Calling His Bluff

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Ever wondered? It felt like she’d spent far too many years of her life wondering.

  The breath she’d inhaled what felt like an hour ago burst out of her in a huff. She shook herself awake from what was essentially a sexual daydream. Time to put a halt to this little game.

  Before she could open her mouth to say a word, a piercing ring blasted from a phone across the room, followed almost immediately by a click and a recorded message. A voice like maple syrup poured into the room after a loud beep.

  “Sugar, I got your message. Now, get off your high horse and call me so I can say I’m sorry about Jane, okay? I didn’t fly to Chicago for my health. And are you seriously planning on staying here? It’s like two polar bears crapped a giant frozen poo and they built a city on it. I’m so cold my teeth are chattering. Right. So, that judge you saw in the Dominican Republic? He’s not, in fact, a member of the legal profession. So, you know, teensy problemo. And since we gotta deal with that, I wanted to talk to you about Ben’s new project, too. There’s a role that’s perfect for me, and you know he’ll do anything for you.” The slow sugar drawl dropped to a new level of husky. “Just like me, baby. Call me, husband.”

  The last drawled word seemed to echo through the open warehouse space.

  Holy. Shit. She was holding goddamn hands with Joey Damico, at last, and he. Was. Married.

  Of course he was. And to a woman who talked like a frigging porn star. Way to make a regular woman feel inadequate.

  “She’s such a drama queen.” J.D. squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but he was sort of grinning with one side of his mouth, like he was more exasperated than angry. She realized that he was still holding her wrist in his hand. His fingers began to move against her pulse, which jumped like a rabbit as heat pooled in her belly. Still, her brain locked onto that one word—married—like a heat-seeking missile. “Where were we?”

  She tilted her head down and gave him a stern look from beneath lowered brows. “Stop it. You’re a married man. Maybe.”

  “I’m really not. Lana’s sweet—morally challenged but sweet—and the ins and outs of the Dominican legal system aren’t her strong point. She doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about.”

  When his fingers stroked higher on her arm to the sensitive skin inside her elbow, she broke out the big guns, “Stop teasing, or I’ll get my big brother to beat you up.”

  “Hmm.” After a moment, he let go of her wrist with a rueful grin. She scooted back a bit, needing a little breathing room. On second thought, she leaned forward and grabbed the wine bottle.

  “Tyler would actually kick my ass, wouldn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” she said and nodded as she poured. More wine might not be a good idea, but she’d never been this thirsty in her life. Still, she stopped at half a glass.

  “Ah, well. Maybe next time.”

  She could have tossed the wine all over him when he winked at her and sat back as if it was no big deal. When she opened her mouth and the words she was thinking rolled right out, she realized that any wine, in fact, might have been too much while sitting half-dressed on the floor next to the man on whom she’d had a massive crush for most of her formative years. One who’d left town, married some wannabe starlet, and hadn’t even had the courtesy to get a real divorce.

  “I wouldn’t sleep with you for all the yen in China. Or Japan. Or wherever, Joey Damico. You were the first in a long string of guys to steal my heart and hand it back to me in pieces.” She shook a finger at him. “And since you started the trend, I figure you should get the blame for every jerk and jackass who followed.”

  “Me?” The shock on his face looked genuine but she refused to feel sorry for him. “What did I do?”

  She pushed her head forward and stared him down, but his look of confusion didn’t even hint at any guilt.

  “What?”

  “You kissed me,” she enunciated with precision, just in case his hearing was as defective as his conscience, “and then five minutes later you were making out with Jessica Blackwell in the bathtub.”

  “I never—when?” he demanded, swinging his legs over her head and dropping his feet on the floor by her side with a thud. He set his wine glass on the end table and turned back to her. “When did I kiss you, and who’s Jessica Blackwell?”

  The last three words did nothing to improve her impression of him. She waited for him to remember.

  After a minute of their glaring at each other, it became clear that that was not going to happen.

