It astonished Renee that she and Sandy talked for over an hour and there wasn’t a single lull in the conversation. Sandy was responsible for most of the chatter, her dark ponytail bouncing as she treated Renee to tales about her and her brothers as they were growing up. As the minutes went by, Renee started to see John in an entirely new light. Up to now she was sure he’d been born a cop and would die a cop with nothing in between, so it fascinated her to hear that he actually had a normal life. And even though Renee was sure she had criminal stamped on her forehead like a tattoo, not once did Sandy say, and by the way, have you robbed any convenience stores lately?
But best of all, Sandy’s chatter kept Renee’s mind off the fact that if she didn’t go to the bathroom pretty soon, she was going to explode.
Sandy wound down from yet another story and gave Renee a speculative smile. “So tell me. What do you think of my brother?”
I think he’s going to go berserk when he sees me talking to his sister while I’m handcuffed to his bed.
“Well, we haven’t known each other long, but he seems like a nice guy.” Which was at least somewhat true. He hadn’t thrown her in jail. That was pretty nice, wasn’t it?
“Is he someone you’d like to know better?”
“Uh…yeah. Sure.”
“Good. But I gotta tell you that that’s not going to be easy. Like I said, he’s way too wrapped up in his job. He’s got this bad habit of getting right up to the point of actually having a relationship with a woman, and then she complains a little about the hours he works, or that he talks about nothing but his job. He hates that, so then he turns around and does something to piss her off just to get her to leave, or he’ll find fault with petty things she does and break up with her. He once sent a woman packing just because she used his toothbrush. Can you believe that?”
Oh, no. She couldn’t imagine that.
“He’ll pull that nonsense on you, too, if you let him. But if you’ll hold out through all the crap he’s liable to dish out and let him know that he can’t drive you away, he might actually see that a long-term relationship isn’t the heinous thing he’s always made it out to be, and you’ll actually have something together.”
Oh, that sounded like fun. Kind of like crawling on her belly through enemy territory and praying she didn’t hit a land mine. “So it’s as simple as that, huh?”
“Okay, so I made it sound like a descent into hell. But let me tell you something, Alice—he’s worth it. Even he doesn’t know that, but he is. He’s a very good man who’s just far too focused on the wrong things in life. But I promise you that if you hang on to him, you’ll be glad you did.”
A very good man. Renee felt a little tingle down her spine when Sandy said that, because in the past few days, she’d seen little glimmers of that. The fact that she was here and not in the county jail attested to it. Amid all that yelling and cussing and hard-ass cop pronouncements, she’d seen a few chinks in his armor, and Sandy was widening those chinks with every word she spoke.
Then Renee heard the clink of a key in the front door. Her heart flew instantly to her throat. Unless another family member had decided to drop by, it looked as if John was home.
“He’s finally here,” Sandy said. “It’s about time.”
Renee heard footsteps coming down the hall. Quick, heavy footsteps. A moment later John appeared at the door of the bedroom. He saw Sandy and stopped short, a look of utter astonishment on his face. His gaze flitted to Renee, then to Renee’s handcuffed wrist, then back to Sandy again.
Sandy zeroed in on John’s bruised face. “Good Lord! What happened to you?”
“Uh…accident,” he murmured.
“Well, I’m gonna screw up the other side of your face if you don’t get over here and unlock Alice!” Sandy came to her feet, her fists rising to her hips. “Were you planning on keeping her in handcuffs forever?”
“I know I went along with it last night, John,” Renee said quickly, in the sweetest voice she could muster. “And it was fun. Really. But it might have been nice if you’d unlocked me before you left the house.”
Understanding appeared to come to him in tiny bits, and she knew the precise moment when he finally realized exactly what lie she’d told to keep them both out of hot water. She thought it impossible, but the big bad cop actually blushed.
“Hey!” Sandy said. “Don’t just stand there! Get over here and unlock her!”
