It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life (16 page)

Face lighting up like a Christmas tree, the blonde stubbed out her cigarette and sprang off her seat. Rounding the bar, she bounded toward them. Sensing Josh stiffen beside her, Mandy turned to ask if he knew the woman, but his shell-shocked expression answered that question loud and clear.

The woman hauled up in front of them. Ignoring Mandy, she threw her pencil-thin arms about Josh’s neck. “Oh baby, it’s you, it’s really you. I’ve missed you so much.”

Before he could answer, she rose up on the pointed toes of her Manolo Blahnik stilettos and planted an openmouthed kiss on his lips. Even looking through smoke-watery eyes, Mandy couldn’t miss the rock-size diamond sparkling from her tiny left hand.

Staring over at them, Mandy felt a trickle run down her cheek and knew the extra moisture had nothing to do with the smoke. “Oh, Josh, you should have told me.” Before she could humiliate herself anymore, she turned and ran for the door.

“The way you played the part of the loving fiancée, you almost had me believing it was true.”

He thought of Mandy’s stricken look when Tiffany threw herself into his arms and wished beyond anything he’d confessed his history with her when he’d come clean earlier about his status as a federal witness. The thing was, he’d written Tiffany off, considered her as being out of his life for good. Her surprise appearance had shocked him almost as much as it had Mandy.

“Oh, baby, I do love you, and I’ve been so afraid for you these last months, I thought I’d lose my mind.” Walking up to him, Tiffany wrapped her arms about his torso, taking advantage of the closeness to rub her breasts against his chest. “But it’s going to be okay now, because I’m here for you. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

Feeling disgusted instead of turned on, he reached down and disengaged her clinging hands from his waist. “You can drop the devotion crap, Tiffany. We’re alone now.”

And alone they were. White-faced and on the verge of tears, Mandy had run out of the bar while Tiffany still had him in a lip-lock. Setting firm hands on her shoulders, he’d pushed her away and gone after Mandy. Just his luck, he caught up with her on Boston Street just in time to see her flag down a passing city cab and get inside.

“Really, Joshie, is this any way to treat your fiancée?” Slanting her gaze up at him, Tiffany pulled her glossy lips into a pout. Once upon a time, that look would have driven him wild but now the affectation struck him as childish, the polar opposite of sexy.

“You’re not my fiancée anymore or haven’t you figured that out?” He glanced pointedly at the engagement ring sticking out from her bony finger, a three-carat monstrosity she’d bullied him into buying in lieu of the elegant family heirloom he’d planned on giving her. That much bling would look overdone on most women, but on someone as petite as Tiffany it bordered on grotesque.

Her mobile mouth formed a shocked circle. “Since when?”

“Pretty much since I walked in on you and the landscaper rocking like porn stars in our bed.”

“I was hoping you might have forgiven me for that little misstep.”

Little misstep
. God, but the woman was a piece of work. It was funny how he’d never seen through her before, not completely, until now. “Well, Tiffany, they say hope springs eternal, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”

“What happened wasn’t entirely my fault, you know. You were working so much, all the time really. I hardly ever saw you.”

As apologies went, it wasn’t much, but then he’d learned not to expect much of anything from her, so in that sense it was all good. “Well, that would be because I was trying to get our London office open before the wedding and then there was the little complication of having my CFO murdered in cold blood and my life on the line.”

“Well, I know all that
now,
but I didn’t then. I was so lonesome and with you gone all the time and all the pressure of planning the wedding, I guess it all got to be too much.”

“Are you saying you slept with the landscaper as some kind of…of tension release?”

He must be over her,
really
over her, because instead of reliving the shock and hurt of finding her in bed with another man, he found himself appreciating the absurdity of the situation. If it weren’t for worrying about Mandy, where she’d gone and how upset she’d looked just before she ran out, he might find it not just absurd but laughably so.

She hesitated. Gaze demurely downcast, she nodded. “I know it was wrong of me, and that there’s no excuse really, but it won’t happen again, I promise. Can’t we just let bygones be bygones and move forward with the future?”

Oh, he fully intended on moving forward with the future all right, only not with an ice princess like Tiffany. If he was fortunate enough to share his life with anyone, it would be with a warm-blooded woman with a generous, giving heart. A woman like Mandy.

