Who Loves Ya, Baby?

by Gemma Bruce

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Let's Get Lucky Catch and cuff a perp without batting a false eyelash? No problem for NYPD undercover cop Julie Excelsior. But her big mouth just got her demoted. . .seems that the department doesn't appreciate a whistle-blower. Well, Julie is too restless to park her long legs under a desk and twiddle her thumbs. She might break a nail--or somebody's head--just to relieve the boredom. Hello? Is anybody listening? That's it. I quit. I'm moving on. Time to say goodbye to the grit and grime of the precinct house, and hello to the simple life upstate where her Uncle Wes, that old practical joker, just died and left her a house on twenty acres. Plus about a million chickens. And the little town of Excelsior Falls has a few other surprises in store. . .like Julie's childhood pal Cas Reynolds, who grew up to be quite a man. As in six foot two of buff-a-licious fantasy fun. And he's the sheriff. Who could ask for anything more? How about a hidden treasure? Yes, Uncle Wes hid something wonderful for his near and dear ones to find but exactly what it is and where it is, no one really knows. Everybody's got a clue but nobody's talking--and the whole damn town is digging up her north forty inch by inch, hoping to get lucky. But Cas and Julie already have, what with toe-curling kisses and tangling up the sheets. In fact, they're having the hottest time of their lives. . . Gemma Bruce is the alter ego of a popular mystery writer, who loves the excitement of a "who done it" and the sizzle of romance. After a career in dance, theater, television and film, performing before packed houses even on a bad-hair-bloat day, Gemma now goes one on one with her computer screen to create the characters and stories she loves. Her laptop has never once made a snide remark about her hair (though it has eaten a few sentences that made it blush).

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Brava

Print pages: 352

Sample

The sole heir of a practical joker should always look before sitting down. Not the wisdom of an ancient Confucian proverb. Not a message in a fortune cookie. Just a little warning that Julie Excelsior failed to heed as she sat in Gunther and Gunther’s Manhattan law office and heard the terms of her uncle’s will.

Now she was sitting in the dark somewhere in the Adirondacks, crammed into her Volkswagen, with suitcases, grocery bags, boxes of linens jumbled on the back seat, and a sixty-pound German shepherd named Smitty, sitting beside her. And it occurred to her that she might have acted a teensy bit too precipitately.

She turned on her headlights again.Yep, still there. And it wasn’t going away. Funny. She remembered a sparkling white, board and batten house, with green gingerbread trim, a shady front porch with two big rocking chairs, and a turret, with elegant oval windows, that rose like a church steeple to a pitched roof and an iron finial that pointed to the sky.

“Giving God the bird,” Uncle Wes explained to Julie and he would curl her five-year-old fingers into position so the two of them could join the finial in the Excelsior one-finger salute.

That was before lightning struck, twisting the finial into a knot, blowing out the turret’s windows, and flooding Wes’s bedroom. Proving to his satisfaction that God couldn’t take a joke.

But that was then. What Julie saw now was a monstrous old house, looming out of the shadows, its stark angles and dark recesses sending a chill up her spine. The wood siding was dingy gray, the windows were gaping black holes. The porch sagged ominously, and the turret seemed to be—she tilted her head to the left—leaning downhill. She could practically hear the doors creaking on rusted hinges. No wonder they called it American Gothic.

It was a disaster. And it was all hers. The house, the pond, the apple orchard, the gazebo, the twenty acres of woodland. And the thing that brought her back to a place she’d tried to forget—the riddle.

No bank account was mentioned in Wes’s will, only the hint of hidden treasure, written on a piece of yellow tablet paper and placed in a sealed envelope, addressed, but never mailed. It had been too tempting. She’d come home, just like her uncle intended. Good old Wes, laughing to the bitter end.

Beyond the house, the headlights picked out chunks of the stone wall that meandered up the hillside, separating the two largest residences in town, Excelsior House and Reynolds Place. It was hard to believe she’d ever crouched beneath it, pulse pounding, fingers crossed, while she waited for Cas to sneak through the dark and silently scale its heights.

Without warning, he’d tumble over the top, scaring the daylights out of her, and land sprawled at her feet, grinning, his hair sticking straight up from the cowlick over his forehead ...

Yeah. And the rest was history, not her favorite subject.

