Chapter Three
Apollo’s blog
I hate recording this blog for the shrinks to analyze, but if that’s what it takes to get back on the streets doing my job, I’ll put up with just about anything. Okay, here goes. What a weird day. I started out watching Jeff’s new wife Pam holding his hand and staring intently into his sleeping face. The sweet-faced brunette didn’t seem strong enough to be a cop’s wife, but there she was, calmly holding his hand with a stack of his favorite crime drama books on the nightstand waiting for him. A plate of Jeff’s beloved peanut butter cookies -- obviously homemade, even to a scorch mark on one edge -- said more than words how she catered to her husband’s needs. She’d probably feed them to him crumb by crumb if that was what it took.
I envied him, and for the first time in my life, I was lonely. I’m a solitary guy by nature, so loneliness in me is like asking a fish to sprout feathers and fly.
Jeff had been in surgery all morning, where a special eye surgeon had done his best to put Jeff’s eye socket back together. Amazingly, Jeff was not going to be blind at all, but just a bit less attractive to the ladies. Not that it mattered to Pam. She’d already declared he’d been too handsome for his own good, and she was glad to see she wouldn’t have to worry about feminine badge bunnies circling her man.
However, she did spare a glance at me and frowned. “You’ve been here all morning. Go home.” She flicked her fingers, shooing me out. “Jeff will probably sleep away the rest of the day, and he won’t be much company until tomorrow at least. Go refinish a desk or something.”
I chuckled softly and left her to care for my partner. Of course Jeff had told his wife how I had a house only so I could have a woodworking shop in the basement garage. I spent my days off rummaging in the abandoned buildings of downtown neighborhoods, rescuing ornately carved mantles, the occasional cabinet set, and once a huge double partner’s desk set made of solid oak so massive I’d had to break down a wall to get it out on the rolling cart I carried in the back of my truck for just such finds. That desk now dominated the small home office I used for my other hobby -- writing a cookbook. If anyone on the force knew how well I could cook, or that I’d once graduated from a culinary school, I’d be teased forever. I wished I had someone to cook with and for. It was no fun cooking for one.
I shrugged to myself. There was no sense in bitching. I’d chosen to switch careers and do something about the crime overtaking the city ever since the Second Depression. There were few restaurants anymore anyway because the rich had moved out to the country and made the private chef fashionable again. Why risk going out in public when you could invite your friends over to your secure home for dinner and a movie in your private theatre? Then you could indulge in whatever kinks and thrills you want with much less likelihood the press will make hash out of your career. I just didn’t want to be anyone’s personal pet chef. Cougar-kind don’t belong in cages.
I stepped into the elevator, but my finger hovered away from the Lobby button. The babysitter was on the third floor, recovering from her foot surgery and a minor bullet wound to her skull. There’d been something so graceful about that one delicate little foot and those hard-working patrician hands. I had to go see if the face matched the extremities. Curiosity killed the cat, but maybe if I got a look…
“Hey, bud. Move or push the damn button, willya?” An impatient pair in loud Hawaiian print shirts fumed behind me, anxious to be on their way. They jammed the Lobby button and gave me filthy looks until the doors opened again on the Lobby floor.
Observing details was part of my training, and I’d noticed a spent coffee cup in the trash bag in the Mercedes. Hmm. I made a purchase at the coffee shop and took the elevator to the third floor. I got past the burly nurse guarding the babysitter by flashing my badge while juggling the cardboard holder with my left. “Aunt Petey” was “Petra Oakes” according to the display behind the nurse’s station.
Okay, so I was wrong to go. I knew it wasn’t smart, and I’d bet someone would say I was compromising the case against me if they decided I needed to be nailed to the wall as a sop to public opinion. I didn’t care. Those graceful, hard-working hands were a contradiction enough to get my interest all riled up. Curiosity might just kill the cat, but satisfaction might just bring it back.
Chapter Four
“Miss Oakes?” The masculine voice repeated himself insistently. “Miss Oakes, I really must insist you wake up. My time is limited, if you please.”
