It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life (7 page)

Since she’d already faced the music, so to speak, she might as well get up and face what would likely prove to be a pretty scary reflection in the bathroom mirror. She cracked open an eye—and felt her cotton candy-colored bedroom spinning like a carousel.

Oh, shit
. She closed her eyes and held still, waiting for the sickening dizziness to wind down. Wait a minute, pink? Whatever happened to the sage green she’d painted just before Christmas? She’d heard of cases where alcohol poisoning had brought on blindness but color blindness?

I must be hallucinating, or still dreaming
. She opened her eyes again. Nope, still pink.

Could someone have crept in after she slept—make that passed out—and repainted as some sort of joke? But no, there wasn’t a trace of odor. Just to be sure, she rolled out of bed and stumbled across the room to touch the wall. The old paint was dry as bone—and still pink. How could that be? She glanced over to the corner where the can of paint and new brushes she’d bought sat. One hand to the wall for balance, she squatted down to examine them. The seal on the paint canister was unbroken and the brushes not just clean but untouched. And yet she’d gotten up early on Christmas Day and put on the final coat. What the hell was going on?

The alarm went off again, this time a contemporary tune by the group, Third Eye Blind. She must have hit the snooze button rather than off. One hand pressed to her pounding temple, she staggered over to the night table when the alarm’s electric date display caught her eye. The digital numbers read 12/24/06—only it was January 1, 2007. Piece of shit alarm must be broken, had to be. She’d pick up a new one on her way home from work that night.

Work.
Oh shit, she was on duty today. Fighting nausea, she grabbed her robe and hurried down the hallway to the bathroom, stripped off her sweats, and stumbled into the shower. Forty-five minutes, two Advil and a large Starbucks coffee to-go later, she was driving down Eastern Avenue to the tune of “Jingle Bells,” the roaring in her head muted to a manageable mewling.

Christmas carols on January first. Some people just didn’t know when to put the season to bed. The music ended and the DJ broke to a commercial. “Attention, holiday shoppers, Smith and Company is keeping its stores open until midnight tonight. Yes, that’s right, midnight. Take advantage of this last chance to get those low, low,
low
sale prices before the holiday, and come on down to…”

Holiday shoppers? Mandy slammed on her brakes, narrowly avoiding running the red light, coffee sloshing onto the floor mat.

Okay, visual hallucinations are bad enough but auditory…that definitely signals trouble.

Shaken, she pulled into the precinct, parked and entered the building with five minutes to spare before roll call. Ordinarily working the holiday would have sucked, but given the weirdness she was experiencing, she was glad to have a routine to fall into.

Betty, the widowed receptionist with the dyed black beehive and penciled-on brows, smiled at her as she walked through the door. “Good morning, Mandy. Would you like a cookie? I took them out of the oven right before I came in to work.”

Glancing down at the foil-covered plate on the desk, Mandy knew that a cookie was likely the last thing she needed. On the other hand, she had skipped dinner last night—unless Reese’s Pieces had been added to the Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid. Besides, Betty lived to bake.

“Sure, I’d love one.”

Beaming, Betty whisked off the foil wrap. Mandy reached down to make her selection and then froze. From red-nosed reindeer to red-capped Santa Clauses to button-eyed snowmen, the cookies were all formed in festive holiday shapes,
Christmas
holiday shapes. Had poor Betty gone off her rocker or what?

Hand hovering, Mandy looked up at Betty, searching that sweet smile for signs of early onset dementia or at least extreme stress. “You mean you reheated these, right?”

Betty’s smile folded into a frown. “Do you think I would serve stale cookies to my friends and coworkers? What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“Betty, I didn’t mean—”

“If you don’t believe me, then try one. Go ahead.”

Mandy picked up a snowman and bit off the head. Chewing, she had to admit there was no doubt about it. The cookie was warm and gooey and well, oven fresh.

Tapping a red acrylic nail on the faux wood desktop, Betty demanded, “Well?”

Feeling as if the cookie was sticking in her throat, Mandy swallowed. “It’s delicious, Betty, but then I always say you could enter your sugar cookies in any cooking contest and come home with the blue ribbon.”

Betty nodded, her smile returning. “Roll call’s next door in five minutes. You want one for the road?”

“Thanks, but no. I’m trying to slim down—New Year’s resolution and all that.”

