Uncorked Read online

  “I don’t take dumb-ass risks.”

  “Yeah?” The single word was sharp with emotion. “How about the time you confided in Hawkins?”

  I stifled a wince. Dr. David Hawkins had been a trusted colleague. Memories washed over me in fresh waves of panic. I glanced at my La-Z-Boy, remembering him sitting there, uninvited. That had been just minutes before the good doctor tried to kill me with a fillet knife.

  “Check the door, Chrissy,” he ordered again.

  “No,” I said, heart pounding and the entirety of my attention focused on that damn lock. But my tiny foyer was too dark to allow me to see if it was secured. Stiff legged, I pattered silently to it on bare feet.

  And at that second, it burst open.

  Chapter 2

  A gentleman, he is but a wolf that is patient, si?

  —Rosita Rivera, whose former husband was a politician and a gentleman

  I screamed and lunged backward, ready to run like hell. But I had so little space, and the intruder was already leaping toward me.

  I stumbled sideways and grabbed the nearest thing I could find. A framed picture came away in my hand. I swung with every ounce of terror I possessed. The attacker ducked. My impromptu weapon whistled over his head. He lunged at me. I dropped the picture and turned to run, but he dragged me down. I fell to my knees, him on top.

  I screamed bloody murder. He smothered me with his hand. I bit. He swore. I struggled, almost got away and was dragged back to the floor. But I wouldn’t go down without a fight. Squirming onto my back, I brought my knee up with all the force I could muster. It slammed against his crotch with satisfying momentum. He grunted and froze. For a moment he was poised above me, then he toppled sideways, falling onto the linoleum like a beached mackerel. I scrambled to my feet. In a heartbeat I was racing toward safety, but he croaked something guttural and terrifying.

  I almost made it to the back door before I realized he’d spoken my name. I grabbed the spinning desk fan for protection and pivoted toward him.

  “Holy shit, McMullen!” The bastard’s voice was harsh with pain. He lay in a fetal position on the floor, hands tucked between his legs, eyes scrunched shut. “How many times do I have to tell you to set your damn security alarm?”

  I backed away a few steps. My hands were just steady enough to flip on the lights.

  A well-built, dark-haired man lay writhing in my hallway, but not in a sexy way. More in a dear-God-you’ve-just-crushed-my-nuts sort of way.

  I canted my head at him, sucked in a breath and said, “Rivera?” His name escaped like a question, but I knew it was him. Telling me he was outside my house so that I’d believe he was miles away, then yanking open my door and scaring the bejeezus out of me was just the kind of thing he had done on numerous occasions. But I wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the fan. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s fucking…” He sucked in a careful breath, calmed his voice. “Of course it’s me.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. He’d once called it his Chrissy tick. “Who the hell did you think it was?”

  “Well…” I tried a sardonic laugh. It sounded a little asthmatic. Adrenaline was mixing dangerously with a dozen other hormones in my overexcited system, and my hands hurt from gripping the fan with such ferocious intensity. “Certainly not you. You said you were watching my house.”

  Turning his head with painful carefulness, he rolled dark, questioning eyes up at me.

  “I assumed you were lying!” I shrieked.

  “Are you totally nuts?”

  “Me? I’m not the one who habitually attacks me in dark allies or—”

  “I’m just trying to make sure you’re prepared.”

  “Prepared! Are you—”

  “Stop!” shouted a voice, and suddenly another man lunged through the doorway. I jerked toward him, still in battle mode, fan lifted high. But my neighbor, Mr. Al Sadr, was carrying a baseball bat in both hands and failed to notice me. “Do not move or I shall—” he began, then came to a screeching halt and stared at the body on my floor in blinking uncertainty. “Lieutenant Rivera?”

  “Fuck.” His response was more a groan than a spoken work.

  “What has happened here?” Mr. Al Sadr’s face was a meld of concern and curiosity not entirely unknown to me. I first became familiar with that particular expression when, as a four-year-old, I decided to become a professional golfer and hit my brother’s left eye dead on with a nine iron.

  “I didn’t know it was him,” I said.

  “Miss Mc—” Al Sadr said and turned toward me, but in that instant his eyes popped wide and his bat dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter.

  “What?” I raised my own weapon in instinctual defense and jerked back against the wall. “What is it?”

  “Holy shit!” Rivera muttered. He almost sounded more tired than wounded.

  I jerked my gaze to him. “What?”

  “Get some fucking clothes on,” he hissed, and in that moment I once again realized my state of undress.

  I felt my face heat all the way to my scalp.

  “Christina!” called a heavily accented voice from outside. “Christina McMullen, is all well?” A second later Ramla Al Sadr, too, burst through the open door, holding a can of pepper spray and looked ready to do battle.

  At that juncture I rather hoped I would die, simply pass away and move onto the hereafter.

  “Christina…” She blinked at me, big eyes dark and round beneath her brightly colored hijab. We have a history. Some of it’s good. Most of it’s weird. “What has happened here? Are you well? Why are you without the clothing?”

  My weapon was beginning to droop toward the floor. “I didn’t know it was him,” I said again, but my tone had lost its sterling edge and sounded a little defensive.

