Finders Keepers Losers Die Read online

  Ugh.

  I tiptoed back into Will's bedroom and rummaged quietly through the wardrobe for something to wear. I couldn't face him yet. I needed strong coffee and preferably a lot of distance between us. Call me pathetic, but I wasn't sure what to say to him. Best to say nothing at all until I'd rehearsed a suitable speech.

  I finally settled on a light blue shirt and a pair of beige shorts. I put them on and checked myself out in the mirror. The shirt was too long and the shorts rode low on my hips. I looked like a badly dressed rap artist. I tied the ends of the shirt into a knot, baring my midriff, and rolled the waistband of the shorts over so I didn't do a Paris Hilton when I bent over. Marginally better.

  When I turned round, Will was propped up on his elbow watching me, a lazy smile on his lips. "I think I like your shirt better. But I prefer what you're wearing under this one."

  "I'm not wearing anything." It felt surprisingly liberating.

  "I know." His voice sounded thick and full of promise. "Come here."

  I took a step backward into the wardrobe. "Maybe I better go. Lots to do today."

  He sighed and slumped back onto the pillows. "You're right. We better get to work."

  "It's Sunday. I don't work Sundays."

  He looked at me, his expression unreadable. "Oh. Right. Well, I do." He threw the sheets off and strode to the bathroom. My traitorous eyes followed his butt until he closed the door behind him. While he was in the shower, I called Gina.

  "Are you alone?" I asked.

  "I am now but I've got to tell you something." She sounded ready to burst.

  "I know. I'll be around soon. Have coffee ready."

  I headed back to the bathroom. I knocked and Will opened the door, already out of the shower. He was stark naked. Damp. Clean. And so goddamn sexy I could eat him.

  My hormones betrayed me. Again. Not even a respectable hesitation this time. I brushed my fingers through his hair, pushing it off his ruggedly handsome face, and zeroed in on his moist lips.

  The kiss was softer, sweeter than the previous night's battle. The initial ferocity of our passion had tempered into something more intimate. Warm fuzzies spread through my body, awakening it in the way a shower or coffee never could.

  His hands danced lightly across my back. After a moment, one moved up and around, finding my breast under the shirt. I sucked in air against his lips when he gently strummed a nipple.

  "Guess you're not in a hurry to leave," I said, breaking contact as I pushed him toward the bathroom sink.

  "Not anymore." His butt pressed against the porcelain and we kissed again.

  I couldn't keep my hands off his smooth skin. I wanted to touch him everywhere, and eventually, I did. When I reached his rock hard cock, I enclosed it in my fingers and caressed.

  The kiss deepened and his fingers dug into my skin, but otherwise he was in control. No sighing, groaning, not even a drop of pre-cum. But boy, was he hard.

  Still, I wanted a reaction. I wanted just a teensy bit of his self-control to crack, even if only for a moment. I broke the kiss, knelt down and took him into my mouth. Air whistled between his teeth as he drew a breath.

  Better.

  I sucked gently on the tip, held him between my lips and hummed.

  He laughed softly then suddenly stopped. "Oh yeah, Cat, that feels goooood."

  Without warning, I descended, taking him in all the way to the balls.

  His body tightened and he switched his white-knuckled grip to the edges of the sink. He grunted and rolled his hips in time to my movements. Although he tried to maneuver his cock so I'd take it all again, I refrained and stayed at the tip.

  I nibbled and licked and teased. I cupped his big balls in my hands and kneaded, occasionally licking him there. After a few minutes, he was moaning and breathing hard, his hips working back and forth trying to get me to swallow him whole.

  When he started murmuring my name over and over, I descended all the way again.

  "Yessss," he hissed.

  But after one suck, I retreated.

  "No," he whimpered. "Cat, come on. Please."

  Much better. I like it when a man asks nicely. I took him again, slowly inching my way down until I had him completely in my mouth. Squeezing his balls gently, I sucked hard.

  He exploded with a series of loud grunts. His body went rigid then quivered uncontrollably.

  I stood and he drew me into his arms. I melted into his heat and masculinity, listening to the loud whump of his heartbeat, the erratic breathing. I felt so…content.

