by Elise Sax
It Happened
One Fright
book eight of the matchmaker mysteries series
elise sax
It Happened One Fright (Matchmaker Mysteries – Book 8) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Elise Sax
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1981216673
Published in the United States by Elise Sax
Cover design: Elizabeth Mackey
Edited by: Novel Needs
Formatted by: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman
Printed in the United States of America
elisesax.com
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This one if for my mother, again. I miss her so much.
Also by Elise Sax
Five Wishes Series
Going Down
Man Candy
Hot Wired
Just Sacked
Wicked Ride
Five Wishes Series
Three More Wishes Series
Blown Away
Inn & Out
Quick Bang
Three More Wishes Series
Matchmaker Mysteries Series
An Affair to Dismember
Citizen Pain
The Wizards of Saws
Field of Screams
From Fear to Eternity
West Side Gory
Scareplane
It Happened One Fright
The Big Kill
Operation Billionaire
How to Marry a Billionaire
How to Marry Another Billionaire
Forever Series
Forever Now
Bounty
Switched
Moving Violations
Also by Elise Sax
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
Also by Elise Sax
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Life isn’t fair, bubbeleh. At least that’s what my mother always used to tell me. She also said that a dead rat under your bed meant that you were going to come into money. So, I learned to take or leave her advice. Yes, she had the gift, just like you and I. But just because you have a powerful third eye doesn’t mean you can make heads or tails of it. You can’t imagine the fakakta matches she made, dolly. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yes. Life isn’t fair. It’s my belief that we think life isn’t fair because it’s full of the unexpected. Why is this happening to me? That’s what we ask. This isn’t what I had planned. That’s what we say. We don’t expect ninety-percent of what happens to us in life. There are surprises every day. So, tell your matches to turn their backs on life-isn’t-fair and embrace the unexpected. Like a neighbor who drops by for a cup of coffee, let the unexpected in with a smile.
Lesson 121, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Spencer and I were a thing. We were practically living together. I had used his toothbrush on more than one occasion. So, I would have expected to become immune to his charms by now. At least, I should have stopped ogling him.
But here I was in the passenger seat of Spencer’s car, studying his profile in the dark as he drove us off to our mystery location for our first vacation together. His nose was straight, and he had a strong jaw. I could just make out his long, black eyelashes as he blinked against the lights of the oncoming traffic. He was wearing a white, cotton button-down shirt and jeans.
I reached out and touched him. My fingers lightly traced the muscles on his upper arm, and then they traveled lower until they reached his lap.
“Pinky, I’m just a mortal man. If you keep it up, I’m going to crash this car.”
I pulled my hand back.
“How much longer until we get there?” I asked. We had been driving for two hours, going up further into the mountains. We must have been about one hundred miles northeast of Cannes, California, where we lived.
“Not long, now. You don’t want to spoil the surprise, do you?”
Since I had known Spencer, surprises usually came in the form of murdered, dead people. I hated surprises. I wanted to live a life without them. Like Mr. Rogers’ life with two pairs of shoes and a sweater for the afternoons. That kind of life. Nice and easy.
Serene.
Also, since Spencer had made such a big deal out of the surprise vacation, I had thought there was a sixty-to-seventy-five percent chance that we were going to Paris. In hindsight, I would have needed to get a passport for that, but the dream of eating French toast, French bread, and French fries on the Eiffel Tower, with Spencer maybe or maybe not wearing a beret, hadn’t left me until we got in his car and drove east, in the opposite direction of the San Diego airport and flights to France.
The drive at night on the dark, mountain roads with Spencer hot and sexy next to me was already better than French bread, though. Riding off toward the romantic unknown was having a strong effect on me, like butterfly kisses on my erogenous zones.
“How much longer?” I repeated.
“Here we are,” he said, pointing at a wooden sign on the side of the road, which was lit in light green.
“Love is a Splendored Thing Inn,” I read. “For Lovers Who Crave Luxury.”
“That’s us, Pinky. Lovers who crave luxury.”
I had never had luxury before, and I wasn’t sure I was craving it. But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t snub my nose at it.
“What’re we going to do here?” I asked and then a wave of red hot heat rushed through my body from my toes to my head. “I mean…” I started but let my voice trail off. It was pretty obvious what we were going to do at the inn, and I was glad I had gotten a bikini wax the day before. As we drove up the long, picturesque driveway, the inn came into view. It was large and white and very romantic. It was clear that this wasn’t a sightseeing trip. This was a strawberries and champagne in a Jacuzzi bathtub trip.
Spencer put his hand between my thighs and gave my leg a gentle squeeze, which turned my insides into molten lava. “Oh,” I breathed.
“This is going to be good,” he promised. I believed him. Because Spencer was a terrible liar.