What the hell? I fell asleep again? I cracked one bleary eye, already irritated with whoever this asshole was. With the drugs swimming in my system, I had a tendency to fall asleep at the drop of a sunbeam, even more than my feline nature demanded. My current project had slid to the floor last time, and I’d had to wait for the nurse to come in for a vitals check before I got it back. Sleep did relieve the endless hours of boredom, since they didn’t let patients get a full night’s sleep without at least one wakeup for vitals or another vial of blood. “Then feel free to leave, asshat. I don’t remember inviting you here.”
The prematurely balding man puffed out his chest with self-importance. He straightened his gray business suit and humphed out a breath. “Miss Oakes, I am here on your behalf! The least you can do is hear me out, considering all the trouble I… well, let’s merely say it was very difficult to gain access to your room.”
I was incredibly thirsty, but I licked my lips and pretended to be much more stoned on painkillers than I was. I’d learned long ago to appear helpless and pretty around strangers until I could sink claws and fangs in their flesh. This asshole had just confessed he’d snuck in against the rules, and this didn’t endear him to me at all. I deliberately crossed my blue eyes and left them unfocused. “I… I’ll try. I’m kinda stoned, dude.”
His lips twisted in a cold smile of triumph. Maybe he thought he had a chance to coerce me into whatever it was he wanted. Yeah, like that was legal. “My name is Russell Rose of Rose and Ulster. You may have heard of us.”
“Law firm, right?” I put as much confused dipshit blonde into my tone as I dared without sounding too fake. Like I’d never seen the billboards or the TV ads.
Rose and Ulster were ambulance chasers that made a specialty of suing the civil and federal governments and any business that may have had the remotest connection to the situation. So they wouldn’t care about a quasi-legal coercion of a stoned patient as long as they were the ones committing the offense. Worse, they’d turn on me and take on one of the cops as clients and make me the villainess in cahoots with the dead robber. That asshole was dead and unlikely to argue.
Mr. Rose grinned cheerfully. His gleaming smile was always on the billboards with the slogan, “You can call me Rusty.” Like he was your best buddy. Sure he was. Like being friends with a cobra was a good idea. “Excellent, Miss Oakes. I’m so glad you recognize me.”
That was quite enough of the patronization. I wasn’t in much pain, and I doubted Marissa would talk to these assholes. Beans made enough money to ensure his sister and her kids never wanted for anything their doggie desires could dream of. So this Russ Rose had taken the initiative to sneak into my room, hoping I’d be drugged and tractable enough to agree to have him represent me in some massive lawsuit. I dropped the stoned Barbie doll routine entirely, since this stubborn bastard wasn’t likely to play by any rules but his own. There was only one way to get rid of him, since I couldn’t bodily give him the heave-ho with a bum foot. I lived for the day they gave me a pair of crutches. “I state you may not record this conversation to sell it to the media, so if you’re wired in any way, you are now in violation of my civil rights of privacy. Are we clear?”
Darling Rusty ground his teeth, and reached in his pocket. “You are no longer being recorded by me or any of my colleagues, Miss Oakes.”
“Good.” I nodded sharply, my blue eyes narrowed and deliberately mean as hell. “I want nothing to do with you or your company at this time. I refuse your services for the purposes of enacting litigation against the police, sheriff, or the city in regards to the
accidental
shooting of myself. Though I cannot speak for my friend Marissa Burlingame, I sincerely doubt she accepted your services either. It is my further
opinion
that the police officers are absolutely blameless when it comes to my injuries and should not be held accountable for the same.” I drew a deep breath. “Now, that having been said, I repeat for the last time my polite request for your absence before I start screaming hysterically. Are we clear?”
He turned up his nose and left without a word, but the broad shoulders of a man whose face was in the shadows blocked his way. Rusty Rose shouldered the man out of the way and escaped into the corridors, looking for another victim to suck dry.
The shadowy figure leaned against the wall and gave me the accolade of a quiet “golf clap.” Whoever he was, he was six feet of lean muscle on long, blue-jean clad legs, wearing a well-loved pair of sneakers in need of cleaning. “Thank you, Miss Oakes.”
Gratified, I leaned back against my pillows and took a quick sip of water. “You’re welcome, whoever you are. However, if you’re another ambulance chaser, you can follow his ass to hell. “
A scent tickled my sensitive nose, and I inhaled a little deeper, trying not to be obvious. What the hell did I smell? Whatever it was, my body reacted faster than my head. I was instantly hornier than a three-peckered billy goat scenting a whole herd of she-goats.
