between his paws. Eyes tight shut. No wags, no licks, no yips, no friendly interaction of any kind. It was the doggie deep freeze.
“Hey. Mikey. Don’t you want some dinner?” she asked.
Mikey was far above such obvious bribery. He didn’t twitch so much as a whisker. Margot got up and rummaged through the cupboard for the dog treats. She waved one in front of his nose.
He opened one slitted eye and gave her his patented “as if ” look.
“This isn’t fair,” she told him. “I’m leaving you at that kennel to protect you from Snakey, you ungrateful little snot. I can’t afford it, either. I’m still in hock to the vet for your last fight. That dog was ten times your size, but did you think about that before you got mouthy?”
Mikey indicated with a snuffling grunt that dogs will be dogs, and she could stick her budget problems where the sun didn’t shine.
“Besides, you owe me,” she reminded him. “You’d be roadkill if it weren’t for me, fur-face.”
No go. Mikey wasn’t coming down off his high horse tonight.
Margot sagged down next to his basket and concentrated on petting him the way he liked best, a gentle stroke from brow to nape with an extra against-the-grain rub around the ears on the upswing. He allowed her touch, but refused to respond to it. She ran her fingers through his silky hair, careful to avoid the shaved spots around his stitches. A relic from his run-in with a bad-ass stray in the park.
Mikey was a scrappy little guy. She admired that about him, even when it cost her money. He didn’t know when to shut his big mouth. A lot like yours truly, so it’s not like she could point fingers.
She was whipped, but she really should work on her web design business, or plod away at her private amateur murder investigation.
The thought zipped through her mind before she remembered that she no longer had her laptop. The rat bastard thief had it now.
Gah. She was squeezed dry tonight anyhow. Nothing left but pulp. Up before dawn to get Mikey to the pet hotel before her waitressing shift, then she schlepped downtown to do a lunchtime body sculpting class and aerobics class at a health club that catered to corporate types, and then the evening classes at Women’s Wellness. She was woozy, too, after a week on the new crash diet. The kennel fees and vet bills had bitten deep into her already lean grocery budget.
And yet, her butt still hadn’t gotten any smaller. Go figure.
Time to start foraging. It took character and a sense of humor to make a meal out of what was left in her kitchen. She heaved herself to her feet and opened the cupboard. Crumbs in the bottom of the cornflakes box. Whatever she might still be able to scrape out of the Skippy’s jar. There was a third of a bag of peeled baby carrots in the fridge, and she was hungry enough to actually eat them tonight, not just tell herself that she should. God, it would be great to just pick up the phone and order in something wickedly high-caloric and delicious.
That made her think about Davy McCloud’s offer of Mexican food. A whoosh of something potent and scary shivered up her spine.
She’d been checking the guy out ever since she’d started teaching at Women’s Wellness. Your typical stern, taciturn Nordic warrior type; studly, gorgeous and as cold as ice. Apparently uninterested in her, but oh, so fascinating. The lure of the unattainable, and all that crap.
She stared at the black pepper and the teabags while the images played through her mind; McCloud’s powerful body moving over the tatami with the swift, lethal grace of a thrown spear. He was so well-proportioned, you didn’t notice how huge he was until he was right in your face—and then, whoopsy daisy, it was too late.
He was way too big for her, though. Big guys made her nervous. On those rare occasions that she did indulge her baser instincts—that would be way back in prehistory when she still had the nerve—she picked mellow, scrawny guys who made her laugh. Guys she could put into a hammerlock, if need be. Craig had fit into that category.
Her mind shied away from poor Craig. She focused her attention back on the far more appealing image of Davy McCloud’s half-naked body. Nobody could put McCloud into a hammerlock. She had a tough time imagining him laughing, either. The thought of those piercing eyes made heat rush into her face—and various other parts of her body.
Strange, to have such a raw sexual reaction to a guy she barely knew. She’d been off men for months. Waking up naked and bewildered in a strange hotel room after witnessing a brutal murder could do that to a girl. Real libido crusher. Turned those hormones off like a faucet.
And God, she would really, really rather not think about that tonight, or she’d start feeling slimed, and have to take another shower.
A hot, juicy sexual fantasy starring Davy McCloud and her trusty vibrator would be a fab distraction. He was pure fantasy, though, and she’d better not forget it. With his angular face, his grim mouth, his hair cropped off into that sweat-stiffened brush cut, he looked almost military. Too severe for her. Once his hard-on was taken care of, she would drive a guy like that bonkers with her smart mouth.
Must be the old opposites-attract cliché. His attitude of rigid discipline and authority rubbed her the wrong way. Made her want to goad him. Like, hey, who died and made you boss of the universe, pal?
Then she’d strip him naked, rub him down with oil, knock him onto his back and ride him off into the sunset. At a hard gallop.
Whew. She opened the fridge, fished a carrot out of the bag and chomped it. Might as well give all that extra saliva an honest job to do.
She should cut herself some slack. Lusting over McCloud was a lot more fun than fretting about Mikey’s big, hurt eyes when she left him at the money-sucking pet hotel, or feeling like she was going to urp with dread every time she peered into the shadows of her own porch. It was better than worrying about Snakey lying in wait for her in the dark. Or obsessing about what had happened to poor Craig and Mandi.
She grabbed the Skippy’s jar and the bag of carrots and flopped down next to Mikey’s basket, curling up tight around the cold, sick ache in her belly. Sometimes curling up helped. A little bit, anyway.
She ran a carrot around the rim of the jar and crunched it with grim determination. She needed a new brillant scheme, but Snakey was hogging all the RAM in her brain. There wasn’t enough room left on the hard drive to run the kapow! knock-your-socks-off creative solutions program. She’d just started to drag herself out of this tar pit a few weeks ago, when she’d landed a job in a new graphics design firm in Belltown. The fake references she’d bought for her new identity had eaten up months of meager savings, but it had seemed well worth it at the time.
It had lasted exactly ten glorious days before the studio had burned to the ground. It was like she was cursed.
Screw this. She was going to hunt down this joker who was playing tricks on her, and rip his limbs and any other loose appendages off his body. Then she would spring Mikey from the joint, clear her name, and get her act definitively together. The details were fuzzy, but that was the plan. Having a plan was a good first step, right? Right.
She stared at the phone, tempted for the gazillionth time to call Jenny, or Christine or Pia, her best girlfriends from her old life. Just to let them know she was alive, and that she missed them.
Fear and guilt squelched the impulse. She couldn’t put her friends in danger, after
