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Authors: Linda Howard

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BOOK: Drop Dead Gorgeous
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"I've already bought you a plant."

"You bought me a
shrub
. And it's planted outside, where it belongs. Don't worry, you don't have to do anything with the plants, other than move them where I tell you to move them, when I tell you."

"Why don't you just put them where you want them and leave them there?"

Was that a male point of view, or what? "Some I will. Some I'll put outside on the porch during warm weather and only bring them in for the winter. Just trust me on the plants, okay?"

He couldn't see how I could do anything sneaky with plants, so grudgingly he nodded. "Okay, we can have a few plants."

A few?
He was so clueless. I loved him anyway.

"And some rugs."

"I have carpeting."

"The rugs go on top of the carpeting."

He shoved his hand through his hair in raw frustration. "Why in hell would you put a rug on top of carpet?"

"For looks, silly.
And there should be a rug under the breakfast room table." The breakfast nook floor had the same tiles that were on the kitchen floor, and they were cold. A rug for there would be one of my first purchases. I smiled at him; smiling didn't hurt. "That's it."
For now, anyway.

He grinned suddenly. "Okay, that sounds fairly painless."

A horrible suspicion began to form. Had I been played? Had he been
messing
with me? Now, as a general rule, at least half of what I said was because I enjoyed messing with him, pushing his buttons and trying to get a rise out of him, but that's part of the fun of dealing with a man as
alpha
as he was. Trust me on this. Teasing Woody Allen wouldn't be half the thrill that teasing, say, Hugh
Jackman
would be.

But just because I enjoyed pushing his buttons didn't mean turnabout is fair play.

"Have you been talking to Daddy?" I asked suspiciously.

"Of course I have. I know I'm taking on a big job, marrying you, so I'll take all the expert advice I can get. He told me to pick my battles, not to start feeling territorial over crap I don't really care about. As long as you leave my recliner and television alone, I'm okay."

I didn't know whether to sulk or feel relieved. On the one hand, Daddy wouldn't steer him wrong, and my life would be a lot easier if I didn't have to do all of Wyatt's training
myself
. On the other hand, well, I'm a button-pusher.

"You can just write a check for me to get started," I said cheerfully. "I'll let you know when I need more. I know this great carpenter, and though he probably won't be able to get started right away I can meet with him next week and show him what I want and let him get started on the plans."

He stilled, going wary again.
"A check?
A carpenter?
What plans?"

One great big
button,
duly pushed. Life was good.

"You do remember how this conversation started, don't you?"

"Yeah.
You and
Siana
were talking about my dick."

"Not that conversation,
this
conversation.
The redecorating one."

"Got it.
I still haven't made the connection between my dick and window treatments," he said wryly, "but I'll go with it for now. What about how this conversation started?"

"A pantry.
You don't have one. I need one."

An incredulous look entered his eyes. "You're evicting me from my office? And you expect
me
to pay for it?"

"I expect you to pay for the lion's share, yeah. You have more money than I do."

He snorted. "I drive a Chevrolet. You drive a Mercedes."

I waved that away.
Details.
"I'm not
evicting
you. I'm moving you into a new office. We'll divvy up the space of the living room." It was a big room, and I didn't need all of that space for a home office for myself.
The biggest portion of it, yes, but not
all
of it.
"You need a bigger office
anyway,
you have so much crammed in the pantry you can barely get yourself in there."

That was nothing but the truth. It was a mystery to me why, when he'd done such an extensive remodeling of the house when he first bought it, he hadn't included an actual office for himself. The only explanation was that he was a guy. At least he'd put in an adequate number of bathrooms, though that could have been the building contractor's idea; certainly the idea for the pantry hadn't come from Wyatt.

I watched him wrap his mind around the idea of a bigger office, and realize I was right—he needed more space, and I needed a pantry.
"All right, all right.
Do whatever you
want,
and I'll pay for it." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I came here to tell you about the security tapes, and somehow I end up spending twenty thousand dollars, at least," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Twenty thousand?
He wished. I kept that part to myself, though. He'd find out soon enough. "You got the parking-lot tapes?" I was a bit incredulous. "I didn't think you would, since she didn't hit me. Did the mall just hand them over?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah, but I could have gotten them anyway."

"You'd have needed a warrant, and no crime was committed."

