Calling His Bluff (5 page)

“I’m not sure he believed me. I did inform him that he was sure to see the guinea
pig again, just probably not in a form his kid would want to play with.”

“And?”

“I think he finds my sense of humor lacking.”

“No kidding. So what’s he here for?”

“Aside from a second opinion on the possibility of squeezing Squeak out whole from
either end of the snake? Apparently the little fluff ball put up quite a fight.” Jackie
didn’t share Sarah’s sense of propriety. Her eyebrows wiggled. “The long and skinny
one took a couple of hits to the snout. Needs a little patching up.”

“Ah, the glamour. TGI Friday.” Sarah laughed out loud and shook her head as she stepped
into the exam room. Who was she kidding, having a mental flirtation with J.D. Damico?
The man spent most of his time with the glitterati of Hollywood, and she would spend
most of her morning bandaging a boa.

Besides, J.D. had been nothing but a horrible tease to her when she was a girl. She
shouldn’t get her brain all twisted into knots over him. No doubt he’d just been yanking
her chain when he kissed her.

Anyway, knowing J.D., he was probably already planning on skipping town. Halfway renovated
loft condo or not.

Hours later, Sarah bruised her knuckles for the third time, whacking them against
J.D.’s armored tank of a front door.
He can’t be gone already,
she told herself.

Could he?

Even as a kid, he’d barely waited to turn legal before throwing everything he owned
in the back of a rattling gray Chevy Citation and hitting the road for freedom and
adventure, aka anything that got him away from his parents. She was pretty sure the
only reason he’d stuck around for as long as he did was that he didn’t want to disappoint
her
mother, who asked about his homework every day when she checked on her own children.
If J.D. could have offered himself up for adoption, he’d have done it in a heartbeat.
But still, the moment he was legal, he’d made a break for it.

Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Sarah,
she scolded herself.
Not even shoot-from-the-hip J.D. would throw a pregnant cat out on the street in the
middle of winter. Plus, it would be pretty hard to sell that condo in its present
“a bomb just exploded” condition. There could be a million reasons why he’s not home,
you loon. Just because the man doesn’t have a nine-to-five job doesn’t mean he never
leaves the house. Even artists need to hit the store for toilet paper and toothpaste
every now and then.

Or he could be out with his ex. Correction, not so ex.

Or worse, maybe he’s locked in with her and they’re not answering the door.

She had stopped pounding on the door while berating herself, and in the silence she
heard the faint inquiring mews of a cat.

All of a sudden she felt incredibly stupid.

What was she doing here?

The man obviously did not need her help any longer. Although he’d been desperate for
help with the cat, it wasn’t as if he’d picked up the phone the next day to call her.
He hadn’t even bothered to thank her for messengering over some supplies the next
morning. She’d sent kibble and vitamins and a brush, for crying out loud. Showing
up on his doorstep was more likely to seem flirtatious than professional.

She bumped her elbow against the neck of the wine bottle sticking out of the medical
bag that hung at her hip, a fine pinot noir she’d picked up at a neighborhood wine
shop earlier in the day. She pressed her lips together and remembered that she’d slicked
a coat of plum gloss on them before stepping out of the car. Had unearthed a dusty
comb from the depths of her bag and run it through her straight hair, too.

Likely
to seem flirtatious?

Good grief.

She had to get out of here before he came home and found her camped out on his doorstep.
And then say a prayer in gratitude that this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where
the neighbors minded each other’s business.

“You lookin’ for J.D.?” a woman’s voice called out.

Lovely.

“Uh, no.” But she clearly was. God, she hoped she hadn’t been spotted pounding on
his door like her pants were on fire. The two women standing on the sidewalk sported
four-inch stilettos and skirts that weren’t much longer. Both sported extravagantly
dyed fake-fur jackets and matching Easter-egg colored blunt-cut wigs.

Well, neighbors came in all different shapes and sizes, she guessed. And some didn’t
live on your street, so much as, well…work there.

The women were still watching her, eyebrows arched and hips cocked to one side.

