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just wanted to go home after a long day of writing and a bad night of poker. It was a damned
good thing it was only penny ante, and she always played with money she didn't need, anyways,
or she'd be filing for Chapter Eleven the next morning! Gambling was a definite weakness, and
Kelsey felt incredibly glad that there were no casinos anywhere near her, or it would have been
much more of a problem. As it was, she usually either broke even or got ahead a little on the
occasional poker nights with her friends, but not tonight.
Her atrocious luck tonight just fit perfectly into the kind of day it had been: This
morning, her computer had crashed before she'd had a chance to save almost a whole chapter
she'd written, which made her want to weep at the lost work. The hot dogs she'd cooked for
lunch this afternoon had been rancid, but she hadn't known it until she bit into one and gagged
her way to the garbage can.
Plus, the number one cause of aggravation in her life: Clint Duncan, who had been the
reason for her precipitous flight to Melly's so early in the afternoon. That man could push her
buttons faster than anyone on the Earth . . . and what was worse was that he seemed to be
pushing even more personal buttons than he had been - spanking buttons, and that was not a
good thing.
But it was a darned good thing that she and Melly were extremely good friends, and she
knew where the spare key was kept. She'd taken her anger out by cooking, which always calmed
her. By the time Melly got home that afternoon, there were several hors d'ouevres already
cooked for the hungry players - all women on diets, the most dangerous and hungry sort - that
would be descending on them that night.
And now it was almost two in the morning and she was exhausted, and here she was just
sitting at this idiotic light. It was holding so long one would think it was the middle of rush hour
- such as it was - traffic instead of the middle of the freaking night.
She was just about to invoke that little known law of the road - "left-on-red-if-it's-past-
midnight-in-a-tiny-Vermont-town", but then, finally, she got the green light. Not about to get
caught at the next set, she raced down Merchant's Row, which was the main street of the small
burg, and was almost in sight of her turn off when she saw a flashing blue light in her rearview
mirror.
"Son of a bitch!" Automatically slowing down, Kelsey pulled over to the side of the road
and leaned over to the glove box, snatching out the envelope that contained her registration and
proof of insurance, grabbed her license out of her wallet, then leaned back and waited for the
blasted cop to come to her. While she waited, she glanced up at her rearview mirror, and noticed
that the cop car was not the usual type. It must've been unmarked, because the only thing that
tagged it as a cop car was one lowly blue bubble gum machine throwing its garish glare onto
everything.
Maybe she could talk him out of a ticket if she buttered him up a little . . .
Come to think of it, Kelsey thought, squinting a little and leaning forward to get a better
look, that car looked somewhat familiar . . .
"Didn't I tell you to watch your speed, little lady?"
She knew that voice before his face appeared in her drivers' side window, and her heart
sank. It was him. "Go away."
 "I don't think so. Did you know you were doing almost sixty in a thirty-five?" Part of
him was frankly amazed that her little German rattletrap could attain such a speed without
shaking itself apart. But the majority of him was filled with a righteous concern for her safety
that made him feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and also made him just a little crankier than
usual.
How easily he adopted that pedantic, "talking to a kindergartener" tone that policeman
who had a motorist dead to rights always assumed - as if he was talking to a complete idiot.
"Clint Duncan, are you stalking me?"
The sardonic look on his face made her want to punch him. "No, ma'am. I was just
driving downtown when you blew by me, and I couldn't shirk my duty as an officer of the law,
now, could I?"
She gave him a withering glance, but it didn't faze him in the least.
Kelsey sighed, surrendering to the inevitability of it. He had warned her. She just hadn't
realized how obnoxious he could be. She handed him all of her pertinent information, then had
to sit and listen as he called it in. At least she felt vindicated that the voice on the other end of
the radio sounded clearly surprised to find he was doing a traffic stop.
Clint leaned on her window, ticket pad in hand. "Now, we can do this the easy way, or
we can do it the hard way. It's up to you. If you'll give me your word that you're not going to
speed around town again, then I'll let you go with a warning." He felt he was being extremely
generous, especially considering how fast she was going in a populated area. "Of course, if you
give me your word and you break it in the future, there will be extra consequences - besides a
ticket - that would be purely between you and me."
Before she had a chance to consider his offer, Kelsey seethed from between ground teeth,
"Gimme the ticket and hurry up about it, Officer." Her inflexion made the title an insult.
Clint sighed. "Are you sure? It's going to be a hefty fine, and enough points so that if
you get another ticket within the next two years, you're going to end up without a license."
Stubborn to the end, Kelsey merely tapped the ticket pad that was, as yet, blank.
Grimacing, Clint wrote out the citation and handed it to her. He'd quickly decided he
wasn't going to be that generous to the stubborn chit. "You and I are going to have a discussion
when I come home - wait up for me."
Reigning in her temper only somewhat successfully, aware that if she pissed him off he
wouldn't hesitate to add on infractions - real or imagined - Kelsey asked stiffly as she stared
straight ahead, "Am I free to go?"
With another agitated sigh, Clint grumbled, "Yes, you are. But I meant what I said about [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]