  With pleasure, she enlightened him.

  “July, 1995.”

  “July ninety-five…” His forehead wrinkled and then smoothed as she saw the memory return to him. She sat up straighter and waited for his apology. It had been a long time coming.

  “But you were only, what? Twelve!”

  She could hear from the disbelief in his voice that she’d be waiting for that apology forever.

  J.D. ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging a few loose strands that fell against his chin as he shook his head.

  “You were twelve, and I was saving you from kissing Tad Kipling, who I believe you referred to as ‘that sweaty-palmed toad from square-dancing class.’ You kids were playing spin the bottle in your mom’s basement and I pretended the bottle was pointing at me when I came downstairs to check on you, because I could see you squinching up your face at the thought of kissing him. I rescued you!”

  She had forgotten. He was a man, and men never understood anything.

  “You kissed me, and then two minutes later you were sucking face with Jessica Blackwell!”

  Apparently she’d lost all control over both her brain and her mouth.

  “Let me repeat. You were twelve. I was fifteen. Jessica Blackwell was sixteen. She had her own car and wore a 36D bra.” He nipped the wine glass out of her fingers before she could throw it at him. “I’m sorry, honey, but you never stood a chance.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she muttered and threw herself down onto the concrete floor so that she could stare morosely at the far-off ceiling. “I was twelve. Don’t expect rationality from a preteen.”

  A light flashed.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and glared at him as he dropped a camera into his lap. When did he bring that out?

  “Hey! Don’t take my picture when I’m pouting. Jackass.”

  He smiled at her and she felt herself blush. Damn it.

  “Sorry. If it’ll help, I apologize for handing your heart back to you in pieces. In my own defense, I have to say that I wasn’t aware that I had it.”

  “Yeah, you’re forgiven. I got over it in my twenties.” She waved a hand in his general direction. “I’m thirty-one. Old enough to know that the kiss wasn’t that good.”

  She rolled onto her side, ready to laugh at the end of a good joke, the same way he’d done earlier after pretending to hit on her. Of course, she knew she was kidding herself when she called it joking. A part of her still felt like that twelve-year-old girl watching her crush drive off with the beautiful blonde girl who had the car and the boobs.

  She smiled at her own foolishness and was about to sit up when two glowing gold eyes flashed out at her from beneath the couch.

  “Hey,” she lowered her head back to the floor, “there’s a cat under here.” When she popped back up, J.D. was looking at her with raised eyebrows. Suddenly she remembered why she’d shown up on his isolated doorstep in the first place. “Right, you have a sick cat. What’s wrong with kitty?” She ducked back down to peer under the couch.

  “I can’t believe you’re a vet, by the way. You couldn’t stand the sight of a bloody skinned knee when we were kids.”

  “Yet another thing I got over,” she said and snapped her fingers at him. “The cat, J.D.?”

  “How should I know what’s wrong with the stupid thing? It’s been under the couch ever since it walked in off the street a few days ago. The only time it came out was when it got cold in here.
I found it sleeping in the ashes of the fireplace, so I stoked up the fire, cranked the heat up to eighty, and I’ve been sweating my ass off for two days while it hides out.”

  Half an hour and two cans of tuna later, she had the cat in her lap, willing to trust her for the moment. She ran her hands over its body and looked up with a grin.

  “Congratulations, J.D. You’re gonna be a daddy.”

  Over his protests that he “couldn’t have a cat let alone kittens,” she explained that she’d send someone over with more food and some special vitamins the following morning. Meanwhile, she changed back into her suit and gathered up her things, having decided that it was definitely time for her to get going. She left him with some last-minute instructions.

  “Keep her warm. That was a good idea. Give her all the tuna she wants tonight and refill the dish of water I put out if she finishes it. And J.D.?” She stopped at the door and turned back to look at him. He was standing in the middle of the room, leaning on his crutches, backlit again by the glow of the fire. Even now, with muscles that weren’t there when he was a teenager and longer, straighter hair that was still escaping from the blunt ponytail, there was no mistaking the graceful and supremely controlled kid she’d watched and wanted for years.

