Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (42 page)

Not that she and Leo argued a lot. Their
relationship was pretty darn amicable. And comfortable. Maybe too
comfortable. What if Leo never thought it was the right time for a
family? Jami was thirty-five. It was time. She wanted a child so
badly it sometimes felt like shrink-wrap squeezing her insides.
They’d been living together for seven years. When would he make up
his mind? There was always that next big promotion around the
corner or one more financial goal he needed to achieve. Not to
mention that their lovemaking had become increasingly perfunctory,
and, to be honest, not so much about her pleasure.

Jami shivered. How was she supposed to break
the job news to Leo? They lived in his condo, but she shared
expenses. She had savings to live on for...well, over a year at
least, but it would still be a blow to them both.

Okay, she wouldn’t think about all that
now.

Jami hunkered down in front of the stapled
paper bags on the bottom shelf. Grab bags. They took her back to
her childhood when her favorite uncle visited, with grab bags for
her and each of her sisters. Filled with junk that her sisters
threw out along with the paper sack, in Jami’s mind, there was
always a treasure in there, big or little. Growing up, she’d been
the youngest and never learned how to scream the loudest or the
longest, and her mother was often too busy dealing with someone
else’s drama to notice Jami’s relatively minor problems. The fact
that her uncle always knew the perfect treasure to put in that
sack, one especially for her, made up for the lack of
attention.

Continuing grab-bagging into adulthood was,
at the very least, a little OCD, but Jami didn’t care if she had an
obsessive-compulsive disorder. She loved the grab bags.

Closing her eyes, she put out a hand for a
stapled bag. Best not to think or look too hard. That was the key
to grabbing. If you didn’t over-think, the universe stepped in and
gave you exactly what you needed.

Then someone snatched the magic bag right out
of her fingers. Jami snapped her eyes open and rose to her full
five foot seven plus three-inch heels. “Hey, that’s mine.”

“I saw it first.” Easily a head shorter than
Jami, the elderly woman clutched the bag to her chest, her bosom
heaving.

“I had it first.” Jami narrowed her eyes and
secured her stance on her high heels, like a gunfighter ready to
quick-draw. She’d touched it first, so she had dibs. She might not
have stood up to Dick Head when he’d ordered her to sign that PO,
but she’d go to the mat for that bag.

A tear trickled down onto a cheek that
resembled an apple wizened in the sun. “But I need it. You don’t
need it.”

Jami took in the woman’s blouse, which was
literally falling apart at the seams. The torn hem of her skirt
dragged on the orange shag carpet. Jami glanced at the bag. Its
label read women’s clothing.

Jeez. Did it matter who’d touched it first?
The grab-bag thing was about feeling better, and really, if she
yanked it out of this poor lady’s hand, she’d feel lower than dirt.
“You’re right. I don’t really need it.” She reached in her purse
for a dollar bill and handed it to the woman. “But since I touched
it first, I still have to be the one to pay for it.”

The woman beamed. She was missing a tooth.
Then she snatched the dollar from Jami, pushed between two men
arguing about a broken cuckoo clock that
cucked
but didn’t
koo
, and slapped the bill on the counter before Jami could
change her mind. If the old lady had scammed her, she’d done it
well, and Jami didn’t mind.

Instead, she bent down, reached into the maze
of bags on the shelf without looking, pulled one from the last row,
then made her way to the front.

The two men were still arguing about the
cuckoo.

When she reached the counter, Olga patted her
hand. “What’d ya get this time, Baby Doll?”

Smiling, Jami plunked down her dollar. “I
have no idea. It’s a surprise.”

Olga looked at the sack’s writing through the
bottom of her glasses. “It says—”

Jami stuck her fingers in her ears. “Don’t
tell me. I don’t want to know before I open it.”

There was a whole ritual to follow; okay, she
did
have OCD. She couldn’t read the writing on the outside
of the bag, just stick her hand in, eyes closed. It could be
clothing, jewelry or books, CDs or video tapes. She’d been known to
pick men’s clothing or shoes, but there was always something worth
calling treasure, even if all an item did was garner a memory of
her father’s Florsheim shoes and the quarters he used to pay her as
a child to keep the leather polished. Pops had passed from lung
cancer ten years ago. He hadn’t smoked a day in his life.

Olga shook the bag. “It sounds like—” she
singsonged in that raspy voice.

“Stop it,” Jami squealed, playing along. “I
don’t want to know.”

Olga loved to tease, and they went through
the same rigmarole every time. Maybe that was part of the pleasure
of grab-bagging. Olga, her teasing, her smiles. Even before Jami
left the shop, she always felt sunnier. A little more hopeful.

“Well, I want to hear what you find inside.
If it’s really good, I think we’re going to have to consider
raising prices.”

“It’s because they’re only a dollar that you
even sell them and you know it.” Jami herself was probably the only
one who got a big kick out of what was in the bags anyway. “Raising
the price doesn’t do you a darn bit of good if volume goes
down.”

“Being a high finance mucky-muck, you oughta
know.”

Right. She’d been more like Dick Head’s bum
girl even if she did have a title.
C’est
la vie.
The
bright side was not having to see Dick Head day in and day out.
Maybe getting fired was a blessing in disguise.

Olga slammed the cash drawer. “Now get outta
here, and see if you got anything fun.”

Jami waved. The bag rattled in her hand as
she headed out to her SUV. It didn’t sound like jewelry. CDs, maybe
videos; she rarely got DVDs, since everybody was chucking their old
tapes.

The sun shone through the windshield of her
white 4Runner, and once inside she was toasty despite the taste of
fall chill.

“What have we got?” she whispered. Tearing
out the staples, she closed her eyes and stuck her hand in.