Julie briefly considered turning around and driving back to Manhattan. Then remembered that she had nothing to return to. She reached into the glove compartment for her flashlight, clipped on Smitty’s leash, killed the headlights, and opened her door.

Smitty scrambled over her lap and leapt out of the car, dragging Julie with him.

“Heel,” she cried as he plunged toward the scraggly bushes in front of the house. “Heel, you police academy dropout.” Smitty stopped and planted his feet. Julie careered past him and tripped over a piece of gingerbread molding that lay on the ground. Damn. She looked around, then upward and found a jagged, empty space along the eave above her head.

She must have been out of her mind. She was a cop—an ex-cop—not Miss Fix-it.

She let Smitty stake his claim to a rhododendron bush, then started up the steps. The floorboards groaned beneath her feet as she cautiously crossed the dark, deep-set porch, Smitty pressed to her side, the flashlight picking out glimmers of the red, blue and amber stained glass windows that flanked the heavy chestnut front door. It also picked out several squares of cardboard that covered sections of missing glass.

Someone had left a pair of work boots by the door and Julie’s gut twisted to think of Wes, living and dying alone in the decaying house, with no friends, no family, just his riddles. He’d left her everything and she’d never even sent him a Christmas card.

“Oh hell.” She sniffed and reached into her jeans pocket with suddenly clammy fingers, pulled out the key to the front door, and inserted it in the lock. The tumbler creaked. The latch clicked. She turned the knob and pushed the door inward—and was hit by a blast of air so cold and dead that she stepped backwards, her heart clamoring.

Smitty padded past her into the dark.

After a second, Julie followed. Not that she trusted Smitty’s sense of self-preservation. But it was either go inside or sleep in the front seat of a bug-sized car with a giant-sized dog.

She groped for the light switch, and praying someone had paid the electric bill, flipped it on. A yellow light shone down from the teardrop chandelier and Julie let out a pent-up breath. Except for a fine layer of dust, the foyer looked just the way it always had: the dark wainscoting beneath pine green walls, the curving walnut staircase, the oriental runner, more threadbare than she remembered.

Okay. This was better. She turned off the flashlight and looked into the parlor. The same overstuffed, red velvet couch and wing chair were placed around the fireplace. The same case clock and assortment of figurines rested on the mahogany mantel; the round oak table still held its place by the front bay window.

She let Smitty off the leash and stepped inside the room. The ceiling-high bookshelves were stuffed with books: history books, nature books, sailing books, novels, and the cache of erotica that she and Cas had discovered on the top shelf one summer and had read aloud in the obscurity of the gazebo, only half understanding the words. They had giggled until their sides ached and then Cas had touched her and it was different. And their laughter turned into something else.

Remembered warmth rushed through her. She clamped a lid on it and backed out of the room, away from the past. She had no intention of taking any little trips down memory lane. She was here to sell the house and get on with her life. Whatever it was going to be.

She went out to the car and unloaded the essentials: her suitcase, a six-pack of beer, dog food, a gallon jug of water, and a bag of donuts. The rest could wait until the morning. She left her suitcase in the foyer and carried the rest down the hall.

Smitty was waiting for her by a closed door.

“Didn’t have any trouble finding the kitchen, did you?” said Julie. She turned the knob. The door opened; the knob came away in her hand. She looked at it, looked at the brass rod that hung out of the hole in the door.

She sighed and put the knob on the kitchen table. She thought longingly of Manuel, her apartment house super. He could fix anything, and Julie depended on him. She might be able to unload a clip into a bull’s-eye at sixty feet, but she didn’t know a washer from a bolt nut.

Tomorrow she’d have to find a handy man, a cheap one.

She turned on the kitchen light. A fluorescent tube flickered a few times, then came on with a buzz ... and kept buzzing.

And an electrician.

She filled Smitty’s water dish from the water bottle, and took a beer and donut out to the parlor. She sat down on the windowsill where she could see the lights of Reynolds Place winking in the distance.

For years, she’d passed that house every Friday afternoon, carrying her overnight case for her weekend visit with Uncle Wes, knowing Miriam and Reynolds were watching her from the window, thinking white trash, though they would never dare say it out loud. She trudged along, dressed in her Sunday best, like Pip summoned by Miss Havisham. Only at Wes’s you were more likely to get a rubber ice cube than a calcified wedding cake.

