D is for Drunk (3 page)

“The other ones all died.”

He looked so shocked, she laughed.

“Not really. You’re my first. My first rescue I mean.” Smooth. She sounded so very smooth. “And you’ll be fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But you should still see a doctor. Weird things can happen after you almost drown, so you need to be careful. I remember from a class at the YMCA about dry drownings hours after being rescued. And also head wounds are serious, especially if you lose consciousness.” She wasn’t sure she should have said that. She didn’t want to upset him. It didn’t help that Jaxon was pretty darn distracting-looking. She kept babbling. “I should have paid more attention in class. Anyway, get checked out by a doctor.”

“I promise I will, Miss...Sofia.” He made an X over the left side of his chest. “Cross my heart.”

A minute of uncomfortable silence followed. She wanted to ask for his phone number, but wasn’t sure on the rescuer/rescuee protocol. It seemed like it’d be taking advantage.

“So, why’d you decide to suddenly start surfing?” she asked to have something to say, even though it sounded dumb.

“I usually live in Wyoming. I’m in town for a month to do a show, so I figured I’d better take advantage of the ocean while I’m here.”

“What kind of show?” Was he an actor? A stripper? She would never hear the end of it if she started dating a stripper.

“Trick riding. I’m with
The Riders of Randorin
.”

“Your show is supposed to be incredible! It had a great write-up in the
LA Times
.”

He actually blushed right there on the surfboard. Which was adorable. “The riders put in a lot of time. I’m not with the regular show. I’m filling in for a friend who got sick. Usually I work on my ranch.”

“You have a ranch?” That made him a cowboy, didn’t it? She’d never dated a cowboy.

“More of a dude ranch, but we run a few cattle, some horses, and chickens. It’s called the Lazy Seven.”

“I thought that was Lazy Eight?”

“That name was taken.”

They’d almost reached the beach now, and Tony unclipped them. She hadn’t noticed when they’d gone through the spot where the waves usually broke.

Her neighbor, Tex, waved from up the beach. She had on a silver one-piece swimming suit. It didn’t look half bad on her, with her thick gray hair and snapping dark eyes. The suit, and Tex, were both dry. She had way more sense than Sofia did.

“If you want to go to the show, we have one tomorrow,” Jaxon said. “I could leave you tickets at will call.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

That was totally a date. Her first in quite a while. Even if she was just going to watch him ride around on stage, it counted. She had a date with a cowboy.

Jaxon’s giant smile was back.

“Let’s get you guys off the board, and let me check out Jaxon’s head wound.” Tony was all business.

She flopped off the board and into the cold water, but it didn’t seem so bad this time. She stood and shook Jaxon’s hand again. “See you there.”

Tex wrapped a giant gray towel around Sofia. It was the warmest thing she’d ever felt, and she pulled it close. “Thanks, Tex.”

“See you where?” Tex asked.

“
The Riders of Randorin
show, ma’am,” said Jaxon. “My name’s Jaxon Ford, and I’m in the show. Sofia here was kind enough to agree to come to see me perform as a thank you for saving my life.”

“I can see why she did.” Tex practically leered at him, but Jaxon didn’t seem to notice. “Sofia has an eye for horseflesh.”

“I do?” Sofia asked. Then she caught Tex’s double meaning. “Oh, yeah. I love horses.”

“I rode a bit on the rodeo circuit,” Tex said. “A few years ago.”

“I’d be happy to leave a ticket for you, too, ma’am,” said Jaxon.

“Under the name of Pearl Chang would do nicely,” Tex said.

“Pearl?” Sofia said.

“You didn’t think my fine Chinese parents put Tex on my birth certificate, did you?”

Tony tugged Jaxon back toward the lifeguard stand. Jaxon nodded to Sofia and followed him. She watched him go. He looked good from the back, too.

“Horseflesh?” Sofia said, as soon as she was sure he couldn’t hear her anymore.

Tex pulled the towel closer around Sofia and rubbed her arms. “I have a Thermos full of hot tea over by my chair.”

Sofia suddenly realized how cold she was, and how much she wanted to sit down.

Tex led her to a wooden cabana chair, sat her down, and poured her a Thermos-cap full of green tea. The cup shook in her hands.

