“R-ridiculousness?” she stammered.
Ignoring her protests, Cole signaled his secretary who announced the next item on the meeting agenda.
A discussion about the future of Espresso’s aging building ensued. Meanwhile, Lola stood frozen, dazed from the callousness of her so-called loved ones. They’d actually pulled the plug on her career, she thought. A career that had already been on life support.
The New York City–based talent agency Lola had hired to field offers outside of Espresso hadn’t taken her calls since the amateur videos of the airplane incident became social-media fodder. Not that they had presented her with a job she’d actually consider.
Lola wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there when the sound of Cole calling her name yanked her out of her own head.
“Well, are you going to just pose like a mannequin, or help us strategize next year’s ad campaigns for your replacement?” he asked.
She blinked. After leading their family’s underhanded coup, her brother had the unmitigated gall to expect her help. There was no way in hell she’d take him up on his offer. She opened her mouth to tell him so.
Don’t be hasty.
A warning from her inner voice, the same one that tried so hard to keep her impulsiveness and tendency to say exactly what was on her mind from getting her into trouble, made Lola hesitate.
You may not like it, but it’s the best offer you’ve had in months.
Lola recalled the proposed gigs the talent agency had called with, and cringed. But how could she even consider her family’s offer after the way they’d all treated her this morning, not to mention the humiliation of being replaced by a drag queen?
Swallow your pride and take the job!
“We’re all eager to hear your thoughts,” her sister said encouragingly.
Gulping, Lola tried to swallow the lump of indignation stuck in her throat. “I—I...” she began.
It just wouldn’t go down.
“Well?” Cole asked. “Surely, as Espresso’s former model you have something useful to say.”
Glaring at her brother, Lola silently told her inner voice to take a hike, along with any notions of kowtowing to the very people who had just given her the boot. “All I have to tell y’all is where to shove the idea of me helping you screw me over.”
“Lola—” her brother began, but this time she was the one to interrupt.
“I’ll give you a hint.” She looked pointedly at the chairs under their behinds. “You’re sitting on it.”
Without stopping to think about her actions or the consequences of them, she hefted her pink leather tote off the table and walked toward the open conference room door. Lola paused in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder.
“Firing me was a huge mistake,” she said. “I’ll try to remember we’re family when you all come crawling for me to save this company and your asses.”
Pulling the sunglasses perched on her head down to cover her eyes, Lola strutted down the hallway toward the bank of elevators, reveling in the stupefied expressions on their faces.
She jabbed the down button and flipped her hair over her shoulder, noting the frayed ends. Espresso wasn’t the only cosmetic company in the world, she told herself. Once word got out she was available, there would be plenty of offers from rival brands.
“Wait!” A male voice rang out as she boarded the elevator.
Humph. It didn’t take them long to realize they’d screwed up in letting her go. Lola pressed her lips together to stifle a grin. Triumphant, she spun around, only to see not a member of her family, but one of the building’s maintenance crew carrying a ladder.
“Thanks for holding the elevator, Miss Gray.”
Remembering the employee was a newlywed, Lola inquired about his wife on the ride down to the lobby. Making small talk kept her mind off the fact that the sense of satisfaction she’d gleaned from her parting shot at her family had diminished. So had her confidence she’d ever be offered another job as good as the one she’d just lost.
In reality, with the exception of some runway work during New York and European Fashion Weeks, there was only one segment of the market vying for her face. At her age, a very unappealing market.
The elevator pinged.
“See you around, Miss Gray,” the coverall-clad worker said.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Lola walked in the direction of the building’s exit with her head held high, as her insides began to cave over the morning’s events.
She stopped short when she spotted through the lobby windows a man she’d recognized. He was standing in front of the parking garage across the street. The slimeball was a cameraman for the reality show Celebrity Pranks, and he appeared to be in deep conversation with a guy dressed in a clown costume.
Lola bit back a curse. That stupid show had been out to trip her up since the airplane incident. She’d first seen the cameraman lurking outside a boutique in Atlanta three days ago, only that time his partner had been dressed in a gorilla costume. Fortunately, another shopper had come in and mentioned a Celebrity Pranks SUV parked around the corner.
It would serve them right if she marched across the street, snatched the big red nose off that clown and stuck it...
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Lola muttered, this time allowing the voice of common sense to overrule her impulse.
Unemployed or not, the last thing she needed was to be caught on video getting in that clown’s painted face. The footage would fuel the reality show’s ratings better than any stupid prank they had up their sleeve to make a fool out of her.
Lola continued to watch them through the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows, debating whether to have Espresso’s building security escort her to her car in the parking garage. Maybe she should just tuck her hair under the baseball cap in her bag and try to slip past them unnoticed.
Her phone buzzed, and she shrugged the massive designer tote off her shoulder. Rifling through it, Lola unearthed a curling iron, packets of protein-shake mix, a plastic blender bottle and the remote control for her television that had somehow made its way into the black hole of a bag. The ringing had stopped by the time she’d retrieved the phone, nearly nicking her fingers on a pair of scissors she’d used to cut crochet braids from her hair a few weeks ago.