  She turned toward the supposed villain, who remained on the floor, knees clamped together. Her eyes grew wide again. “Lieutenant Rivera?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Al Sadr.” His words sounded a little more normal but still had a good deal of that am-I-dead-yet tone to it.

  “Christina, what have you done to him?” she asked and rushed forward. She'd liked Rivera ever since he’d been instrumental in saving her sister from an abusive husband, but I’d been instrumental, too, and I never elicited the kind of adoring glances he did.

  “I didn’t know it was him,” I repeated.

  “There is another whose testicles you wished to crush?” she asked, glancing up at me as if I was the bad guy.

  “No. Well, yes, but—”

  “Good God, McMullen, will you put on some clothes?” Rivera hissed again.

  I glanced down, glanced at Al Sadr, glanced at his wife.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and setting the still-spinning fan carefully back in its allotted position, I slunk along the wall toward my bedroom.

  By the time I had dressed and worked up enough nerve to reenter my own kitchen, Rivera was sitting alone at the table. He looked up, eyes dark and malevolent over the chipped coffee mug that housed my favorite maxim: Mornings are for masochists.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said.

  He exhaled something that sounded like a chuckle. “I guess things could have been worse, then.”

  I swallowed, cleared my throat, tried to do the same with the guilt. “Ramla made you coffee?”

  “Tea,” he said. “She couldn’t find any coffee.”

  I nodded. That was probably because I didn’t keep any in the house. I didn’t believe in wasting my daily allotment of caffeine on such an inferior form. It’s chocolate or die for me. “How are you feeling?”

  “My balls were just rammed up my esophagus,” he said. His Chrissy muscle twitched again. “How do you think I feel?”

  His tone made me a little testy. I mean, seriously, the man had just broken into my house and scared the hell out of me. “Like an ass?”

  He stared at me a second, then snorted and took a sip of tea. He didn’t like tea. The thought improved my mood a little.


  “Remind me not to worry about you anymore,” he said.

  “You don’t worry about me,” I countered, and remembered to hate him. It was easier when he wasn’t curled up on my linoleum like a dying salamander. “We’re not seeing each other anymore. Remember?”

  His eyes were as shadowed as midnight dreams. “That’s right,” he said, but there was something in his tone that threatened to suck me in, to roll me under. Fortunately, at that precise moment, I remembered with unexpected clarity that my current boyfriend, one Dr. Marcus Jefferson Carlton, had an IQ of 141. He was a published author, an accomplished yogi, and a dynamite chess player. Unfortunately, he was also incommunicado while he was traveling in another country with no one to keep him company but Sam, his trusty publicist.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Hoping this tea will put out the fire in my balls.”

  “I really did think you were someone else.”

  “Yeah? You always greet your new beau with a knee to the gonads?”

  I gave him a snotty smile and preened my tone to match. “Not at all. Dr. Carlton is a perfect gentleman.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled a little. “Well, I guess opposites really do attract then, don’t they?”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  He caught my eye again. “You swung at me like I had Spalding tattooed on my forehead, McMullen. Sometimes perfect gentlemen take offense to that.”

  “Well, perfect gentlemen don’t come crashing into a woman’s house like a crazed gorilla.”

  “I never claimed to be a gentleman,” he said, and something about his tone made me remember the first full night we’d been together. Part of it had been spent at the very table at which we currently sat. Part of it had been spent on that very table. Holy crap, I thought, and wiped away the memory with a sweaty imaginary hand.

  “Well…” I got my snotty tone back with some difficulty. He was looking all lean and masculine. I can’t be trusted with lean or masculine. “It’s late. I’m sure you have to get to work tomorrow,” I said, and turned away with resolute good intentions.

  “I’m taking the day off.”

  I practically stumbled over my own feet as I turned back toward him. “You? The dark detective?”

  His scowl deepened. “I’ve taken time off before.”

  “I must have been busy that hour.”

  “You still pissed because I didn’t have more time to screw you?”

  For a second I almost considered remaining above such adolescent banter, but the moment passed like a bullet from a semi automatic. “I’m pissed because you had time to screw everyone…” I stopped myself. I didn’t really know if he had slept with everyone or not. But it didn’t matter anymore. I was perfectly happy with my current guy. He was intelligent, intuitive and well read. That was so much better than irritating, insane and, well—

  “I didn’t sleep with her,” he said.

  Anger spouted up in me like Old Faithful on Viagra. “Well, I’m sorry if I interrupted before you could get the job done.”

  “I told you before,” he said. “I was questioning her.”

  “Really? It looked more like mouth-to-mouth.”

  “I was on a case.”

  “What case?”

  “A case that I can’t talk about.”

  “Do they always tell you not to talk about who you sleep with?”

  "Listen, I think we've got a bad cop in the department. Things aren't…" He stopped himself, rose abruptly to his feet, barely wincing at the sudden movement. “I guess this was a bad idea.”

  “You bet your nuts it was.” We stared at each other. I knew better than to open my mouth again, but the words came nevertheless. “Why’d you come here anyway, Rivera?”

  He turned away. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

  I drew a slow, steadying breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked you in the balls either.”

