Buch lesen: «The Last First Date»

Chapter One

A few strange women had flitted in and out of Lang’s life in the past few months, but not one of them had a bizarre fixation on chewing gum like tonight’s winner Sq.uinting through the sleet-spattered windshield, he peered into the harsh glare spilling from the glass storefront of the T-N-T Mini Mart, hoping to catch sight of his date. The multitude of neon signs crowding the spotless expanse lit the puddles of slush in carnival colors. The store’s owner, Max Merida, believed in the laws of plenty. Plenty of light, plenty of cheesy merchandise crammed onto narrow counters, and plenty of markup built into every price.

Apparently, his date believed in having plenty of gum.

Five minutes had crept past since she bailed from his car, insisting he stay put. He could only figure choosing the right flavor was a deeply personal matter for Kristin…no, Kirsten.

Kir-sten.

No matter how many times he repeated it in his head, the name probably wouldn’t stick. Not that there was anything wrong with the girl. She seemed nice enough. Blonde and pretty in a slightly overly made-up way. Her dress was low-cut and her legs were long—two features he usually appreciated—but tonight the sparkly package just wasn’t doing it for him. Kir-sten would be his fifth first date this month. He was getting good enough at gauging them to know that this one was not off to an auspicious start.

In the past six months alone, he’d chalked up a toll booth attendant who thought she was a shrink, a clinging-vine attorney who wanted to sue him for breach of contract when he broke a dinner date, a girl who ate whole cloves of garlic to keep vampires from sucking her blood, a nymphomaniac kindergarten teacher (not as fun as he expected), a woman whose man hands would have made Jerry Seinfeld jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, and a tattoo artist who wrote free-form poetry. On people’s skin.

And those were just the headliners.

Dating was a horror, pure and simple, but it was the only socially acceptable way to cure what ailed him. Gum fixation aside, he was willing to give this date a chance. Even if it was a blind date procured for him by his grandmother and one of her canasta buddies. On New Year’s Eve.

Gripping the top of the steering wheel, Lang curled forward until his lips touched the backs of his hands, and purged the oxygen he’d been holding deep in his lungs. In his early twenties, playing the field had seemed to be the thing to do. His friends had begun pairing off as that decade ground to an end, yet he’d still thought he had all the time in the world. But his thirties proved to be a revelation. He used to snort every time he heard a woman complain that all the good ones were taken. On principle, he considered himself to be the exception to that rule. But the longer he dog-paddled his way around the dating pool, the closer he came to commiserating with them. Still, he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. That was why he was spending the second biggest date night of the year parked outside the Tank ‘N Tummy waiting on a woman who had a slushball’s chance in Florida of being The One.

He drummed his fingers on the wheel as he stared into the store again. There was a reason he refused to look too closely at the crap lining the counters when he stopped into the T-N-T for his morning coffee. If he did, he usually saw things he didn’t want to see. Like the hookahs in the display case or the heavy-duty paperweight that looked suspiciously like a set of brass knuckles. Aside from their questionable merchandising choices, the owner, Max, and his wife, Elena, believed small talk cut into their profit margin. Turnover was everything to the Meridas. For the life of him, Lang couldn’t imagine what could be taking Kir-sten so long.

The heel of his hand hovered near the center of the wheel. His subconscious prompted him to hit the horn, eager to get this date started so it could be over. Catching himself at the last second, he yanked his hand back as if he’d been singed.

Reflected light colored the drops of rain smattered across his windshield. He let his head rest against the window. His breath fogged the glass. The plate-glass door swung open wide and a woman emerged. Lang sat up straighter.

But the woman was not Kir-sten.

As a matter of fact, this woman was as different from his gum-loving date as Lang could imagine. She was dressed in clothing that was infinitely more weather-appropriate than the candy wrapper Kir-sten had on under her too-short winter coat. Her hair was dark—a rich, thick brown like coffee left to cook too long in the pot. And messy. The winter wind whipped loose curls around a perfect cameo of a face scrubbed clean of any trace of cosmetics. The planes and angles cut by ruthlessly high cheekbones were too sharp to pass for pretty. The careless tangle of her hair told him she was the kind of woman who never gave more than a passing thought to the beauty born in her bones.

She was apparently also the type to wear a hot pink coat so puffy it made her upper body look like a balloon animal.

Lang stared, riveted, as she raised her hand to draw her coat closed against the icy rain. Her gaze was wary and watchful. He liked that. In his opinion, there was nothing sexier than a woman who was nobody’s fool. His skin tingled when their eyes met through the spattered windshield. The wipers brushed semi-frozen precipitation aside but she didn’t look away. His heart rammed into his sternum. Just once. A single dull thud meant to mark the moment.

