It Should Happen To You. Kathleen O'Reilly

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СКАЧАТЬ to make sure no big ears were listening. “Nah. I mean a professional criminal. You know, a real thief. Unfortunately, now I’ve got to find somebody. You don’t meet many criminals in the lab.”

      “I know just the man,” said Beth, quick as you please.

      Amazed, Mickey stared at her with new appreciation. “You really know criminals?”

      Beth lifted one eyebrow. “You meet people from all walks of life in a Starbucks. Come in tomorrow about ten. He hangs out at a table near the coffee-mug-clearance shelf in the back.”

      Mickey considered it for a moment. It was so tempting. “What do you think he’s into? Drugs?”

      Beth shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s a made guy.”

      Huh? The foreign terminology made Mickey wonder at the sheltered life she had led. “What’s that?” she asked.

      “Part of the Outfit.”

      Her jaw dropped open. “No way. A mafia guy?”

      Beth preened. “Yup. Right in my own Starbucks. Venti latte. Loaded.”

      Starbucks. It was a long way from The Godfather. Times had changed.

      Mickey took another sip of the martini. The alcohol was beginning to make everything seem logical. “How do you know that he’s one of Them?”

      “I saw his driver’s license once when he flipped open his wallet. Dominic Corlucci.”

      Mickey still wasn’t convinced. “Just because he has an Italian name doesn’t mean anything.”

      “Trust me, Mickey. A woman gets a sense about these things.”

      A scientist would be laughed out of the lab on hunches and womanly instincts, but Beth sounded so sure, even in the absence of any conclusive evidence. Mickey thought instincts ranked right up there with the tooth fairy, and could rationalize the whole thing away with logic and science when she wanted to. That she had inherited from her father.

      It all sounded glamorous and possibly real. The Mafia. She took another sip of her drink. She’d always had a major thing for Pacino.

      Still, the Mafia.

      It wasn’t exactly what she had planned. She’d been thinking of one of those penny-ante types that wore pants that were too short and hung out at the racetrack. In the end, did she really have a choice?

      It was her career on the line. Her reputation as a professional and as an astronomer. No way were they going to take away her stars.

      The mob ate guys like Monihan for dinner. That made her smile. It’d definitely be worth it. And worst case, she would lay even odds that the Witness Protection Program didn’t have one astrophysicist in their ranks.

      Yet.

      “BETH. PSSSSSSSTTT. BETH.”

      Beth stared blankly, her face half-hidden by a cappuccino machine.

      Oh, this was good. No recognition at all. The disguise was working. She’d had to leave her glasses on, because she was blind without them. Not that it seemed to affect the whole look. Mickey disguised as a bimbo had been a masterstroke. Who would suspect?

      Mickey placed a hand on her hip, forming a nice isosceles triangle, just as she’d seen the other girls do.

      “May I help you?” Beth asked.

      “It’s Mickey,” she answered, twitching a little because the spandex skirt was hitting her butt in all the wrong places.

      Beth emerged from behind the cappuccino machine and started to smile. “It’s always been a big, fat lie, hasn’t it?”

      “What?”

      “The whole ‘I hate men’ thing. Look at you,” she said, her hand encompassing spandex, lace and thigh-high boots. “You just jumped from the latest issue of Sluts R Us.”

      Not exactly the look Mickey had been trying for. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

      Beth finished up the coffee she’d been making and put it on the wooden bar. “I’m not, huh?”

      Mickey shook her head.

      Beth grinned. “Well, girlfriend, you’re going to be fighting the vice cops off with a stick.”

      When Beth started thinking she was witty, they were in serious trouble. “Where is he?”

      Beth cocked her head in the direction of the far corner. “That’s his usual table. He’s not here yet.”

      “Okay.” Mickey, who’d secretly been looking forward to mingling with the wrong kind, felt a little disappointed.

      She practiced her walk over to the small round table. Hip to the right, hip to the left, thrust, thrust, thrust. There was a certain samba feel to it, not that Mickey had ever danced the samba, but if she had, it would have given her that same all-over body tingle that she had now.

      Three espressos later, he walked through the door. Instantly she knew who he was. He moved with a sleek, lean grace, no squeaky tennies here. The kind of man who could kill you before you even knew he was in the room. His shoulders were broad, probably from lifting bodies. All in all, he was one dangerous hombre.

      What scared Mickey was that, although Beth had told her enough that she would be able to recognize him, Beth had failed to disclose how a woman’s body would react. A logical, intelligent, rational woman’s body.

      Mickey sat up straighter in her seat. Her back, her chin, her breasts all snapping into place. She’d taken a course in body language, she knew what she was saying.

      Come on, baby, light my fire was the same in all languages.

      Cold dark eyes scanned the room, settling on her.

      Uh-oh.

      The room temperature dropped ten degrees. In that moment, it dawned on her this was a really stupid idea.

      He was going to kill her. He had the look of a man who carried a tommy gun in his pocket, or even worse, a garrote. Automatically, her hand covered her throat.

      The next thing she knew, this cold-blooded killer was looming over her table. “You got three seconds to move your pretty little ass clear of my table.”

      My table. Her eyes narrowed. Nothing like arrogance to piss a woman off, especially Mickey. She had heard the tone before. Dr. Breedlove had tried it her rookie year at Astrophysical Sciences Research Center. Her nuclei and elementary particles prof at U of C tried it, too, and both had been easily shot down. That’s what happened when you could solve Maxwell’s equation at the age of eighteen.

      Mickey pulled at her tortoiseshell glasses until she could stare down her nose at him. “I’m here on business, so you might as well stop your gawking and sit your pretty little ass right down.” She smiled innocently. “Sweet cheeks.”

      The coolness in the СКАЧАТЬ