Betty pushed the plate toward her again. “Oh, go ahead, hon. You might as well live it up for the next week. There’ll be plenty of time to diet after the holidays.”

After the holidays,
there it was again.
Oh my God, what’s happening to me?
Had that Danny guy slipped something into her beer last night when she wasn’t looking?

The squad room was filling up with suits when Mandy entered. Boblitz took the roll and then handed out the day’s assignments—all identical to the ones she’d received on Christmas Eve the week before, right down to checking in with the mother of an armed robbery suspect who’d gone missing along with the cash.

The day progressed, the coincidences piling on until she could no longer ignore them or deny the apparent truth. As impossible, okay, crazy, as it sounded, she’d lived this day before. She felt like an actor in a TV drama, knowing the script by heart because she and the other players had blocked out the scenes. Only this was no walk-through. She was living it all firsthand—again.

The finale came at the end of the day. As if responding to a stage manager’s cue, Sergeant Boblitz belted out, “Yo, Delinski, not so fast.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Either I’ve lost my mind, completely flipped out, or it must really be true, it must really be happening
. She’d gone back in time but only a week. It was Christmas Eve,
the
Christmas Eve Joshua Thornton had asked her out for coffee, kissed her and then turned up dead on Christmas Day.

Heart pounding, Mandy turned slowly around.

“Somethin’s come up, special detail at the BMA. I need you there pronto. There was a bomb threat earlier this week, totally bogus but the museum director, who is stuck way up the mayor’s ass, is pissing in his pants to make sure nothing goes wrong tonight.”

Reciting from memory, she said, “But it’s…Christmas Eve. What, uh…could be going on tonight?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, one of those artsy fartsy shindigs, and seeing as the museum is one of the city’s leading cultural attractions, et cetera, et cetera, the department has a vested interest in making sure tonight goes off without a hitch—make that a
boom
. Seeing as you’re so gung-ho on making detective, I know you won’t want to pass up this opportunity to distinguish yourself.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

Mandy raced out of the squad house, jumped into her squad car, and drove to the museum as fast as she dared.

He was just about to give up when his frozen hand came upon the object of his search—a magnum bottle of high-end champagne the caterer had reserved for VIP guests. Well, anybody who’d stuck it out this long for charity rated as a VIP in his book. Bottle in hand, he stood up. “Here you go, sir, ma’am. Merry Christmas and enjoy.”

He splashed bubbly into their glasses, earning the woman’s smile and a generous five-dollar tip from her husband. Once five dollars would have seemed a pittance, but the days when he’d pulled down a six-figure salary were fading to a distant memory. It was all relative, he supposed.

Why was it standing in the same spot for hours on end left him feeling more tired than when he’d crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon? At least working the bar of the crowded Canton pub, his regular gig, kept his hands and mind engaged, but these formal functions were deadly whether you were a guest or the hired help. Time always felt like it was standing still. He looked across the atrium courtyard in search of a wall clock—and found himself staring into a pair of thickly lashed chocolate-brown eyes. The eyes stared back at him from the oval-shaped face of a drop-dead gorgeous redhead with a porcelain perfect complexion and a mouth fashioned for sin. Tall and curvy, she somehow managed to look both sexy and feminine in the buttoned up uniform of a Baltimore City street cop, no small feat. His gaze returned to her mouth, full lips painted a deep, rich red reminiscent of a silver-screen-era starlet, and suddenly images of all the things they might do together to smudge that perfectly applied cosmetic ricocheted through his mind. As if on cue, he felt himself growing heavy and hard.

Easy, Josh. Down, boy, down.

Granted it had been a while, okay, a very long while, since he’d gotten down and dirty—or even down—with a woman, but the depth of his reaction took him by surprise nonetheless. Grateful for the ledge of bar that came above his waist, he willed his breathing to relax, his heartbeats to slow, and his hard-on to soften. He was a Thornton, after all. Thornton men prided themselves on their business acumen, their principles and, above all, their self-control.

But he was also an O’Malley on his mother’s side, and those passionate and unruly Irish genes would not be denied either, not entirely. And so in a very un-Thorntonlike gesture, he filled an empty champagne flute, raised the glass in a toast, and meeting the police woman’s wide-eyed gaze, mouthed the words “Merry Christmas.”

