HostileMakeover







Chapter 2

“Lacey, cher, you there? Marie Largesse here, y’all’s friendly neighborhood psychic.”
Lacey braced herself for whatever wacky prediction du jour her friend Marie had left on the answering machine. Usually it had something to do with the weather.
“I’m feeling in my bones a heavy storm’s gonna knock you on your fanny—so to speak. Maybe you should wear those padded bike shorts. Ah, that’s not your style, is it?”
“I doubt it,” Lacey said aloud to her machine. She shook her head and squeezed the moisture out of her hair and realized her knees hurt. She lifted her skirt to see that they were scraped and her hose were torn. “Kneepads would be more like—”
“And here’s the thing,” Marie’s recorded voice continued. “I’m feeling there’s some kind of jinx whirling ’round your head, trying to latch onto you, so you be careful, hear? I know you don’t believe me; sometimes I don’t believe myself. But there you go. A jinx grabs onto your astral body, it’s got to be redirected back from whence it came. Like a lighting bolt hitting a mirror.”
“Thanks, Marie.” Lacey shook her head and reminded herself that Marie was usually wrong, and besides, she was never quite sure what on earth the soothsayer meant.
“Y’all come on by the Little Shop of Horus; I’ll do a reading for you. With Halloween around the corner it’s a madhouse, but you’re always welcome. Maybe I’ll start carrying those bike pants. Bye-bye now.” The machine beeped to end her message.
Lacey rolled her eyes and willed Marie’s words out of her head. She was a dear, but after dodging the lightning bolt with Wiedemeyer, Lacey was anxious just to forget it all. Besides, Marie’s psychic warning was too late—and too cryptic—to help.
Lacey turned from the answering machine to watch lightning strikes hitting the Potomac River. There was a lovely view from the French doors of her balcony. But her soaked clothing was sticking to her skin, and she was desperate to get into something dry. She stripped on her way to the bedroom and tossed her wet clothing into the tub. She slipped into some jeans and a soft red sweater, grabbed a towel for her wet hair, and then stood by the windows and allowed herself to be mesmerized again by the drama outside. In between thunderbolts and lightning, she heard a knocking at her door. Aware that she might look like a drowned cat after her rainy afternoon’s adventure, she wiped her face, hoping her makeup hadn’t streaked.
Through the peephole she saw the one man who could give her heart palpitations without an actual lightning bolt required. Vic Donovan.