“It’s the adrenalin,” Tex said.

“And the cold.” She took a sip of scalding tea.

“Jaxon Ford could warm a woman right up.”

Sofia wasn’t going to argue with that.

“That’s the kind of thing that makes me want to take up swimming again,” Tex said. “Salvage. You get to keep whatever you recover on the high seas, you know.”

CHAPTER 3

L 
ess than an hour later, Sofia pulled out onto the PCH and her red Tesla joined the traffic crawling along the highway. She turned on the car’s heater full blast. That was the last time she was going swimming without a wetsuit. But the thought that, because of her swim, Jaxon and his wide-open smile were still around made it all worth it.

When she turned into the parking lot, she checked her watch. Still on time. A yellow Porsche and a black Lincoln Town Car sat alone in the parking lot. Not a good sign. Business had been slow at the detective agency lately, and it hadn’t picked up this morning. The Town Car belonged to the owner of the agency, Brendan Maloney, a former Los Angeles police detective and consultant to the TV show Sofia had spent most of her childhood working on,
The Half-Pint Detective
. The Porsche belonged to his son, also a former Los Angeles police officer, and Sofia’s partner at the agency. He lived to drive her crazy.

“You’re tardy,” Aidan said as soon as she walked in.

“It’s thirty seconds past nine.” She made a beeline for the coffee machine. “That’s perfectly on time.”

“Thirty seconds is a long time.” He wandered into the kitchen after her. “Ask a trapeze artist.”

“Any new work?” She poured herself a coffee and took a quick sip. Aidan made good coffee, but she’d never tell him.

“How was your morning?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Why?” Something was up.

“You have a certain glow about you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Rosy cheeks,” he said. “Star-struck eyes.”

“I went swimming this morning before I came in.” She took a longer sip of the coffee. Coffee was the elixir of the gods.

“In the freezing cold Pacific? With the undertow?” Apparently, Aidan wasn’t a water person. “And the pollution?”

“I made it out alive,” she said. “And I pulled someone out with me.”

“Do tell.” Aidan’s blue eyes sharpened, and she wished she hadn’t said anything.

“A surfer guy named Jaxon Ford.”

“Action Jaxon,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like the name of a guy who’d need rescuing.”

“He got hit in the head by his board.”

“Not good at the whole action thing then?”

“He’s probably plenty good at it. He’s a horseback rider in that show,
The Riders of Randorin
. And he owns a ranch.” She wasn’t sure why she was defending Jaxon to Aidan, so she decided to change the subject. “What are we supposed to be doing this morning?”

“I brought some locks in for you to practice on.” He pointed to a pair of handcuffs sitting on her desk next to a package of bobby pins.

“Ooo! Lock picking!” She raced across the office to her desk. He had been promising to teach her to pick locks for a while now. She ran her finger across the handcuffs. “How do I start?”

“Don’t make so much noise. We don’t want Brendan to hear.”

She had often wondered where Brendan came down on lock picking. She guessed on the law and order side. Not Aidan, though. She’d watched him pick locks before, and he was too good at it not to have had a lot of practice.

“Let’s start with the handcuffs.” Aidan gave her one of his trademark Irish smiles, all dimples and insincerity. “Hold out your wrists.”

She hid her wrists behind her back. “I’m not letting you handcuff me.”

“It only makes sense to practice in real world conditions.”

She wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he had her handcuffed, but she sure wasn’t going to find out. “I’ll practice with them on the table the first time.”

“Always so suspicious.” He locked the handcuffs and handed her a bobby pin. “This is what’s called a single lock handcuff. You’ll start with that.”

“This is what’s called a bobby pin, not a lock pick.”

“Strip off the rubber part, then bend the end to a 45 degree angle,” he said.

“Do we have pliers or something?”

“Are you going to have pliers sitting around if you’re ever handcuffed?”

Was she going to have a bobby pin around either? She resolved to start carrying an emergency bobby pin in her wallet. She stuck the bobby pin in her mouth and stripped off the rubber tip with her teeth. She hoped Aidan hadn’t spit on it or something. She spat the rubber into her hand and scraped it into her garbage can.

“Ladylike,” Aidan said.