“Yes, well, I was just, you know, checking to see if he was home. I happened to be
in the neighborhood.”

God, she felt like an idiot.

The taller of the two women smiled at her. “I know whatcha mean, honey. Almost all
the guys who come see me just happen to be in the neighborhood, too.” Her companion
snorted a little. Sarah was pretty sure she was laughing. “Did he stand you up?” the
first woman asked, jerking her chin at J.D.’s door. “And after you brought the wine,
too.”

The sensation of being smashed on a slide and examined under a microscope grew stronger.
Heat raced over her face as she concentrated on not stuttering.

“No, we’re not…you know,” she waved her hands in front of her chest. The women looked
at her as if they knew very well indeed. This was getting worse. “I’m just a friend.”
Skeptical looks. Her voice squeaked higher. “His veterinarian. He’s got a cat?”

She hated it when her voice rose up at the end of perfectly simple sentences, making
her sound like a teenybopper looking for approval. It was a habit she’d almost completely
eliminated. Except when she got nervous.

Getting busted by a couple of hookers in a transparent attempt to put the moves on
a guy, who had made it clear by the simple fact of not calling that he was uninterested
in repeating the mind-blowing kiss they’d shared, made her nervous.

Go figure.

“Yeah, I saw that cat,” the shorter woman was nodding. “Took him half the morning
to corner that damn thing in the alley. Man must be awful lonely to chase a mangy
cat that hard. Maybe you should stick around with that wine.”

Strange. J.D. clearly didn’t want an animal. Why would he have rescued a stray at
all? It was difficult to come up with an explanation that made sense, particularly
given that she was still in the middle of the most peculiar conversation of her life.

“But you should put some lipstick on, honey. You’re too pale,” the first woman advised.

Excellent. Now she was getting makeup tips. And she was already wearing lip gloss,
damn it.

Her feet were stiff with cold, her nose was starting to run and she’d had her fill
of humiliation for the day. It was time to go console herself with a decent meal and
some company that didn’t charge by the half hour. Maybe read a nice, sedate, nineteenth-century
novel.

“Either of you ladies like pinot?” Time to hit the road.

* * *

Her attempt at cheerful self-deprecation lasted all of fifteen minutes. Until she
got a ticket.

More precisely, three.

With her forehead resting on the steering wheel of her car, Sarah gave serious consideration
as to whether her day could possibly get any worse.

Then she remembered that Officer Dubinski, rhymes with Buttinski, had offered to take
her down to the station, in cuffs of course, if she thought that would improve her
mood, and decided it could indeed be worse.

But it was just that she
had
car insurance. The insurance card itself maybe wasn’t the first thing you came across
in the explosion of crap that fell out of her glove compartment the moment you opened
it, but it was in there somewhere. And she hadn’t thought there was a time limit on
finding it.

And she
had
stopped at the white line. But that last tap on her brakes must have happened just
as the tires hit a patch of ice, because the car had slid forward a foot or two before
coming to a complete stop.

And she
knew
that her passenger side rearview mirror was cracked. Some idiot parking his car must
have clipped the mirror the night before, but the dealership said they had to order
the part since her Jeep was so old, and it wouldn’t be in until Monday. She couldn’t
work
without her car.

It just seemed so unfair that she hadn’t done anything wrong and was in all this trouble
anyway. When she tried to explain that to the officer, he’d flashed a palm in her
face to stop her monologue. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can tell your side of it in court,
lady.”

Now he was sitting in his cruiser, parked behind her, and she was too nervous to pull
away from the curb. She was so angry her hands were shaking. She’d probably step on
the accelerator and drive right into a parked car. But after it became clear that
the police officer was more than capable of out-waiting her, she finally shifted her
car into drive and pulled away from the curb. Her gaze jumped to her rearview mirror
every two seconds until the cruiser finally got off her tail.

Now she didn’t want a meal. Or a book. She wanted to skip town. In lieu of that, she’d
settle for some sympathy, damn it, for J.D. not calling her and for the hookers and
for Officer Buttinski. And maybe a couple stiff drinks. She knew just where to go
to get them.