Julie grinned. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they found out their worst nightmare was now their neighbor.

Too bad Cas wasn’t here. He’d get a big kick out of how things had turned out. But he must be a banker by now. The Reynolds men were always bankers. And since the local Savings and Loan had gone belly up fifteen years ago, he wouldn’t be banking here.

Just as well. Sort of.

Cas was her closest childhood friend. The first boy to look up her dress to see her underwear. The first boy to reach down her T-shirt to cop a feel. The first boy to tie her to a tree. Actually he was the only boy who’d tied her to a tree, but it had been a promising beginning. Julie smiled, then frowned. He was also the first man to betray her.

Well, to hell with him and the rest of the Reynoldses. She wouldn’t embroil herself with that family ever again. She’d be more than content to smirk at Reynolds and Marian from over the wall.

Suddenly tired, she pushed away from the sill and sank down on the velvet sofa. The cushion emitted a loud raspberry, and Julie jumped to her feet. “Ugh. For once, couldn’t I be surprised by an inflatable boy toy instead of a whoopee cushion?”

She looked around for a safer place to sit and saw a piece of yellow tablet paper propped against a stack of books on the table.

The next clue? Maybe this one would lead her to where Wes had hidden his money. She hurried over to read it.

Great. Total nonsense.

P.S. Sleep in your old room. The sheets are clean.

“Right,” she muttered. “If someone else hasn’t slept in them in the last fifteen years.”

P.P.S. Remember who loves you.

She did remember.

P.P.P.S. Get Cas to tell you the one about the chicken, the horse and the Harley.

She frowned at the paper, but couldn’t stop the anticipatory shiver that ran over her.

“Dammit, Wes, if this is another one of your pranks.” Cas couldn’t be here. He was a banker ... somewhere else.

She sometimes pictured him sitting behind a desk, tall, potbellied, and stoop-shouldered, wearing a three-piece suit and rimless glasses, his cowlick supplanted by a shiny bald pate.

She never imagined him tall and hot and tying her up. Not often. Not when she was awake. She looked at her watch. Hmm. Time for bed.

She washed the last of her donut down with a swig of beer. She was not here to get sidetracked by the past, but to follow the clues to her inheritance. Because the past didn’t pay the rent.

She didn’t have time to think about Cas. She didn’t miss him and she certainly didn’t need him. She had a dilapidated house, man’s best friend, and jokes from the grave.

All in all, life was looking pretty good.

Life was not so great for Acting Sheriff Cas Reynolds, a job he’d held for four months and for which he had no experience. What had started out as a weekend visit to a dying friend had turned into three months of disaster. He’d been in town for exactly four hours and ten minutes when Hank Jessop, the real sheriff, keeled over at the Fourth of July picnic, practically at Cas’s feet. An hour later, Hank was going through double bypass surgery and Cas had agreed to fill in as sheriff until he recovered.

“Don’t worry,” Wes told him and slapped him on the back.” Nothing ever happens in Ex Falls.”

And nothing had happened during his first three and a half months.

Then Wes died and the chicken thefts began. Two coops in two weeks, cleaned out right under the noses of the owners. Cas had driven to each place, poked around in the muck looking for God knew what, took depositions, listened to suppositions and he still didn’t have one damn lead.

He banged on a spot above the door handle of the police cruiser and the door swung open. He stepped out onto the graveled parking lot of the Roadhouse, tossed his uniform shirt into the back seat, and replaced it with a green sweater. Then he shoved his hands into his pants pockets and sauntered through the cluster of motorcycles, battered pickups and rusty cars to the entrance of the bar and grill.

The place was hopping and Cas had to squeeze through the crowd toward the bar, where the black jackets of the local motorcycle gang took up nearly every seat. Cas settled onto the one free stool. Unfortunately, it was the one next to Henley Baxter, his least favorite person since third grade.

“Hiya, Cas,” said Tilda Green as she slid a Foster’s draft toward him. Tonight Tilda’s hair was red and combed into a beehive, so high and finely teased that the barroom lights created a magenta halo around her head.

“Evening, Tilda. Nice hairdo.”

Tilda patted her head. “My Laverne and Shirley look.”

Henley leaned into Cas and Cas got a whiff of hair grease.