He would choose this moment to show up. When I’m feeling about as seductive as a mud puddle, she thought, but she smiled to herself anyway. Lacey opened the door with one hand and held the wet towel in the other. Vic Donovan took her in with one long, dangerous look. His grass-green eyes were amused, his cocky grin revealing beautiful white teeth. His hair was wet, and his dark locks curled enticingly on his forehead, like a Heathcliff who had just ridden in from the rainy moors.
“Get caught in the storm, Lacey?”
“That keen private-eye observational skill slays me every time.”
“You’re dripping. I’d be happy to help towel you off.” She chuckled and backed away. “That’s no way to greet a weary traveler,” he said. “By the way, you’d look beautiful in nothing but a wet towel.”
She pulled him inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. “Shut up and kiss me, you wet fool.” Sprinkling her with rainwater from his curls and clothing, he swept her into his arms and tightened them around her. Vic Donovan kissed her like a cowboy back from a long, hard ride on the range, and he looked like one as well in his tight jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. Under his beat-up black leather jacket, he wore an old blue denim shirt. The buttons were strained taut across his chest.
Lacey never really felt small until she was wrapped in Vic’s arms and looking up at him. She was five-foot-five in her stocking feet, next to his muscular six feet. She pulled away and tossed him the towel.
“A call would have been nice.”
“And ruin the surprise? I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t gotten into any more trouble since last week.”
“What kind of trouble could I possibly get into?”
He cocked an eye at her. “I’m sure I’ll find out. Did you know the front door of your building is wide open?”
“Broken. Just try getting something fixed around here.”
They had just come to the decision to revive their long-frustrated romance and try to take it to another level. But Vic’s business was getting in the way. There always seemed to be something pulling them apart. And he was unhappy about her recent accidental involvement in crime solving. “Leave it to the professionals,” was Vic’s rule.
He had recently returned from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he sold his home to his ex-wife, who was now divorced again—and available. At the thought of Montana McCandless Donovan Schmidt, Lacey could feel her upper lip curl. Vic had made it back from Colorado just in time for Gloria Adams’s long-delayed funeral the previous weekend, a funeral that Lacey had sworn would be a new beginning. And Vic Donovan was a big part of Lacey’s new personal love-life makeover plan.
After years as a small-town cop and finally chief of police, Vic was now working for his dad, who had retired from the Pentagon to set up one of the most well-connected security firms in the Washington area. Vic was involved in running a big project that made huge demands on his time and pulled him away at odd hours. Worse, he said he couldn’t discuss it. Lacey assumed it was contract work for the Department of Homeland Security, but she couldn’t drag a word out of him. She made a mental note to revise her interrogation methods. They had been doing way too much talking anyway.
“Before I make a fool of myself, Lacey, I want to get one thing straight. About Jeffrey Bentley Holmes. Is he going to get in our way?”
“We were just friends.” She didn’t know what to think about Jeffrey. “And it’s rather awkward after the rather untidy exposé I wrote about his family.” She winced at the memory.
“You have to factor those things into the risk assessment when you date a reporter.”
“Oh, really.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “What have you factored into your risk assessment?”
“That the benefits outweigh the risks. I think.”
“Very funny.”
“About Holmes . . .”
Lacey had received a letter the other day from Jeffrey Bentley Holmes, nephew of the famous designer Hugh Bentley, following her latest story on the Gloria Adams murder. He said it was painful for the family dirty laundry to be aired in public, but it had been done before and no doubt would be again, and he held no grudges. She wasn’t sure whether she believed him.