  He snorted, narrowed his eyes and turned back. “Is that an apology, McMullen?”

  I shrugged a little. “Probably the best you’re going to get.”

  He smiled and lifted his hand. For a moment I thought he was going to touch my face. I braced myself for the impact. But he took a step back and sobered immediately.

  “Andrews is getting out of jail,” he said.

  The floor jolted beneath my feet. I felt the blood rush from my face, felt my knees buckle. “Jackson Andrews?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sat down hard in my kitchen chair. Andrews had had his hand in numerous criminal activities but was best known as the inventor of a dangerous blend of chemicals called Intensity. From the little I knew of the situation, his incarceration had done almost nothing to slow its distribution. “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Today!” I jolted from my trance. “Shit, Rivera. That means…” I could barely force out the words. “He’s already loose.”

  He nodded, sober as a nightmare.

  “Couldn’t you have waited a little longer to tell me?” The words were weak. It’s a bad sign when I can’t even issue sarcasm with decent volume.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and wonder of wonders, he actually looked sorry. “I didn’t think you’d want me to…” He paused, atypically uncertain. “I didn’t want to interfere in your life.”

  Since when? I wondered, but I didn’t say it out loud.

  “When you said there was someone parked on your street, I…” He blew out a slow breath, shook his head once. “I need you to keep your security system armed, Chrissy.”

  I nodded. “I really did think I had the door locked.”

  “You did.”

  I stared at him.

  He glanced away. “I had an extra key made before we split up.”

  “You have a key?”

  “You were always getting yourself in scrapes. I wanted to make sure I could get in if I needed to.”

  I tried to dredge up the appropriate amount of rage, but I was tired.

  “You have to be more careful.” He sounded tired, too.

  “Okay.” I try not to be compliant. Hell, sometimes I try not to even be reasonable. Or maybe that’s just what my God-given DNA demands of me. But Jackson Andrews was certifiably insane. And the thought of him on the loose made me want to move to the Dominican Republic with a bodyguard named Hercules, or maybe Death Ray.

  “And keep your drapes pulled,” he added.

  “All right.”

  “Do you still have the gun Manderos gave you?”

  I shook my head. Blood was beginning to return to my cerebellum. My face felt warm. “I didn’t have a permit. I couldn’t keep it. It’s against the law for me to carry—”

  “I don’t give a shit!” He spat out the words. I refrained from taking a step back, from fainting at his admittance. Rivera was cop to the core. He probably had his badge tattooed on his spleen.

  He glanced away, jaw set. “You need some protection.”

  “I have Harlequin.” I jerked my head toward the backyard, where my Great Dane was probably hiding behind one of the two landscaping boulders that graced my humble property. Harley doesn’t like controversy.

  Rivera turned his head at the mention of the dog I’d once thought of as our love child. “He’s too big to carry in your purse.”

  “So is a knee.”

  He scowled. I nodded toward his balls.

  “But it’s pretty effective in a pinch.”

  He didn’t laugh, but some sort of light shone in his dark coffee eyes. If I tried really hard, I could almost believe it was admiration. “Where’s your spray?”

  I tilted my head.

  “The pepper spray I got you. Where is it?”

  “In my purse.”

  “Get it.”

  “Listen, Rivera…” I was getting angry again. I mean, I know I hadn’t been all sweetness and light thus far in this little transaction, but kneeing him in the g
roin had been an honest mistake. Really. And he had no right to tell me what to do. “It’s very nice that you still carry a torch for me but—”

  “Show me the pepper spray and I’ll let you get to sleep,” he said.

  Sleep, he knew, was tantamount to chocolate on the Richter scale of pleasure for me.

  I went to get my purse. I like to leave it in a heap on a kitchen chair. Retrieving it from said chair, I plopped it atop the table. Then I rummaged through it for a while, found a cherry sucker I’d gotten from my bank, two tampons that had escaped from their little protective sleeves and a tube of lip balm I’d mourned the loss of long ago. But no defense spray.

  “I must have put it in my jacket pocket,” I said, but when I glanced up, Rivera was glowering at me, eyes angry and body language unspeakable.

  “Get it,” he said.

  “I left it at the office.” I was just lying now. I had no idea what I had done with the damn pepper spray. I’m not an idiot. Really, I’m not. But I don’t like to spend a lot of time on paranoia about being mugged by some lurking psychotic. It’s hard enough just to pay the bills and keep my bathroom scale from performing treason.

  “You lost it, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “No, I didn’t lose it.”

  “Then get it.”

  “I told you—”

  “God dammit, McMullen!” Stepping forward, he grabbed my arms.

  And suddenly all the air was sucked out of the house. Maybe it was sucked out of the entire universe.

  “What are you trying to do?” His voice had gone deep and dangerous again. His lips were a hard, straight line.

  I swallowed, watching those lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He seemed to be watching my lips too. “I need you to—”

  I blinked, shivered, tried not to be an idiot. “To…?” I said, but just then he slammed his mouth against mine.

  Chapter 3

  Violent mood swings—try 'em, you’ll like 'em.

  —Crazy Bet, who may not have been quite as crazy as she seemed