  “Yes, Dr. Evil?”

  “Better find something to call her instead of ‘stupid cat.’ She’s yours now.”

  She stepped outside into the frigid March air and headed toward where her Jeep was parked at the curb, leaving him to muscle the door shut behind her. Plastic bags and old newsprint pages blew past her ankles in the winter wind.

  “Hey Sarah.”

  He was standing in the doorway, one hand outstretched as if to hand her something she’d left behind. She opened the car door and slung her bag into the backseat before jogging back up to the building.

  “What, did I forget some—”

  He grabbed the collar of her coat and yanked her up against him, his other arm a tight band across her lower back, pressing her hips into his. She thought she’d go cross-eyed as he bent down toward her, his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers. She could smell the cabernet on his breath and felt the warmth of it feather over her.

  “I didn’t want you to go off thinking you’d had my best effort at kissing all those years ago.”

  Then he lowered his mouth to hers and she closed her eyes as J.D. kissed her for the second time since she was twelve years old.

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks later, she was still feeling that kiss. She’d nearly rear-ended a canary-yellow VW Bug at a stop sign because she was daydreaming about the taste of his mouth.

  It wasn’t fair.

  She’d been waiting her whole life for someone to match the slow roll and tumble in her stomach that she’d felt when she was twelve and her brother’s best friend kissed her on the lips.

  It was so unfair that the first and only person to make her feel that way again was that very same boy, now all grown up and far more dangerous than when he was fifteen.

  Not to mention the whole “still married” thing.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t run into some good kissers in the years bookended by J.D. Damico. He wasn’t the first man to cup his hand against her cheek and slide his palm around to the nape of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair along the way. And he wasn’t the first man to grab the front of her jacket to pull her even closer. Or to pause for a moment, his mouth hovering over hers, to nip at her bottom lip.

  But that mouth. Damn. The moment his lips pressed to hers it was like someone had slid a hand up her thigh and whispered, “Lie down with me.” And the sudden wash of wanting him was a sharp cramp that left her breathless. His tongue in her mouth was a tease. The moment had passed too quickly, leading her to do some tugging of her own. She’d wrapped her hand behind his neck to pull his mouth back down to hers.

  A horn blasted behind her and she stepped on the gas without thinking. Slammed on the brakes and waved the car with the right-of-way through the intersection, making the “Sorry!” face at the other driver, who flipped her off. She stopped thinking about the kiss for ten seconds and managed to get across the four-way-stop intersection and into the itty-bitty parking lot that scraped alongside the veterinary clinic where she worked.

  She bumped the medical bag on her hip up against the metal plate at the back entrance so that the security scanner could read the card in the outside pocket. The door unlocked with a beep. She appreciated the high-tech setup at this clinic, but she would’ve put up with just about anything to get out of her previous clinic, from padlocks on the doors to gas lanterns for light.

  She didn’t know what it was, but something about her attracted older married men who were too self-aware to indulge in a midlife crisis by having an affair with a twenty-two-year-old blonde bombshell. It was as if they took one look at her and thought, “Hmm, the calm, quiet brunette in the corner there, what about her? Looks studious but pretty. No one could accuse me of going for flash there. And then maybe I can still get the Porsche.”

  She had only fallen for that with her first boss because he hadn’t gotten around to mentioning the fact that he was married until six months into their relationship. She’d needed a new job fast, particularly since things ended so badly. After she “accidentally” dropped a fifty-pound bag of dog kibble on his foot, he threatened to call the cops. She threatened to call his wife. She had avoided even speaking to her second boss whenever possible, only to find herself being chased around the examining table mere months later by another man having a midlife crisis, who promised he could help her “lighten up.”

  Blech. Now she worked for a woman, which was the selling point that had brought her on board. That and the off-street parking.