He parked in front of the inn and took our suitcases out of the trunk. I was only vaguely aware of the inn’s décor, or even what the night manager said to us when we checked in. Instead, my brain was focused on the swirling cloud of hormones that had taken over my body. It focused on Spencer’s hand on the small of my back. It focused on the way Spencer filled out his shirt and his jeans. And it focused on the way he stole glances at me, his eyes dark and full of desire.
Holy cow.
It was day one of our vacation. We had a full week away from home, away from work. It would be the first time in my adult life that I had a week where I could relax and not worry about money or what I wasn’t doing. And I had a man who was in love with me and who wanted to ravish me in the lobby.
That was obvious.
“I got us a suite,” he told me as we left the elevator on the top floor of the inn. “with a Jacuzzi tub and a shower that you need a Ph.D to work.”
“It sounds like you’ve been
here before. Like this is your go to place for seducing women.”
Spencer had been a ladies man before he finally settled down with me. He had gone through more models than the Ford Modeling Agency. I had seen him with scads of skinny bitches with perfect bone structure, and I didn’t want to be a number at his favorite love nest. The fear of being one of many cooled my hormones, and suddenly I wanted to go home and watch Golden Girls reruns on TV while I ate chips in bed.
Spencer turned toward me and put his finger under my chin, tilting my head up. “Pinky, I’ve never been here before. But I did my research. I wanted to take you to the perfect place for a perfect time together.”
He didn’t blink. He fixed his eyes on mine, communicating his truth to me. And again, I believed him.
Holy moly.
A door opened down the hall, and a young woman in a long t-shirt and panties hopped out, holding an ice bucket. “Excuse me. Just getting some ice.” She giggled and skipped past us.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones here for a perfect time,” Spencer whispered in my ear. His breath was hot on my skin, but it made me shiver. He opened the door, and I walked in.
It was a beautiful room, with handwoven rugs on the wood floor, and a fire roaring in the fireplace. A king-sized bed was topped with rose petals, and champagne was chilling in an ice bucket next to two crystal glasses on a small table.
“It’s perfect,” I said, and Spencer scooped me up into his arms, as if I weighed nothing. “Are you taking me to the bed?” I asked. “I bet it’s memory foam. I’ve always wanted to lie down on memory foam.”
“I’m taking you to the shower.”
“Why? Do I stink?”
It was a possibility. I was between perfumes. I just couldn’t find one that I really liked at this point of my life, which included a secure job and committed relationship. As far as I knew, Chanel never created a scent for that.
“You smell wonderful, Pinky,” Spencer told me, his voice deep and gravelly. “But prepare yourself because we’re about to get very, very dirty.”
He used my legs to open the bathroom door and flip on the lights.
“Dirty?” I breathed.
Spencer nodded. “Very, very dirty.”
He put me down. My knees buckled, and he pulled me against him so I wouldn’t fall. There was the familiar zing between us. Chemistry. If we could bottle it, we could make millions, selling it to despotic leaders who wanted to wage chemical war on the world.
My ears buzzed with arousal. Ditto my pores, which had sprouted goosebumps. If I tried to speak, I would have swallowed my tongue.
So, I didn’t try to speak because I didn’t want to swallow my tongue.
And I was going to need my tongue for other things.
“Are you okay?” Spencer asked me, slipping his hand under my shirt. He cupped my breast, and lightly caressed my nipple with his thumb.
“I might be having a stroke.” My head flopped back, and my hands slapped Spencer’s butt, clutching onto his firm butt cheeks like I was squeezing fresh orange juice.
He kissed my neck. “What are the symptoms?” he asked between kisses.
“There’s throbbing.”
“Mmm… Throbbing is good.”
His hand traveled down my front until it was at just the right spot. “And quivering,” I added.
“I like quivering.”
In a swift bit of magic, Spencer transformed my lower half into complete nakedness, all the while maintaining contact with my special spot. “And heaving.” I heaved. “Not throwing up heaving. The good kind of heaving.”
“Like romance novel heaving,” he said.
“What do you know about romance novels?” I asked. “You’re way too macho to know anything about romance novels.”
“Don’t you know, Pinky, I am a romance novel.”
And just like that, the rest of me was naked, and so was Spencer. Our clothes were pooled at our feet, a mound of fabric on the marble floor.
Spencer had been right about the shower. It was like something out of a science fiction movie with enough heads and nozzles and touch screen control panels to make a porn film starring Esther Williams. Not that she would do that. She was a nice lady who wouldn’t have had anything to do with heads and nozzles that shot in every direction. She wasn’t that kind of person. But I was totally that kind of person.
Totally.
Spencer adjusted the shower’s controls to the honeymoon setting, and we got in. Whoa, mama. It wasn’t a shower. It was an experience. It was also a really good excuse to get down and dirty, just like Spencer had promised. His hands were everywhere, and so was his penis.
