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“Yeah, a block o’ buttah.”
“You and me, Shorty, we were pretty damn smart getting a big black trailer ’cause we blend into the night.” He didn’t really mean that, the part about Shorty being smart, but compliments usually cheered people up.
“Right now,” Louie continued, sounding as breezy as the winds over the Keys where he’d soon be living, “we’re blending into the night like chocolate frostin’ on chocolate cake. That dude would hafta be glued to his side mirror to realize he’s bein’ tailed.”
“Chocolate frostin’ on chocolate cake,” repeated Shorty as he took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it out the window. The burning embers flamed in the darkness.
Louis slugged Shorty on the arm. “Nice move. Next time, why don’cha set off a flare?” So much for being friendly-like.
Shorty rolled up his window. “Flare? Wha—?”
“We’re on reconnaissance. We just found our mark—” Louie nodded toward the yellow truck down the alley ahead of them “—and you toss a lighted cig out the window! How many times I gotta tell ya there’s an ashtray in here! But did you use it? No, better to signal the guy with a miniflare that we’re tailin’ him!”
“I’ll use the ashtray next time, Lou.”
“So you’ve said. Now shut up. I’m concentratin’.”
Louie drove slowly, keeping some distance behind the truck.
“He’s movin’ awful fast for hauling a bull,” commented Shorty.
Louis had thought the same thing when he’d seen the truck turn down this side street.
Suddenly, the Nederlander Highlander truck lurched to the right and parked in a well-lit spot between a scooter and a compact car. Louis did an ultra-smooth glide into a neighboring parking lot, conveniently dark with no streetlights.
“Primo lookout spot,” he murmured, killing the engine. Damn, he was good.
They were sweetly hidden in the night gloom. And, between two Dumpsters lined up between the lots like some kinda green metal barricade, they had a clear sight of the parked Nederlander Highlander truck.
Louis breathed a small prayer to Saint Anthony for the strategically placed streetlamp that acted like a spotlight on the truck.
“Why’d he stop there?” asked Shorty, fidgeting with the pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket.
“Look at the frickin’ flashin’ neon sign.” Over the back door of the brick building that Mr. Nederlander Highlander would probably soon be entering was an orange-and-purple neon sign flashing Ned Head Ed’s with a dancing beer bottle.
“Ned Head Ed’s?” repeated Shorty, squinting at the sign. “What’s a Ned Head?”
“Ned’s an abbreviation for Nederland. If you’d been looking as I was drivin’, you’d have seen Ned-this and Ned-that on almost every frickin’ store we passed.”
“But Ned Head?”
Louie blew out a gust of air. “Ain’t you ever heard of the Dead Heads? Jerry Garcia? The Grateful Dead?”
Shorty was quiet for a long moment. “Oh!” he finally said. “It’s a play on da words Dead Head. Ned Head. Hey, dat’s kinda cute.”
This gig better end soon. Two more days with Shorty and Louis would remarry wifey number three, who not only applied less guilt and asked fewer questions, but figured stuff out faster.
“Dere he is!” Shorty pointed at the ponytailed guy shutting the driver’s door of the yellow truck. With his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, the guy slouched casually toward Ned Head Ed’s back door and disappeared inside the bar.
The truck sat unattended.
“Go check if there’s a bull in there,” ordered Louie, flicking the overhead switch so the dome light wouldn’t go on when they opened their doors.
“Me and what army? Did you see the size of that mother back at the stock show?”
“Just sneak up and look in the truck’s back window.”
“It’s butt-freezin’ cold out.”
“You gotta coat on.”
“So do you. Leather, too.”
Louie’d known this topic would come up sooner or later. A week ago, when they’d got this gig, he’d had to do some fast shopping for Colorado winter weather. Shorty bought some butt-ugly wool and canvas coat, while Louie went for a fur-lined leather jacket. After they’d got to Colorado and put on their coats, Shorty kept flashing little jealous looks at Louie’s jacket.
But Louie’d been accustomed to such looks all his life. Dudes givin’ him those little jealous glances over his clothes, his cars, his dames…hey, it wasn’t easy being a classy guy.
