Drop Dead Gorgeous (38 page)
Forester glanced toward the door, and in it appeared one of the female detectives, her eyes big with excitement—and focused on me.
"Ms. Mallory," she gushed, her voice loud enough to attract the attention of everyone on the floor. "I'm so excited to meet you! Would you autograph this for me, please? I want to post it in the women's locker room." She handed over a sheet of paper with ragged edges, while a crowd gathered behind her, peering into the off
ice.I
could almost feel the accumulation of glee.
Automatically I took the sheet of paper and looked down at it, recognizing it immediately. It was one of the notes I'd written while I was locked in
DeMarius
In a flash I remembered
DeMarius
leafing through the notes and grinning, and Forester doing the same. One of them must have filched this particular note, instead of dropping it in my tote with the others.
"Let's see that," Wyatt said with resignation, recognizing a setup when he saw one.
Very helpfully, Forester plucked the note from my hand and placed it on Wyatt's desk, while everyone gathered outside the door burst into raucous laughter.
In very big block letters, which I had gone over several times to make them darker, was what I had meant to be the coup de grace on all the asshole men who hadn't let me out of that stinky squad car:
SIZE MATTERS
Chapter Twenty-eight
"Size matters, huh?" Wyatt growled, grabbing me around the waist when he entered the house not five minutes behind me late that afternoon. I'd escaped his office amid the howls of laughter and made a beeline for the third fabric store, where—
tah-dah
—I'd found my fabric. I'd been so happy and relieved I hadn't even questioned the price, which had been steep, but then you don't get quality fabric for a dollar ninety-nine a yard. My booty now rested safely in the trunk of my rental, and I was taking it to Sally's house in the morning. She intended to work on the dress all weekend.
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 pre-made 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.
"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 tax payers, 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