“Hey sheriff, seen any chickens lately?” Henley grinned and turned back to his beer.

Cas sighed. He needed to take shit from someone who couldn’t decide if they were Elvis or The Fonz.

“Yeah, see any chickens lately?” echoed Bo Whitaker, a shorter, stockier version of Henley, including the hair and the sideburns that grew down to his jawline.

Tilda placed a battered plastic menu in front of Cas and turned to the two gang members. “I don’t want any business in here tonight. I’m still four chairs short from the last time you broke up the place. If you do it again, you’re out of here.”

“Cheeseburger, medium, fries, well done,” Cas said and pushed the menu back to her.

Tilda slipped it under the counter. “And Cas is in a mood. You wanna spend the night over on Walnut Street?”

“Depends,” said Henley. “What’re they serving at the jail tonight? Chicken?”

Beside him, Bo let out a nasal snort and said, “Chicken?”

Cas sighed. He was getting a little tired of the chicken jokes. He didn’t know why he still stuck around, now that Wes was dead. The county sheriff could do Hank’s job. But there was that damn riddle, and he couldn’t leave until he figured it out.

“They’re just razzing you, Cas,” said Tilda. “Cause there’s nothing else to do around here. I’ll put a piece of lettuce on that burger. Make sure you get a vegetable today.”

Henley chewed on his lip and nodded. “Ya know, you should go down to the hotel. I’m sure your sister’s got some ... chicken cooking.”

“Yeah, chicken cooking,” echoed Bo.

Cas took a swig of beer. All he had ever wanted to do in life was build a boat, marry Julie Excelsior, and sail away. He’d managed to build a few boats. But he hadn’t married Julie and he’d never sailed away.

His burger came, a wilted piece of lettuce drooped over each side. He doused it and the fries with ketchup and concentrated on eating.

Henley stood up. “Well, gotta get going. Gonna find us some ... chicks.” He pulled his jacket collar up and did a couple of shoulder twitches straight out of a fifties movie. “Like maybe your baby sister.”

Cas’s jaw clenched. He put down his burger and slowly turned to face Henley as the rest of the bar grew silent. Henley grinned back and sucked on his tooth.

“Put a sock in it, Henley,” said Tilda. “Or you’ll find yourself without a place to drink. And I mean it. Get outta here.”

“Aw, Tilda. I was just goofing.”

“You’re mean as a skunk, always were. Now beat it.”

“Thanks, Tilda,” Cas said when Henley and Bo had left and the rest of the drinkers had gone back to minding their own business. “I didn’t really feel like breaking up a fight tonight.”

Tilda pushed another Foster’s toward him and grinned. “Especially one you started.”

“It’s this chicken thing,” said Cas.

“You gotta admit, it’s funny,” said Tilda. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Wes Excelsior was stealing chickens from his grave just to bust your chops.”

Cas took a sip of beer. “Believe me, Tilda, the thought has crossed my mind.”

Julie stood outside her old bedroom, wondering how much dust, mold and mildew could build up in fifteen years.

Smitty pushed his nose against the door.

“Okay, but you’re sleeping on the floor.” Julie opened the door and felt along the wall for the light switch.

Smitty sneezed.

“Dust,” she said, her hand going unerringly to the switch. The light popped on and she blinked; then sucked in her breath.

The room wasn’t dusty, it wasn’t moldy, it wasn’t mildewy. It was pink. Everywhere. The wallpaper was flocked with fuzzy pink blossoms on a light pink background. Her sneakers sank into plush pink carpet. Pink ruffled curtains hung from the window, and a pink satin comforter was spread across a new four-poster king-sized bed. Pink pillows were piled high against the headboard; frills, ruffles, ribbons, all pink.

“Good God,” exclaimed Julie. “Maybe I shouldn’t mix donuts with beer.”

Smitty, quicker to realize a good thing when he saw it, jumped onto the bed, circled twice, and stretched out on the comforter.

Shaking her head, Julie dropped her suitcase on the luggage rack at the end of the bed and walked over to a ridiculously small dressing table with a tiny ornate mirror.

“Nice touch, Wes, very nice. I feel just like the effing little princess.” She batted her eyelashes at the mirror. Only she didn’t look like a little princess. She looked like someone who had quit her job under duress, driven five hours to the back of beyond, and eaten a chocolate donut for dinner. “Please say the bathroom isn’t pink.”