"Reckless endangerment is a crime, honey."

"You didn't say anything about reckless endangerment last night."

He shrugged. In his view, cop stuff was his business, in sort of the same way keeping the lap pool at Great
Bods
properly chlorinated was mine; I didn't discuss every detail with him, and come to think of it, he discussed very little cop business with me. I didn't exactly agree, because cop business is way more interesting than pool chlorination, which was why I snooped through his files every now and then. Okay, whenever I got the chance.

I waved away his lack of communication, which, regarding his work, he had no intention of remedying anyway. "What did you find?"

"Not much," he admitted, frustration glinting in his eyes. "To begin with, the mall has an outdated system that uses tapes instead of being digital. The tape is worn out; I couldn't make out a tag number, just that the car was definitely a Buick. Our tech guys said the tape should have been replaced a month or so ago, it literally has holes in it. They couldn't pull anything really useful from it."

"The mall doesn't replace the tapes with new ones on a regular basis?" I asked indignantly. The
mall
was lax? I felt betrayed.

"A lot of places don't, at least until something happens. Then whoever is in charge of the surveillance system will catch hell, and for a while the tapes will be changed out the way they should be. You wouldn't believe some of the crap we're given to work with." His tone was hard. Wyatt didn't cut much slack for people who didn't do what they should.

He reached under the sheet and clasped the inside of my thigh, his hand hard and slightly rough, and oh so warm. "She missed you by inches," he said roughly. "I damn near had a heart attack, seeing how close it was. She wasn't trying to just scare
you,
she literally tried to kill you."

Chapter Seven

 

 

Mom came in shortly afterward with my clothes, hanging them in the minuscule closet and dropping my keys back in my purse. "I can't stay," she said, looking frustrated and harried and incredibly beautiful, because that's just Mom, she can't look any other way. "How are you feeling, sweetheart?"

"Better," I said, because it was true. I'd managed to eat those God-awful eggs, hadn't I? The "better" was qualified by a "marginally," but I'd take what I could get. "Thanks for bringing my stuff. Now go do your thing, and don't worry about me."

She gave me a wry, "yeah, sure" look. "Has a doctor been in yet?"

"Nope."

Her look of frustration increased. "Where's
Siana
?"

"She went to the cafeteria when I got here," Wyatt said, checking his watch. "She's been gone about twenty minutes."

"I can't stay until she gets
back,
I have to leave five minutes ago." She leaned down and kissed my forehead, gave Wyatt's cheek a buzz as she breezed past, and was out the door, tossing "Call my cell if you need me" over her shoulder as she disappeared from view.

"You didn't mention the parking-lot tapes," Wyatt observed. He was still working on deciphering our family dynamics. While he went with the belief that cold, hard reality is the most stable operating platform, Mom and I shared a tendency to go off on tangents so we wouldn't have to think about the bad stuff until we'd processed it and were ready to deal. I'd had all night to process, plus I'd
been
there and knew exactly how much danger I'd been in, so I'd already explored a few tangents and was now solidly squared with the cold hard stuff.

"She knows someone tried to run me over. There's no point in telling her how close the bitch came to actually doing it. She's already stressed, and that would just worry her more." The incident was
over
… except for the getting-well part. There was no way to track her down, so everyone might as well forget and move on. I was; I had to. I had shopping to do! This had already cost me a day, would likely cost me at least a couple more, and I didn't have the time to spare.

Wyatt checked his watch again. His days were incredibly busy, so I knew he'd been pushing to find time to come to the hospital. I reached for his hand. "You need to go, too." Hey, I can
be understanding
.

"Yeah, I do. You have your key to my house with you, right?"

"It's in my purse. Why?"

"So you can get in, if I can't shake free to come pick you up when you're released.
Siana
can drive you, can't she?"

"That isn't a problem, but I'm not going to your house, I'm going home." I saw his brows start to draw together and squeezed his hand. "I know you're feeling protective and I'm not trying to be difficult, honest"—hard as that was to believe—"but all of my paperwork and things are at home. I may not feel like shopping, but I can do some things by phone and computer. I'm not an invalid, this time around, so I don't need someone to stay with me. I also promise not to drive myself anywhere." There. I couldn't be any more reasonable than that, could I?

BOOK: Drop Dead Gorgeous
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