Page 50 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

First and most important, I needed clothes, just something to wear today so I could go buy more. I listed bra, panties, jeans, shoes, and blouse, as well as a blow dryer and hairbrush. I gave that list to Wyatt, and he read it to Mom. I knew she’d handle it from there.

The next call on my list was Lynn at Great Bods. I might be late today.

Wyatt snorted and said, “You think?” But he made the call.

Next on my list was my insurance company, but it wasn’t open yet. Because I wanted to be fair, I also listed Wyatt’s insurance company. He had things he had to deal with, too. Then I started listing everything I needed to buy. I’d just started on the second page when Wyatt jerked the notebook away from me and pulled me out of my chair.

“You can organize your shopping spree later,” he said, physically shepherding me toward the stairs. “You should see yourself. We both need to shower.”

No argument there. What I didn’t need to do was showerwithhim. I jerked away from him, almost stumbling from the effort, and held up my hand like a traffic cop. My jaw set, I pointed at him, then at myself, then emphatically shook my head.

“You don’t want to shower with me?” he asked innocently. Damn him, he knew how mad I was, and he was deliberately taking advantage of my laryngitis.

All right, let him see what he could make of this. I pointed to both of us again, then made a circle with the thumb and first finger of my left hand, and thrust the first finger of my right hand back and forth really fast in the circle, then dropped my hands and shook my head even more emphatically than before.

He grinned. “You don’t have a clue how bad you look, or you wouldn’t think my mind is on sex. Let’s get cleaned up, then we’ll go to the station and you can answer some questions, make a statement.” Then he corrected himself. “Writea statement.”

I had some idea how I looked, because I could see him. That didn’t make me any less wary of his intentions. This was Wyatt, Mr. Perpetually Horny. I knew how he operated. We’d had sex in the shower more than a few times.

There were three bathrooms upstairs, but in typical Wyatt decorating only the master bath had towels in it. I went in ahead of him, grabbed two towels and a washcloth from the linen closet in the bathroom, shampoo and conditioner from the shower, one of his shirts and a robe from his closet, and headed out again.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

I pointed in the direction of the other bathrooms, and left him to shower alone. He needed to meditate on the enormity of his sins.

But he was right about how I looked. Once I was safely behind the locked door of the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and would have moaned if I’d had a voice. The rims of my eyelids were red and swollen, I was covered in oily soot, and my nostrils and around my mouth were completely black with the stuff. My hair was stiff with ashes and soot. There was no way one lathering with shampoo and soap would take care of this mess—at least, not this kind of soap.

I went back downstairs and stood a moment, considering. Dish detergent, or laundry detergent? I decided dish detergent would be less corrosive, but still good on oil and grease. I grabbed the bottle from underneath the kitchen sink and returned upstairs.

Thirty minutes later, even though I’d used only lukewarm water and turned it completely off while I was lathering, the hot water was gone, but then with two of us showering I wasn’t surprised. The Palmolive had done an admirable job removing the soot, though it had left my hair with a texture like straw, so I’d had to shampoo and condition it, which had taken even more water. As I toweled dry I checked my face in the mirror. My eyes were still red-rimmed, but I couldn’t see any soot. My hands and feet still showed some dark spots, but I didn’t want to scrub my skin raw getting rid of them; they could wait.

I didn’t have any underwear, of course; I hadn’t left any clothing at Wyatt’s house any of the nights I’d spent there. Feeling ridiculously naked, I put on Wyatt’s shirt, then his robe over that. Finally, my wet hair wrapped in a towel, I went downstairs to wait for someone to deliver my requested clothes.

Wyatt was in the kitchen; he was freshly shaven and dressed in a suit and tie as he always was for work. He’d put on a pot of coffee—I blessed him for that, even if I was angry at him—and was standing with my sheaf of notes in his hand, looking through them.

He looked up when I appeared in the doorway. The expression in his eyes was a little disbelieving. He glanced back at one of the notes.

I could see it from the doorway, because I’d written all the notes in big block letters. That particular one proclaimed:

WYATT IS A JACKASS

Chapter

Twenty-one

Icircled around him, giving him a wide berth, and headed to pour myself a cup of coffee while he continued pondering my notes. He chose another one, held it at arm’s length, and cocked his head as if he’d never seen a note before. “‘I need a shotgun.’ Now, there’s a thought that probably has all my men on high alert.”

I thought it was a good idea. I needed one right now. Peppering his ass with buckshot would make me feel ever so much better. Turning my back on him, I reveled in the fantasy as I took my first sip of coffee, which was a lot more work than I’d expected. My throat didn’t want to cooperate, didn’t want to do the swallowing thing. The coffee felt good going down, bathing my sore throat in heat. Drinking hot stuff usually helps a sore throat, and I wanted my voice back. I had alotI wanted to say.

I needed to make a list of everything I wanted to say, so I wouldn’t forget any of it. I also needed to get started on Wyatt’s list of transgressions, because this was going to be a good one.

His arms came around me from behind and he eased me back against him, resting his chin on top of my towel-wrapped head. “You were talking to me on the cell phone, and now all of a sudden you can’t make a sound. Is something really wrong with your throat, or are you just not talking to me?”

Carefully I sipped more coffee. What was I supposed to do, answer him?

I thought about slinging an elbow into his ribs, but all that cop training he had made getting physical with him sort of dangerous, plus he never let me win, which is just so snotty of him I can’t believe it because letting me win every now and then would be the gentlemanly thing to do. Besides, all I had on was his shirt and his robe, both of which were way too big for me. If we started tussling, the robe would come off in a heartbeat, and the shirt would be pushed up to my neck, and, well, that’s just what happened when we started tussling.

Instead, because I knew this would worry and annoy him more, I set down the cup and calmly removed his arms from around me. After topping the cup with more coffee, I took it with me to the table, where I sat down, and then was momentarily distracted by my tote bag sitting in the middle of the table. I hadn’t noticed it before, because I’d been so intent on battling with him, which tells you what a horrible effect he had on me. I hadn’t forgotten the tote—or my shoes—while fighting for my life, but throw Wyatt into the equation and I lost all sense of concentration. Scary.

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