“You believe I’ll have to spend the night at your house in order to catch this beeping Peeping Tom?” Aidan continued, obviously repeating what the caller had suggested. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.
Bobbie did the same when her pager went off again. She’d obviously not turned it off after all. The metal trash can rattled and echoed the series of annoying, pulsing beeps. It was the proverbial back-breaking straw, and she didn’t have to be a camel for it to be majorly effective. She ripped her phone from her purse and punched in the numbers. Jasper answered on the first ring, but the only thing he managed to get out was the hel-part of hello.
“Don’t call or page me again,” Bobbie warned. “As far as I’m concerned, Jasper Kershaw, you’re no better than highly contagious foot fungus, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to avoid you.”
Obviously engulfed in his own battle of wills, she heard Aidan continue with his call. “No, I’m afraid I can’t come out, Miss Martindale, since this person only beeped and didn’t come onto the premises. My advice is not to undress while standing in front of an open window.”
“Bobbie,” Jasper crooned as if she hadn’t just issued a really disgusting insult. “It’s good to hear your voice. We need to talk. Where are you? I’ll be right over.”
“No, you won’t,” Bobbie said at the very moment that Aidan concluded, “No, I can’t.”
Their gazes met. In the swirl of all those shades of tropical green, Bobbie saw the same frustration, the same aggravation, the same why-the-heck-me? look that she was sure she had in her baby-browns. Without taking her gaze from his, Bobbie clicked off the phone. Without taking his gaze from hers, Aidan placed his phone back onto the desk.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
He squinted one eye. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”
It seemed a reasonable request, but it could lead to a thoroughly embarrassing moment if they weren’t on the same frequency here. After all, Bobbie had been thinking something totally ridiculous.
But perhaps necessary.
“You first,” she insisted.
Their phones rang again. Her pager rattled and beeped from the trash can. They didn’t answer any of the annoying communication devices. Bobbie and Aidan just stood there with their gazes locked.
“Look, we hardly know each other. Heck, we’re practically strangers, but maybe we can help each other out,” Bobbie suggested.
“Maybe.”
It wasn’t the most enthusiastic response she’d ever received, but it was a start. A start that just might buy them both some time to regain their sanity.
“I’m not looking for anything remotely romantic,” Bobbie added. Since the rattling and beeping were driving her to the brink of madness, she reached into the trash can, calmly removed the pager and smacked it with her foot. It took three good stomps before it shattered into a dozen flamingo-pink chunks. “I’ve had enough romance to last me a couple of lifetimes. And this is more than just a guess, but it appears you’d like to avoid any more kitty rescues and Beeping Tom reports.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
Bobbie took a deep breath, hoping a good analogy would come to mind.
It didn’t.
Unfortunately, a bad one popped right into her head and found its way straight to her suddenly chatty mouth. “It’s sort of like the Twango, one of Boxers or Briefs’ best-selling products.”
From the look on his face, she’d dumbfounded him. “The Twango?”
The bad analogy just kept coming. “It’s a satin-lined, control-top foundation garment for men.”
He just stared at her.
Bobbie probably should have shut up, but the non-stop ringing of phones gave her enough courage, and perhaps the insanity, to continue.
“The Twango,” she explained, the slogan slipping right off her tongue. “Comfort, style and illusion—all rolled into one bottom-shaping, stomach-minimizing brief.”
All right. So, that wasn’t her best attempt at explaining things.
But then, sadly, it wasn’t her worst either.
Rather than keep digging a hole that was getting awfully deep, Bobbie took a step back and waited to see if Aidan O’Shea was desperate enough to snap up her offer.
2
The Drifter: Catalog Item 421. A machine-washable cotton-spandex brief for the man on the move who wants to keep things in place. Available in Stop Sign Red, Alert Amber and Go-get-’em Green. Comes with complimentary Boxers or Briefs travel toothbrush.
“THE TWANGO,” Aidan said under his breath.
Heaven help him.
So that he wouldn’t have the urge to demolish his phone the way Bobbie had her pager, he turned off the ringer. Besides, he needed a moment of quiet so he could think straight. He was almost positive this was one of those situations where he needed a clear head.
“Comfort, looks and illusion,” she repeated as if that would help.
Well, it wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped Bobbie Fay Callahan would offer. Aidan had thought maybe she could put an end to this lottery business by canceling it. He’d further hoped that she would tell the ladies of Liffey to stop calling him about everything from faucet drips to flat tires. He just couldn’t understand why the female population had taken such an interest in him.
Or why they had such a distorted view of the duties of a law-enforcement officer.
However, at this point, he was open to suggestions—any suggestions—that would make his life easier and quieter. He hadn’t had more than fifteen minutes of peace since he’d arrived a week earlier in what was supposed to be a sleepy little town where peace and quiet were plentiful.
“It’s not often a man finds himself compared to an item of underwear,” he commented.
A lobster-red blush covered her cheeks. It matched the color of her skirt and silky top. “You think I’m a candidate for the loony bin, don’t you?”
Absolutely. Her, her uncles and, seemingly, three-quarters of the town.
While Aidan was trying to figure out how to put that observation into kinder, gentler terms, Bobbie just kept right on talking. “Okay. So using the Twango probably wasn’t the best comparison, but stay with me here, and I think I can explain this better.”
Good. She had a hundred-percent chance of doing that, because so far she hadn’t made an eyelash of sense.
Bobbie turned off her phone before she continued. “I want the illusion that my love life is good. Very good. That way, it won’t give anyone, including my uncles and Jasper Kershaw, the right to feel they can monkey with it. And maybe, just maybe, the same could happen for you.”
Aidan certainly hoped this sounded better when he said it aloud, but he wasn’t counting on it. “What exactly would we have to do to stop people from…monkeying with us?”
She shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “We’d have to pretend to go through with the lottery, of course. We’d do the Twango, so to speak. And remember, the Twango is a garment of illusion. I’ve seen before and after pictures. Trust me, it flattens even the worst beer guts, and I mean the worst. It’s even better than the Drifter, and the Drifter’s twice the price.”
“The Twango