It was. Dainty pink hand towels hung over brass towel bars. A stack of thick pink bath towels were perfectly folded on an open brass armoire. The walls at least were white and she lifted her eyes toward the ceiling and, by inference, heaven, to thank her wacky uncle for showing such restraint.

“On second thought ...” She looked down. “Is there a purgatory for bad taste?”

Behind a shower curtain of pink butterflies, she found a huge, spotless, brand-new Jacuzzi tub. Smiling, she turned on the jets and stripped out of her clothes.

When she emerged from the tub a half hour later, her knees were weak, her skin was tingly warm, and she smelled like peaches from the pink bath salts she found in a wicker basket on the armoire. She wrapped herself in a pink towel and padded across the carpet to open her suitcase. The extra large NYPD sweatshirt she slept in was folded on top. Not nearly up to the mark for her new bedroom, but it was comfy and it wasn’t like anybody was going to see it.

She tossed it on the bed and put a stack of jeans in the bottom drawer of the bureau. Her T-shirts and sweatshirts went into the next. But when she opened the next drawer, she found it was already filled.

Not with pink, thank goodness, but with a wild array of the tiniest pants and bras she had seen outside a Victoria’s Secret Catalogue. All new, tags on. She dumped her underwear on the top of the dresser and lifted out a black lace thong. “They are from Victoria’s Secret. Thanks, Wes.” She dropped the thong back into the drawer and shoved her underwear in after it.

With a sense of trepidation, she opened the remaining drawer. Yep. There they were. Little nylon nighties, mostly pink. But not little-girl pink like the rest of the room. More Mae West on a hormone day. She riffled through them until she found a creamy white nightshirt. It had a plunging vee neck and little cap sleeves, but it wasn’t pink. She dropped her towel and slipped it over her head.

The silk fabric caressed her skin as it slid down her body. Too bad there was no one to enjoy it with her. But the closest she’d come to having a boyfriend in the last year was her ex-partner Donald, the bribe taker. She’d blown the whistle on him and been demoted to a desk job for her valor. She wouldn’t wear silk for him even if he showed up at the door with expensive champagne and wearing nothing but a G-string.

Which left her only one fantasy. Nope, she warned herself. Pot belly, bald shiny head, respectable three-piece suit. Definitely not for you. But the image of Cas—the one she ruthlessly squelched even at her loneliest—popped into her mind anyway. That Cas was tall, lean and hard, with a tight ass and a larger-than-life penis. His face had developed character, but he still had the lopsided smile he had at fifteen. And his dark hair still stuck up above his forehead.

She ran her fingertips along the neckline of the nightshirt to where it stopped between her breasts. Pulled them away. Nah. She was better off thinking about the pot belly. And much better off without Cas.

She lifted the last thing out of her suitcase and weighed it in her hand.

A Glock semi-automatic was a little out of place in the Pollyanna bedroom. She’d worked hard to become a cop only to realize that when you’re five feet six and built, with a turned-up nose and wide, baby-blue eyes, perps had trouble taking you seriously. Even wearing a uniform, her feet planted in the standard shooting stance as she aimed her Glock at them, they were just as likely to say “Hey, Babe,” as to put their hands in the air. Once she’d made detective and gone undercover things got better. A Glock wielded a lot more clout with stiletto heels and a leather mini-skirt behind it. She bet it wielded even more in front of a thong.

She carried it over to the bedside table and opened the drawer. It was already occupied by a box of condoms.

“Jesus, Wes. Did you leave a list of possible prospects, too?”

But there was only the box. She placed her Glock next to it and shut the drawer. She shoved a snoring Smitty aside, crawled between pink satin sheets, and turned off the lamp.

Moonlight streamed in through the window. She pulled the comforter up to her chin and settled down to sleep. Certainly not to wonder if Cas was in Ex Falls or how he would look in a G-string.

Julie was dreaming about crystal fountains and golden apples when she suddenly awoke. It was dark and for a moment she couldn’t remember where she was or why. Then she heard the low growl.

She groped for the lamp switch and blinked against the sudden light. Smitty was at the window, paws on the sill, tail lowered and his fur standing erect.

