I heard the click as the cylinder turned and the lock gave. I heard the faint snick as the door opened.
Show time.
Fine, I’d use my hands to take down this intruder, and my feet, of course. (I’d long ago learned to never under estimate the power of a well-placed foot.) Oh shit, I’m a woman … I’d use my brains.
I leaned forward just enough to catch the edge of the sheet from the pull-out and I pulled it in toward me.
I readied myself in attack mode — crouching down low, ready to spring. I was ready to kick some ass. Gently, if need be. But harder was good, too. The door opened enough so that the culprit could enter. Oh, please God, let it be Harriet Appleton.
The intruder poked a leaning head into my mother’s apartment, and I jumped into action.
“Gotcha!”
It wasn’t a shout, for I really didn’t want to alarm Mother and Mrs. Presley until I had the criminal fully apprehended. Yes, showing off, but if there was going to be a fight here on my hands, it wasn’t something I wanted either of those two ladies getting in the middle of.
I flung the sheet over the intruder, muffling an exclamation.
Oh, shit! Male! Definitely male. A shot of adrenaline fueling my muscles, I tackled him onto the sofa with a move that would have made an NFL defensive end proud.
“What the hell?”
Okay, that sounded familiar. And so was this physique that I was now straddling on the sofa bed.
“Dylan?” I asked in a harsh whisper, then pulled the sheet off.
“Jesus, Dix.” He matched her stage whisper. “Are you trying to give me a freakin’ heart attack?”
“Give you a heart attack? What did you think you were going to be greeted with when you broke in? A bouquet of flowers?”
I still held him pinned (yeah … moving must have slipped my mind), but he managed to shrug against the white sheet. “I thought you’d be asleep, and I wanted to practice my technique.”
“I appear to have taught you well, Grasshopper.”
He grinned. “Apparently. But I’m disappointed in you, Sensei. This is the best weapon you could come up with. A sheet?”
“I thought you were Harriet Appleton, or maybe Wiggie Appleton, and I didn’t want to kill them. Besides, it worked. You’re caught.”
“Yes, but what if I was a real intruder, not a willing captive?”
Oh, God. Willing captive. The way he said the words — oh, Christmas, it just did it for me. I felt a low hum start deep in my belly.
I jumped off him fast and sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t the sex that made me jump away. It was the closeness. You know how it is. Once burned…. To a crisp like a goddamn marshmallow in the face of a flame-thrower.
“Well, if you were a real intruder, you might not be willing, but you’d still be captive.”
Dylan drew himself up on his elbows. He wore a dark turtleneck, and a dark tuque (perfect cat-burglar material) though of course with his dark hair, the hat was not really necessary. But he was fully prepared for any situation.
“So Dylan, is that a flashlight in your pocket, or were you just happy to see me?”
He smiled. Under the glow of the television it looked so damn —
Glow of the freakin’ television! Ack!
“What are you watching?” Dylan sat up. Or rather, struggled to sit up. Hard to do with a full-grown forty-year-old woman body slamming you back to the bed again.
“Hmph.”
“I’m watching … I’m watching….” One arm on Dylan symbolically if not actually holding him down, and one hand frantically searching the pulled-apart bedding, I scrabbled for the remote. Mid waw-waw-wawwwwww, I found it and clicked as quickly as I could. “This is what I was watching.”
Oh God. The Lawrence Welk Show. How uncool was that! How positively geriatric.
“You like this show?”
“Duh. Why else would be I watching it?” Certainly not because I was truly watching porn and just about got caught by my hot, hot assistant.
“Cool.” Dylan looked at the screen. “Man, that Sissy and Bobby sure can dance, huh? I wish I were that light on my feet. Hey, remember old Lawrence conducting? A-one-and-a-two-and….”
I arched an eyebrow.
“My grandparents used to love this show,” he explained. “They couldn’t wait for Saturday nights to sit down after supper to watch it. Whenever they babysat me, I’d watch it with them. I had a real crush on Sissy. But I was just a kid.”
I couldn’t help but smile. The mental picture of a young (okay, younger) Dylan Foreman in his jammies with a crush on the dancing Sissy … well, it was just too cute.
“Hey, remember that theme song? I had it memorized. I used to sing along with it every week.”
I could literally feel the dilation of my pupils. And it had nothing to do with adjusting to the light. Dylan was the world’s worst singer. He just didn’t know it.
“Every week?” I asked.
“Well, every week until my grandmother started turning the television off about two minutes before the show was over. Weird.”
“Huh,” I said. “Go figure.” I muted the television quickly.
Dylan spotted the wine. “Mind?” he asked.
I poured him a glass and refilled my own as I did. We tasted. We sipped. And then it was time to talk shop.
This wasn’t just a social call. Dylan Foreman wasn’t sneaking about on this fine Florida night to join me in a Lawrence Welk marathon.
“I retrieved the office voice mails,” he reported.
“Anything special?”
We did have a few things on the go, but nothing that couldn’t wait until we got back. And I’d notified current clients of our absence, so I didn’t expect there to be much.
“Not much. But you won a week at a timeshare in the Dominican Republic. You just have to pay the taxes on the prize.”
“Gee, what’s the catch?”
Dylan chuckled. Even in the low lighting of the room, I knew his eyes were sparkling. And chances were mine were too. What was it about this guy?
“Seriously though, nothing urgent.” He took a long swallow of wine that matched mine.
I topped up both our glasses. “So,” I said. “Any luck checking on our newfound friends?”
The look on his face changed instantly. When Dylan Foreman went to work, it was all business. The guy was smart, and I loved that intense look he got when we were working on a case. After his apprenticeship was over, he was going to make one hell of a good private investigator.
“Where do you want me to start?” No notes, no hand-held gadget to retrieve the information. It was locked solid in his mind.
“Tish McQueen.”
“You mean ‘Tish the Dish’?”
Tish the Dish? I sat up straighter.
Apparently, Dylan had already gotten an eyeful of Miss Above-the-Law-of-Gravity Tish McQueen.
“You’ve seen her?” I followed the question with a drink.
“Nah. That was her stripper name.”
I almost pffted out my drink out onto my chin. Yes, just almost. This was wine, not coffee.
“Apparently, our Miss Dish had quite the career in her younger days. Worked from Florida to Toronto. New York to Vancouver.”
“And all ports in between?”
“And she not only worked under Tish the Dish. But also Trixie O’Treats. Tish Tush. Oh, and my personal favorite — Tish the Fish.”
I blinked.
“Mermaid theme,” he elaborated.
“And when was this?”
“Early sixties. I found some posters on the Internet from her stripper days. I tell you, Dix, she was a headliner. Built like a….”
He didn’t finish the thought. But my shoulders pressed back even farther as I did.