John looked so flustered that if Renee hadn’t known how furious he was going to be once they were alone again, she probably would have laughed. He extracted a key from his pocket, then took hold of Renee’s wrist. With his back to his sister, he gave Renee a wide-eyed what the hell has been going on here? look that Renee couldn’t answer without giving them both away.
He pulled the cuff from her wrist and let it clunk against the headboard. Then he turned back to face his sister, assuming his stern cop voice. “This is not what you think it is.”
“Oh?” Sandy’s voice held a note of amusement. “Then what is it?”
John grabbed his sister by the arm and pulled her into the hall. Renee could see them through the crack in the door, though, and even though they spoke in angry whispers she could still make out every word.
“Okay,” John told Sandy. “It’s what you think it is. Now will you get the hell out of here?”
“Hey, I’m just thrilled that you have some kind of social life, even if it is a little—” she looked back through the crack in the door and grinned “—kinky.”
“Sandy, leave.”
“Though I must say it’s not particularly original, especially with you being a cop and all. Is this your way of mingling business with pleasure?”
“Out!”
“Sure, John. I’ll go. As long as you promise you’ll come to Sunday lunch today at Aunt Louisa’s.”
“Not today.”
“And bring Alice.”
“Bring Alice?” He shook his head wildly. “No. No way.”
“You haven’t been to Sunday lunch in months.”
“It hasn’t been that long.”
“Aunt Louisa only lives three blocks over, you know. It wouldn’t have been much of an effort.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“The Cowboys are playing today.”
“I can watch them right here.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Come on, John! Would it be so awful to come to lunch and bring a girlfriend along?”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
“She could be.”
“That’s up to me to decide, isn’t it?”
“No offense, but up to now your decisions in that regard have left a little bit to be desired.”
“So I need you to tell me how to run my life?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I think you do.”
“Drop it, Sandy.”
“John—”
“I said drop it!”
There was a long silence.
“Listen to me,” Sandy said sharply. “I talked to her. She’s nice, she’s smart, she’s pretty, and I think she’ll put up with you. Don’t blow it!”
As Sandy disappeared down the hall, John wheeled around and stormed back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. He couldn’t believe this. He simply could not believe it. He strode to the bed and stood over Renee, glaring down at her. To his dismay, she was regarding him with something less than the abject fear and total respect he really could have used right then.
“What did you tell my sister?”
“Not much, really. A picture is worth a thousand words.”
“Does she know anything she’s not supposed to?”
“She thinks we had kinky, mind-blowing sex, complete with bondage. Was there another story that would have explained this situation?”
John closed his eyes, trying to quell the tension he felt rising inside him. He reached for the handcuffs dangling from the headboard.
“No!” Renee said. “Wait! I have to go to the bathroom!” He slumped with disgust, then motioned toward the bathroom. “Fine. Go.”
“You can’t lock me up again, anyway. Your sister will think you’re a sex maniac.”
“She already thinks I’m a sex maniac!”
“No, she doesn’t. She thinks you’re wonderful. She thinks you work too hard. She thinks you need a wife. And she thinks you finally had a little fun for once. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Renee disappeared into the bathroom, leaving John standing there completely and totally dumbfounded. While he’d been gone, they’d been discussing the intimate details of his sex life like a pair of gossipy teenagers. And he hadn’t even participated in the sex life they’d been gossiping about. Could he have made a bigger mistake than bringing Renee there? Was there any way he could have made a bigger mistake?
He heard a flush, then water running, and a moment later Renee came out of the bathroom. “And Sandy told me a lot of other things, too,” she said, picking up right where she’d left off without missing a beat. “She told me that when you were six, you tied a bath towel around your neck and jumped out of a tree. Surprisingly, you did not fly like Superman. You did break your arm.”
He was going to kill Sandy.
“She also told me that in the fifth grade your brother Dave used to walk to school three blocks out of his way to avoid a bully, until you went along with him one day and ‘kicked some ass.’ I believe that was the way Sandy put it.” Renee smiled with delight. “And then she told me about the time you saved a kitten from drowning in a sewer drain.”
