The Temptations of St. Frank (34 page)
“Our mothers are friends. I've know him since we were little.”
“Oh, okay.” He nodded, his brain whirring. They were playpen pals. She doesn't really like him. Her mother made her do it.
“I gotta go,” she said, turning to walk away.
He panicked. “Wait. Hang on.”
She turned around and looked at him, her eyes sparkling sapphires in the sun.
“I was thinking maybe we couldâyou knowâdo something sometime.”
“Like what?” She was grinning again.
“I dunno. A movie. Maybe a concert. Maybe just hang out.”
“Okay.” No hesitation. She didn't even have to think about it.
His heart was slamming.
“Call me,” she said.
“I don't have your number.”
“201-332â“
“Do you have a pen?” he said. Desperate.
“No.”
Shit! Then he thought of something. He knelt down on the grass and opened the newspaper to the want ads. He picked up one of the grass turds the mower had spit out. “Go ahead,” he said.
“332-5505”
He smeared the turd on the newspaper, writing large thick numbers that took up the whole sheet. It looked like something a chimp would create, but the numbers were clear enough.
He got back to his feet and wiped his grass-stained fingers on his jeans. “Do you want the rest of the paper?”
“You can have it.” She started walking away, walking backwards, looking at him, her eyes sparkling with her smile. “Will you call me?” she said.
I will, he thought.
“I will,” he said.
She turned around, and he watched her walk back toward the parking lot, watched till she disappeared behind Mulvaney Hall. He looked at the lawn mower and all the grass he still had to mow, and he laughed. He was throbbing all over.
Loretta Kovacs Novels
In
Devil's Food
, the first book in the Loretta Kovacs thriller series, it's make-it-or-break-it time for zaftig Loretta when she's assigned to the ragtag Parole Violators Search Unit, a.k.a. the Jump Squad. All her buttons are pushed when she goes undercover as a desperate dieter at a Florida fat farm in order to nab an embezzler who's a perfect size 2.
In
Double Espresso
, the second book in the series, Loretta races to keep one hitman from killing another. The intended victim is a valuable government witness against the mob, and a dirty FBI agent is helping the bad guys. Loretta must fend off the advances of an amorous mob boss while babysitting the cantankerous witness in SeattleâJava Cityâas she desperately struggles to kick her caffeine habit.
In
Hot Fudge
, the third book in the series, parole officer Loretta falls for her partner, Frank Marvelli. A sexy fellow parole officer “borrows” Marvelli for an assignment in San Francisco, and jealous Loretta tails them. Marvelli is kidnapped, and the women team up to find him and nab the fugitive in question, a successful ice-cream entrepreneur. Loretta encounters a cast of kinky characters and stumbles onto the sinful secret ingredient that has made Elmer Fudge Whirl impossible to resist.
Gibbons & Tozzi Thrillers
FBI agents Mike Tozzi and Cuthbert Gibbons: odd-couple partners and dedicated mob-busters. Hot-headed Tozzi goes renegade, and Gibbons is pulled out of retirement to stop him. Together they uncover a secret crime family headed a convicted mobster pulling the strings from the safety of the witness protection program, get into deep trouble when they investigate a deadly partnership between the Mafia and the Japanese yakuza, investigate shady dealings between the mob and a celebrity real-estate mogul in Atlantic City, and attempt to foil a mobsters comeback from a mental institution.
FBI profiler Trisha McCleery has been on a twenty-year personal search for the person who brutally murdered her mother. At the same time serial killer Gene Lassiter has been on an obsessive twenty-year search for the daughter of his first kill. If she finds him, justice can at last be served. If he finds her, one man's reign of terror can continue unabated. In a stunning life-or-death final act, the hunter and the hunted go head-to-head, with a shocking ending that bleeds justice dry.