A Hoboken Hipster In Sherwood Forest (33 page)

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A San Diego Sweetheart in a Roaring Gin Joint

Chapter One

"I can't be the only one in this goddamned city who's too stressed for sex!"

I sucked down the remainder of my chocolate brownie Frappuccino, struggling with a stubborn chunk caught in the straw. Finally I gave up on the last smidgen of chocolate (a total crime against humanity, I know!) and set the cup down, letting out my most frustrated sigh.

"I'm sure you're not," my photographer, Jenny, replied with a laugh. The pretty twenty-two-year-old brunette reached over and patted my hand. "But who wants to admit it on local TV news?"

"Right." I stared out into the crowd of people milling about the Fashion Valley mall. We'd scoured the area for hours that morning, asking the inane "Man on the Street" question for my six P.M. news story—a fascinating feature on a new scientific study that found eighty percent of Americans feel uninterested in getting it on with their partners because of work pressures. Eighty percent claimed they were literally "too stressed for sex."

The problem was, zero percent wanted to go on camera and tell me about it.

"Besides, it's not that you're too stressed for sex," Jenny added with a twinkle in her sparkling blue eyes. "It's just that you only want to have it with a guy you refuse to talk to."

I groaned. Not this again. It constantly amazed me how even after nearly a year, Jenny still rooted for Nick the Prick and I to get back together. I should have never told her my "We'll always have Baghdad" romance story on that oh-so-boring
eight hour stakeout we'd been on when I first came back to California. (No, not that kind of stakeout. No lurking criminals or bad guys. Angelina Jolie had been rumored to be staying at the Four Seasons, if you must know.) Ever since that day, Jenny had been like a pit bull with a bone, and no matter how much I protested that I would never, ever speak to that asshole again as long as we both shall live, my words fell on naively deaf ears. In her yet-to-be-scarred mind, our relationship was beautiful, broken, and just dying to be mended. With her help, evidently.

Sigh. She was as bad as Nick's geeky brother Tom. The dot-com billionaire whom Forbes claimed was busy revolutionizing interactive electronics seemed to have a lot of free time on his hands, trying everything under the sun to get Nick and me back together. He claimed his brother deserved a second chance, and nothing I said or did could dissuade him.

But hey, the two of them could hold out hope 'til Judgment Day for all I cared. After what Nick had done to me last Valentine's Day halfway around the world, I'd sooner run away and join the circus than speak to him again. And that was coming from someone with a major clown phobia.

Jenny grabbed her video camera as she stood up, and handed me the microphone. Time to get back to work. "You know, maybe you should call him sometime," she said, oh-so-casually. "See how he's doing up there in the City of Angels, all by his lonesome." She grinned. "Or maybe I should. I mean, he is really hot and all."

I rolled my eyes and play-swatted her with the mic. "Your pathetic attempts to stir me into a jealous rage are completely in vain," I informed her. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: Nick and I are through. Forever. Finito. End of story."

"Bah," Jenny scoffed, shaking her head. "Have it your way. It's none of my business anyway, right? I'll just shut up and take the pictures."

Grr. Great. Now she was going to go all sensitive on me. I drew in a breath and reached over to pat her on the shoulder.

"Look, Jen. I know you're trying to help. But you don't know the whole story. What Nick did to me on Valentine's Day last year—it was unforgivable. And not a day goes by when it doesn't hurt." I glanced down at the ugly scar on my forearm and thought about the one I couldn't see running down the side of my face. It was amazing the station had hired me to be on air—me channeling the Phantom of the Opera and all. Well, maybe Phantom of the Opera was overstating it a bit, but I knew as well as anyone how the tiniest mark could mean a pink slip in the pristine, porcelain-doll world of TV news.

Yup, I still hurt all right. Maybe not physically. But the mental pain. The fear. Stuff I knew would never completely go away.

Not that I wasn't trying to move on. After all, I'd left Iraq, quitting my high profile career as a foreign correspondent to take on the most innocuous, non-dangerous reporting job on the planet—albeit the cheesiest. I'd spent the last year healing. Living one day at a time.
Erasing the past scandal and creating a life for myself, one without fear and danger and heartbreak at every turn. And I had to admit, I was pretty proud I'd gotten as far as I had. Not that I didn't have a long way to go.

Seeing Nick again would just hurl me backward. And I couldn't afford that. I just wasn't strong enough yet. I might never be.

"Okay, okay, I get ya," Jenny agreed, punching me lightly on the arm. Luckily she knew when to quit. "Let's go find some undersexed San Diegans."

I smiled, and together we walked down the open-air corridor of the Southern California mall where a good number of people were wandering about, carrying big bags of stuff they'd accumulated in their afternoon of shopping hedonism. Unfortunately, no one looked particularly interested in wasting five minutes of their life to get fifteen seconds of local news fame by exploiting the secrets of their sex lives. (Or in this case, lack of sex lives—which was technically worse.)

No one, that was, until an elderly woman with the stereotypical helmet of wispy blue hair hobbled over. "Can you interview me?" she asked, leaning on her knobby cane. "I want to be on television."

Hmm. I gave her the once-over. It was funny how some people were dying to be on air, while others avoided it like a Ben Affleck/J-Lo movie. (If I
wasn't a reporter, I'd so be in the second category!) Of course, granny here wasn't our target demographic—at News 9 we only cared about the sex lives of twenty-five to forty-nine-year-old women with a lot of disposable income. But it was nearly three P.M., and I was getting desperate.

"Okay," I said, giving her my Big Reporter smile. I pointed the microphone at her. "Do you ever feel you're too stressed for sex?"