John closed his eyes. That damned kitten story? Again? “I just pulled the stupid thing out of the water before it could go under. I don’t even like cats!”
“So that’s why you took it home and blow-dried it?”
No. Death was too good for Sandy, unless it was a slow, painful one.
“She also told me that you fell in love with Anita Saunders in the seventh grade, and you’ve been partial to blue-eyed blondes ever since.”
“That’s crap!”
“So you’re not partial to blue-eyed blondes?”
“I’m not partial to my sister yammering on about me to a total stranger!”
Renee grinned. “So she’s right.”
Oh, boy, was she ever. Anita Saunders had been a walking, talking wet dream who’d gotten imprinted onto his adolescent hormones, turning him into some kind of Pavlov’s dog whenever a blue-eyed blonde wandered into his line of sight. Which probably explained why he’d left Harley’s with Renee in the first place and gotten himself into this fallacious mess.
But did his sister really think he would have hot, kinky sex with a woman he barely knew?
Yes, thank God, she did, and that was a whole lot better than any alternative explanation.
“Listen to me, Renee. I’m not interested in my sister’s warped version of my formative years. We’re in deep shit here. If she opens her mouth to the rest of the family—” Suddenly a loud whirring sound came from the other room. John listened for a moment. It couldn’t be.
He yanked open the bedroom door, then wheeled back around and pointed at Renee. “Don’t you move one muscle!”
He stormed into the hall, and when he turned the corner into the living room, he saw, of all things, Sandy vacuuming his living room rug. He yanked the plug out of the wall. “What are you doing?”
“This place is a mess.”
“But it’s my mess, and I don’t care!”
“But you know how Aunt Louisa is about dirty rugs.”
“What has Aunt Louisa got to do with this?”
Sandy smiled sweetly, then snatched the plug out of John’s hand. “Our lunch plans have changed. I called Aunt Louisa. Turns out she’d just be delighted to bring her pot roast over here instead, considering she hasn’t seen you in, like, months.”
Sandy stuck the plug back into the wall. The vacuum motor whirred. John yanked it out again.
“You call her right now! Call her back and tell her not to come!”
“Sorry, John. She’s already out the door, armed with pot roast, that Jell-O salad you hate, and a phone to tell the rest of the family what’s up.” She gave him a smug grin. “I told you I wanted you and Alice to have lunch with us, now, didn’t I?”
She plucked the plug from John’s hand again, and he wondered if homicide was indeed an option. It would certainly overshadow the fact that he was harboring a fugitive. He eyed his sister’s throat for a few calculating seconds, then opted for damage control instead.
He hurried to the utility room, yanked Renee’s clothes out of the dryer, then went to his bedroom and tossed them to her. “Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”
“Huh?”
“Sandy invited my whole family over here for lunch. I can’t stop them. We have to get out before they get here.”
“Get out? Where to?”
“It doesn’t matter. Sandy’s one thing. The rest of my family is another. We have to get out of here now!”
“But what will Sandy say if we leave?”
“I’ll handle Sandy. Just get dressed!”
Renee yanked up the clothes, hurried into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. John stood next to it, checking his watch every ten seconds.
“Renee! Move it!”
“I can’t get into my jeans!”
“What?”
“I told you not to wash them in hot water! And you put them in a hot dryer, too, didn’t you?”
“Just put them on!”
John waited a minute more, then two, during which time he heard a considerable amount of feminine grunting coming from inside the bathroom.
“Come on, Renee! Hurry!”
“I’m trying!”
Finally John couldn’t wait any longer. He burst through the bathroom door. Renee stood beside the toilet, jeans gaping open around her hips, her pink satin panties peeking out. She’d already put her bra on, but not her sweatshirt. He only wished he had time to enjoy the view.
“John! What are you—”
He strode over, spun her around, then took a double handful of the waistband of her jeans and gave it a hard yank. The jeans slid up over her hips, hauling her up to her tiptoes at the same time.
