I scrambled over the center console and sprawled against the passenger seat and door. Cursing my decision to wear a pencil skirt, I flailed to right myself. I popped the door open. The car was rolling, but at a snail’s pace.
“Hey,” Atlas said, dipping his head to look into the car. “What are you doing?” He reached for my arm. I grabbed the Tupperware and bashed his knuckles.
“Ow! What’d you do that for?”
I stumbled out of the car and sprinted down the line of traffic backed up behind the broken-down Tercel.
“Eva! Stop!”
I glanced back through a curtain of red hair. Edmond had stopped pushing and gawked at me, dough oozing through his fingers. Atlas stood beside him, angel wings spread wide, but Edmond had his hand on his arm. The bigger man gestured at the traffic, the car, and then at me. I turned back around before I saw their decision.
“Hey, lady, are you okay?” someone shouted from the line of cars.
I didn’t stop. I was not okay. I was stranded in the middle of downtown LA—not the safest place for a woman to be handcuffed—and I was carrying a Tupperware of cupcakes. I hadn’t planned on bringing them with me. I simply forgot to let them go after hitting Atlas.
I cut through traffic to the other side of the road and sprinted to a taxi idling at the curb. I bent down to look in the driver’s window.
“You available?” I asked.
He looked me up and down, gaze snagging on the cuffs. “Sure.”
I popped open the back door, tossed the Tupperware inside, and scrambled in after it. I glanced through the rear window. I didn’t see Atlas or Edmond following.
“Where to?”
I gave him my address. “But take Doheny to Burton to West Fourth.”
The car eased from the curb. “You got the cash for that? I mean, if you don’t, I’ll take you a couple of blocks for free, but I can’t afford to take you that far for nothing.”
“I’ve got the cash.” I didn’t turn around in the seat until we made a right and the Tercel, Edmond, and Atlas were out of sight. Then I fought with my adrenaline, striving for tranquility. I closed my eyes for thirty seconds, counting off the time, holding my breath for five-second intervals to slow my heart and control my breathing while my body screamed for me to run. I needed to find calm if this car was going to last longer than a few blocks.
Opening my eyes, I stared down at my cuffed wrists. A tide of helplessness rose to overwhelm me, and I closed my eyes again. I should have headed to the nearest police station. I could report Atlas and Edmond, and the cops could pick them up before the tow truck arrived. But if I did that, I risked the police finding out about Kyoko—and then the world finding out about me.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on straightening my wardrobe. Hudson had gotten me out of handcuffs before; he could do it again. I settled my bag onto my lap and checked its contents, keeping an eye on our location because I didn’t completely trust the taxi driver to take me home and not straight to the police. If I were a taxi driver and someone handcuffed and running down the middle of the street hopped in my car, the police would be my first stop.
I met the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. He was bald and tanned. His ID card said his name was Pawel Ostrowski. His accent had already identified him as a native Californian.
“You want me to call the police?” he asked.
“No. Ah, no.” I scrambled for a story to clear his suspicions. “It’s, well, it’s a game.” I looked down at my hands and then back up at the driver through my lashes. “My husband and I like to keep things interesting.”
A marionette manifested on the center of the dash. Its wooden head swiveled backward to face me, squared-off mouth dropping open a little. It could have been a puppet version of a smile or of shock. Either way, it gave me the creeps. The marionette wore blue overalls and a black shirt, and it had a little cap on its wooden head. I shuddered and tugged the Tupperware back onto my lap.
Pawel nodded sagely. “My ex and I tried all kinds of things to spice it up: feathers, leather, pies, even video. But then she said she wanted to be a man. I thought she wanted to be the man in the relationship. You know, on top, in control. Nope. She wanted a dick. What was I supposed to do with a second dick?”
If ever I’d heard a question I wasn’t going to answer, that was it. Plus, pies?
“Maybe if I’d tried your game. We had the cuffs. Not the real ones like you’ve got. We had ones with leopard print, but you could jerk and get free of those. Are you under arrest? Is he going to rescue you?”
“It’s, um, private.”
“Yeah. I get it. Seems dangerous, though. Unless that was your husband back there.”