Julie threw off the covers and went to see what was going on. “This better not be some nocturnal animal you want to meet,” she told him as she peered out the window. Below them, the yard was dark. But on the hill where the roof of the gazebo stood out in dark silhouette, the beam from a flashlight wove in and out of sight.

“What the hell?” Julie watched as it turned in the direction of the gazebo. Damn, she had prowlers. But what could they be after in the gazebo?

The treasure? Maybe she wasn’t the only one looking for Wes’s fortune.

She pulled Smitty away from the window, climbed over the bed and reached into the drawer for her Glock. Then stopped. She had no authority here. Her permit might not be legal outside of New York City. But she couldn’t let someone steal her fortune. She had to do something, but short of shooting ...

She glanced around the room, found the princess phone sitting on the dressing table and picked it up. There was a dial tone. She punched in 911 and was only half surprised when someone answered. A woman’s voice, sounding like someone’s favorite grandma.

“I want to report a five sev—a prowler—in my yard,” Julie whispered.

“Oh dear,” said granny.

Julie gritted her teeth. “Could you please send a patrol car to—”

Smitty shot across the room and out the bedroom door. Julie stretched the phone cord, trying to see what was happening outside, but it wouldn’t reach the window. Last time I leave my cell downstairs, she thought.

“Don’t panic, dear. Is your door locked?”

Had she locked the door? She couldn’t remember. Damn. What if they gave up on the gazebo and came to the house? They might try to rob her. She looked down at the gaping neckline of her nightshirt. She could see all the way to her toes. Rob or worse. She’d have to shoot them.

“What’s your address?”

“I’m at the Excelsior House on Hillcrest Drive.”

“Oh,” said the operator. “Are you sure? No one lives there.”

“Of course I’m sure. Could you hurry?”

“Yes. I’m calling the sheriff now.”

Julie could hear Smitty scrambling over the wood floor downstairs as he ran from windows to door, looking for a way out.

“Tell him to hurry,” said Julie and hung up the phone just as the granny said, “Stay on the ...”

Sheriff be dammed. Hank Jessop was slower than a snail even after a thermos of coffee. She had property to protect. She unholstered her Glock and raced down the stairs.

“Stay,” she commanded Smitty as soon as she reached the front door. Smitty sat down. She eased the door open and he bolted outside. She made a grab for him, but missed, and she found herself alone on the front porch, barefoot and freezing. Hell. If she went back upstairs to dress, they’d probably get away. She felt around for the work boots she’d seen earlier. They’d have to do.

Praying that nothing was living inside, she shoved her feet into the boots and clomped after Smitty, shoe laces flying, the enormous boots flopping on her feet as she crunched across the frost-covered grass.

Smitty was standing in attack mode halfway up the hill. His tail was wagging like a furry windshield wiper. When he was good, Smitty was the best. Unfortunately he had a short attention span and an innate love of people, which made him a great pet, but not prime police dog material.

Julie slipped into the shadow of a newly built shed a few feet away. “Ease off,” she called and slapped her palm to her thigh. Smitty broke his stance and trotted toward her.

“Good boy.” She wrapped her fingers around his collar and pulled him into the shadows with her. She peered around the corner of the shed. The gazebo was a hundred feet away, a mere outline in the dark. She didn’t see any sign of movement.

“Heel,” she whispered to Smitty and stepped around the edge of the shed. Smitty kept right beside her as she clung to the shadows and slowly made her way up the hill. She stopped behind a juniper bush and strained her ears to listen for the sound of a patrol car coming up the drive. All she could hear were her teeth chattering.

She leaned forward to get a better look and instead got a whiff of something unpleasant. A handyman, an electrician—and a yardman, she thought.

A figure moved away from the gazebo. Julie stepped out into the open, her Glock steadied in both hands. “Halt,” she shouted in her gruffest voice. The flashlight turned in her direction, froze on her, then the light snapped off and the interloper began running for the trees.

“Halt.” Julie fired over his head. Smitty raced after him. When her ears stopped ringing, Julie followed, but the slippery ground and the unwieldy work boots slowed her down and by the time she got to the edge of the woods, they had both disappeared. She pressed her back against a pine tree, listened, then slipped into the trees. In an instant, the moonlight was snuffed out, but she could hear them thrashing through the underbrush. Then a high-pitched motor chugged to life and a vehicle roar. . .