Page 8 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

The automatic door of the department store opened and two women came out, chatting happily as they carried out their booty and started up the aisle of parked cars. The first one to see me shrieked and stopped in her tracks.

“Don’t mind that noise,” I told the operator. “Someone was startled.”

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” The second woman rushed toward me. “Were you attacked? Are you okay? What happened?”

Let me tell you, it’s really annoying when help shows up once you no longer need it.

The parking lot was full of flashing lights, cars parked at odd angles, and uniformed men mostly standing around chatting. No one was dead, so there wasn’t any sense of urgency. One of the vehicles with flashing lights belonged to the medics; their names were Dwight and Dwayne. You can’t make this stuff up. I don’t like the name “Dwayne” because that was the name of the man who had killed Nicole Goodwin, but I couldn’t say that to this Dwayne because he was a really nice man who was calm and gentle as he wiped away blood and bandaged my scalp wound. My forehead was scraped, but my face wasn’t cut, which I guess meant that I’d sort of had my head tucked down when I landed. Good news for my face, bad news for my head.

They agreed with my diagnosis of concussion, which on one level was satisfying—I like being right—and on another disheartening, because a concussion would seriously interfere with my schedule, which was tight enough without having this kind of handicap thrown into the mix.

One of the patrolmen was Officer Spangler—I knew him, from when Nicole was murdered. I was lying propped on a gurney and he was taking my statement while the medics efficiently wiped and bandaged and got me ready for transport when Wyatt drove up. Even without looking I knew it was him, because of the way his tires squealed, punctuated by a slamming car door.

“There’s Wyatt,” I said to Officer Spangler. I didn’t turn my head, because I was trying very hard not to move.

He glanced in the direction of the new arrival, and pursed his lips a little so they wouldn’t smile. “Yes, ma’am, it is,” he said. “He’s been in radio contact.”

There had been some conflict between Wyatt and some of the older guys in the police department, because he was promoted ahead of them. Officer Spangler was fairly new, and young, so he was free of that resentment. He stood and gave a respectful nod as Wyatt approached and stared down at me, his hands on his hips. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up over his forearms. His service weapon rode in a holster on his right kidney, and his badge was clipped to his belt. He carried a cell phone/radio in his hand, and he looked grim.

“I’m okay,” I said to Wyatt, hating that look on his face. I’d seen it before. “Kind of.”

He immediately switched the laserlike focus of his gaze to Dwayne. Dwight was fiddling with their medic cases, putting stuff back, so Dwayne was the target. “How is she?” he asked, as if I hadn’t even spoken.

“Probable concussion,” said Dwayne, which was likely against some sort of regulation, but I supposed most of the medics and cops knew one another, and maybe cops could get all kinds of info that was supposed to be private. “A lacerated scalp, some contusions.”

“Road rash,” I said glumly.

Dwayne smiled down at me. “That, too.”

Wyatt squatted beside the gurney. The bright light the medics had set up for their work threw harsh shadows on his face. He looked tough and mean, but his hand was gentle as he took mine in it.

“I’ll be right behind the ambulance,” he promised. “I’ll call your mom and dad on the way.” He shot a look at Spangler. “You can finish taking her statement at the hospital.”

“Yes, sir,” said Officer Spangler, closing his notebook.

I was loaded into the back of the ambulance—to be precise, the gurney was loaded in the ambulance, but since I was on it, the end result was the same. The guys closed the double doors, and the last sight I had of Wyatt was him standing there looking both cold and fierce.

Then we pulled out of the parking lot, lights flashing but no siren wailing, for which I was grateful because my head ached so much.

Well, this was familiar. And in this case, familiarity sucked.

Chapter

Four

Wyatt was the last thing I saw before the doors to the ambulance were closed, and the first thing I saw when they were opened.

He looked so grim and cold and furious, all at the same time, that I reached for his hand again as I was unloaded from the back of the vehicle. “I really am okay,” I said. Except for the concussion, I really was. Banged up, but okay. I wanted to sound brave, which would convince him I was fine and was putting on a false front to garner sympathy, but my head hurt too much for me to muster the energy, so instead I sounded sincere, so of course he didn’t believe me.

The man/woman jockeying-for-position supremacy thing was too complicated for me to deal with right then. You’d think he’d be relieved, but no, I could tell by the way his jaw clenched that instead he was worried as hell. Men are so perverse.

I mustered my strength. “This is all your fault,” I said, with as much indignation as I could manage.

He was walking alongside the gurney holding my hand, and he gave me a narrow-eyed look. “My fault?”

“I was shopping tonight because ofyourstupid deadline.Ifyou’d listened to me I could have shopped during the daytime, like civilized people, but no, you have to give me anultimatum,which forced me to be in the parking lot with a road-rage-crazed psycho bitch in a Buick.”

His eyes got even more narrow. To my relief, the grim look had relaxed somewhat. He figured if I could work up a head of steam, I really was all right. “Ifyou had managed to plan something as simple as a wedding,” he said with maddening disregard for the millions of details that go into a wedding, “I wouldn’t have had to step in.”

---