strong hands. “It makes a difference,” he said roughly. “No birth control. It makes a difference.”

  It did. Not a physical difference, but a mental one. Since the brain is the most important erogenous zone…wow. Everything was heightened, intensified, and sex between us had already been pretty intense.

  He lay heavily on me afterward, absently stroking my hip as he often did. Dazed, I became aware that he hadn’t undressed at all, though he’d managed to get me out of the bottom half of my clothes. His badge was still clipped to his belt, scraping really close to where I didn’t want to be scraped, thank you very much, and that big black automatic was uncomfortable against my inner left thigh.

  I wriggled under him. “You’re still armed,” I complained.

  “Yeah, but I unloaded.”

  I pushed at his shoulders. “Badge—ouch!”

  Pausing several times for kisses, he braced his hands on the cushion I was lying on and carefully pulled away from me. Logistically, this hadn’t been well planned, and now we had to deal with practicalities. You know what I mean. Thank God the couch was leather.

  After we cleaned up we made supper together. Before, he would have eaten out, but since we’d been together I’d stocked his freezer with premade stuff that just had to be heated. That night we chose lasagna, and added a salad. Salad fixings were something else I’d added to his refrigerator. I was teaching him about girl food.

  After supper, I bit the bullet. I’d been thinking and evading and thinking some more since Tuesday night, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. We were having sex without birth control, for heaven’s sake, and even though there was practically no chance I could get pregnant, still…

  “The things you said,” I began as we loaded the dishwasher.

  “I was horny. Men will say anything to get sex.”

  I frowned at him. “Tuesday night. When you were mad.”

  He straightened, giving me his full attention. “You’ve thought about it long enough, huh? Okay, let’s have it, so I can apologize again and get it over with.”

  That wasn’t exactly the serious tone I’d wanted. My frown changed to a glare. “This isn’t something to apologize for, it’s something we need to face, straight up, and make a decision.”

  He crossed his arms and waited.

  I hoped my voice would hold up to the explanation. Giving it a rest that afternoon had returned me to that awful croak, which at least had sound to it. I blew out a breath and started.

  “You said that I pull dumb-ass tricks, that I expect you to jump through hoops and get pissy with you when you don’t, and that I call you for everything that pops into my head and expect you to check it out. You also said I’m high maintenance. Duh. All of that other falls under that category. I’m high maintenance, I’ve always been high maintenance, and I’ll always be high maintenance. That won’t change. I won’t change.”

  “I don’t want you to change,” he began, reaching for me, but I stepped out of reach and waved him to silence.

  “Let me finish, because I don’t know how long my voice will hold out. I don’t consider my tricks dumb-ass, so that’s a difference of opinion there. I don’t think I expect you to jump through hoops, but I put you first and I expect you to put me first—within reason, of course, and that goes for both of us. If you’re at a murder scene, for instance, I wouldn’t expect you to come jump my car off if my battery goes dead. That’s what I have AAA for.

  “And I don’t call you to check out every little thing. Honest. But I will definitely expect you to do things for me, like fix any parking tickets I happen to get, but I wouldn’t ask you to fix a speeding ticket or falsify a report or anything like that, so I think that’s reasonable. But in the end this is your decision, whether or not to go on with this marriage. If the high maintenance bothers you that much, if I’m already not worth the trouble to you, then you should get out now. We’ll probably stay together for a while, but we should call off the wedding—”

  He put his hand over my mouth. His green eyes were glittering. “I don’t know whether to laugh, or…laugh.”

  Laugh? My heart had been breaking, I’d finally gotten the courage to lay it all out for him, and he wanted to laugh?

  Men can’t be the same species as women. They just can’t.

  His other hand slid around my waist, pulling me against him. “Sometimes you make me so mad I could spit tenpenny nails, but since we’ve been together there hasn’t been a day I haven’t woken up smiling. Hell, yeah, you’re worth the trouble. The sex alone is worth the trouble, but when you throw in the entertainment value—”

  Furiously I tried to pinch him, but he laughed and caught my hands, pulling them up to hold them against his chest. “I love you, Blair Mallory Soon-to-be-Bloodsworth. Everything about you, even the high maintenance—even the notes you write, which, by the way, have completely alleviated the resentment toward me from the older guys. I don’t know how that bastard Forester managed to steal that note without me noticing, but I’ll find out,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t write it to be funny,” I snapped, or tried to snap. “I was making a point.”

  “Oh, I got the point; we all did. You were mad as hell, at all of us, and after we knew why we had to admit you had the right. But I’d do it again, to keep you safe. I’d do anything to keep you safe. Now, how is it macho men are supposed to phrase this? Oh, yeah, I’d take a bullet for you. The wedding is still on. Does that answer your questions?”

  I didn’t know whether to pout, pinch, or punch. I settled for looking sulky. God, I was so relieved! He knew I wasn’t going to change, and he still wanted to marry me? Good enough.

  “Clarify something for me, though.”

  I looked up, questioning, and he took advantage, stealing a couple of kisses.

  “Why would you want a parking ticket fixed but not a speeding ticket? A speeding ticket costs more, counts against your driver’s license, and makes your insurance premium go up.”

  I couldn’t believe he didn’t see the difference. “A speeding ticket would be for something I did. But a parking ticket? Excuse me! Who owns city property? The taxpayers, that’s who. Am I the only person who thinks it doesn’t make sense for someone to be charged for parking on their own property, and then fined if they park too long? That’s un-American. That’s downright…downright fascist—”

  He didn’t use his hand to shut me up, that time. He used his mouth.

  Chapter

  Twenty-nine

  The weather turned chilly again overnight, and rain had started by morning. Normally I would be going to work early on Saturday, because it was a busy day, but when I talked to Lynn she said that JoAnn was working out great and she suggested offering the job full-time. I agreed, because otherwise these next three weeks would kill me.

  Wyatt slept late, sprawled across the bed, and I entertained myself that morning by writing his list of transgressions. Like I would forget something that important? No way. I sat curled in his big chair with a throw over my feet and legs, perfectly content to laze away the morning. The rain seemed to do away with any sense of urgency. I love listening to rain anyway, and seldom get the chance to because I’m usually too busy. I felt safe and happy, cocooned with Wyatt, letting the detectives do the legwork in tracking down my stalker. They were on the right track with the rental cars, I just knew it.

  I could talk. To my delight, I could actually talk. My voice was very raspy, but