Unleashed Read online

  “So you’ve said,” she agreed cautiously.

  “But Rivera makes me…” I paused, clenching one fist as I searched for the proper phraseology. “He disturbs my tranquility.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious. He makes me…less than perfectly rational,” I said, and rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. When I withdrew my hand, one of the teenagers was scrambling into the shopping cart. I wondered distractedly if he had won or lost the argument.

  “Have you ever considered the fact that that might be your gift, Mac?” Laney asked.

  “What’s that?” I asked, tearing my attention from the adolescents and wondering vaguely how our species had ever clambered out of the primordial ooze.

  “Maybe your particular personality type is the reason you’re so successful?”

  “I’m successful?” I asked, feeling my aching insecurities clatter like wind chimes.

  “Now’s not the time for false modesty,” she said.

  “If not now—”

  “Maybe the reason your clients appreciate you so much is because you can relate to them on their level.”

  “Are you saying I’m deranged?”

  “I’m doing my utmost to avoid that,” she said, and I almost laughed despite everything. “When did this talk take place?”

  “Talk?” I said, hedging carefully.

  “Don’t mess with me, Mac. I’ve got a tankard of toxic hormones swimming around in my system.”

  “You mean the talk with Rivera?”

  “Yes.” Her tone suggested that I was testing her patience. I was used to hearing that tone since before I was able to breathe without the aid of an umbilicus.

  “Oh. Monday.”

  There was a pause that suggested repercussions to come. Repercussions from Laney usually consisted of hurt feelings. I’d rather be boiled in castor oil. “And you didn’t tell me before this?” she asked. I tensed against the guilt.

  It was Wednesday. I had spoken to her twice since Monday and had failed to broach the subject on both occasions. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “It’s not as if I haven’t broken up with guys before.”

  “Eighty-three times, if my math is correct.”

  “It’s not.” I tried to sound indignant. Eighty-three failed relationships might suggest a certain lack of…something. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that something was, despite the damned PhD.

  “I might have missed a few guys,” she said, then steered back onto the verbal track. “Listen, Mac, I know you and Rivera are…” She paused, possibly still searching for a euphemism for weirder than shit. “Fractious. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I mean, people fight. Everyone—”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you and…” I drew a deep breath, searching for the proper term. J.D. Solberg, her husband of nearly a full, mind-numbing year, was the dweebiest, most obnoxious man on the planet, a fact that I had voiced on more than one occasion. The new and classier me, however, would no longer lower myself by mentioning that fact to the woman who honest-to-God loved him. “Do you and…your spouse…” I winced a little as I admitted their union. “Fight?”

  “Of course. Jeen and I fight all the time.”

  “Really?” Atop the concrete incline, a second teenager was scrambling disjointedly into the shopping cart. “When was the last time?”

  “What?”

  “When was your last big blow out, Laney?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a blow out exactly.”

  I felt tired and strangely…dusty. “What would you call it…exactly?”

  “It was more like a…a disagreement.”

  “A disagreement.”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded. Laney would have disagreements. Rivera and I had what might better be referred to as street brawls. But that was the old me. “When was it?”

  “Just…” I could almost hear her shake her head. Maybe it was her hair crackling against her cell phone. The Amazon queen’s on-set stylists liked to starch her coiffure to magnificent heights. “Just last week we had an argument.”

  “What was it regarding?”

  “I don’t think that’s the point, Mac.”

  “Was it about who loves whom the most?”

  There was a pause.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I might have momentarily lost my fabulous composure, but seriously…“That was your argument?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, and turned away from the phone to produce gagging noises possibly loud enough to be heard without a cellular device. I know it was infantile, but honest to God, the thought of the sweetest, most beautiful woman in the world consorting with the dweebiest man on the planet always makes me queasy.

  She laughed. “Listen, if anyone gets to barf, it’s me.”

  I pushed my phone back to my ear. “What do you mean? Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little nauseated sometimes. And tired. And I don’t know. Kind of lonely, I guess.”

