Truly, Madly, Briefly: Truly, Madly, Briefly / Tried And True. Delores Fossen

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      Jasper slipped his narrowed gaze to Bobbie. “And I can see you’re still playing hard to get.” He didn’t give her time to deny that absurd claim. “Well, two can play at that game, darling.”

      And with that announcement, Jasper hooked his arm around Maxine and hauled her against him. The lovers’ embrace perhaps would have been far more effective if Maxine hadn’t winked at Aidan.

      Bobbie got to her feet as well. “Is there a point to all of this, Jasper?”

      “Yes!” Jasper gave Bobbie a heated look and blew her a kiss. “The point is that one way or another, I intend to win you back, darling. You will be mine, and we will go on that honeymoon to Paris.”

      Another wink from Maxine. “Plus, Deputy, the lottery’s over tomorrow, and everything will get back to normal. Bobbie won’t have dibs on you anymore.”

      That threat alone was enough to make Aidan want to extend the Twango-Drifter Plan indefinitely.

      Bobbie took a step toward the winking, puckering couple. They looked as if they had nervous tic disorders. “You know, I’m a little tired of all this dibs talk.”

      “Yeah?” Maxine challenged.

      “Yeah,” Bobbie countered.

      Uh-oh. Hoping to stave off disaster, Aidan reached for Bobbie. Too bad that reaching caused him to step the wrong way. His foot landed right on the gift bag that Mr. Eidelson had left on the ground.

      Aidan heard the too-familiar sound of breaking glass mere seconds before he got his first whiff of new and improved Sensuous Massage Oil. Ohmigod. Like a deadly top-secret-weaponized chemical agent, the reeking aroma engulfed them.

      “Ewwww.” Maxine clothes-pinned her nose. Jasper began to fan his hands around.

      Aidan took full advantage of the distraction and turned to Bobbie. “Why don’t we skip the seed-spitting contest and get out of here?”

      “Agreed.”

      She latched onto him, and they headed away from the smelly toxic spill. “I don’t have my car here. I rode in with my uncles.”

      The first drops of rain splattered on them as they made their way across the baseball field. If Aidan had been thinking right, he might not have led Bobbie in the direction of his car. But the massage oil had obviously dulled his senses because that’s exactly where they ended up when the sky opened and it began to pour.

      “I think Jasper and Maxine are following us,” Bobbie let him know as he stuffed her into the car. A jolt of lightning zipped across the sky.

      Aidan climbed into the car and checked the rearview mirror. She was right. Jasper and Maxine were in hot pursuit.

      But they weren’t alone.

      Raccoons and squirrels scurried out of the trees and adjoining woods. Most went straight for the squished orange bag, but a couple of especially obstinate-looking raccoons made a beeline for Jasper and Maxine.

      But that didn’t mean Bobbie and he had escaped disaster just yet.

      Sugarfoot, the boxer-clad ferret, broke away from the crowd and headed for Aidan’s car. Obviously, enough of the scent had permeated their clothes for the critter to take notice and come after them.

      It was like a scene from a Hitchcock movie.

      So Aidan did the only thing he could do. He gunned the engine and put some distance between them, the amorous ferret and the human couple trying to catch them.

      “Whew, we made it,” Bobbie said looking back at the chaos they’d left behind. She laughed.

      Aidan probably would have laughed too if he hadn’t cast his gaze in Bobbie’s direction. With that simple innocent glimpse, he glimpsed at a lot more than he’d counted on glimpsing. Pressed against her rain-soaked, nearly transparent shirt, her rose-colored nipples had tightened. They were perfect little buds that his fingers itched to touch.

      Oh, man.

      He forced his itchy fingers into a death grip on the steering wheel. Talk about icing on the proverbial cake of needy things. Not only was he alone with Bobbie. And not only did she smell like bottled sex. She looked like bottled sex.

      No, he didn’t need this.

      He didn’t need her.

      And as soon as his body started to soften, Aidan was sure he’d remember that.

      BOBBIE STUCK her index finger in her nonlistening ear to shut out the storm noise so she could hear what the factory-floor manager had to say. Too bad she hadn’t waited until Aidan had gotten her home to take this call, but if Rudy Tate had just said what she thought he said, then this wasn’t something she could put off.

      “There’s a whole case of triple-X Bold-as-Brass Sheikh Yerbootees missing,” Rudy repeated. “I’ve double-checked the inventory, Bobbie, and they just aren’t there. I don’t think I’m jumping the gun here if I say that someone’s taken them.”

      She wrinkled up her nose. “You looked in the overflow stock room, I suppose?”

      “Absolutely. But I only found some glow-in-the-dark Boogie Boxers, some fantasy briefs and a couple of cases of those seatless Casanovas—the ones with the padded red silk lips on the fly-front. But I tell you, there’s not a Sheikh Yerbootee in sight.”

      Thank goodness Aidan couldn’t actually hear the bizarre phone conversation. It was a definite silver lining to an otherwise silverless moment.

      Obviously, the thief had struck again, and he or she delighted in stealing underwear with weird, kinky names. Why couldn’t this sticky-fingered person steal Gladiator boxers or Happily-Ever-After briefs? At least those were items that she could comfortably discuss in public.

      She’d have to make a report to Aidan, of course, but at least she wouldn’t have to give him a running commentary of their most bizarre inventory in the overflow stock room.

      “A problem?” Aidan asked when she hung up and dropped her phone into her purse.

      He stopped the car in front of her house. What he didn’t do was look at her. In fact, he hadn’t looked at her since they’d left the park. He sat soldier-stiff on the seat and kept his attention focused straight ahead. And he’d cleared his throat at least a dozen times. Maybe that massage oil had caused some kind of strange allergic reaction.

      “That was Rudy Tate. He says there’s more vanishing underwear.” Bobbie glanced up at the sky and huffed. The rain was still coming down in buckets. “Why don’t you come in for a while, and I’ll give you the details? There’s too much water on the road for you to be driving back into town anyway.”

      He hesitated but finally nodded. And he cleared his throat again. That time, Bobbie had a pretty good idea what caused that throat clearing and the hesitation. It probably wasn’t a good idea for them to be under the same roof alone, but the sudden storm hadn’t given them a lot of options. She didn’t want him getting into an accident after rescuing them both from Sugarfoot the ferret and her navel-lint ex-fiancé.

      She СКАЧАТЬ