“I’m drivin’,” Louie said, “You’re sittin’. Now go!” He fisted his hand, ready to smack.
Shorty made a disgruntled sound and hopped out. Hunching over like some kind of chubby troll, he skittered through the opening between the Dumpsters. Just as Shorty reached the yellow truck, the back door of Ned Head Ed’s reopened. The driver and several guys carrying boxes headed toward the truck.
Shorty, about ten feet from the truck, halted midstep as though stung by an invisible cattle prod. Slowly, he straightened, then began whistling and sauntering as though he were out for an evening stroll. Which might be convincing if it wasn’t colder than a meat locker outside.
Louis sighed heavily. “You coulda acted like a wino or hidden behind a Dumpster,” he said out loud, “but no, you act like you’re out taking a frickin’ stroll in a frickin’ parking lot on a frickin’ freezin’ evening.” He slammed his fist against the steering wheel, wishing it were Shorty’s thick skull.
Fortunately, none of the people exiting the building seemed to notice Shorty’s nonchalant strolling act. They opened wide the truck’s back doors.
Louie strained to the left, peering into the back of the truck.
No bull.
He smacked the steering wheel again. “Frickin’ A. We fly all the way out to bohunk Colorado, rent this frickin’ bull-size trailer piece of junk, only to lose what we had stole, clean and clear!” That girl had balls. Stealing back the bull by mounting it and riding it out of the stadium like some kind of rodeo bull queen. And that was the last time Louie paid off a few cops for their “support”—they’d watched, bug-eyed, as she rode away.
Shorty had navigated an elaborate U-turn and was whistling as he sauntered past the truck, heading back to Louie. “Are you frickin’ crazy?” Louie muttered. “Walking right past the people we’re tailin’? Like they need extra help to ID us?”
A few minutes later, the passenger door opened and Shorty hoisted his chunky frame inside. “No bull.”
“No kiddin’.”
“How’d you know?”
“I was sittin’ here, looking at the truck as they opened the back doors. I was also lookin’ at you—” he shook his fist “—walkin’ past them not once, but twice! Why didn’t ya just yell ‘hi there’ and introduce yourself?”
“They didn’t notice me, Lou.” Shorty’s voice was getting all whiney again.
Wifey number three was looking better and better. Louie hunkered down, watching the people stash the boxes in the back of the truck. “We’ll sit here, wait for the guy’s buddies to leave and then we’ll have a little chat with our ponytail friend.”
“What for? There’s no bull.” A match sizzled as Shorty lit his cigarette, carefully hiding the flame behind his cupped hand.
“He might not have the animal in the truck at this very moment, but he knows where he dropped our Mr. Money Bull.”
“Mr. Money Bull,” Shorty repeated, blowing out a stream of smoke.
Louie grinned, enjoying a whiff of secondhand smoke. Enjoying even more the word money. Oh yeah, once this gig was up, life was gonna be sweet.
A few minutes passed as boxes were loaded in the back of the Nederlander Highlander truck, then the guys, except for the ponytailed one, returned to Ned Head Ed’s bar.
“He’s alone.” Shorty made a great show of stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“Let’s go have us a little chat,” said Louie, tugging the collar of his leather jacket up around his ears.
“You carryin’?” asked Shorty.
Louie shook his head no. “Don’t need no gun to convince Mr. Nederlander that all we need is a little information. I have a feelin’ he’ll sing with very little persuasion. Just like a little canary.”
“Tweet tweet,” said Shorty, opening his door.
KIRK YAWNED and blinked open his eyes.
In front of him, like two burnished columns, were a pair of bare legs.
Long.
Shapely.
Sleepily, he gazed up those legs, past the thighs, daring to look farther…
She moved and a blast of sunlight hit him smack in the face.
He squinted, his eyes aching from the white brightness.
She moved again, her body shadowing his face.
He dared to open one eye, then the other, and stared at a very curvy bottom in a pair of creamy pink undies.
