Big Guns Out of Uniform

by Nicole Camden

  His hard mouth softened, and he took her still-extended hand. “Nick Woodruff,” he growled. “Sergeant Nick Woodruff. I live behind you.” He jerked his head toward the butchered evergreens. “On Westwind.”

  Westwind Drive was a pretty street that led past Hidden Lakes’ grand entrance, but definitely wasn’t part of it. For the first time, Delia actually looked at the property that backed onto hers. Nick Woodruff lived in a rambling, rustic house on a huge lot randomly dotted with oak, pine, and mounds of azaleas rather than the perfectly placed, artificially irrigated landscaping of Hidden Lakes.

  Now that the thick foliage was gone, Delia could make out the long, narrow lap pool that edged Woodruff’s back porch, and the hot tub that sat adjacent. Closer to her property line stood some sort of workshop, part of it open on two sides, where Woodruff appeared to be in the process of gutting a small red sports car. A mountain of firewood sat nearby—the real stuff, too, not those prissy little plastic-wrapped packages from Kroger.

  “Look, Mr. Basham,” drawled Woodruff, nudging Delia back into the present. “Eventually you’re going to have to let these utility people do their job.”

  Bud was now cradling the battered orange chain saw as if it were his favorite grandchild. “Not today, Nick,” he said in an unrepentant tone.

  Woodruff shrugged, as if his big black gun were chafing him. “Well, it’s almost quitting time,” he said with authority. “You folks go on back to SP&L, and tell ’em somebody’s gotta explain this policy. I’m real sorry for what happened today, but they can’t just go sending you folks out with no word or warning.”

  The utility workers shrugged, hefted up a couple of serious-looking power tools, and headed for their truck. The excitement over, Bud Basham trudged back up the hill with his chain saw. Delia shrugged, too. To hell with the dead pines. Like the house itself, the trees had been Neville’s idea. He’d demanded the real estate developer install them, to shield them from the “riffraff” he’d been sure resided on Westwind Drive. Now the sight of Neville’s evergreens hacked down to oozing little nubs was giving Delia a perverse sort of pleasure.

  Beside her, Nick Woodruff cleared his throat, and suddenly Delia realized she was alone with the riffraff in question, a big, surly-looking neighbor whom she’d never bothered to meet. “So, Dr. Delia,” he drawled. “At last we meet.”

  So he knew who she was. Delia felt a stab of irritation. People always seized on her radio persona, when in reality, she also worked as an assistant professor of psychology, collaborated on research projects at half the Ivy League, and had co-authored two textbooks. But then, Woodruff didn’t look like the academic type.

  “Hey, I want to thank you for calming Bud down,” she said, trying to sound gracious. “He has a bad temper but a good heart.”

  Woodruff snorted. “He’s a crazy old coot, is what he is,” he answered. “But I keep an eye out for him.”

  Delia tried to smile. “Did you begin as an innocent bystander?”

  Woodruff nodded. “Just coming home from the office. I could hear Basham bellowing from my mailbox.”

  “So you’re a cop, huh?”

  Woodruff seemed to scowl. “SBI. In Raleigh.”

  State Bureau of Investigation. “Oh,” said Delia. “I’ve done some work for them.”

  Woodruff’s brows went up at that. “Yeah?”

  Delia smiled tightly. “A serial rapist case down in Charlotte last year,” she said. “They needed some of my research on the behavior of sexual predators in court. And I got my face plastered all over cable TV in the process. It was pretty awful.”

  Woodruff grunted. “Not much of a topic for a radio talk show, either.”

  Delia looked up at him. Way up, as it happened, since Woodruff probably stood six-two in his big, bare feet. “No, it certainly isn’t.”

  He looked over his shoulder at his house as if impatient to be gone. “Well, looks like my work here is done, Dr. Delia,” he said, backing away. “Sorry I couldn’t save your fancy landscaping. I know you folks in Hidden Lakes like your privacy.”

  Delia caught the hint of sarcasm in his tone, and it inflamed her. “Not a problem,” she said sweetly. “I’m moving. But I hope you like your new neighbors, Mr. Woodruff, because they’ll have one hell of a view of your hot tub.”

  She watched Woodruff’s eyes flash and his jaw clench. Then Delia tossed him a cheerful wave and turned toward her house.