She hesitated and then smiled back, a dazzling smile that showed off straight white teeth and matching dimples flanking either side of her slightly cleft chin. Holding her gaze, he silently willed her to cross the room toward him.

“Tanqueray and tonic.”

He broke eye contact to regard the sixtysomething woman standing before him, a diamond choker clasped about her bony throat and a sense of entitlement oozing from her every patrician pore.

Covering his annoyance at the intrusion, he said, “My apologies, ma’am, but the only gin we’re serving tonight is Beefeater.”

“Beefeater!” From her shocked tone and indignant expression, one would have thought he’d just suggested savagery on par with draining the life’s blood from infants or drowning puppies in the city’s Inner Harbor. “And well you should apologize. Do you have any idea what a sponsor-level membership runs these days?”

Squelching the impulse to ask who might give a damn, he pasted on a stiff smile and reminded himself that he’d dealt with his fair share of difficult clients in the telecommunications industry. These days the consequences of an unhappy customer were pretty insignificant stacked up against multimillion dollar accounts at stake—or his very life.

“Would you still like that gin and tonic—with Beefeater—or would you prefer another beverage?”

She hesitated, nostrils flaring. “I’ll have a white wine.”

“Chardonnay, coming right up.”

He grabbed one of the newly opened bottles of Kendall-Jackson and filled a wine glass to the rim if only to delay her coming back. Looking up to hand her the drink, he froze. All too often dreams died on the vine, but once in a great while wishes still came true.

Standing directly behind that tower of stiffly sprayed gray hair was the redheaded cop. If possible, she was even prettier up close than she’d appeared from across the proverbial crowded room.

Taking a sip of her wine, the older woman wrinkled her nose. She reached a liver-spotted hand into her beaded evening bag, plunked a quarter into his tip jar, and moved on.

Glad to see her go, Josh suddenly found himself face-to-face with the object of his lust—a doe-eyed, full-figured redhead conjured straight out of his most X-rated dreams. “Can I get you something to drink…
officer?
” He was pretty sure he knew what her answer would be, but he couldn’t resist flirting, or at least he didn’t want to. There was something about her, a rare innocence that made for an intriguing combination with all those sexy curves.

She shook her head and blushed as though he’d suggested stripping her naked and having her on top of the bar—a lovely fantasy and like most fantasies, highly impractical—but, oh, so fun to think about. “Can’t…I’m on duty.”

Not yet willing to let her go, he pressed, “Coke, then?”

He had the eerie déjà vu feeling of having asked her that question before, which was crazy since they were meeting for the first time. Shrugging off the been there, done that sensation as an occupational hazard of bartending, he waited for her answer.

Again, that shake of her head, those big brown eyes riveted on his face as though she couldn’t quite believe he was real. “N-no thanks, I’m good. You’re not…you’re not from around here.”

That remark was the equivalent of plunging the semi-erection he’d got going straight into the drink cooler of ice. “What makes you say that?”

She shrugged, which did amazing things to the beautifully shaped breasts molded to her high-buttoned uniform top. “Your accent, it sounds kind of New England.”

Josh relaxed fractionally. It was an innocuous observation for anyone to make, cop or civilian. He must be even more on edge than he’d thought. Paranoia was a fairly normal symptom of cumulative stress, in his case the stress of spending six consecutive months in hiding. And now of course it was Christmas, the absolute worst time of year to be alone, separated from family and friends and…home. Thank God the ordeal was coming to an end in just a little over a week. The trial date was set for January second. The night before, the feds would fly him up to Boston, he’d give his testimony the next morning, and then he’d be home free.

Free. Keeping that beautiful thought foremost in his mind, he found his smile—and his flirt. “Oh, it’s
my
accent, is it?”

All that smiling must have been contagious because she smiled back, revealing a dimple on either side of her sexy, upturned mouth. “If you’re saying I have a
Bawlmer
accent, then I’m guilty as charged. I can’t help it. I grew up in the city.”

He shook his head. The last thing he’d meant to do was offend her or seem to put her down. “I like your accent. It’s distinctive…like you.”

“Thanks,
hon,
” she said with a wink.

He’d been in Baltimore long enough to recognize those truncated vowels, especially the infamous Baltimore
O.
Charmed by her ability to poke fun at herself, he tossed back his head and let loose with a belly laugh that would have done Old St. Nick proud.