  "Cat, that was…amazing." He hugged me tighter then drew away and held me at arms length. "Gotta go." He pulled on his shorts and jeans. "You know where the kitchen is. Have whatever you can find for breakfast and let yourself out when you're done."

  Huh? Was that the brush off? It definitely sounded like it. Not even Will could be totally clueless about how to treat a woman the morning after. He must know the host is supposed to at least stick around for coffee.

  "Sure thing," I said casually. "See you tomorrow."

  He was about to pull his T-shirt over his head but stopped. "Yeah. Right. Tomorrow. At the office. Not tonight." He blinked a couple times then continued dressing.

  "You weren't expecting me to stay here again were you? I'm sure I mentioned this was a temporary arrangement."

  "No. I mean, yes." He shook his head. "Yeah, you said it was just for the night, but," he shrugged one shoulder. "That's fine. Whatever. So where will you stay?"

  "Gina's. It should be safer than Mom's."

  "Safer. Huh." He stared blankly which unnerved me more than his yelling ever could. "Christ, why would someone try to burn your place down?"

  I didn't tell him my theory about someone wanting Roberta's jewels. Actually, I didn't tell him about Roberta. It was best he didn't know. Best for me, that is, and my future employment prospects.

  "Who knows? Anyway, I've gotta go too."

  "But, Cat—"

  "Not now."

  He sighed and didn't ask again.

  We left the house at the same time and headed in opposite directions. My first stop was Gina's. I probably should have visited Mom but I didn't feel like facing her and telling her I nearly burned to death in a fire started by someone who probably wanted to kill me. Mothers can be kind of sensitive about these things, even New Age ones.

  Besides, I needed clothes and who better to go shopping with than your best friend?

  Gina let me into her apartment with one raised eyebrow. Then the other one joined it.

  "You got laid!" we said together. "How do you know?" we both replied.

  Gina recovered from her giggling fit first. "Is that why you're dressed like a gender-confused homeboy?"

  I explained about the fire, leaving out the nasty details about how it started. Best friends, like mothers, tend to over-react. "I needed somewhere to stay so I went to the office."

  "But you could have stayed here."

  "Yes, we could have had a threesome."

  "Oh, you saw?"

  "Not much."

  The scent of her latest floral arrangement, a blue and white bouquet, perfumed the apartment. I always liked going to Gina's. The smells and colors from the flowers she brought home from the shop made it fresh and inviting. She had good taste in decorating. Nothing modern or bleak, just comfortable armchairs covered with big cushions and family photos hanging on the walls. It was like walking into a House and Garden photo shoot.

  She headed into the kitchen and I followed. "I drove by last night, intending to stay," I said, "and saw him through the window. Who is he?"

  "No, you first." She placed a pot of coffee on the stove. "So what happened at the office? Who—?" She spun round, her mouth wide open and her eyes bugging out. "Will?"

  I nodded.

  "Finally!" She clapped her hands like a performing seal. "It's about time you two got together."

  I eyed her with caution, half expecting her to morph into someone else. Someone who actually li
ked Will. "You're not mad? Don't you think he's a bastard?"

  "No, you do. Which is why he's perfect for you."

  I shook my head. "I don't get it."

  "You need someone who gets your juices flowing."

  "Interesting choice of words."

  She looked at me sideways. "Anyone with eyes can see the sparks flying between you."

  "Sparks are caused by two hard objects clashing, Gina. Nothing romantic in that."

  Gina's frown looked more like a pout. It was kind of cute and hard to take her seriously when she did it. "But you just slept with him. Surely you're past all that now?"

  "I don't know." I sighed. "I like him, I really do—when he's not being the workaholic asshole. It's just that…I don't know. I can't put my finger on what it is about him that bothers me. We'll see what happens tomorrow at work. He gave me my job back." I tried to sound brighter than I felt. In truth, the next day loomed like King Kong over the Empire State Building. All I wanted to do was scream.

  "That's great!"

  "Maybe."