She bent over and the very curvy bottom widened provocatively, stretching those creamy pink cotton undies until the pink became sheer…so sheer, the color looked more fleshy than pink.
Kirk licked his suddenly dry lips as his pulse kicked up a notch. That was no fleshy color.
That was flesh.
His stomach muscles bunched. His face flamed hot.
Kirk blinked rapidly, amazed at the physical reactions he was having. He, who prided himself on his intellect. Dr. Dunmore, global expert on the late Cretaceous period, recipient of prestigious paleobotany awards, the discoverer of the new dinosaur species Saurexallopus lovei…
Was suffering from libido fever.
Struggling to breathe, Kirk watched as Bree pulled a pair of jeans over that tan, pink-clad rump.
“Checking me out?”
Caught.
He jerked up his gaze. “No, I, uh, was, uh, watching the sun coming up.” Hell, he was getting married in less than forty-eight hours. Whoever named pre-wedding jitters “cold feet” was too subtle. This was out-and-out body freeze.
She turned and faced him, her hands on her ample jean-clad hips. “You really are from another planet, aren’t you?”
With great effort, he maintained eye contact and whispered hoarsely, “Gor.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Gor, the counter-Earth planet.” Which was pretty much the truth because Kirk Dunmore sure didn’t conform to most of the stupid guy-stuff on Earth. He didn’t play pool, swig beer and had long ago decided “nailing” a woman was despicable and demeaning for both the woman and the man.
So if Gor was good enough for Tarl Cabot, it was good enough for Kirk Dunmore.
Bree flashed him a quizzical look. “Is Gor where you paleo-paleo-whatever-you-guys-are visit to dig up fossils?”
“No, it’s what we paleobotanists say to cover moments when we’re caught gawking at a woman’s body parts. Very lovely body parts, may I add.”
Was she blushing?
His gut did that funny clench again and he wondered for one insane moment, if maybe, just maybe she felt the same things he was feeling.
With a swivel, Bree turned and headed back to the bed where she sat down and began pulling on her socks and boots. “I know we’ve been playing a bit with each other, but the fact is, you’re almost a married man, Kirk,” she said quietly.
Almost married. Kirk could feel that damn body freeze creep from the tips of his hair all the way down to his toes. Okay, okay, his best buddy George, who was blissfully married and had two great kids, had admitted even he’d had a bad case of cold feet right up until the moment he said “I do” five years ago.
Kirk expelled a slow breath. That’s all this is. A little cold feet, or in my case, a complete body freeze.
He reflected on why and how he’d fallen for Alicia in the first place. At the time, his dating life was more in danger of becoming extinct than the dinosaurs he researched. And when he’d talked to her about his recent discovery of the five-lobed Macginitiea leaf from the Tertiary period nearly forty-five million years ago, he’d loved how her cobalt-blue eyes stayed glued on him, immensely fascinated.
And when she’d murmured that she’d always wanted a smart, prestigious man in her life, he figured this Cherry Creek trophy number was hot for him.
After a few dates, when they were discussing their mutual desire to settle down, have roots, family and children, he did the first spontaneous thing he’d ever done in his life.
He asked her to marry him.
And when she said yes, it wiped out his years of growing up as a lonely kid, moving from town to town, calling at least six different men Dad. Finally, Kirk Dunmore was on the verge of having what he’d always wanted—roots, family, children.
And that had all seemed well and fine until…
Well, until meeting Bree.
Waking up in the room with her this morning, looking at Bree’s freshly scrubbed face, and her “naked confidence” as she strode around in those pink cotton thingies, shook him up like he’d never been shaken before.
He didn’t remember ever feeling that shaken up with Alicia. Maybe if she wasn’t always slathering goop on her face or talking on a cell phone that seemed permanently wedged next to her ear, maybe he’d feel more shaken up.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with goop or phones. Maybe it was simply that Alicia didn’t seem to give a hoot about his research anymore. Months ago, he’d chalked it up to her being preoccupied with the wedding plans, but he sometimes wondered what she’d be preoccupied with after the wedding…