And then she was gone.

Lang wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and craned his neck, watching her dash out from under the awning and plow headlong into the freezing rain. Headlights caught the reflective strip running down the leg of her sweatpants as she dove into her car. A pang of envy tweaked his stomach. He had a pair with a similar stripe, and right now, he would give his left nut to be home sitting on his couch wearing them. Instead he was all trussed up in a suit heading for an anonymous hotel ballroom with a ditzy blonde who was apparently more interested in bubble gum than the prospect of dating him.

Heaving a sigh, he killed the engine and opened his door, determined to retrieve his date and get back to the task at hand. Wheatfield was only forty miles west of Chicago, but on a cold, rainy December night those miles could stretch on for hours. Though it was a small city in its own right, the far west suburb didn’t offer the kind of entertainment most women would expect on a New Year’s Eve date. That’s why the prepackaged party at a downtown hotel had seemed like a good idea when he forked over the cash for the tickets. Now he wasn’t sure.

Cruel winter wind stole his breath and sliced through the wool of his suit coat. He planted one foot on a patch of icy asphalt, waiting until the sole of his shoe caught a melted spot before leveraging himself from his car. The coupe was too small for a guy who’d been too tall since the tenth grade, but he didn’t care. He loved the way the engine hummed like a satisfied woman. If he could just find the woman he wanted to satisfy…

His car door closed with a solid ker-thunk, but a muffled scream caught his attention. Instinct kicked into high gear. Lang whirled, but he had no weapon strapped to his side. He was on a date, not on duty. He scanned the crowded parking lot, searching for the source of the distress. The screech of unoiled door hinges made the hairs on the back of his neck go porcupine. He spun around just as the woman in the track pants jumped from her driver’s seat to pound the hood of her car as she gave voice to her frustration.

“Really? Now? Because my life hasn’t gone to total and complete crap yet?”

Her outburst startled him, but it had little effect on the sedan. Propelled by a mixture of amusement and empathy, he turned away from the storefront and headed toward her. Ice crunched under the soles of his shoes. She glared at him, but the wind whipped her dark hair into her face, totally ruining the effect. Copping a clue, he tamped down on the urge to laugh but kept the smile in place as he approached.

“Maybe I can help?”

She fell back a step and he raised his hands in the universal symbol of surrender, wanting to ease some of the wariness in her tense expression. Swiping damp, dark hair from her face, the woman eyed him speculatively. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m a police officer.” He offered the information in hopes of reassuring her but knew it could cut either way, depending on her point of view. “I can show you my badge.”

She squinted at him through the falling sleet. Full lips thinned into a grim line. “I don’t need a badge. I need a jump.”

She pushed her hair back from her face once more, tucking the wayward waves behind her ear, leaving the long, smooth line of her throat exposed. That column of pale vulnerable skin beaconed to him. A hot knot of lust formed in his gut.

For a split second, he imagined himself crouched and poised to jump her. Like a tiger or panther, or something equally badass. But instead of taking the leap, he curled his toes in his too-tight shoes and kept his feet planted on the ground. He also bit his tongue. Hard. Ten thousand innuendos tickled the back of this throat, but something told him she wasn’t in the mood to wrestle with words.

“Do you have cables?”

The question jolted him from his haze. Swallowing the rust in his throat, he nodded. “Pop the hood and get in there out of the rain. I’ll be right back.”

Lang hustled back to his car, glad to have something to do other than turning lech on a complete stranger. Then again, it couldn’t be worse than spending an entire evening waiting on a woman with a chewing gum obsession. He grabbed his cables from the trunk just as a carload of teenagers vacated the spot beside his damsel in distress’s vehicle. He waved to catch her attention through her rain-dotted window. Using a series of exaggerated gestures, he signaled his intention to move to the space beside her.

He tossed the canvas bag containing cables into the empty passenger seat and started to slide into his car when a stunning array of light bounced off the mini-mart’s rain-speckled door and a commotion spilled out into the night. Lang looked up to find Kristin…Kir-sten backlit in the doorway, trying to yank her arm from Max Merida’s grip.

“Help!”

“No! You do not yell ‘help’ as if you did not attempt to steal from me,” Max argued.

“Whoa!” Jumper cables forgotten, Lang slammed the car door and hurried to the walkway that led into the store. “What’s going on?”

“Ah, Detective. Thank goodness you are here,” Max said in his thick, accented English. “Arrest this thief. She has stolen from me for the last time.”