Lola swiped the screen with her thumb. Her tote weighed down the crook of her arm like a bowling-ball bag. She listened to the message, gave the phone a quizzical glance and then frowned.
Her agent, Jill, had said it was urgent she return the call, but not much else.
“Lola, honey.” Jill bubbled enthusiastically through the phone moments later. That saccharine-sweet voice laced with faux cheer could mean only one thing, Lola thought. She stifled a grunt. Here we go. Another offer to advertise something aimed at the AARP crowd.
“You won’t believe who just called. They want you to—” Jill started.
“No.” Lola cut her off. Usually, she would have heard the agent out and then politely declined, but after getting shafted by her family in the company boardroom and being stalked by that silly tabloid show already today she was in no mood.
“But you haven’t even heard what the job is...”
Rolling her eyes, Lola tapped her foot against the lobby floor. She had a pretty good idea. Espresso’s senior-citizen image clung to her, and no one seemed to care that she was only in her twenties.
“Look, I thought I already made this clear. I’m not interested in being the face of a denture adhesive, walk-in bathtubs or doing commercials where I’m snuggled up to some old dude with an idiotic grin on my face because he popped a pill to get a hard-on.”
“I promise, this one is different. It’s a fantastic opportunity and absolutely perfect for you,” Jill insisted.
Lola grunted again. “Yeah, I’ve he
ard that before.”
“Please. Just hear me out.”
Lola shrugged. At this point, she had nothing to lose by listening. She leaned against the wall near the windows and faced the lobby’s interior. “Fine, go ahead.”
The agent filled her in on the details, and Lola broke out in a huge grin. If she played her cards right, this wouldn’t be just a job, but the opportunity of a lifetime.
She ended the call and dropped the phone into her pit of a bag.
“Boo-yah!” Pumping a fist in the air, she whispered the words she wanted to scream loudly enough for her family to hear on the tenth floor.
“I’m back!”
Nothing could bring her down now, Lola thought. Not even the sight of the maintenance worker from the elevator removing the giant poster of her that had hung from the lobby’s rafters for years, and replacing it with one of a man wearing a blond wig and lipstick.
Chapter 2
Police Chief Dylan Cooper hadn’t seen faces this unimpressed with what he had to say since dealing with his ex-wife.
“I hauled ten bad guys to jail last night,” someone yelled from the back of the room. “Didn’t even have to call for backup.”
“Is that all?” A snort accompanied the shouted question. “I made over fifty arrests this week, including Big Moe, from the top of the most-wanted list.”
Murmurs of approval echoed off the walls at the capture of the elusive Big Moe. They fueled the fervent bragging, each person who chimed in boasting bigger arrest statistics than the last.
“What about you, Chief? How many bad guys you take off the streets this week?”
Dylan had hauled the Henderson brothers to the county jail after they’d started a brawl at the sports bar to avoid making good on a wager. His efforts had earned him a sucker punch to the jaw from one of the lumberjack-sized brothers, while he’d been busy subduing the other two.
However, those arrests had been two weeks ago.
The metallic gleam of the badge pinned to his uniform caught Dylan’s eye as he glanced at the worn carpet. He raised his head slightly to meet the dozens of expectant faces awaiting his reply.
“None,” he said finally.
A chorus of gasps erupted, quickly followed by muffled giggles.
“However,” Dylan interjected over the din, “I run a small-town police department, not a video game controller.” He eyed the classroom of fourth and fifth grade Cooper’s Place Elementary School students gathered for his day-in-the-life career talk. “So those arrests you all made playing Cop Crackdown don’t count.”
“Not even nabbing Big Moe?” the boy in the back of the room asked.
Dylan took a moment to think it over. A few of his cop buddies back at his old precinct in Chicago played the popular video game, but none had managed to beat the last level and capture the slippery Big Moe.
Dylan stroked the shadow of beard clinging to his chin. “Well, maybe...”
“Dylan Cooper.” The sound of his name, spoken in an admonishing tone he rarely heard, grabbed his attention. He turned from the students seated crossed-legged on the floor to their teacher standing in a corner of the classroom with her arms folded over her chest.
“Yes, Mrs. Bartlett.” Dylan’s deep voice automatically adopted the singsong quality it had decades ago when she’d been his fifth-grade teacher.
She peered at him over the frames of cat-eye glasses that had slid past the bridge of her nose. Her lips were pursed into a frown, deepening the wrinkles around her mouth. Time had transformed the teacher’s once dark hair to salt and pepper. However, her expression was the same she’d worn the day a garter snake he’d encountered on the way to school had escaped his backpack and slithered onto her desk.
“These students are in my classroom on this sunny July day because they spent the school year trying to apprehend Big Moe instead of doing their homework.” She paused and gave the open window a pointed glance. As if on cue, the happy shrieks of children at the small town’s playground floated in on the mild breeze.