Recovering, he held out his hand. “My name’s Josh.”

She hesitated, and then slipped her much smaller hand inside his. “I’m Amanda…Mandy, actually.” She gave his fingers a slight squeeze, and suddenly he found himself bombarded with images of all the other places he’d like to let that soft palm and pretty pink-nailed fingers travel.

“Mandy, hmm?” he repeated even as his semi rocketed to full-out hard-on. “Pretty lady, pretty name.” He glanced down at their joined hands. One of them, maybe both, had forgotten to let go.

A throat clearing saved him from behaving like a complete idiot. Dropping her hand, he looked beyond her and saw that the blue-haired lady with the scary hair had returned. She held up her empty wineglass as if to say, “Fill her up.”

“I guess duty calls,” the cop, Mandy, said, brown eyes sparkling.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He made a show of rolling his eyes, letting her know he didn’t welcome the intrusion anymore than she did. “Hey, I’ve got another hour to go and all the nonalcoholic carbonated beverages you can drink, so don’t be a stranger, okay?” He winked.

Josh spent the rest of the evening pouring chardonnay, champagne and the occasional mixed drink to a steady stream of thirsty patrons. Throughout, he kept one eye on the wall clock and one eye on the pretty lady cop, Mandy, stationed at the door. Mandy. Ever since she’d introduced herself, the Barry Manilow song of the same name had been playing nonstop in his head, only now it struck him as kind of nice rather than goofy.

When eight o’clock rolled around, he made double time in closing down the bar, packing up the stock and storing the used glassware in the plastic crates. He ducked into the men’s room and changed out of his uniform into jeans and his leather jacket. Stepping out, his uniform on a hanger, he spotted Mandy standing at the security check-in area. He came up behind her and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

She whirled, the cell phone he hadn’t seen dropping from her hand to hit the floor as that same hand went to the holster at her hip.

Man, he thought he was tightly strung these days. Taking a step back, he held his arms out from his sides in mock surrender. “Hey, easy you. There’s no need to pull a Dirty Harry on me. I just wanted to say good-night before you snuck out.” He dove for the cell and handed it to her.

She took it and slipped it into the clip at her waist. “I’m not sneaking out, I’m just signing out.” She hesitated. “You’re, uh…done for the night, too, then?”

He rolled his shoulders, thinking how good those small, capable hands of hers might feel on his back, and said, “Yeah, thank God.” He paused, reaching for his nerve. “Any chance I could persuade you into grabbing a drink or a cup of coffee with me…or don’t you fraternize with civilians?”

Actually given his situation, he was the one who shouldn’t be fraternizing. On the other hand, if the mob boys hadn’t found him yet, chances were they wouldn’t. In another week, he’d go back to Boston, testify at his mobster brother-in-law’s trial, and be home free. Almost to the finish line, he felt like celebrating—only not alone. Besides, it was Christmas Eve.

Flushing, she shook her head, and he felt his heart drop along with his hopes for the evening. “I can’t drink in uniform, but uh…coffee sounds good. Only it’s Christmas Eve. There won’t be much open at this hour.”

God, she was pretty. She smelled good, too, some light floral fragrance underlying a spicier scent that had his head spinning—and his mouth opening to blurt out, “In that case, I should probably mention I make great coffee.”

Jesus, had he really just asked a complete stranger to go home with him? What the hell had gotten into him? He liked women, okay he liked them a lot, and though he’d logged in his share of sexual exploration, he’d never been a one-night stand kind of guy. Getting to know a woman first wasn’t only the health-conscious thing to do, but it also built the anticipation to make the inevitable conclusion all the more satisfying.

But there was something about this night and this woman that was different from any other encounter, borderline magical. He wasn’t acting like himself, not at all, and as much as he wanted to blame it on Christmas and being lonely, he knew that wasn’t the explanation, not really. Truth was he’d never been this red-hot, this on fire for a woman, and he was badly in danger of losing his head.

If he’d shocked her, she hid it well. She took a small step back but didn’t bolt. “Actually, I know of this great locals’ place, The Daily Grind. It may still be open.”

Amazed she wasn’t turning him down flat after the way he’d behaved—make that,
misbehaved
—he hid his relief behind a smile. “In that case, officer, lead the way.”