“That was a misunderstanding.”
He merged into traffic on Burton Way. The marionette stood and pantomimed a rendition of my recent escape, only it made the whole escapade look dirty.
“Is that why we’re going such a convoluted route?”
“It seems safest this way.”
“Look, I know it’s none of my business, but you’re a beautiful woman. If your man needs complicated games like this, maybe he doesn’t appreciate you.” He pulled up in front of my building, double-parking next to the row of parallel-parked cars. He twisted in his seat to face me. “LA’s a dangerous place. A lot of people see a pretty woman helpless in handcuffs, and they’re not going to think right, you know?” He held out a business card. Behind him, the marionette cloned itself into an army, and they all flexed cylindrical wooden arms. “You think you’re going to ‘play’ this game again, you call Pawel, okay?”
I took the card. “Thank you.”
“You sure you’re okay to get out here?” The marionettes snapped their jaws at me.
Pawel seemed like a genuinely good guy, but his divinations made my skin crawl.
“Perfectly. There’s my husband.”
I pointed with my chin to Hudson, who had been leaning against the front of my building and had started our way when he saw me in the cab.
“He’s got the money,” I said. I stumbled out of the back of the taxi with the Tupperware, feeling loose-limbed without adrenaline. Hudson’s smile turned to a scowl when he saw the silver on my wrists. The puffy cloud glowing behind his torso morphed into a great white shark tattooed with bizarre ghosts.
“No questions,” I said softly. “Greet me like you’ve missed me, then act possessive and pay the driver. I’ll pay you back.” Pawel may have been nice, but I didn’t need some marionette creep hanging around my apartment, thinking he’d either rescue me or find me in handcuffs again.
“Did he do this to you?” Hudson touched my wrists while leaning in to kiss my forehead.
“No. And you’re my husband.”
“Shouldn’t I be concerned about the cuffs?”
“They were your idea.”
His eyebrows rose; then he grinned, grabbed my shoulders, and yanked me to him. His lips came down on mine with possessive ferocity, and his tongue teased liquid fire across my lips before sweeping into my mouth. He shifted his grip to the back of my head, his fingers tangling in the hair at my nape, and his other arm circled me, pressing me as close to him as the Tupperware would allow.
I moaned into his open mouth, my body heating from tepid to boiling in seconds. He pulled back, and I followed, teasing his bottom lip with my tongue. I shifted to get my hands on him, only to be brought back to reality when the cuffs cut into yesterday’s bruises.
Hudson eased a few inches between us.
“Something like that?” he whispered, out of breath. His eyes were dark, shuttered by thick lashes.
I licked my bottom lip and nodded. “Yeah. Perfect.”
Cocky grin in place, Hudson sauntered over to pay the driver. I watched his ass until he rounded the car, then forced myself to turn toward the building. I needed a moment to recover. That kiss had been everything the chemistry between us had promised. It also had been scripted instead of spontaneous. I took a few deep breaths
and tried to ignore the tingling in my lips.
“Are you okay?” Hudson asked, returning to take my arm. He wasn’t talking about the way his kiss affected me. The shark had shrunk to catfish size and swam lazily through his body. A foot-tall marble angel balanced on his shoulder. Puffs of insubstantial dandelions escaped from his hair. The shark was fear, but the other apparitions remained a mystery. “What happened?”
“A little gift from Jenny.”
“She cuffed you again?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did she give you the cupcakes?” Hudson asked, peering through the clear side of the Tupperware.
“Not exactly.”
“Work with me.”
“Cuffs first. Do you still have your picklock toolkit?”
“You’re in luck. You know, maybe you should get a set to carry with you.”
“Ha-ha. Funny.”
We sat at the curb, shielded between the bumper of two cars, and Hudson picked both cuff locks. I rubbed the dark bruise on my right wrist and stretched my arms.
“I’m getting pretty good at freeing you from those things. I guess practice makes perfect.”
I grimaced. “Come on, we’re going to Ari’s for dinner. She’s been tracking down info on Jenny.”