  She poured coffee into mugs and handed one to me. We sat opposite each other at the little kitchen table. Gina blew into her mug, watching me over the rim as I sipped. "You know," she said, "for someone who had wild sex with a drop-dead gorgeous man, you don't seem very happy."

  I avoided her gaze. Talking about sex with Will felt awkward, even with Gina. Usually I could tell her everything, providing as much lurid detail as she could stomach, but not that morning. Maybe it was because she knew Will. Or maybe because I didn't know what the sex meant to me yet.

  "You know how it is," I said. "You get carried away with the moment then in the cold light of day, you wonder what the hell you were thinking. The problem is, Will and I just don't get along." I shrugged. "I'm not sure he knows how to be anything other than a dictatorial egomaniac." I sipped my coffee. Maybe I wasn't being fair. I really only knew Will The Boss, not Will The Guy. And someone who made love like that couldn't be all bad. I smiled into my mug. "He was fantastic though."

  Gina gave me an all-knowing smile. Only someone who'd recently experienced great sex could smile like that. "Look, Cat, the agency's his business, his baby. He's protective of it. I understand that. And maybe if you didn't, um, deliberately try to annoy him, he wouldn't be so…"

  "Mean." I bristled. Gina was my friend. She was supposed to be on my side whether I was right or wrong. "I don't annoy him. Not deliberately anyway." I shook my head and ended the conversation with a wave of my hand. I didn't want to hear Gina defending him again. After the intimacy of the previous night and the abruptness of our departure that morning, I felt a little raw when it came to Will. The last thing I needed was a lecture. "Enough about Will. I want to know about the new man in your life. Why didn't you tell me about him earlier? Who is he?"

  "Well," she leaned forward and grinned stupidly, "he came into my shop yesterday to buy his mother some flowers for her birthday."

  "He's nice to his mother. That's always a good sign. Although he might be a mommy's boy." I screwed up my nose. "That could be bad."

  "Cat, pay attention. He came back later and I thought, oh no, he's going to complain about the flowers. But he bought a dozen long-stemmed yellow roses and gave them to me." She indicated the door to the living room. "They're the ones on the coffee table."

  I hadn't noticed. Gina always had flowers on her coffee table. "But why? Not only are you already surrounded by flowers and take home the left overs, you get them wholesale so he just wasted his money."

  "No, he didn't. And I thought it was lovely." She had a dreamy, faraway look on her face. Yep, she was gone. Gina had only ever looked dreamy once before—when she'd fallen head over heels for a football player. She'd dated him for six months then it had ended in tears and a broken heart. Guess whose.

  "So what's his name?"

  "Walter."

  Walter? Who was named Walter these days? "He's not sixty is he?"

  "No. Late thirties."

  Gina was my age, twenty-eight. I said nothing but I thought ten years a little excessive. Anything more and I'd say it was father-figure syndrome.

  "He's a computer programmer," she went on.

  "Since when do you date geeks? What happened to the jocks?" Don't get me wrong—I was glad to see her moving up the evolutionary ladder to choose her dates, but I wasn't sure if a computer nerd was the way to go for a party girl like Gina.

  She sniffed. "I'm ready for someone a little more sophisticated. Besides." She grinned. "He's amazing in bed."

  We giggled like schoolgirls.

  "He must have left early this morning," I said when I recovered.

  "He had to be up early today so he went home last night."

  Call me over-protective, but who the hell gets up early on a Sunday?

  The guy who didn't want to face his lover in the morning because a relationship is out of the question, that's who. For Gina's sake, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He could be a workaholic like Will.

  "So what's he like?" she asked conspiratorially.

  "Who? Will? In bed?"

  She nodded eagerly.

  I couldn't stop my smile or the blush burning my cheeks. "Let's just say he knows what he's doing and the equipment is top of the range."

  She laughed. "Then it doesn't matter if you don't get along outside the bedroom."

  She had a point but it was time to move the conversation away from my sex life. "When I finish calling the insurance company, let's go shopping."

  "You bet. You can't wear that all day."