Could be video games. She didn’t know if they
came in jewel cases. She opened her eyes to find Lawrence Welk
staring at her, offering his all-time favorite polkas. Oh my God,
her aunt would love it! She sifted through the bag, counting nine
more CDs. Maybe it was Lawrence Welk’s complete collection. One
Christmas present was in the bag, no pun intended. The next one she
pulled out, however, was Slim Whitman. Jami laughed out loud.
Grandma in the movie
Mars Attacks
had played a Slim Whitman
record on her phonograph and made all the Martian heads explode,
thus saving the world. Jami had thought they made up Slim just for
the movie, but he was an honest-to-God crooner.

Les Paul and Mary Ford were next. A married
couple from the fifties timeframe, and the CD featured their
Rheingold beer commercials. Hmm, okay. She found four more Lawrence
Welk, big band, ballads, and standards, then the soundtrack for
The Blair Witch Project
—did it even
have
a
soundtrack?—and two CDs from a guy she’d never heard of. Colton
Amory. The first was called
Dream Sweet
and the second
Dreaming of You
.

She flipped over one to read the song titles
on the back, and her heart simply jumped into her throat. Even in a
studio portrait, Colton Amory had the most penetrating pair of blue
eyes she’d ever seen, as if he were looking right into her soul.
Jami held her breath for several seconds. His hair was dark brown,
and though his mustache had one or two streaks of gray in it, she
could swear he wasn’t more than mid-thirties. He had a cock-eyed
smile that made her want to smile right back at him as if he could
see her, and laugh lines around his gorgeous blue eyes.

The dollar she’d paid was worth it for Colton
Amory’s photo alone. She turned over the other CD,
Dream
Sweet
, and this time his smile was only a hint. As if he had a
sexy secret. His mustache was minus the gray streaks. But damn, he
was hot in both photos.

The copyright dates on the inside covers
showed
Dream Sweet
was the earliest, nine years ago, and the
second album,
Dreaming of You
, a couple of years later.

By now, Colton Amory probably had a paunch
and a big bald spot, but she could still fantasize about what he’d
looked like seven years ago. Since he’d found his way into a Used
But Not Abused grab bag, however, his music was probably crap.

She started the engine, yanked his more
recent CD out of its jewel case and shoved it into her player, then
pulled into traffic to the opening strains of Colton Amory’s
guitar. It had an odd sound. No, not odd. Not out-of-tune either.
It was unique, in a different key that pulled a person’s soul right
into the music. Some songs didn’t penetrate the consciousness.
Usually, she’d be thinking about the million things she had to get
done in the first five minutes at work and never even heard the
songs on the radio. Colton Amory’s music didn’t allow her to think
of anything else. It sucked her in and wouldn’t let her go.

Then he started to sing, his voice like the
smooth taste of a glass of Kahlua-n-cream going down. Sweet and
velvety like cream, yet rich and smoky like Kahlua. In “Baby, I’ll
Find You”, he sang about dreams and soul mates and finding the
perfect woman. More than a partner, the person who fulfilled you,
completed you, the one who gave you synergy. Separate, you were
just going through the motions, but together you were so much more
than simply the sum of your separate parts. His words spoke to her
inner heart; his voice mesmerized her. She ran through the tail-end
of a yellow light, cutting it way too close to red.

Oh. My. God. Colton Amory was a grab-bag
treasure among treasures. His lyrics made her want to reach for her
dreams.

At the next light, she closed her eyes and
shivered with an ache so bad, it made her insides quake. God, she
wanted. Everything. A baby growing inside her, then finally,
finally, that cherished little human being in her arms. Leo’s ring
on her finger. His breath in her ear saying how much he loved her,
wanted her, needed her. A four-bedroom house she and Leo owned
together, something in the suburbs with a white picket fence and
rows of hydrangea bushes. She wanted the blue ones. She wanted all
the passion in that song, to rediscover it with Leo. Now. Not
tomorrow or next month or next year.

The emotion Colton Amory seared into his
music was more than mere words. It was a message. In that grab bag,
the universe had given her exactly what she needed. Maybe the
universe had been sending her a message when Dick Head fired her,
too. It was time to take a stand, go for the gusto, take charge of
her life, and ask for what she wanted. She’d waited seven years for
Leo to make up his mind. She wasn’t getting any younger. She’d
spent far too much time waiting for things to happen. It was time
to let go of her fears and force them to happen.

Finding Colton Amory’s music was serendipity.
Or fate. Maybe even destiny. Jami knew what she had to do.

Tonight, she’d make up Leo’s mind for
him.

* * * * *

“I hate to say it, sweetie, but no man buys
the cow when he can get the milk for free.”

Jami’s shoulders tensed, then her neck, until
finally a mammoth tension headache sprouted like an alien probe
inside her head. With her outdated clichés, her mother was an
anachronism. You’d think Mom had been raised on fifties TV shows
like
Father Knows Best
and
Leave it Beaver
. She’d
actually caught her mother watching old reruns on TV Land.

But Mom was right, things with Leo hadn’t
gone the way Jami planned.

If you enjoyed this excerpt, look for
Baby, I’ll Find
You
from Jennifer Skully!

Jasmine Haynes also writes steamy erotic
romance single titles. But be warned, this one is pretty darn
naughty!

Kinky
Neighbors

Cover design by
Rosemary
Gunn

Two couples, two very hot wives, two husbands
who don’t mind a little swapping...

The Mitchells and the Harts have been next
door neighbors and friends for the past year. They have loads in
common; double incomes, professional careers, no kids,...and a
kinky streak.

Now they’re about to
become
very
good
friends...with kinky benefits.