  FOR DELIA, Friday’s edition of Let’s Talk About Sex turned out to be a hellish nightmare. At least ten calls came in for the absent Dr. Bozner, whose book had just hit the New York Times best-seller list, and who would have been a hot property had he actually shown up. The remaining callers turned out to be cranks, creeps, and perverts. Delia liked her new radio show, she really did. And she thought she could make a difference in people’s lives by bringing topics like sexually transmitted disease and healthy physical relationships out of the closet and onto the airwaves. But sometimes Frank did a piss-poor job of weeding out the weirdos before sending the calls through.

  After work Delia drove down to the bank to transfer money from her fast-dwindling savings account. She’d added up her growing pile of bills after waving goodbye to the cheerful Mr. Woodruff on Wednesday and realized that, as usual, there was just too much month left at the end of her money. Once parked, Delia shoved in the clutch and stared at the glistening plate-glass door. She hated having to visit the bank again. Hated being twenty-nine years old and still burdened with a staggering student loan, not to mention a big, ugly house she’d never really wanted. Just then, as if to lengthen her list of woes, the Volvo shuddered, belched, and died.

  Delia let her head fall forward onto the steering wheel. Well, it’s your own fault! she could hear her mother carping. You were a fool to sign that prenuptial agreement. A man should support his wife, Delia, not impoverish her.

  Oh, her parents had been thrilled when she’d married a doctor. Now they thought she was proud, stubborn, and foolish. But Delia had wanted a marriage, not a meal ticket. She had wanted children, a real family, and she had wanted to build her own career. And although Neville had changed his mind about the children, she’d succeeded with her career. Her income was barely a third of her ex-husband’s, but it was enough to live well on.

  Soon the house would be sold, and they would split the equity. Then Delia’s dreams of a new car and a new condo would come true. On that somewhat consoling thought, Delia got out of her car, but at that very instant the bank’s shiny glass door swung open, and Neville’s new wife walked out, her long blond hair swinging.

  Alicia was tall, tan, and totally oblivious to Delia’s presence. Lifting her face to the sun, Alicia slid on a pair of cat-eyed Oakley sunglasses which had probably cost more than Delia’s car was worth, then beeped open the door to an olive-green Jaguar XK8 convertible. The car roared to life, then swung deftly into the traffic flow, leaving Delia behind, a little heartbroken.

  Yes, there was a lot about Alicia to envy. And this time it was more than just her hair and her car. Delia had been unable to miss the flowing, baby-blue tunic the new Mrs. Sydney had been wearing over her slim spandex slacks. No mistaking the slight swell of her tummy. And this time it wasn’t the sort of plumpness old Neville could liposuction off. Well! So much for Neville’s old complaint about pregnancy ruining a woman’s figure. No wonder he’d rushed to the altar.

  Oh, to hell with Neville and her banking. Everything would just have to wait until Monday. Weary and discouraged, Delia crawled back in the Volvo, said a prayer, and cranked the engine. It gagged and sputtered, but she made it out of the parking lot. In fact, she made it all the way across town, all the way out I-40, and almost—almost—all the way down Westwind. And then, only a quarter-mile shy of the Hidden Lakes entrance, it began wheezing again. Delia let off the gas, wondering if she could coast to the security gate.

  Nope. The Volvo went into death throes and spasmed its way only as far as a long, tree-lined driveway on her right, th
en promptly died. Delia was still trying desperately to start the car when a black Silverado pickup came flying down the drive backward. It was definitely one of life’s Oh, shit moments. Frantic, she turned the key again as the Silverado’s backup lights got bigger and bigger and bigger. Jesus Christ, isn’t he even going to look?

  Then, at the very last instant, the truck’s brakes locked up, and the black beast skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and dead leaves. Embarrassed, Delia got out of the station wagon just as a big, broad-shouldered man in a pair of baggy Adidas shorts climbed out of the Silverado. He stood in the dust cloud, his hands lifted expressively in one of those What the fuck? gestures. Delia’s embarrassment quickly shifted to total humiliation when the dust cleared.

  Nick Woodruff?

  Feeling a little sick, she shifted her gaze past the Silverado. Yep, there it was, her big ugly house, just visible through Woodruff’s tree-filled yard. Funny how she’d never bothered to look before. And man, oh, man, was she ever going to pay for that bitchy parting shot two days ago. His expression made that abundantly clear.