She stared at me a moment, her blue eyes wide, as if shocked at my brazen question. I felt my face heat. Of course. What was I thinking? Granny probably hadn't gotten it on in the last thirty years or so. Ever since her precious Wilbur died back when Reagan was president.

Sigh. Too bad my story wasn't "Too Senile for Sex."

"Too stressed for sex?" the old woman repeated, following the phrase with a tinkling laugh that sounded a little like Christmas bells, "My goodness, no. In fact, ever since I started using this female Viagra I got off the Internet, I've been having multiple orgasms at the drop of a hat. Henry loves it!" She beamed at me and then turned to look directly into the camera. "My sex life is great!" she informed the lens.

Hmph
. Evidently these days even Granny was getting more action than me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Okay," I said, lowering the microphone. She obviously wasn't going to help with my story. "I appreciate you taking the time to answer." Not that you gave us anything we could use, my little senior sex kitten.

The woman gave me a disapproving look over her bifocals. "You young people," she scolded. "You need to stop working so hard. Start enjoying life. When you're on your deathbed, you won't look back on your life and think, 'Why didn't I work more?' Trust me. But you might wonder why you didn't have more orgasms."

Ah. Even better. Not only was Granny
boinking like a bunny, she was now offering up life lessons. Next thing you knew, Jenny was going to tell her the Nick story, and the two of them would be tag-teaming for a sex-filled reconciliation.

Can we say, no thank you?

"Thanks," I muttered, stepping backward to put as much distance as possible between me and the hot flash ho. "Now, if you'll excuse us..."

"Good luck, Sweetie," the woman said, then smiled patronizingly. "You'll find your Prince Charming eventually."

I swallowed hard and resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to tell her I'd already found him. And that when I'd kissed him, he'd turned into a total frog. I wanted to insist that relationships—while perhaps good for short-term, crazy, hot sex—always ended in pain. Leaving you vulnerable and wounded and crying in your tomato alphabet soup. Alone.

Instead, I channeled Self Protective Mode and turned to throw Jenny a smirk as Granny hobbled away. "Some people!"

My photographer shrugged. "She does have a point, Dora."

"Oh, don't start." I groaned. The last thing I needed was a lecture on relationships from an inexperienced twenty-two-year-old. The girl had been dating her boyfriend since the high school prom. She had no idea what was in store for her future love life.

Jenny opened her mouth to speak, then looked behind me and closed it again. I whirled around to see what had caught her attention and actually achieved the nearly impossible task of shutting her up, crossing my fingers it was a twenty-five to forty-nine-year-old woman who looked way too stressed to do the wild thing with her hubby. Instead, my eyes fell upon a very tall man, dressed entirely in black, standing before me, arms crossed against his broad chest. He had mirrored shades, slicked-back black hair, and a shiny Rolex that peeked out from under his suit coat sleeve. The whole look screamed Men in Black.

"Yes?" I asked, donning Indulgent Reporter Smile. He was probably from mall security and was about to ask us to leave the premises before he called the cops. Could this day get any worse?

"Dora Duncan?" he asked in a clipped accent I didn't recognize. "Are you Dora Duncan?" I felt my face heat into a blush. Not a security guard. Maybe even a fan! A real, live fan!

I always got a kick out of people recognizing me on the street. Of course, back in the old days when Nick and I rocked Iraq, this was a more regular occurrence. We were network superstars then. A tag team everyone rooted for. Now, only a year after escaping the network to take this silly features reporter job in San Diego—where I was sure not to run face to face into a semiautomatic machine gun—nobody even knew my name.

Nick, on the other hand, was still uber-famous. In fact, I didn't understand how any normal human being could manage to garner such a fan base without selling his soul to the devil. (Which, of course, I wouldn't put past him.) After leaving Baghdad and taking a job as a network news anchor in Los Angeles, he'd become more famous than ever. While I labored in local news obscurity, he walked the red carpet, schmoozing with starlets. While I covered craft fairs and dog shows, he interviewed senators and got laws changed. While I lived my life scarred and ugly because of his mistake, he made People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People."

And Jenny wondered why I wouldn't take him back?

I realized the man in front of me had his hand outstretched and that I should be shaking it. Had to be gracious to the few fans I had left.

"Yes. Hi. How nice to meet you," I said with a smile. I wondered if my hair was covering my scar. I hated that I always wondered that while meeting someone new, but I couldn't help it.

"I'm Special Agent Fredricks," he said in response, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a badge encased in smooth black leather. He flashed it at me, and I raised an eyebrow. Not a fan. FBI. Figured. "We need your assistance, and I've been asked to have you come with me."

I furrowed my brows. The FBI needed my assistance? My assistance?

"What could you possibly need my assistance for?" I blurted, and then regretted it a moment later. After all, I didn't want to come off as rude and uncooperative to the FBI. But still...

"It's classified,"
Fredricks replied, tossing a glance at Jenny. "Now, if you could just come with me..."

I looked over at my photographer, then back to the special agent, trying to decide what I should do. I had a story to get on the air in a few hours, a story I wasn't exactly making much progress on. If I took time out to go with this man, I'd never make my slot. But, he was FBI. I couldn't say
no to the FBI, could I? Plus, what if it was an important story he needed my assistance with? What if it were an inside scoop on a huge scandal? Even though I'd taken this job to get away from the danger I'd faced in Iraq, truth be told, lately I was getting a bit sick of covering sex and cellulite and celebrity C-sections for the evening news.

"Uh, let me call the desk. See if it's okay." The assignment desk was the Big Brother of the newsroom: always watching you. If I took off without checking in with them, I could be in big trouble.

I reached into my purse to dig out my phone. The agent placed a hand over mine. "No need, Ms. Duncan," he said. "We've already called your station. That's how we knew where you were."