  “Lonely?” I scowled at the squabbling teenagers. One of them—the sanest of the trio, I suspected—was still outside the cart. The other two were hanging onto the corner of the nearby building, keeping their soon-to-be vehicle immobile. I could see the muscles in their scrawny, spider monkey arms stretched taut. “I thought Solberg was there with you?”

  “He is, and it’s great to have him here. But I just…”

  “What?” Memories of death threats and hostage situations jolted through me. Laney’s life had been endangered on more than one occasion. The disappearance of the dweebster had nearly killed us both when my misbegotten attempt to find him took us to Vegas, the only place on earth with more oddballs per capita than L.A.

  “I miss you, Mac.”

  My heart ached, my vision went blurry, and my stomach twisted. Three sure signs of love. Or gastric irregularities. “I kind of miss you, too,” I said.

  She sighed. “Maybe when I get home we should buy a horse ranch together.”

  “Sure,” I said, and fondly remembered our requisite horse-crazy years, when she and I had haunted every equestrian stable within a ten-mile radius of Schaumburg, Illinois. “Because I’ve got so much money and you’ve got so much time.”

  She sighed at my sarcasm. “I think you should give Rivera another chance.”

  But he made me crazy, and I so very much wanted to be sane.

  “Maybe sane’s overrated,” she said, making me wonder for the hundredth time if she was just a little more psychic than I cared to believe.

  I glanced at the teenagers. The one I had tagged as “most sane” was climbing laboriously into the cart/suicide vehicle, knobby limbs folding like a praying mantis’s. “I don’t think so.”

  “What’d he do wrong?”

  “Listen, Laney…” My eyes stung. I blinked repeatedly. “You know I love you, but my date’s waiting and I—”

  “I can still catch that flight.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. Despite my flirty skirt and classy top, I felt hot and wilted. “I have to assume Jean-Claude has passed out by now from waiting with bated breath for your next command.”

  “Who?”

  “Jean—” I began, then narrowed my eyes. “There is no Jean-Claude dying to buy you airline tickets, is there?”

  She laughed a little. “Tell me what happened. Please.”

  I sighed and ignored the teenagers, who were now frozen in anticipatory pre-death. “Nothing happened, Laney.” I fought the urge to unload my pathetic troubles onto her unreasonably capable shoulders, but I was weak. “All month,” I added. “Nothing happened all month.”

  “You haven’t seen him for a month?”

  “Except for the talk, I haven’t even spoken to him.”

  “Well…” She seemed to be searching for some sort of platitude. “He’s a busy man, Mac.”

  “Too busy to push a button on
his phone?”

  “I don’t mean to worry you, honey, but he is in law enforcement. I mean, you both work with troubled individuals, but his clientele tends to try to kill people with more frequency.”

  “I don’t know. It might be about par,” I said. The laundry list of guys who had recently tried to off me was deplorably long.

  “The point is he’s probably been working on something really important. Pretty soon, he’ll solve the case and the two of you won’t be heard from for three days and four nights…except for…you know, the complaints from your neighbors.”

  I remembered the last night we’d spent together; my neighbor, Mr. Al Sadr, had, in fact, alerted the authorities about an animal in distress. Apparently, achieving sexual satisfaction after what some might refer to as a dearth can sound something like a hyena in the throes of torture.

  I sighed, then pulled on my big-girl panties and moved on. “But that’s the thing, Laney. I’m almost thirty-five years old.”

  “In your dreams.”

  I ignored her. “And a licensed therapist, a PhD, a respected member of my community and…“

  “Respected?” she began, but I powered through.

  “I don’t want to disturb the neighbors anymore!”

  “Are you sure? Usually—”

  “I’m tired of the highs and lows. I want normal.”

  She exhaled softly, as if about to divulge a hard truth. Generally speaking, I like my truths in small doses and laced with copious amounts of chocolate. “I don’t think normal’s for the likes of you, Mac,” she said.