Of course, in classic Chicago style, all the open parking spaces on the residential
streets had been blocked with buckets, brooms and folding chairs by people who wanted
to save the spaces after going to all the work of digging them out. She spotted one
last unclaimed gap on the block, only to watch as it was stolen from her by a jerk
in a Hummer who definitely had a tiny penis.

That was it. She’d had it.

Her tires skidded as she slalomed halfway into a spot blocked by two green plastic
lawn chairs and slammed on the brakes. She was out of the car in two seconds, and
she had a chair in each hand moments later. She was about to pitch them onto the parkway
when she came to her senses.

Did she really want a rock through her windshield?

Two minutes and a quick search of her med bag later, the chairs were stacked neatly
just off the curb and a hot pink Post-it that broadcast her apology was anchored to
the seat with a chunk of ice.
So sorry—Emergency! Leaving soon & will put the chairs back!
Her Jeep was parked neatly in the stolen space.

She was still risking that her car would get attacked with a shovel, but if she had
to drive around the block for one more minute, she was going to lose her mind. Or
commit vehicular suicide.

Finally, she’d made it. The one place where she knew everyone would be on her side.
She’d managed to wrap up early enough that it was still before five, so there shouldn’t
be anyone around except for her favorite people. She yanked open the door to her brother’s
pub, the original Tyler’s, and prepared herself for some sympathy.

“…I just felt sorry for Sarah because she was always mooning around about some guy
she liked.”

This was
not
happening to her.

* * *

“I was just yanking her chain.”

It was a good thing he hadn’t actually sat down yet, J.D. thought, as he took another
step back from the long wooden counter in front of him.

Tyler had both hands flat against the bar. He looked about two seconds away from hopping
it and coming after J.D. with fists swinging.

“You kissed my sister?”

He couldn’t blame the guy. When you ask your friend to check up on your sister, you
don’t really mean it in a carnal way.

“I asked you to
talk
to her, Damico. Tell me if you thought she seemed a little off. I didn’t tell you
to put the moves on her.” Tyler wasn’t smiling at all. The man seemed pretty pissed,
actually.

“Hey, I was doped up on pain meds when you called. Plus, I haven’t seen Sarah since
she was a kid. I wouldn’t know if she seemed a little off if I talked to her all day.”

“Yeah, well, see with your eyes, not with your hands.” When Tyler yanked at the bar
rag hanging from his belt and started polishing the counter in front of him like it
was inspection time at the barracks, J.D. figured it was probably safe to sit down.
Which was necessary, because after five days without crutches, his leg still ached
like a son of a bitch. “Sarah doesn’t need her chain yanked by the likes of you. Dude,
you don’t even know if you’re still married.”

Maybe not so safe yet.

“No way. I paid. I got the papers. Only one married here is you, bro. Thank god.”

He glanced reflexively over his shoulder when he heard the gentle creak of a hinge
and shivered as a small gust of cold air hit the nape of his neck. He hoped whoever
it was would take the heat off him. The petite blonde who came barreling through the
front door of the pub, two small children hanging off her hands, fit the bill.

J.D. shook his head and smiled at the sight of the classic Gold Coast beauty, blond
hair up in a twist and designer suit hanging flawlessly on her small frame. She definitely
merited a second glance. Even though she was married to his best friend.

Grace kicked off her high heels, which skidded to a stop at the base of the jukebox,
and walked across the spotless hardwood floor of the bar in her stocking feet.

J.D. had been out of the country when she conned her way into an under-the-table waitressing
job at Tyler’s pub, using a fake name while she hid out from some cold and manipulative
family members. It didn’t surprise him much that she’d fallen for Tyler. Women always
did sooner or later. What did surprise him was that his buddy had fallen just as hard.

“I’ll trade you your children for a glass of pinot grigio,” Grace suggested to her
husband. She threw J.D. a grateful glance as he scooped two-year-old Isabelle onto
his lap, pulling out one of the baseballs he always had on hand somehow to start a
tame game of underhand toss with four-year-old Daniel. “Thanks.”