“I don’t know what happened. Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“You should talk to him,” May prompted, pushing gently. “Find out what’s really going on.”
“That would be the logical thing to do—and why start that ugly trend now?”
“He panicked, Jess.” Phil sat with his back against the sink cabinet and his wife resting between his legs. “Men do it all the time.”
“Smitty doesn’t panic.”
“They may not panic in a firefight in a foreign country, but a woman they care about makes them positively unglued. It’s a man thing. Don’t try and rationalize it.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
Jess shrugged at Danny’s question. “What is there to do? I’ll be honest, guys. I don’t think I can face him. Not right now.”
“Not a problem,” May reminded her. “We’re going away for the long weekend tomorrow.”
“Johnny’s birthday party. I completely forgot. I’m a horrible mother.”
Phil let out a long sigh. “You know, sweetie, if you want, I can start kicking your ass over bullshit if you’re getting tired of doing it yourself.”
“I hear sarcasm.” Jess opened her mouth and caught the chocolate May tossed into the air. “I’m not trying to be hard on myself.”
“But it comes so naturally?”
“Pretty much.” Jess’s cell phone rang, the tune letting her know she had a text message waiting, and Danny went into the bedroom to grab it out of her pile of clothes.
When he walked back in, he was staring at the caller ID and frowning.
She didn’t even dare to hope it was Smitty. “Who is it?”
He handed the phone to May, who flipped it open and held it up so Jess could see the screen.
“Oh... fuck.”
May shook her head. “You don’t have to see her tonight.”
“No, I better. I can stop by the office, grab the papers, and take them to her.”
“Why can’t we conduct business like we normally do with this woman?” Phil complained.
“’Cause she’s crazy,” his wife stated. “Like a rabid dog.”
“I like her,” May admitted. “She’s definitely crazy, but she makes me laugh.”
“It doesn’t matter. This deal could bring us a lot of money. That and our connection to these guys will keep us in the happy, shiny place for quite a while. So I’ve gotta go.”
Sabina pulled away from her husband and stood. “Then we go with you.”
“You guys don’t have to do that.”
Dramatically, Sabina took the phone from May’s hand and stared at the small screen. “Do you really think we’d let you go here alone?”
“Or you could just admit that you really want to hit a club tonight.”
“True. I could admit that. But it would only make me look like a bad wife and mother. Give me ten minutes to put on something sexy and then we’ll go.”
“I guess you’re going too?” Jess asked May after Sabina walked out.
“Sure. It’ll be fun.” She kissed her husband and followed after Sabina, leaving Jess alone with Phil and Danny while she sat in a bathtub with dwindling bubbles. She didn’t care. It wasn’t like the two of them hadn’t seen her naked before. And had been duly unimpressed.
“And you guys?”
“You know we’d love to come, Jess,” Phil said.
“Really we would,” Danny added.
“But we don’t want to take away from you ladies getting in some nice girl bonding.”
“You just want to stay home and watch that documentary on the Roman Empire again, don’t you?”
“You know how much we love Nero. We have to see the scene where he fiddles while Rome burns.”
Jess chuckled. Honestly, the male dog obsession with the History Channel was simply not normal. “Go. Enjoy your carnage.”
Scratching her head affectionately, Phil asked, “You going to be okay, kid?”
“Yeah, I’ve survived worse. Although I have to admit, Smitty’s rejections are getting much more intense.”
Mace stared at the top of his friend’s head. It wasn’t that he was so much taller, it was that Smitty had his head on the desk. “Didn’t think you’d be in today.”
“Didn’t want to go home,” he grumbled into the desk. “It all smells like her.”
“That bad?”
“That good.”
“You going to tell me what happened or burrow your head into the desk like a badger?”
“There’s nothing to tell. I blew it. I blew everything.”
“Do you mind talking to me directly? I’m starting to think you find the desk more interesting than me.”
“It is,” Smitty muttered even as he sat up. “I don’t know, hoss. Maybe my daddy was right. Maybe I am an idiot.”
“Your daddy is certifiably insane.”
“In the South we call that eccentric.”
“Well, in New York, we call the cops to get ’em away from the front of our building.” Mace relaxed against the door frame. “Is this about Jessica?”
“I almost marked her today. In a gas station bathroom.” Elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands. “The woman is rich, beautiful, goes to all these fancy charity parties no Smith would ever be invited to, and I nearly mount her like a bitch in heat right by the bathroom condom machine.”
“Did she seem to mind?”
He dropped his hands to the desk. “That’s not the point. I don’t want her thinking... ”
“Thinking what?”
Smitty let out one of those soul-deep sighs that used to drive Mace crazy when they were on duty together. “When I was eleven, I walked in the kitchen just as my momma slammed one of the Thanksgiving Day turkeys into the back of the old man’s head. She dropped his ass too. Like two tons of garbage. The sad thing was I knew whatever he’d done—he’d deserved it.”
“And?”
“I just don’t want the next forty years to be filled with flying turkeys.”
Mace laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Smitty, I think you’re worrying over nothing. Jessica Ward isn’t the type to start throwing things.”
When Smitty only stared at him, Mace asked, “She throws things?”
“Only at me, it seems.”
“Did you deserve it?”
Smitty smirked. “Kind of.”
“Sitting around the office whining about it isn’t going to fix it. Let’s go to dinner. You can whine over a rare steak and cold beer.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Smitty pushed his chair back when Mace said, “So I got a call today. From a Kenshin Inu.”
“Who?”
“Asian wild dog who said he met you at a karaoke bar?”
“Yeah, right. The dog. What did he want?”
“To discuss a business offer with him. Next week. My cat senses are tingling. I’m sensing money.”
“How do you know?”
Mace stared at Smitty. “You do know who Kenshin Inu is, don’t you?”
“Not a clue.”
“Well, he’s many things. Mad scientist, ladies’ man... billionaire.”
Smitty stopped in the middle of pulling his jacket on. “Billionaire?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hope you were nice to him ’cause I was kind of an asshole.”
“I’m still trying to get my mind around you singing at a karaoke bar.”
“Don’t start.”
His friend laughed. “Man, what you’ll do for pussy.”
“Is that right... dog owner?” Smitty met Mace’s glare head-on. “How is the new puppy doing anyway?”
Mace let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s bad enough we have the baby. Which I was accepting of because he’s mine.”
“That’s real big of ya, hoss.”
Mace thought so.
“But then she gets a puppy. So now we got the two stupid ones and the damn puppy. Who isn’t too bad,” he grudgingly admitted.
Smitty finally chuckled. “Everybody loves a puppy, hoss.”
Johnny put his violin and bow down and answered the door to his rehearsal room. He expected one of the other musicians or singers using the other rooms were stopping by. Sometimes they did, although he rarely had anything to say to anyone. What he didn’t expect was to find Kristan Putowski standing outside his door with a couple bags of McDonald’s.