style="font-size:15px;"> His turn to drive.
Meeks accelerated and waved. And laughed.
He’d made an international laughingstock of her and now he was laughing in her face. One second she was sitting there, the next she just…floored it.
Bam. Her Mustang plowed into the rear door of his Caddie, the impact jerking her against the seat belt. She didn’t have an airbag to go off, but her horn did.
She sat there. She’d just rammed Meeks’s car…with hers.
He jumped out of his car, screaming and waving a cell phone but she couldn’t hear him over the blaring of her horn. Stunned by her own behavior, she sat and stared at him. Unfortunately, his penis didn’t fall off in the street and no rabid squirrels came running. She did, however, hear the approaching wail of a police siren.
Santa wrenched her door open, his beard askew, his bell still in his hand. “Are you okay? Are you trapped in your car?”
She unbuckled her seat belt, her hand amazingly steady even though she felt as if she were shaking all over. “I’m fine.”
She climbed out, her legs barely holding her upright.
“Hey, aren’t you the lady—” he looked over at Cecil jumping up and down like a maggot on a stick “—isn’t he—”
“I am. He is.”
Suddenly the clouds opened up and it started to pour. Not the soft gentle rain of a summer shower but a cold, driving, early-December deluge that stung.
Sunny tilted her face upward. Maybe she’d just drown before things got any worse. If she was lucky.
Luck, however, didn’t seem to be running her way.
“WHAT IN THE HELL was Sunny Templeton thinking?” Cade muttered to himself as he watched the five o’clock news’s lead story over Marlene’s shoulder on her computer monitor.
Meeks had a bandage wrapped around his head and a sling supported his right arm as he played to the camera. “It was terrifying. I didn’t recognize her until I drove past. It was the rage and hate filling her eyes that caught my attention and then the next thing I knew she attacked me with her vehicle. She clearly tried to kill me. I’m lucky I walked away with only the injuries I sustained.”
“Is this your first interaction with Ms. Templeton since the election?” the reporter asked.
“Mercifully, yes. And I hope my last. The woman’s definitely deranged.”
The female reporter quirked her eyebrow. “Some people believe you crossed the line when your campaign put out that flyer.”
Cecil adopted a sanctimonious demeanor. “Absolutely not. I considered that a public service. When you put yourself up for public office, there can be no distinction between public and private life. The public had a right to know what they were getting with Ms. Templeton.”
The reporter faced the camera. “Ms. Templeton is currently being held at the Memphis Police Department pending bail. We’ll bring you updates as available. Back to you now, Gretchen.”
The camera cut back to the in-studio news anchor and Cade filtered out the rest, his attention still focused on Sunny Templeton and Cecil Meeks.
“That man ought to be ashamed,” Marlene said, switching to another screen with one click of her mouse in evident disgust. “I’m sorry we had anything to do with him.”
Cade straightened. “That makes two of us. Meeks is a worm. It’d be kind of funny that she wrecked his new Cadillac, if it hadn’t landed her in jail.”
Marlene sighed. “I’d go over there and help her if I could.” Marlene had turned Sunny into a regular Joan of Arc in the last month. He’d be hard-pressed to believe Sunny Templeton had a more staunch supporter anywhere in Memphis than Marlene. “I’m sure True Blue will handle the bond.” She shot him a look that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck quiver. “It’s a shame. I think she’s a nice girl. Pretty. Smart. Nice figure in a bikini.”
“Don’t look at me that way.” Marlene might’ve decided to look for love in all the wrong places herself but she could leave him out of her matchmaking schemes. She’d considered herself the matchmaker extraordinaire when Linc and Georgia had wound up together. She was barking up the wrong tree, however, with him and Sunny Templeton.
“I’m not looking at you any way.”
“Yes, you are.” His single-man-in-danger-of-being-fixed-up alarm was going off.
“You’re paranoid.”
“Go figure,” he said. Marlene obviously had decided in her single-minded brain that Sunny was the woman for him. Not by a long shot. God help him if Marlene ever got wind that he’d put Jones onto Meeks to dig up dirt for the woman sitting across the street in a jail cell.
Unfortunately, Marlene could ride this for hours. Fortunately it was time for him to head home. He wanted a nice dinner and a glass of wine or a cold beer.
“I’m outta here. If you’re through, I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. The upside to their location was they were right across from the jail. The downside to their location…they were right across from the jail. Yeah, that meant a bunch of cops were around, but it also meant a lot of slime was around. Throughout the years, they’d made it a habit for one of them to always accompany the office manager to her car.
Marlene unplugged the miniature Christmas tree she’d insisted on buying for her desk corner but left the chili-pepper lights outlining the front window turned on. She’d turned AA Atco into the most festive bail bond office on Poplar Street—hell, probably the entire city of Memphis.
“Let me get my coat,” she said.
“You can go ahead, Cade,” Martin called out from his office. “I’ve got a couple of things to go over with Marlene. I’ll walk her to her car.”
“Thoughtful,” Cade said in a sarcastic aside to Marlene. Martin knew what time she left. Why wait until it was time for her to leave to go over things?
“I heard that,” Martin groused.
“Good. Remember she’s been here all day and she’s supposed to go home now,” Cade said, stopping by Martin’s office door. Martin wasn’t the most thoughtful employer. Come to think of it, Martin wasn’t thoughtful. Period.
“I’ll take her to dinner to cover the overtime. Happy? And I’ll help her with that Web page.”
What was Martin up to? “Only if Marlene wants dinner.” Cade looked at Marlene. “You want dinner?”
“Sure.” Marlene’s smile was just a tad too honey-sweet. “There’s a new sushi place I’ve been wanting to try.”
Cade grinned at Marlene’s neat turn of the table and Martin’s look of disgust.
“I was thinking something with real food.”
Marlene leveled a guileless look at Martin and Cade made