  A door squeaked in the background. “Ms. Ruocco?” The voice sounded as timid as a mouse, as smitten as a kitten. “Frank says we’re going to miss the sunset if you don’t come soon.”

  “I’m sorry, Andy. Can you convince him that I need just a couple more minutes?”

  I could hear his backbone stiffen from nine hundred miles away. Maybe other anatomical parts were stiffening, too. Laney’s boobs had been pretty impressive pre-gestation; I could only imagine her proportions now. “I can and I shall,” he said. The door closed resolutely behind him.

  “You should go before Andy finds a cross and hangs himself on it for you,” I said.

  “He’s a nice kid.”

  “Kid?”

  “Twenty-six in a couple of weeks.”

  “Ah, yes, barely out of swaddling. How many times?”

  “How many times what?”

  “How often has he proposed?”

  “I’m already married. Not to mention pregnant. Remember?”

  “Did he just ask you to run away with him, then?”

  She sighed. Hunky men throwing themselves at her feet seemed to make her weary. I don’t have that problem. “Listen, Mac. Don’t do anything drastic. Eventually, Rivera might get tired of you breaking up with him.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Laney, I’m tired of it, too. I don’t want any more drama.”

  “Are you sure? Because your extremities tend to go numb when you get bored.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I’ve changed. Grown up.” Outside my little Saturn, the trio of teenagers loosened their simian grip on the building and screamed toward the bottom of the incline. “Boring is the new orgasmic.”

  Chapter 2

  While in a romantic relationship, women generally endeavor to be well-dressed, sophisticated, and articulate. If men manage coherency, they are well ahead of the curve.

  —Regina Stromburg, professor of Women’s Studies 101, bitter but not entirely inaccurate

  Holy hell, he was boring, I thought, and nodded at yet another of my date’s endless anecdotes.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t reconsidering my statement to Laney: Boring is good. So what if I had long ago lost feeling in my right foot? I had a spare. And Tyler was really quite attractive…in an industrial sort of way. He had blue eyes and a square jaw. Generally, I’m not fond of facial hair, particularly my own, but the carefully cropped beard looked good on him. As an added bonus, he seemed willing to pay for my meal, which, if you’re wondering, can be pretty spendy at a French castle.

  So I nodded for the fifty-first time and refused to let my eyeballs roll back in my head like a drunken monkey’s. “Uh huh,” I said with enough enthusiasm to suggest that I not only remained conscious…I was still listening. But I seemed to be experiencing a loss of sensation in my shins.

  “That’s when I decided to become an engineer,” he said.

  I smiled again. My teeth felt tired. “Do you get to wear one of those cute little hickory-stripe hats?”

  “What?” Not a dollop of humor showed on his face. I stifled a sigh as I felt my right butt cheek surrender to the inevitable. My left, however, was holding up like a real trooper.

  “I’ve always wanted to blow the whistle.”

  He watched me in silence for a few endless seconds. “I’m not a train engineer.”

  “I thought maybe,” I said, and noticed that he hadn’t eaten his fair share of the shrimp appetizer. The waiter, fabulously pretentious, had informed us that they had been lovingly sautéed in garlic and brandy.

  “You were making a joke?”

  “I thought so,” I admitted, and tried to quit staring at his remaining hors d’oeuvres. The new Christina was only interested in food on the basis of its nutritional value. “What kind of engineer are you?”

  “Electrical,” he said, and I felt my entire rear end go dead.

  When the date whimpered to a merciful finale, I slumped into my Saturn and headed toward home. Two blocks from the restaurant, a shopping cart lay on its side at the bottom of a concrete ramp. In a fit of altruism mixed with entrepreneurial genius, I had given a business card to each of the still-conscious teenagers, who, I hoped, would hand them off to their parents before their next longevity-shortening adventure.

  It was clear that there would always be the need for a good shrink in the greater metropolitan area. Still, I felt dejected. I turned on the radio. Bach’s Mass in B Minor soared from the speakers. I winced, remembered Classy Chrissy had outgrown Mick Jagger, and turned off the sound.