  Woodruff stood in front of the Volvo now, hands on his hips. “Well, Dr. Delia,” he snapped, “we meet again.”

  Delia bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It just sort of died here.”

  Nick made a sweeping gesture at the road. “Well, kick it out of gear and drift it out of my driveway, honey,” he growled. “Because I’m late for pickup basketball, and believe me, I need the exercise bad.”

  Delia opened her mouth to tell the big ox to go screw himself, but nothing came out. Instead, she felt herself start to crumple inside. What else could possibly go wrong with her day?

  Nick Woodruff wanted to bite back his spiteful words almost as soon as they left his mouth. Almost, because it took him a couple of seconds to realize that those really were tears pooling in Delia Sydney’s silvery blue eyes. Suddenly Nick was halfway glad his mama was dead. Because if she’d been living, she’d have laid a hickory switch to his butt, and no maybe about it. However rich and snooty Delia Sydney might be, she was a lady in distress. And she was also wearing very wicked shoes.

  “Hey, look, Doc, I’m sorry,” he said, slipping his fingers into the crack beneath the Volvo’s hood. “I’ve had a couple of real bad days at work, and my fuse is short. I’m not usually such a jerk.”

  “Well, jeez, I’m sorry I broke down!” Her face pale, Delia Sydney circled around the car. “Wh-what are you doing?”

  Nick found the latch, popped it, and shoved the hood up. “Let me have a look,” he said. “I reckon I can miss a ball game.”

  “Oh, heaven forbid!” she said stiffly. “Just give me a push, and I’ll call the auto club from my cell phone.”

  In response he shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Hey, Doc, it’s okay,” he said quietly. “I’m a shade-tree mechanic. So what’s up with it? Need a tune-up?”

  At that, her anger seemed to melt, and she poked absently at a little rock with the sharply pointed toe of her black high heel. “Well, what I need is a new car,” she said, sighing. “But that’s not going to happen until I can get the house sold. So, yes, I need a tune-up. Probably a complete overhaul. I never know whether to believe what the mechanics tell me.”

  Nick let his eyes run over the filthy engine. “You really selling out?”

  Delia exhaled. “I’ve been meaning to, yes,” she admitted. “But the last few months have been hell. I teach and travel a lot. So it seemed easier to just write the mortgage check and hang in, but the truth is, I hate that house. And I can’t afford it, either.”

  Nick tried not to look skeptical. “You’re Neville Sydney’s wife, right?”

  “Ex-wife,” she answered, a little too quickly.

  Nick narrowed his eyes and stared into the afternoon sun. He was trying not to feel sorry for Delia Sydney. But he did, and he couldn’t help it. Her guard was down, and despite her snug black suit and perfectly coiffed hair, she was starting to look young and vulnerable. Worse, he was starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that she was neither rich nor uppity. In fact, she seemed real nice. And awfully pretty. Then there were those shoes, shoes that made a man think of kinky, erotically painful things.

  Jesus. Nick rolled his shoulders, trying to relax. Trying to stop looking at her shoes. But his shame was deepening over his mean-spirited words. It sure wasn’t Delia Sydney’s fault that his day had been total shit. The least he could do was help her out of a jam.

  “So,” he finally said. “Let’s see if we can coax this rattletrap ’round back of my house, Dr. Delia. I just started a two-week vacation, so I can tune up your car.”

  Delia was dumbstruck. “But you…you don’t know me. Your family—you must have plans?”

  Woodruff’s eyes raked over her. “No, I don’t know you,” he admitted in a voice that was just a note lower, but a good deal warmer. “And I don’t have any family. Not here, anyway. And my vacation, well, let’s just say it was unexpected.”

  Delia didn’t know what to think. The cost of an engine overhaul would probably be three times what the car was worth—if it was even needed. But this man, this very large, very virile-looking stranger, was offering to work on it as a favor? She looked at him suspiciously. “Now, why would you want to spend part of your vacation working on my car, Mr. Woodruff?”

  Finally he laughed, a rich, sexy laugh that came from somewhere deep in his chest. “Because idle hands do the devil’s work, Dr. Delia,” he said, holding his palms out as if for inspection. “That’s what my Granny Woodruff says.”

  The devil’s work. The words were vaguely fascinating, the hands more so. Woodruff’s palms were broad, the fingers long and blunt. One thumb had a bruised nail, and on his left index finger, a scar ran from the first knuckle into the callused heel, the suture marks painfully visible. They were a worker’s hands. A warrior’s hands.