“Ouch! John! For crying out loud!”
He spun her back around, snagging her sweatshirt from the bathroom counter and slapping it against her chest. “Forget zipping them. Just put this on and pull it down over your jeans.”
She glared at him, then wiggled into the sweatshirt. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the bathroom, while she used her free hand to hold the sweatshirt down over her unzipped jeans.
“John!” she whispered loudly. “My shoes!”
“Leave them!”
He took her by the hand, dragged her through the bedroom, and started down the hall, where Sandy was rolling the vacuum cleaner back inside the closet. She spun around, planting her fists on her hips and blocking the way. She glared at John.
“You’re not thinking of going anywhere, are you?”
“Alice and I have plans.”
Sandy turned to Renee. “Is that true?”
Renee started to answer, but John squeezed her hand and she clamped her mouth shut again. “Sandy, if you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to move you out of the way!”
“Nope.” She turned to Renee with a confident smile. “He knows better than to mess with me.”
“Sandy, I swear to God—”
“Helloooo!”
The voice accompanied the sound of his front door opening. Aunt Louisa. John bowed his head. This couldn’t be happening.
“I could use some help with this Crock-Pot, kids!”
“Coming!” Sandy shouted, then turned back to John and shook her finger at him. “And if you even think about slipping out the back door, you move right to the top of my shit list. And you know that’s a place you don’t want to be.”
Sandy wheeled around and headed into the living room to greet Aunt Louisa. John peeked around the corner and out his living room window. His worst fear was realized. Aunt Louisa had parked her car in his driveway, blocking his in the garage.
He had no escape.
He turned back to Renee. “Okay. You have to play along with this. And make it good. Do you hear me?”
“Yes. I hear you.”
“And don’t leave my sight for one second.”
“I won’t.”
“Just let me do the talking, and go along with whatever I say. Got that?”
Renee rolled her eyes. “Yes, John. I understand. Do you think I want them to know why I’m really here?”
“And don’t even think about slipping out of this house. I’ve got my car keys in my pocket, and I’m watching every move you make.”
“Come on. How stupid would it be for me to run? I’ve got no car, no shoes—”
“You managed to get away from Leandro with nothing but the clothes on your back, so don’t even go there.”
“Look, I’m not going to do anything to get you into trouble with your family. It would only get me into trouble, too. Wouldn’t that be kind of stupid?”
John inhaled a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. As long as she didn’t proposition his brothers, steal Aunt Louisa’s car, or set fire to his house, he was going to consider himself lucky.
“It’s no big deal,” Renee added. “All we have to do is eat lunch and watch a lousy football game. I don’t think it’ll be that tough to fool them.”
“That’s because you haven’t met my family.”
“I’m sure they’re very nice. It won’t be any problem just to—”
“Did I tell you my brothers are cops?”
Renee’s mouth stopped moving, and she swallowed hard. “They are?”
“Dave’s a patrol cop. Alex is a detective.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. And it gets better. My grandfather is a former prosecuting attorney who believes the majority of people have either committed a crime, are considering committing a crime, or wonder what it might be like to commit a crime. Are you getting the picture, Renee?”
Renee teetered a little on her feet, as if oxygen were slowly being sucked from the room.
“Then there’s my cousin Eddie, the criminologist, and his wife, Brenda, a member of the SWAT team. Brenda can put a hole through a quarter at two hundred feet, and Eddie can tell you what weapon she was firing when she did it.”
Renee looked as if she were going to faint. “Is that…all?”
“Yeah. Unless you count my grandmother, who spent twenty years as secretary to the chief of police.”
“Oh, God.” Renee closed her eyes, then opened them with a hopeful look. “But what about Sandy? She’s—”
“She’s a florist.”
Renee took a breath.
“And the volunteer chairman of the Tolosa Crime Watch Council.”
Renee’s expression turned positively ghostlike. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
“I see you’re speechless. That’s good. The less you say in the next few hours, the better off we’re both going to be.