Mother is hospitalized under psychiatric care for the foreseeable future, Jeffrey wrote. Uncle Hugh has decided it would be better that I distance myself from the Bentley name, Cousin Aaron no longer talks to me, Aunt Marilyn refuses to speak my name. Only the lawyers are speaking to other lawyers, and there has been talk of my disinheritance. So, as you see, things are looking up. My retreat here at the monastery has offered a most needed respite, but I soon will have to decide what to do next. Lacey hadn’t written back yet. She didn’t know what to say.
Vic waited for her answer.
“Darling, there is nothing between me and Jeffrey.”
“I saw you kiss him.”
“He kissed me. There is a difference, and besides, you hadn’t called or written for months while you were out of pocket in Steamboat. What’s a girl to do?”
“I’m not a letter writer,” he protested. “And we’re talking about now. Next time I’ll be sure to use the Pony Express.” She raised her eyebrow again. “And e-mail. I’ll e-mail. But Lacey . . .” His green eyes were warm as he reached and pulled her into a kiss so deep that she forgot what she was doing. “Don’t go around kissing anyone but me, okay?”
“Okay.” Who else would I want to kiss?
A tremendous bolt of lightning flashed outside. Vic moved swiftly through the living room. He opened the French doors to the covered balcony to take advantage of the stunning view of the sheets of rain and the sky still bright with beating thunderbolts, their clean white strikes arcing into the river. He stepped outside. “Some storm, huh?”
“I ordered it special for you.” She stood at the open door.
Vic took hold of her hand and pulled her next to him, holding her close while she shivered. “I’ve been thinking, Lacey. We should really get away for a while.”
Her heart jumped. “You want to get away? You and me? Are you talking about you and me—together? ”
“I think it’s time, don’t you?” He tilted her face up and met her eyes. “I want us together pretty badly, and I get a feeling you do too.” There was no denying that she wanted to be with Vic, but she had never heard him say it so plainly before. “We’ve waited long enough.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead, then her cheek and her neck, raising her temperature and sending chills through her at the same time. “And if we don’t do it soon, I’ll be up to my ears in this new contract. And then we’ll both, you know—explode. It’ll be messy.”
“Well . . .” She hesitated. It was complicated. Although he had flirted with her mercilessly the entire two years she worked in Sagebrush, Colorado, they had never dated there. Back then he was the chief of police, and she was the cops reporter on the tiny daily newspaper: a slight conflict of interest. There had been enormous sexual tension between them, but Vic was in the middle of a divorce from the infamous Montana—and Lacey refused to consider him while he was married. “Straitlaced,” he had called it; “high standards,” she had replied.
“I’ve waited for you for six years, Lacey.”
“Technically, I’m not so sure you’ve been waiting, Vic Donovan,” she countered. “And I certainly haven’t been exactly—”
“Now you shut up.” He kissed her again.
Catching her breath, she said, “Okay. What exactly did you have in mind?”
“Something romantic, preferably somewhere you can’t run away from me.”
“Me? Run away?” Of course, she had run away once from a man—not Vic—who asked her to marry him, and they were probably still talking about it back in Sagebrush.
“You’ll like it.” He grinned at her and his hands moved up the small of her back. “We’ll go away for the weekend. Before Halloween.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “I know a place. I’ll take care of everything. You think you can stay out of trouble until then?” He kissed her neck.
“What do you mean, trouble?”
“Oh, you know, dead bodies, crazed killers, running with scissors, that sort of thing.”
“Those were just freak occurrences. Besides, it’s going to be a very simple week. I only have to interview one diva supermodel introducing her new line of clothing, which I very much doubt she had anything to do with. A major snoozefest. How dangerous can it be?” Then she thought of something else, and a look must have crossed her face.
“What? What is it?”
“Well, it’s only a rumor, but this supermodel, Amanda Manville, has kind of a reputation.”
“As what?” He was wearing his cop face. He looked suspicious.
Lacey didn’t want to say, Amanda Manville has a reputation as a killer. It might set him off. She cleared her throat. “Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Lacey, I’m waiting,” Vic said, his green eyes locked on hers. She could see how suspects would spill their guts to him.
“There’s a rumor, and it’s never been confirmed, probably because it’s not true, right? It’s totally a supermarket-tabloid story, and there never has been a body or charges or indictments or anything, but Amanda Manville is supposed to have, um . . . killed, um . . . an old boyfriend.”
“You’re making this up,” he said, doubt still wavering behind his eyes. “You’re yanking my chain.”
“Your chain should be so lucky, big fella. And I try not to make up what I report. I work for The Eye Street Observer, after all. Not The New York Times. But I thought you would like to know about Ms. Manville. As I said, it’s only a rumor. Completely unfounded, I’m sure.” I hope. I’ll call Miguel in New York tomorrow. He’ll know.
“Are you sure, Lacey?” He stroked her cheek with his fingers. She marveled at how such large hands could be so gentle. “Because I really want to see you in one incredibly sexy piece by the end of the week.”
“Incredibly sexy?” He kissed her so hard her toes curled. “Silly boy, what could possibly happen?” Indeed, how many murders could possibly happen in one lifetime that I could possibly get involved with? I figure I’m done. He kissed her again. Incredibly sexy, huh?
Vic laughed. “What could happen? With you on the story? Oh, darlin’, don’t get me started.” He gave Lacey another kiss and then zipped up his jacket. “I have to go.”
“Go? You can’t go now!”
“It’s tearing me up, honey, but there’s this last-minute job I have to take over, a big surveillance for Dad.”
“But you just got here. Come on, you’re exhausted. You need to rest. Lie down. Prolonged bed rest is what Dr. Smithsonian orders.”
“Smile and think of me, Doc. And be careful.” He turned and kissed her again before walking out the door. She admired his well-muscled flanks as he sauntered down the hall. He turned and saluted her, flashing a devastating smile before stepping onto the elevator. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

Isn’t that just like a man? Gets you all hot and bothered and then waltzes right out the door.