  Jesus, she was getting fanciful. Still, there was no denying Woodruff was a fine example of manhood, if you preferred your men…well, a bit primitive. Delia swallowed hard, tore her gaze from his hands, and focused—rather imprudently—in the general direction of his hot tub. What do you suppose a man like that looked like with his clothes off?

  “So, Dr. Delia, what do you say?” asked Woodruff, his voice suggestively low. “Wanna let me poke around under your hood?”

  Delia felt herself turn pink right down to her toes.

  Woodruff made a little choking sound in the back of his throat. “Jeez, Doc, you’re blushing,” he muttered. “Give me a break.”

  “I’m not blushing,” Delia lied. “I’m—it’s—hot out here. And frankly, Mr. Woodruff, I’ve had kind of a crappy week. Look at my pine trees. They’re shaved down to bloody nubs. On top of that, my boss is a jerk and my car won’t run. I barely avoided a bad remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My ex-husband’s new wife almost ran me down in her brand-new Jaguar. And—oh, let’s not forget this—half the perverts on the East Coast called me up to chat this afternoon.”

  Woodruff flashed a sudden, sexy grin. “Oh, yeah, that Doris Jean from St. Augustine was one scary chick,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Where do people get that kind of bondage gear, anyway? Sadomasochists-R-Us?”

  Delia’s blush deepened and she swiftly dropped her gaze. “You…you’re…a fan?”

  Nick Woodruff was casually tossing his car keys now. “Oh, yeah, Dr. Delia,” he answered smoothly. “A big one. A real big one.”

  It was only then that Delia realized just where her gaze had landed. She was staring straight at Nick Woodruff’s crotch.

  Chapter Two

  Delia rolled out of bed Saturday morning at seven sharp and shrugged into her favorite sweatshirt. Downstairs, she punched the silver button on Neville’s four-hundred-dollar German coffeemaker and listened to it chew up a precise measure of mocha-Kona blend. The machine dumped the grounds into its filter, the water began to hiss, and Delia headed down the hill for her newspaper. As she popped back o
ver the rise of her driveway, she could see her station wagon, its big rear end poking out of Nick Woodruff’s shed, the hood already up. Looked like Woodruff was an early riser.

  After pouring her first cup of coffee, Delia hitched a stool up to the kitchen island and flipped open the Herald-Sun. Bush’s numbers were down, the market was up, there’d been another shooting on Alston Avenue, and Senator Elizabeth Dole had a new hairdo. Well, thank God, Liddy, Delia almost said aloud. The eighties are finally over.

  But instead of carrying on a full-blown conversation with herself, as she’d been known to do, Delia kept reading. At the bottom of the front page a headline screamed the story of a major drug bust in the I-95 corridor just east of Raleigh. Delia skimmed the topic sentences. A Florida man had been killed, another badly wounded. Three million dollars’ worth of uncut, New York-bound cocaine had been seized and two SBI officers placed on administrative leave pending a deadly-force review.

  And then the name Woodruff leapt off the page, causing Delia to choke on her mocha-Kona blend.

  My vacation, he had casually remarked, was unexpected.

  Wow. It certainly had been. And Delia thought her Friday had sucked.

  Still shaking her head, Delia finished her coffee, poured the rest of the pot into two thermal travel mugs, then dashed upstairs to dress.

  NICK WOODRUFF WATCHED his pretty little neighbor flounce out of her kitchen door, and tried to keep his mouth from going dry. Dreams of Dr. Delia—strange dreams—had kept him awake last night. He’d been better off, he realized, when he’d thought she was snooty and rich. This morning she’d exchanged her snug black suit and pointy-toed high heels for some sort of floaty brown skirt that swirled above her ankles in the unseasonable heat. And they were just the kind of ankles you’d expect a rich, sultry-voiced psychologist to have, too. Very, very fine ones.

  But on the whole, Dr. Delia Sydney was definitely not what he’d expected. Over the airwaves her voice really was a little sultry, but a whole lot suave, too. And right now Let’s Talk About Sex was the hottest new show on talk radio. With her million-word vocabulary, she dispensed advice in blunt, no-nonsense terms which made that bald-headed drill sergeant Dr. Phil look like a big ole wuss. And no matter how kinky the question, Dr. Delia never, ever lost her cool.