Want
didn’t quite cover my body’s reaction to the new visitor. I needed to put my butt in the air and yowl like I was in heat. Yeah, like instant heat. As I was in my human form, I’d probably need a soaker pad under my horny ass very soon.
Mr. Sexy Scent shook his head, but detached himself from the wall and sauntered into the room like he owned the hospital. He was grace and power personified, all presented in one sleek, elegant package. Light brown hair streaked with sunlight and the permanent tan only blessed upon folks born and raised in the sunshine declared him a native. His eyes were hazel, both brown and green simultaneously. He didn’t smile, but I got an impression of easy good humor about him. “Nope, but I probably shouldn’t be here either. I’ll have to ask permission once I’ve introduced myself, if you don’t toss me out like that snake who just left.” His southern drawl was smoother than the frozen custard they served at the zoo, all creamy and delicious.
I bet myself females tried to trip him and beat him to the floor with their legs spread every day of the week. Hell, if I weren’t laid up, I’d be begging to stand in line for the privilege. Consequently, my lust pissed me off. He was probably used to every female between puberty and menopause having hard nips and wet butts within five miles of him, and I’d be damned if I’d be another notch on a tattered belt. “Yeah, maybe you’d better tell me who you are.” Since when had my voice become that breathless and soft? Oh, shit.
The sleepy jaguars at the zoo had that same look in their eyes, like they were sizing you up as either prey or to determine if you measured up to some high standard only they understood. He stood close to the foot of my bed, neither crowding nor threatening me. “My name’s Officer Apollo Jones, and I’m one of the police you just defended, Miss Oakes.”
My mind fogged and my jaw slowly fell open. I prodded myself mentally to make some intelligent comment, but inside my head I was on my knees sucking his cock until he begged for mercy. All I managed was a strangled, “Oh.” I bit my lip before I said anything stupid like comparing him to the sun god of the same name. He’d probably had that twisted on him since grade school.
Whatever lust god had hold of me, the same asshole had the cop’s dick too. He’d been looking into my eyes like he’d seen something profound in them. Shit, they were just a big round pair of baby blues stuck above a nose so short someone had asked me if my dad had flattened my face with a wall. Like I knew who my dad was. I was a show-quality Himalayan, all looks and no personality required. Somehow, all that fancy-schmancy breeding crap made my human face desirable. Most men just drooled and grabbed until my steel toes connected with their nuts to remind them I had a brain and a heart.
Funny thing was, this time the lust was mutual. The kielbasa in his pants was growing faster than kudzu in the palmetto scrub. He blinked and visibly controlled himself. “Sorry. I guess you’re used to men telling you how beautiful you are.”
Not the way he thought. I cleared my throat and quickly took another swallow of water. I gave a tiny shake of my head. “Not really. Most see my hard hat and steel toes and make all the stereotypical assumptions. They also feel it’s their God-given duty to put me back on the straight and narrow and that I’d automatically welcome the lessons. Blech.”
“Here.” He set my favorite white chocolate mocha coffee from the Holy Grounds coffee shop downstairs on the table in front of me. Figures that Baptist Hospital would name their coffee shop that. “Hope you don’t mind real cream.” He waved to the chair Rat had used earlier. “May I?”
I pounced on the coffee and sniffed the heavenly odor that didn’t mask the delicious aroma of pure male. Coffee and Apollo Whatever-his-last-name-was was now my favorite perfume. I think both of us knew he shouldn’t be in the hospital room with me, but we were conspirators against the media and assholes like Rusty Rose and his ilk. Besides, he brought me coffee. With real cream. “Dude, I always try to be nice to the boys in blue. Have a seat.” I saluted him with my cup.
Those forest-green eyes crinkled up into a slow, cool smile, and he lifted his own cup to return the toast. “Thank you, Miss Oakes.” Then he sat down with more grace than even Tigs managed on his slinky best day. Whoa.
“Pete.” Okay, so maybe not the most intelligent thing to say, but lust was stroking my fur in all the right directions, and I was a pussy who was thinking with her pussy. Gimme a fucking break, okay?