She ignored him and put the bobby pin back in her mouth. She bent the metal against her teeth, hearing her mother’s voice in her head telling her to be good to her teeth, because they might have to last a hundred years. It looked like a forty-five degree angle, but it wasn’t as if she had a protractor lying around to measure it.

“You’re going to want to insert that into the keyhole and wriggle it around until you feel it catch against a little lever thing in there, then push in the direction the cuff locked in and it’ll pop right open.” He reeled off all the steps as if it would be easy.

She slipped the bobby pin into the keyhole and stirred around inside the lock, hoping she’d luck into it. She didn’t. Not as easy as Aidan made it sound.

“It’s all about the wrists,” he said. “Finesse not force.”

“Considering your dating life, you probably have a lot of finesse in your wrists.” The end of the bobby pin caught on something.

“My dating life?” Aidan snorted. “You’re the one who’s dating The Village People.”

The bobby pin slipped off the lever, and she tried to reset it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He held up one finger. “You started with the bartender, right? Felipe Rose from the Village People was a bartender.”

“Which one was he?”

“The one with the headdress. So, that’s your first Village person.”

She decided to ignore him and concentrate on her lock.

Aidan held up a second finger. “And now you’re dating the cowboy.”

“For a straight guy, you’re awfully familiar with the Village People.”

“So you
are
dating the cowboy?”

“I didn’t say that.” The bobby pin caught against something again. She pulled up as gently as she could.

“You didn’t say you weren’t.”

It felt as if the lever moved. Maybe this would work. “It’s not really a date.”

“Some kind of event where the two of you are together?”

The handcuff lock still didn’t open. “None of your business.”

“That’s a yes. What do you know about him?”

The bobby pin slipped back off the lever. This would be a lot easier if Aidan shut up. “I know he’s cute. He has a ranch in Wyoming. He’s a rider in this show. And Tex likes him.”

Aidan blinked a couple of times. Maybe it was from information overload. “Tex likes him?”

“She was on the beach when we came in.” She almost told him Tex had been invited too, but stopped herself.

“So, basically, you know what he told you, which was nothing.” Aidan folded his arms.

“You only know what the women on your dating sites tell you.” She bent the bobby pin back to 45 degrees and stuck it in the lock. What if she were handcuffed with her hands behind her back? How would she get to a bobby pin then?

“I verify that across multiple sites, plus the Internet is full of information about them. I know plenty.”

“Doesn’t that make you a cyberstalker?” The lever moved the tiniest bit. She held her breath.

“It makes me informed. Keeps me from wasting my time on women who are less than ideal.”

“How’d that last one slip by you, Mr. Sperm Donor?” Aidan’s last serious girlfriend had asked him to give her some sperm so she could have a baby. And raise the baby without him. They weren’t dating anymore.

“It’s a process,” he said. “The checklist helps, but it’s obviously not an entirely foolproof system.”

The lock clicked, and the handcuffs sprang open. “Ta-da!”

Before she had more than a second to celebrate her triumph, Aidan slammed both handcuffs closed around her wrists. The bobby pin fell onto the floor, and he put his foot on top of it.

She glared at him.

“Real world,” he said. “Make another pick from scratch.”

She pulled another bobby pin off the cardboard packaging, which wasn’t easy with her hands cuffed together. A quick bite to get the rubber tip off, a bend, and she held the pick in her right hand. It was a lot harder going than the first time, especially with Aidan looking so smug.

“Who’s next after the cowboy?” he asked. “The construction worker? The soldier?”

“The cop?” She had the bobby pin in the right place already, now she needed to move that tricky tumbler.

“A cop!” He sounded surprised, but she couldn’t look up at him while picking the lock. “You should never date a cop.”

She held the bobby pin perfectly still and looked up at him. “Why not? Brendan was a cop. You were a cop.”

“See what I mean?”

“Brendan’s a very nice guy.” She went back to her handcuffs.

“Excuse me?” A short round blond man and a shorter and rounder blond woman came into the office. They looked like Cabbage Patch dolls, all grown up. The man spoke again. “We’re here to meet with the head of Maloney Investigations?”

As if he’d heard them from behind his closed office door, Brendan swept into the room. He wore a nice blue suit and a blue-gray tie. With his salt-and-pepper hair and his rugged face, he looked exactly like a private investigator should.