Dylan exhaled, shoving aside a twinge of empathy for the kids’ plight. It didn’t matter that he’d once missed a summer of Little League baseball sitting in this same classroom, with the same teacher. He was the adult now as well as an authority figure.
“No,” he said finally. “Nabbing Big Moe doesn’t count as a real arrest.”
Mrs. Bartlett rewarded the statement with an approving smile. But if the grumbles filling Dylan’s ears were any indication, his stock had dropped even further with his audience.
“Isn’t it your job to arrest people?” a kid seated in front asked. “That’s what the police do.”
“Not always,” Dylan replied. “My main duty is to keep everyone safe. In a town the size of ours that could mean anything from teaching you bicycle safety to helping Devon’s grandmother across Main Street.” He inclined his head toward one of the boys and then looked over at a set of identical twins. “Or even helping Natalie and Nicole look for their lost puppy.”
Dylan acknowledged the waving hand of a boy he recognized as an old high school classmate’s son. “Got a question, Ryan?”
“Where’s your gun?” the boy asked.
“At home,” Dylan replied. “I’m not on duty today. Besides, weapons don’t belong in a classroom. I didn’t bring one here today, and you should never, ever bring a gun or anything else that could be potentially dangerous to school either, right?”
Heads in the audience bobbed in agreement, and then he saw one kid raise his hand.
Dylan looked down at him. “What is it, Brandon?”
“Is a Swiss Army knife okay? I got one for my birthday. It’s so cool, I wanted to show all my friends.” The kid held out his hand. A shiny red utility knife rested in his small upturned palm.
“That is a very cool present. However, it’s not appropriate to bring it to school.” Dylan remembered having one just like it when he was the kid’s age. However, times had changed. “I don’t want you to get into trouble, so how about you give it to me for now. I’ll give it to your dad later, and he’ll return it to you.”
Dylan pocketed the small knife and stole a glance at the clock on the back wall. Although this was one of his rare days off, he had a meeting this afternoon at city hall about the upcoming mayoral election.
“Well, kids, from my early-morning drive around town to check out everything to my night rounds and beyond, that’s a typical day in the life of a small-town police chief,” he concluded.
“Sounds boring to me, Chief. Just like this hick town,” the boy who’d caught Big Moe yelled. “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to move away and live someplace fun.”
Another boy chimed in. “Me, too. When I grow up, I’m going to be a real cop like the ones on my mom’s favorite show, Law & Order, not hanging around here helping old ladies cross the street.”
Dylan took in stride the comments and ridiculing snickers that followed. After all, he’d felt the exact same way when he was their age. He’d also done exactly what they intended to do. The moment he graduated high school, he’d fled the town named for his ancestors, with big plans and his high school sweetheart on his arm.
He’d never planned to return to Cooper’s Place, but he was back in his hometown doing a job that most days held all the excitement of watching grass grow. Slowly. One blade at a time.
Still, dull was good, he reminded himself.
His stint as a beat cop and then two years as a homicide detective on Chicago’s south side had given him an appreciation for living in a place where the children he heard outside could play without fears of gunshots ringing out. Sure, he went on routine calls concerning shoplifters, noise disturbances, family and neighbor disputes, and the occasional burglary. However, there were no calls in the middle of the night to investigate homicides. N
o street gangs or armed robberies.
The biggest thing a person was likely to become a victim of here was local gossip.
Cooper’s Place, Ohio, was still a town where the residents were all on a first-name basis and could go to bed at night without double-checking to see if the doors were locked. Peace and quiet reigned here, and Dylan would do everything in his power to keep it that way.
After answering a few more questions, he eyed the exit sign above the classroom door. “It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today,” he said.
His former teacher gave the students a reading assignment and followed him into the corridor. “I’d like to have a word with you, Chief Cooper,” she said, closing the classroom door behind her.
Dylan groaned inwardly at the use of his title, hoping she wasn’t about to give him an update on her ongoing dispute with her next-door neighbor. He’d issued them both citations last month when they’d insisted on pursuing charges against one another over minor transgressions that should have been settled without police involvement.
“How can I help?” he asked.
“It’s that uncle of yours.” She frowned. “My case was heard in Mayor’s Court last week...”
He held up a hand to stop her. Cooper’s Place was one of the small Ohio municipalities that had established Mayor’s Court to hear small cases that would be decided by arbitration. Since the mayor held a law degree, he was qualified to oversee the proceedings. Unfortunately, residents unhappy with the decisions made there often voiced their displeasure to Dylan.
“I’m law enforcement, Mrs. Bartlett. I have no control over Mayor’s Court or the mayor’s rulings. If you don’t agree with his decision you can always appeal to the county court.”
“But he’s your family,” she said.
“Regardless, any problems you have with the way he does his job should be taken up with him or at the ballot box during the upcoming election.”
Heated Moments Page 2
