“Um, do you know that you’re naked?” he asked.
I looked down, saw the girls flying free in the night air and remembered Needle Nose’s deft handiwork.
I looked back at Leon. “Is that a problem for you, Leon?” I said. “Because I am fully aware of that fact and will attend to it once we have secured the suspect.”
He gulped. I pushed up and tried to stand, pulling a screaming, bleeding Needle Nose along with me. Leon attempted to help, but accidentally tripped me in his attempt not to look at my tits.
That is how I wound up in the examining room next to Needle Nose at the Bay County Medical Center.
“It’s only a sprain,” the doctor said. “Keep it wrapped and you’ll be back to normal in a week.” He looked at Leon’s uniform shirt, buttons straining across my chest, and then back at the clipboard he held out in front of him.
“So this was an undercover thing, huh?” he said.
“No, Doc,” I answered. “I always wear a loincloth with my shirt. It makes it so I can run faster and leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
He glanced back at me, or rather at my breasts, and swallowed. “You need anything for pain?”
“They don’t,” I said, “and my foot’s fine, too.”
His face reddened and he left without another word.
“Stella,” my sergeant said, “why’d you do that? He’s only a kid.”
I looked at the sergeant and grinned. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just couldn’t help myself. Did you see how red his face got?”
The sergeant rolled his eyes. “Stella, you gotta work the public-relations angle here. What’s Pete gonna say when I tell him how you acted?”
That got my attention. “You’re not going to tell Pete, Randy,” I said. “I’m serious. He doesn’t need to hear about tonight from anybody but me, okay? Let me tell him myself.”
The sergeant sighed. “Stella, I gotta work with the man. You only gotta live with him. He’ll go easy on you, but me, I gotta cover my ass. How’s it gonna look, me letting you get hurt on your first undercover gig, huh? Besides, it’ll be all over the department by tomorrow. You can’t keep a thing like this quiet. I’m putting you in for a commendation.”
I frowned. “I don’t want a commendation, Randy—I want to make detective.”
Randy rubbed the five-o’clock shadow that made his already dark skin seem three shades darker. “You gotta be patient, Stella. You’ve only been with the department, what, four years?”
I nodded, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach. It was the good-old-boy system that kept me and Randy from getting ahead and he and I both knew it. It had nothing to do with time in or how well you performed.
“Just try, all right, Randy?” He nodded and held the door open while I hobbled out. “Leon brought your car over,” he said, and handed me the keys.
“Oh, great! You let him drive it?”
Randy smiled. “Stella, you gotta have more patience with Leon. He’ll get the hang of it sooner or later. Besides,” he added, “Leon was the only guy left on the squad tonight. We’re short-staffed. I had no other option. I never thought this—”
“Don’t worry about it, Randy. I know you were doing the best you could.”
I hadn’t told him about Leon and I wasn’t going to—nope, that was something I was saving for a personal face-to-face with the rookie.
“All right,” I said. “Whatever. Just don’t call Pete. Let me go home and tell him myself. Maybe I can make him see it in a positive light. I’ll tell him I tripped.”
“Stella,” Randy warned, “he’s the best officer in the department. He’s gonna find out.”
“Yeah, but maybe I can cushion the blow for him first.” I grinned. “That is one of the benefits of the job, you know. I get to keep the loincloth, and the girls at the club taught me a couple of moves I didn’t even know were physically possible. Maybe I can try my act out on Pete and he’ll—”
“Stella,” Randy said, “just go home and stay off your foot! I don’t want to see you back at work for a week, okay?”
“My plan exactly,” I said, and grinned at him as if I really meant it.
You gotta get up early to fool a cop like Pete O’Brian. He had a nose for trouble and would spot a lie a million miles away. I had to be more than a little clever.
I plotted Pete’s ambush the entire way home. He’d be asleep, naked like always, and I’d take him by surprise, slipping between the sheets, running my tongue all over his sexy, strong body. What man could resist a little midnight rendezvous?
I could tell him about Needle Nose later, and then he could strut around and tell me how he should’ve been there to take care of me. I could act as if I really needed him to save me from myself, which might not be too much of an act given the night’s events. I could even play the whole thing down, so he wouldn’t get jealous. I knew Pete would be just a little bit jealous. He always wanted to be the hero. One day I might break him of it, but not now. For now, I’d just keep training, honing my skills and trying to keep Pete from ever realizing that I was getting to be one hell of a cop. He’d come to accept me as an equal, maybe, one day, just not now.
I shook the negative feelings off and drove. I had the next couple of hours all planned by the time I turned into the trailer park. Pete might not like assertive, even aggressive, females on the job, but in bed it challenged him. Sex with Pete was great.
I cut the lights, turned off the engine and coasted to a stop in front of our single-wide trailer. Pete loved surprises, especially naked, under-the-covers surprises. Well, he was going to see a new side of me tonight, all right, the blond exotic-dancer temptress was on her way to blow his mind in a way he wouldn’t soon forget.
Too bad my partner, Lou Ann, beat me to it.
I saw her car sitting on the pad next to Pete’s Jeep. Had she heard about Needle Nose and come to tell Pete? I hopped out of the Camaro and let the door shut quietly behind me while I fumbled for my house key. She could have listened to the scanner and heard about me being hurt. She came over to reassure Pete and wait for me, I told myself, but the explanation didn’t quite fit. In the first place, why would Lou Ann and Pete wait for me in the dark? Secondly, Lloyd was sitting on the stoop and there was only one reason why Lloyd ever sat outside on the stoop.
I walked slowly across the grass to the trailer, my heart pounding hard against my chest. There was a very dim light flickering in the master bedroom. As I drew closer, the not so gentle shaking of the trailer walls crumbled my frail tower of denial.
I walked up to Lloyd and patted him on the head. He looked up at me with huge brown sympathetic dog eyes and whined.
“I share your pain,” I whispered. “Is this why your real mom left?”
Lloyd licked my hand