Lang stared at the short, balding man until the accusation settled into the right slot in his mind. “Stolen from you?” He shifted his focus to his date and her name sprang to his lips. Apparently, all it took to make a forgettable woman unforgettable was a little petty larceny. “Kirsten?”

She looked chagrined and the bright pink flush of guilt stained her cheeks. A twinge of oh-crap pinged his gut. Dread rooted him to the spot. He stared at his date, at a complete loss. The stomach-clenching realization that he might end up spending his only night off this week at the station left him rattled. Unable to look directly at the woman his grandmother had saddled him with, he ran a hand over his face. A movement to his right caught his attention. The woman with the dead battery climbed from her car and he groaned.

“Excuse me!” Her voice carried on the wet wind, her strident tone matching the determined set of her mouth. She hugged herself hard, holding the sides of her puffy hot pink parka closed as she hop-skipped to the entrance. “I hate to interrupt,” she said in a tone that completely divorced her intent from the gist of the statement, “but if you could just loan me your cables, maybe I could get someone else to jump me.”

Her choice of words intrigued him almost as much as the slightly snotty edge to her voice. Envy-inspiring track pants aside, this was clearly a woman accustomed to getting her way. And fairly quickly, he assumed, based on the waves of impatience radiating from her. He’d be damned if he let someone else jump her, especially with his cables.

“I’m sorry, I have a situation here. If you could just wait—”

But Miss INeedaJump was apparently out of patience. “Listen, I’m not trying to break up your little chitchat—”

“I paid for the soda!”

Kirsten’s indignant outburst captured his undivided attention. “Soda?” Senses tingling, Lang turned his questioning gaze back to his date. Sure enough, a bottle of diet soda dangled from her fingers. “I thought you said you wanted a pack of gum.”

“She stole the gum. I saw her put it in the pocket of her coat. The value pack. Not the regular size.” Max added the last bit as if it would up the charge.

Lang glared at Kirsten, determined to get to the bottom of this mess. “You stole a pack of gum but paid for a soda?”

“She has done it before, Detective. That is how I knew to let Elena cover the register when this woman came into my store.” Max’s grip tightened on Kirsten’s elbow and she let out a yelp.

Lang disengaged the other man’s hand and replaced it with his own. “I’ve got her.”

The woman with the dead battery cast a glance at the rapidly emptying parking lot. His distressing damsel swallowed hard as she took in the semi-sketchy area. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but do you have jumper cables I can use or not?”

Lang paused for a moment, watching with detached fascination as their fellow patrons scattered like rats abandoning ship at the first sign of trouble. He glanced down, trying to come up with the right words to reassure her. Instead, he fixated on the way the woman’s pinkie toe poked through a hole in her canvas tennis shoe.

“I demand that you arrest this woman.” Max said. “I wish to press charges.”

Any chance for a pleasant evening deflated the moment he recognized the adamancy in the other man’s tone. First generation Americans harbored a firm and abiding belief in their adopted country’s judicial system, the kind of faith bred out of their native-born countrymen long ago. He turned to Max and made a last-ditch run at reason.

“It was a pack of gum. How about she pays you for the gum—” he held up a hand to stave off another round of protests, “—plus a reasonable sum of restitution? Maybe, twenty dollars?” He cast a questioning glance in Kirsten’s direction in time to see her jaw drop.

“Twenty dollars?” She gaped at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “It was only a pack of gum.”

“Aha! You admit that you took it!” Max crowed. “You heard her.” Spinning on his heel, he pinned Jumper-Cable Girl to the spot with an overly exuberant jab of his finger and a triumphant smile. “You are a witness. She confessed to stealing from my store.”

Lang groaned, pressing his hand to the top of his head as he dropped his chin to his chest. His hair was slick, completely soaked through with sleet. Icy pellets were beginning to accumulate on his shoulders and seep into the weave of his suit coat. Ridges of slush formed around the toes of his leather shoes.

Lifting his head just enough, he fixed Kirsten with a flat stare. “Turn your pockets inside out.”

“But—”

“Do it.” The demand slithered between his clenched teeth. The air stilled around them as Kirsten ducked her head and did as he asked. Sure enough, a mega-pack of strawberry gum landed in the slush at her feet, and Lang’s hopes of waking up from this nightmare were whipped away by the winter wind. “Shit.”

“I am pressing charges of thievery.” Max practically vibrated with justification. “Please, take this woman to the jail, Detective. I will let Elena know I will return once we have the charges in place.”

Lang sighed, his fate sealed by the evidence at the tips of his toes. His New Year’s Eve was over, and his date hadn’t even begun.