  Harlequin greeted me at the door with a tail whap and a wiggle. When he reared up on his hind legs, his face was level with mine. He put his saucer-sized paws on my shoulders, laid his snout against my neck, and sighed. I closed my eyes and kissed his ear. He’s a gigantic pest and a flatulent coward who shows an ounce of bravery only when scouting the kitchen for nose-pinching aluminum cans and scraps of burnt bacon. But I couldn’t love him more if I’d given birth to him. Such is true devotion. In actuality, our rapport had lasted far longer than ninety percent of the relationships I shared with my fellow Homo sapiens.

  Two minutes after my arrival, we were snuggled up on the couch, sharing a bowl of Velvet Vanilla ice cream and watching The Princess Bride for the umpteenth time. Classy Chrissy generally didn’t participate in such self-indulgent behavior, but it seemed wrong to force abstinence on my innocent canine friend.

  Thirty minutes and a full pint later, we were both asleep, while my sweet Westley rode through my dreams on a pearl-white stallion.

  By the time I awoke from my post-consumption coma, it was 7:42 in the morning. I had a 9:00 client and a fifty-minute drive to my practice in Eagle Rock. After letting Harley out to relieve himself and terrorize the avian community, I rushed through a shower. With no time left for breakfast, I jumped into my trusty Saturn and raced off to work. The freeway gods were in a frolicsome mood. Nevertheless, I managed to careen to a halt in front of Hope Counseling by 8:54.

  Still feeling groggy and out of sorts, I eyed Sunrise Coffee across the parking lot. I’m not a caffeine addict, but the old Chrissy appreciated any drink that wasn’t too self-important to incorporate massive amounts of sugar and a buttload of whipped cream, while the new Chrissy didn’t wish to deprive any small business of its…business. So, after a quick glance at my humble office, I hurried across the pavement and ordered a Caramel Carnival. The guy behind the
counter was new…and cute…with surfer-dude hair and eyelashes that would make any member of the camelid family green with envy. Fortunately, Classy Chrissy cared naught about physical appearances and kept the transaction strictly business.

  The damages came to more than you’d dish out for your mortgage payment in most parts of the world, but I shuffled rapidly through my wallet, handed over a couple crumpled bills, and hightailed it out of there without waiting for change.

  My secretary/receptionist met me at the door. “You skipped breakfast again, didn’t you?” Shirley Templeton was not the most beautiful woman on the planet. I appreciated that almost as much as I did her light-years-above-pay-scale efficiency, especially since the stunning Brainy Laney had held the position before becoming Amazonian royalty.

  “Not to worry,” I said, speed-walking toward my office in the back. “I ate a small hamlet last night.”

  Shirley remained at her station but raised her voice so as to be heard. “There ain’t no substitute for breakfast. I told my nephew the same thing when he called about that sticky window of—”

  “Good morning, Mr. Nettleton,” she said, switching to what she called her “show me the money” voice. “Ms. McMullen is currently updating records, but she’ll be with you momentarily.”

  By two o’clock, my stomach was rumbling like a hungry volcano. I had counseled an insomniac, an egomaniac, and a boobiac, my own term for guys who spend their session staring at my fairly unimpressive chest.

  With an hour’s break before my next client, I shambled up to the reception area just as the front door opened.

  “Hi.” The guy from the coffee shop stepped inside and smiled. He was carrying a brown paper bag. “You overpaid,” he said, and stretched out his arm. “So I brought you a turkey sandwich.”

  “I…” I scowled at him, suspicions firing up like smoke signals in my underfed psyche. If you’re at all familiar with my history, you’re probably aware that people tend to try to kill me. Hard to say why, but no new attempts had been made for several weeks and I was hoping to continue that fortuitous trend. So I tightened my fingers around a freshly sharpened pencil just retrieved from Shirley’s desk and faced him head-on. “How did you know where I work?”