He shook his head. “If you came all the way to Baltimore just to tell me you’re sorry, then you could have saved yourself a trip because, sorry or not, it’s over between us.” He was about to turn away when a question occurred to him. “How did you find me, by the way?”

“With Grady turning up dead and everybody thinking you were dead, too, and then Tony’s trial coming up, I was afraid they’d come after me, too. I was frightened to stay in Boston.”

Self-preservation, so now they were getting closer to the truth at least.

Her mouth twisted into an unbecoming snicker. “That woman you were with, the fat one with the dirty hair, I suppose she’s the best you can do in a town like this.”

The flash of anger struck him so fast and hard he had to force his hands down to his sides to keep from throwing her against the nearest wall. For the first time in his life, including the episode when he’d walked in on her in the act of cheating on him, he was tempted to lay violent hands on a woman.

For safety’s sake—hers—he took a step back. “Well, Tiffany, as usual you’ve got only half of the story correct. Mandy is the best, the very best, I can hope to do but not just here in Baltimore. She’s the best I could hope for anywhere, and it’s about time I told her so.”

Mandy thought for a second or two. As much as she might fantasize about throwing herself Anna Karenina style onto the tracks at Penn Station, such high drama was best saved for the pages of fiction. If the past week had taught her anything it was that life, even a lonely single’s life, was very precious gift.

“Home. I want to go home.”

He tapped the side of his temple with a grimy fingernail. “Look, lady, I’m not clairvoyant. I’m gonna need an address.”

“Oh, sorry.” She gave him her parents’ address and settled back against the split upholstery.

Staring out the smeared window as they zipped along, she wondered what the hell her problem was. It wasn’t as if she’d entered into any of this with blinders on. From the first she’d known that Josh wasn’t exactly for real and certainly not for keeps. They’d shared a moment, a fling, or at least a beautiful affair. Whatever she chose to call it, it was officially over as of now. If she’d waited, he would have dumped her eventually. Better to cut the ties now while she was still in control than risk sustaining an even greater, more crippling wound down the road. Sitting back, she told herself it was a relief in a way. No more “I’ll call you” followed by endless hours of frantic waiting for her cell to ring, no more fears about not measuring up, and most of all, no more anxiety about getting jilted. At least this time she’d been the proactive one, the one to initiate the breakup. Now that she had, getting jilted, getting hurt, was one major worry she could cross off her list—permanently. She should feel, if not exactly triumphant, empowered at least.

So why then was she crying in the back seat of a Baltimore City cab feeling more alone, more miserable, than she had in her whole life?

A monotonic female voice answered, “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here by those names.”

Mandy had never been a patient person but the near-death experience and dunking in the yucky harbor water topped off by the surprise appearance of the fiancée had dissipated what little patience she had left. Throwing caution, and professional decorum, to the wind, she shouted into the receiver, “The hell there isn’t. Look, you tell them I’m calling about the Joshua Thornton case and have them call me back ASAP.”

A long pause greeted her diatribe, followed by, “I’m not saying such persons are here, or even exist but if, hypothetically speaking, they did exist and were present in this office, at what number should I have them contact you?”

Shivering with nerves and cold, Mandy repeated her number and clicked off the call. Then she peeled off her waterlogged clothes, wrapped a bathrobe around herself, and sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.

Less than a minute later, the phone rang. She picked up on the second ring. “Delinski here.”

“Who are you and why are you calling?” She recognized the clipped tones as belonging to the younger agent, McKinney.

Dragging a hand through her tangled hair, she said, “Look, let’s cut to the chase. I know all about Josh being in the witness protection program just like you know all about me from watching him, which means you know we’ve been…” She paused. How to put their “relationship” if you could even call it that, into words? “We’ve been hanging out together since Christmas Eve.”

McKinney hesitated, blowing a heavy breath into the receiver. “If you have information on the Thornton case, let’s hear it.”

“There’s been a new er,
development,
and I’m not going to be able to babysit your boy any longer, so you’d better double up for 24/7 until the trial date, got it?”

“What kind of development?”

Mandy hesitated. God, this really hurt. “His fiancée just showed up and well, three’s a crowd, especially in a studio apartment. Speaking strictly as an American taxpayer here, I wouldn’t have minded you guys springing for a one-bedroom.”

“His fiancée! He never said anything to me about having a fiancée.”

Tears welling, Mandy shook her head. “Well, that makes two of us.”