  She really did have terrible luck with men. The first man she’d fallen for had broken her heart without even knowing it, and things had gone downhill from there.

  Sighing, Sarah headed into the bathroom that doubled as an employee locker room. She spun the dial on her locker with one hand while she started stripping off her winter gear with the other. She grabbed her last clean lab coat, crammed her coat, hat, scarf, gloves, boots and medical bag into the too-small locker and bodychecked the door shut. She wouldn’t need any of it until this afternoon’s house calls.

  She spent half of each week making house calls—a stroke of genius on her boss’s part. There were plenty of wealthy pet owners in Chicago’s Gold Coast who were willing to pay top dollar for the convenience of not having to cart a pet off to the vet’s office and spend the morning in a waiting room.

  Although the pet owners were asked to have little Fluffy or Killer confined to an easily searchable area like the bathroom, she did spend a fair bit of time on her hands and knees peering under king-size beds and trying to coax out spooked animals. Still, it was a growing part of their business. Soon she might not need to put in any hours at the clinic except to do paperwork or the follow-up on complicated cases.

  This afternoon, she even had an appointment in the warehouse district. It would probably wrap up early, so maybe she would drop by J.D.’s to make sure he was following her instructions with the kitty. Give him some pointers on what to do when the kittens started coming. Bring him a bottle of wine to replace the one they’d split the other night.

  Maybe jump him where he stood when he opened the door.

  He was the one to push you away, she reminded herself. He’d backed off halfway through a kiss that had been seriously blowing her socks off, looking startled, like he hadn’t meant to take things that far.

  Yeah, she was ready to show him just how far they could take things.

  Down, girl. It was just a kiss. And he’s married, maybe.

  “Who am I seeing first?” she called out as she walked down the hall to the front desk. The day’s clients were already tangling and yowling in the small lobby.

  “I put them in exam room two. They were freaking out the rest of the clients.” Jackie, their nurse-receptionist, smacked a new patient
file into her hand and grimaced.

  “Who?” There was little that shook the normally unflappable Jackie after two decades of animal handling. She’d seen, or stepped in, almost everything. “Is someone foaming at the mouth?”

  “No, thank god,” Jackie said. “Mr. Thompson and his seven-foot boa constrictor. Apparently the snake doesn’t like cages, so it’s just, you know, crawling all over him. People were practically scooting out the door to keep their distance. Yuck.”

  “No snakes for you, Jackie?” She flipped open the file.

  “Nothing that moves on dry land without feet. The snake ate Mr. Thompson’s son’s guinea pig, Squeak, this morning.” For the first time that morning, Jackie grinned. “He asked if we could get it back.”

  Sarah bit her lips together. Always avoid making fun of the clients, she reminded herself, at least on the premises. “I assume you told him there would be no Squeak retrieval today.”

  “I’m not sure he believed me. I did inform him that he was sure to see the guinea pig again, just probably not in a form his kid would want to play with.”

  “And?”

  “I think he finds my sense of humor lacking.”

  “No kidding. So what’s he here for?”

  “Aside from a second opinion on the possibility of squeezing Squeak out whole from either end of the snake? Apparently the little fluff ball put up quite a fight.” Jackie didn’t share Sarah’s sense of propriety. Her eyebrows wiggled. “The long and skinny one took a couple of hits to the snout. Needs a little patching up.”

  “Ah, the glamour. TGI Friday.” Sarah laughed out loud and shook her head as she stepped into the exam room. Who was she kidding, having a mental flirtation with J.D. Damico? The man spent most of his time with the glitterati of Hollywood, and she would spend most of her morning bandaging a boa.

  Besides, J.D. had been nothing but a horrible tease to her when she was a girl. She shouldn’t get her brain all twisted into knots over him. No doubt he’d just been yanking her chain when he kissed her.

  Anyway, knowing J.D., he was probably already planning on skipping town. Halfway renovated loft condo or not.