  After getting lost in automated tele-prompting hell, I finally got to speak to a real person at the insurance company. At least I thought he was real. It was hard to tell from the bored monotone and one-word answers. Guess I'd sound like that too if I had to work on a Sunday in a job that beat mine for crappiness.

  Finally I got my life sorted. They promised to reimburse me for any expenses I incurred on essential items. Designer outfits are, of course, essential. And if the insurance company asked, I owned six pairs of Manolo Blahniks and four Gucci handbags. Such a pity all my original receipts burned in the fire. (Mental note: take receipts out of kitchen drawer and put a match to them).

  Gina was too embarrassed to go shopping with me wearing Will's clothes so I borrowed a short, floaty skirt and the tightest T-shirt she owned. It was still too big across the bust but it would do.

  Before we left I made a quick call to my mother.

  "I'm at Gina's," I said. "We're going shopping."

  "That's nice. Have fun. When will you be home? I thought I'd come over later—"

  "No! Mom, don't go to my place."

  "Why not?" She sounded suspicious.

  "Because I…won't be there."

  "When will you be there?"

  "I won't be. Not tonight."

  She gasped. "Cat! You've found a man! How long have you been going out?"

  Uh-oh. If my answer was anything longer than two months, she'd be emailing me links to wedding sites. Why is it mothers always want to marry off their daughters? Does their social status rise? Is there automatic admission into the Mother-In-Law From Hell club?

  Gina's mother was even worse. Her twenty-eight year-old daughter was unmarried and it killed her. She told Gina so every time she saw her. Gina replied that she hadn't found Mr. Right but she was having a lot of fun looking.

  My mom tried her hardest to get me to the altar a few years earlier when I dated an actor for a while. Thank God I was living in L.A. and could pretend there was an earthquake and hang up. If I'd been living in Renford, I could have been married to Simon by now. Shudder. Nice guy, but his head was as wooden as his acting.

  "Mom, I haven't found a man." It wasn't a lie. I hadn't found Will. He'd been there all the time. "Gina and I are having a girl's night at her place. Oh, and if someone calls for me, tell them I'll call back later. Thanks, bye." I hung up before she could start with the twenty questions.

  Thank God
for Sunday shopping. Gina and I hit The Strip late morning. The Strip was a stretch of shops along Chapel Road in inner Renford. It was classier than the mall. The stores along The Strip priced their wares so high that people like me couldn't afford to shop there.

  Except when using someone else's money, which is what the insurance felt like. I knew there had to be an upside to having my apartment burn down. Sure, I was too scared to go back there, my neighbors probably hated me, and someone wanted me dead, but at least I'd have a killer wardrobe.

  We shopped until we couldn't carry any more bags and then we stopped for a late lunch at Café Mama Lina's. We both ordered salads for starters. I was hungry after the shopping-induced high so I ordered coffee and a slice of chocolate mud cake for dessert. Gina ate a corner of the cake and declared it was too rich for her. She spent the next ten minutes watching me with barely disguised envy. That's the downside of having curves to die for—they become bulges that succumb to gravity if you don't abstain from chocolate cake.

  We paid and gathered our purchases and headed outside. After the rain of the previous day, the weather had cooled to a less sweaty temperature and the sun peeped cheekily through the clouds. I felt cheery considering everything that had happened in the last couple of days. Amazing what retail therapy can do.

  We walked back to my car. I carried bags in each hand and some looped over my arms. I was perfectly balanced. If someone bumped into me, I'd topple over. Sure enough, someone bumped me and I stumbled to the pavement. Luckily, the box containing my new knee-length Prada boots cushioned the fall.

  I looked up, ready to berate the moron when I recognized her. "Tanya!"

  "Cat?" She looked around quickly, probably to make sure no one had seen her involvement in the embarrassing collision. Then she scowled at me like I'd inconvenienced her by stepping in her way. No apology, no "How are you?" Not even "Are you fucking my ex?"

  But even worse than her attitude, she looked good. Fantastic in all white. Damn. How could I compete with that hair, those eyes, those breasts?

  The temptation to rub her nose in my liaison with Will gnawed at me but I felt magnanimous after shopping for free and refrained.