“Pinky, I’m so in love with you,” he told me earnestly as he gazed into my eyes and rubbed up against my belly with his rigid manhood.
Spencer was really good at seduction.
All my fears of our vacation evaporated with Spencer’s expert foreplay. Gone was the anxiety that Spencer would propose to me and that I wouldn’t know how to react. Gone was my phobia of all things commitment, and tulle-covered wedding dresses. Banished was my concern that I hadn’t packed correctly for a luxury vacation.
Now, my only thoughts were oh and ah and yum. I was in that space between consciousness and orgasm. Our hands raced to give each other pleasure, and Spencer positioned me to take me against the marble wall of the space age shower.
I was so ready.
I wanted him so much.
More than I wanted mint chocolate chip ice cream. And I wanted that real bad.
Spencer lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around him. “Nothing will stop me from making love to you, my beautiful Pinky. We’re made to be one. There’s nothing in this world besides you and me.”
“Oh, yes,” I breathed and pressed my lips against his.
That’s when we heard the noise. It came from the other room. Spencer turned his head, breaking our kiss. “Did you hear that?”
“No,” I lied. “Don’t stop touching me. I’m so close.”
He kissed me again, but stopped a moment later when there was another noise.
A scream.
Spencer put me down and shook his index finger in my face. “You stay here,” he growled, his authoritarian voice on full strength.
“You’re not going out there, are you?”
“I’m a cop, Pinky.”
And that said it all. He walked out of the shower, his body tensed, like he was prepared for any emergency. There had been one scream and one boom and that was it. But it had definitely come from our hotel room. Spencer put his hand on the door knob and turned. I squeezed the water out of my curly hair and walked out of the shower.
“No, Gladys,” Spencer growled. “Stay here.”
“Okay,” I lied. “And don’t call me Gladys.”
The romance had left the room. The cloud of hormones had dissipated, and now I was just wet. And not in a good way.
“I mean it, Pinky. You stay here.”
“I said, okay.”
He opened the door and stepped into the room. I followed him.
Ever since my father died when I was a little girl, I had been squeamish. I couldn’t even think of blood without passing out or at least getting woozy. But ever since I had moved to Cannes to help my grandmother with her matchmaking business, I had had more than my share of encounters with dead, murdered people. I had even touched a couple of them.
The experiences had definitely hardened me, and I had acquired a tolerance for a certain amount of gore and the harshness of life. But nothing prepared me for the sight I saw in our luxury, king-sized bed with a hand-crafted quilt and memory foam mattress.
In fact, I didn’t register much before I lost consciousness. The only thing I knew was that there was a murdered woman lying on my side of the bed, and she was dead. Obviously dead. And obviously murdered in a horrible way. It was the young woman who had skipped down the hall in search of ice, and now she had been brutally murdered in the perfect bed of my perfect vacation
with my perfect man.
“Dead. Bed. Woman. Ice. Dead.” I moaned.
With that, I passed out. Cold.
CHAPTER 2
Warts aren’t so bad. Even on a nose…not so bad, bubbeleh. I’ve been in the business for a lot of years, and I’ve heard a lot of complaining. “He wore pleated pants.” “She parted her hair in the middle.” “He had a space between his two front teeth.” Give me a break. What do any of these things have to do with love? Bupkis, dolly. Bupkis. The same thing with warts and pimples and all the little things that matches focus on except for what counts. As a matchmaker, you have to explain to them what counts, dolly. And that’s love. Love’s what counts.
Lesson 74, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
I didn’t dream. I didn’t struggle to wake up. Instead, I regained consciousness like I was waking from a relaxing nap.
“There you are,” Spencer said, an obvious look of relief on his face. He was naked from his waist up, with his lower half wrapped in a towel. Still wet, his hair dripped water onto my cheek. I wiped it off.
“Looks like she’s been stabbed a good forty times,” I heard a man say in the room.
“Who’s here?” I touched my body, panicked that I was lying naked on the floor while other men were in the room, but Spencer had covered me with a couple of towels.
“Emergency services. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, even though I had fainted.
“Let me help you up.”
I clutched onto Spencer’s arms. “Don’t let me see. Don’t let me see.”
He understood what I was talking about. “I’m going to walk you back into the bathroom. You won’t see a thing.”
Carefully, he wrapped me in the towels as I got up so that nobody would see me naked. I averted my gaze from the bed, but I could tell that the room was filled with law enforcement, and a group of people surrounded the bed, studying the scene of the crime.
I walked into the bathroom, and Spencer closed the door behind me, while he stayed on the other side of the room. I assumed that he had to talk to law enforcement and explain to them why a murdered woman was in our bed.