Hudson helped me to my feet. While we walked to Ari’s, I filled him in on my recent adventure of being not kidnapped and the limited information Atlas and Edmond had given me.
“None of this makes sense,” I said. “Why does Jenny have Kyoko? Who ‘deployed’ the skip tracer that Jenny’s so afraid of? And if Jenny’s got cousins helping her, why didn’t she leave Kyoko with them?” Okay, the last question I could answer myself, having firsthand experience with the cousins.
A flash of emptiness opened beneath Hudson’s feet, like a giant hole had swallowed the sidewalk. I tripped and grabbed for his arm before my brain processed the drop-off as a vision. Hudson steadied me with his free hand, holding the Tupperware in the other. The abyss disappeared and the silver top hat appeared.
“Do you want to go to the police?” Hudson asked.
“No,” I answered too quickly. Hudson cocked an eyebrow at me, the top hat growing by two feet. “I don’t want to get my aunt in trouble, or you. Plus, I don’t trust those guys or Jenny. They could be making up this scary retrievalist. I’m not going to trust anyone who handcuffs me.”
“A sound policy.”
“We can’t tell Ari about my kidnapping, okay? She’ll get all mother hen on me, and I don’t need that.”
“Mother hen?”
“It’s not pretty. Promise not to tell?”
Hudson shrugged. “I promise.”
“Oh, and Ari thinks you want to be my boyfriend, so you’re warned.”
“What gave her that idea?”
“You did when you pretended to be one and got yourself involved in this mess.”
“Oh. That.” He didn’t look at me, but a smile curved his lips. Baby sharks still circled his midriff, but the hat disappeared and the cloud came back. I didn’t warn him again. He looked confident and a trace smug, but my money was on Ari. If she was in full matchmaker mode, Hudson would be lucky to escape tonight’s dinner without proposing to me and thinking it was his idea.
* * *
It didn’t surprise me to hear Antonio’s voice as we approached the front door. Ari lived with her brother in his Spanish-style three-bedroom bungalow. On a Friday night, Antonio would normally have been out, so Ari must have told him about Hudson. Antonio would see it as his duty to evaluate Hudson, and he was too protective of Ari—and me—to leave us alone in the house with a strange man.
I knocked, then let myself in with my key. As a contractor, Antonio was a genius, having renovated and repaired everything in his house from the foundation to the roof. He’d also redone all the wiring and piping in my loft so everything ran off gas instead of electricity, including the lighting. But he had no eye for interior design. He’d left those details to his sister. Ari liked bold colors, lots of plants, and comfortable furniture. Her house felt like home—to me and virtually every other person who stepped past the threshold. It was feng shuied to perfection, too, if I did say so myself.
I dropped my bag into a chair and rubbed the kinks in my shoulders. Getting manhandled into a car and being handcuffed twice in two days had wreaked havoc on my shoulder muscles.
A series of trills followed by a long meow announced Chatter, Ari’s cat. She trotted up to sniff our feet, talking the whole way, long tail straight up. Though she hadn’t met the breed’s specifications, Chatter looked Bengal to me, with a marble coat that was a mixture of tan, black, and gold. Chatter thought she was divinity itself bestowed upon us for worship.
She closed her eyes in bliss when I scratched her neck.
“Hudson, this is Chatter. Chatter, Hudson.”
Chatter twined through my legs, then stood up against Hudson’s thigh and tested her claws in his jeans.
“Ow.” She sniffed his fingers, then accepted a rub under her chin. Seconds later, Chatter’s deep purr resonated in the front room.
“You’ve just made a friend for life,” Ari said, whisking into the room from the kitchen. Antonio propped himself against the door frame behind her and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Italian, with brown eyes, thick black hair, a square jaw, and justified confidence, Antonio delivered a powerful blast to any heterosexual woman’s libido, and it was only a slight mark against him that he knew it.
At one point in time, we’d given dating a trial run. We’d flirted since high school; we’d been friends longer. Marrying him would have made me an official member of my adopted family. Ari would have died of happiness. It should have been perfect, but our hearts weren’t compatible. Our breakup had been remarkably civilized, and our friendship had evolved to include the occasional benefit.
