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CHAPTER 1
“DROP YOUR PANTS.”
Today certainly wasn’t the first time a woman had told Mick Winchester to take off his pants. From playfully suggestive, to wickedly sultry, the sentence conjured up a variety of pleasant memories. Of women. Lots of women.
He just loved them. And he was a lucky enough son of a bitch that they usually loved him back. Usually.
A lot of people had told Mick that women would be the death of him. He’d heard it from ex-girlfriends, from his mother and sister, from buddies who envied his romantic success. Hell, just yesterday his own grandfather had given him a lecture on settling down before some female wentFatal Attractionon him.
He’d laughed off the warnings. How could something he loved as much as women bring about his downfall?
Unfortunately, as he stared down the five-inch barrel of an old Colt.45 handgun, he was beginning to see the possibilities.
“Louise, you don’t want to do this,” he told the woman holding the gun. “Whatever’s wrong, we can work things out.”
“Drop ’em, loverboy.”
She didn’t say another word, merely waiting patiently, watching him the way a hawk might study a tempting bit of prey—with stoic determination and a bit of outright hunger.
He wished he’d opened the blinds as soon as he’d gotten into the office this Monday morning. Perhaps then someone outside might have noticed something odd. Unfortunately, since he had an appointment with an out-of-towner looking for a room to rent, he’d come in early and hadn’t opened the office. He’d left the blinds down and the lights dim in the reception area. No one outside would notice a thing. And his administrative assistant wouldn’t be in for a little while yet.
The out-of-towner wasn’t due for an hour. So, whoever the Hollywood woman was, she’d probably walk in after Louise Flanagan finished whatever the hell it was she was trying to do here.
“What are you waiting for?” she finally said, sounding so perfectly reasonable, as if they’d just bumped into one another at the diner or the bank. “I know you’re not hard of hearing.”
“I’m trying to understand why you want to kill me.”
Hell, of all the women in Derryville, this one had the veryleastreason to hate his guts. And that was saying a lot, since he could easily name several females who would probably like to see him strung up by the nuts.
But Louise? He’d always been polite to the woman, giving her a smile when other people had laughed at her. He’d always liked her, had been nice to her in the old days, when the high school hierarchy had liked to crucify the farmers’ daughters who wore their coveralls to school and smelled of their daddy’s dairy farm.
She gave him a small smile. “Oh, Mick, you old silly, I’m not gonna kill you. Now get naked. Pretty please?”
This was beyond ridiculous, even forhim. Oh, sure, he’d been caught naked with women before, once even in the coat-check room of an upscale Chicago restaurant. But never so close to home. Never in his own realty office. Never with a local girl whose family would riot at the thought of their darling hooking up with the wickedest playboy in Derryville, Illinois.
And never,neverwith Louise Flanagan, his lab partner from tenth grade biology. Louise was not only three inches taller and forty pounds heavier than he, she was the four-time champion hog wrestler at the state fair. Plus, Mick’s and Louise’s grandfathers were long-standing enemies.
“Louise, I’m not going to take my clothes off.”
She cocked the hammer.
“Shit.” He tugged his shirt from the waist of his pants.
“That’s good. Shirt first, that’s proper. But no more cursing,” she said with a tsk. “That’s one of your bad habits. That, your drinking and your cigar smoking are going to be the first things you give up when we get married.”
That word nearly made him choke. “Married?”
She nodded. “Yessir. And soon. Got to get you tied down and rescue you from your overactive manly urges.”
Manly urges. If he’d ever had any in his life, the image of marrying wiped them out of his memory banks.
She continued. “I mean, I knew when I heard about those TV people coming here to do their show that I had to step in before it was too late. I can’t have you losing your head and giving this whole town more reason to think you’re just a good-for-nothing playboy. Not when I know better.”
She gave him a worshipful smile that told him he’d been residing on a pedestal and had never known it. Thatalmostdistracted him from the fact that she’d called him a good-for-nothing playboy. But nothing was distracting him from the loaded gun, which she wagged suggestively toward his body.
“Louise—”
“Come on, your shirt’s easy. Just pretend it’s Saturday.”