Neither of us were possessive, so Antonio’s tough-guy posturing while he watched Hudson made me roll my eyes.
“I’m Ari.” Ari shook Hudson’s hand while Chatter head-butted her leg. “This is my brother, Antonio.”
Hudson shook hands with Antonio, and Ari and I shared a laughing glance at the seriousness between the two men.
“Do you pretend to be the boyfriend of every beautiful woman you meet?” Antonio asked.
“Only the redheads,” I said, answering for Hudson and giving Antonio a firm look. “What’s for dinner?”
“Lasagna,” Ari said. “How’d the consultation go?”
“Not bad. I’ve never seen so many guns in one place before.”
“What?” Hudson asked.
“This is why you need a chaperone,” Antonio said. It was an old argument. Antonio lived firmly in the women-should-be-treated-like-fragile-flowers camp. He believed women should be independent, but only so long as he could keep them cocooned in bubble wrap, and he didn’t see a conflict between the two beliefs, either. His forceful coddling was one of the many reasons we hadn’t lasted as a couple.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Hudson asked. “I could have gone with you.”
“Don’t you start,” I warned.
“The man’s got a point,” Antonio said. He looked at Hudson with approval. I groaned.
“I’m not listening to either of you. It’s been a long day. I don’t want to argue.” I pushed past Antonio into the kitchen. Ari followed, with Chatter on her heels. The cat sat beside the fridge and batted the handle.
“Let me get Auntie Eva something first,” Ari told Chatter. “Then I’ll get you some food.”
Ari opened the microwave and pulled out a single piece of coffee cake on a napkin. My eyes latched on to the treat. “Homemade?”
“Would I give you anything less?”
I snatched the cake from her hand and broke off a piece. Warm brown sugar and cinnamon melted on my tongue. I relaxed my hips against the counter and closed my eyes to savor the delicious flavors. Taking another bite without opening my eyes, I could feel the day’s stresses floa
ting away on a sugar haze.
I opened my eyes when I realized the kitchen was silent. Hudson eyed me like I was a piece of coffee cake, Antonio watched me with fond amusement, and Ari watched Hudson, a smirk on her face.
“Coffee cake turns her into putty,” she said. Hudson started and glanced at Ari. She winked at him. “That’s a secret a lot don’t know. You’re welcome.”
Hudson and I both blushed and avoided eye contact while I finished the last bite and carried my napkin to the trash. Memory of the hot kiss Hudson and I hadn’t discussed set my lips tingling again.
I checked the microwave. It was empty.
“No more until after dinner, Eva.” A red hen perched on Ari’s shoulder. It had been only a matter of time. She was in the kitchen, at home, with family who allowed her to boss them around. The hen always appeared at times like this. Ari was content. And about to get nosy.
“I’ll set the table,” I volunteered. “Are we eating outside?”
“Yep,” Antonio said. He grabbed plates and place mats and I selected flatware and napkins, and we both retreated to the outdoor patio.
“Hudson, could you help me with the salad?” Ari asked, effectively culling him from the herd.
Located in the back right of the house, the small outdoor patio spanned most of Ari and Antonio’s love and marriage and fame sections. A one-car garage filled out their wealth section. Because their house was long and narrow, some of the back three baguas spilled over into the house, but most of the feng shui for those sections had been done outside. Which is why Ari and I had selected warm earth-toned flagstones, pink and red flowering vines to climb the stucco walls, and a variety of healthy plants to line the patio. A long pergola covered a wooden table large enough to seat six. To the side, a grouping of cushy chairs circled a movable fire pit. Looking at the area as a whole, it was no surprise Ari had a reputation as a great host and better friend, and Antonio was well liked and trusted as a contractor.
I was twitchy to rework their relationship area, but after Ari had a bad breakup a few months earlier, she had forbidden me from taking more than minimal action. She needed time to recover and had little interest in using feng shui to attract another man into her life. Antonio had been happy with the mosaic of dancing women I’d found to adorn the large gap where Ari had torn up a pear tree. He’d had no problem finding fun, unattached women to share his bed, and Ari’s female relationships flourished.
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 12
