Janet Evanovich - Hot Stuff

A couple of minutes later Julie was in front of Beast, hands on hips, smiling. “Jest look at this here dawg! He’s about the most adorable dawg I’ve ever seen. Look at his smushy face, and big brown eyes, and droopy ears.”

Beast gave a happy woof, put his two massive front paws on Julie’s chest, and they both went down to the ground.

“Woops,” Julie said. “He’s a biggun’.”

Julie was a honey blonde with blue eyes and an Alabama accent so thick it was like a foreign language. Her hair was straight and long and almost always in a ponytail. She was average height and had an average girl-next-door body… if that girl lived in Alabama and ate a lot of fried okra and grits.

“He’s supposed to be trained,” Cate said, wrestling Beast off Julie. “It says on his papers he’s a guard dog.”

Julie got up and plastered herself against a wall so she wouldn’t get knocked over if Beast got friendly again. “I don’t know anything about trained dogs. Mostly we jest opened the door, and the dog run out. And then when he was hungry he’d show up on the back stoop.”

“You didn’t have to walk him and pick his poop up in a bag?”

“Not in my neighborhood. We was all happy if we didn’t find old Mr. Lawson poopin’ on our lawns. We jest let the dogs do what comes natural.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to take Beast?”

“Sweetie, I’d love to take Beast, but my landlord made it real clear I can’t have animals. I don’t know why not. I mean it’s not like the place is furnished. And what’s he gonna do to an aluminum lawn chair? I’d be happy to go walkin’ with you though.”

“When do you suppose he needs to walk?”

“My guess is this dog always needs to walk. Look at the muscle he’s got. He looks like my cousin Vern. Vern really bulked up in prison. By the time they let him out he had no neck. He looked like one of them big ol’ gorillas. When’s Marty coming home?”

“I don’t know. He said he was doing a private party in Aruba, but he didn’t say when he’d be back. Evian has him scheduled for Friday.”

The doorbell chimed, followed by a fist pounding.

Cate looked out the peephole. “Oh no!”

“Who is it?”

“Kitty Bergman.”

“That woman scares the bejeezus out of me,” Julie said. “I swear she’s the Antichrist. I know her and Marty are real good friends, but I never could see the connection.”

“I know you’re in there,” Kitty Bergman yelled through the door. “I can hear you whispering. I can smell you.”

Cate opened the door and Kitty stormed in. “Where is he? Where is that double-crossing misery of a man… or woman?”

“He’s in Aruba.”

“Aruba? What the devil is he doing in Aruba?”

“He had a private party there last night.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Kitty Bergman said. “I’m going to track him down and surgically remove his nuts, and then I’m going to kill him.”

“Ouch,” Julie whispered.

Kitty Bergman was five foot two inches tall, weighed exactly one hundred pounds naked, and had ass muscles that were so well toned they could crack walnuts. She was fifty-five years old and had been nipped, tucked, and sucked by some of the best cosmetic surgeons in Boston. Kitty was married to Ronald Bergman, heir apparent to the Bergman Corrugated Box fortune. The Bergmans owned a Back Bay mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, and while Ronald was off clear-cutting virgin forestland in a voracious hunt for yet more wood pulp, Kitty lived to fund raise. Kitty didn’t give a flying fig about the various charities she supported, but she did love to see her sixty-thousand-dollar sparkling white porcelain veneers smiling out from the society page of the Boston Globe .

Kitty was hands on hips, platinum blonde hair lacquered into a tight knot at the nape of her neck, feet planted wide in Manolo heels. A Chanel purse hung on the shoulder of her aquamarine and crystal St. John knit suit. She leaned forward slightly and narrowed her eyes at Cate.

“I’m going to be on you like flies on a bad burger until you give up your precious roomie. I know you’re in on this.”

“This?” Cate asked. “What is this ? What are you talking about?”

Kitty pointed her finger at Cate. “Don’t mess with me!”

Beast pressed himself against the back of Cate’s leg, doing his best to hide from Kitty Bergman. He looked out from behind Cate and whimpered.

Kitty gave Beast a cursory glance and made a sound of disgust. “Tsk.” She turned on her heel, swung her StairMaster ass out of the condo, and slammed the door shut.

“Hoy cow,” Julie said.

Cate tentatively patted Beast on the head. “It’s okay,” she said to Beast. “She’s gone.”

“Isn’t this supposed to be a big, brave guard dog?” Julie asked.

“That’s what it said on his papers. It said he was a trained assassin.”

“Maybe he’s just having an off day,” Julie said. She fondled Beast’s ear, and he smiled at her. “Then again, you might have gotten stiffed on the killer dog thing. He looks to me like a great big sweetie pie. I bet you got a guard dog dropout. I bet this here dog flunked people eatin’.”

“Fine by me,” Cate said. “I don’t want a dog who eats people. It would be enough if he just looked scary.”

“I guess he could look scary,” Julie said. “But you’re gonna have to get him to stop smilin’. I swear I’ve never seen a dog smile like that.”

Beast wagged his tail and swept a crystal bud vase off an end table. He jumped when the vase hit the floor and tipped the table over with his butt.

“Poor thing’s just a bull in a china shop,” Julie said.

Cate bit into her lower lip and stifled a hysterical giggle. If Beast belonged to someone else she’d be laughing out loud at his goofy clumsiness. Unfortunately he was sort of her dog, and she was mildly terrified.

“You don’t want your dog steppin’ on these glass pieces with his big ol’ feet,” Julie said. “Why don’t you take him out for a walk, and I’ll clean this, and then lock up for you. I’d walk him with you, but I was writin’ in my journal, and I want to get back to it.”

Cate pocketed her key and a couple of gallon-size plastic bags, and coaxed Beast out the door and down the hall to the elevator. They rode to ground level, and Cate dragged Beast through the lobby to the building’s front door.

The instant Beast hit the sidewalk, his nose went up, his eyes went wide, and he bolted for the vest-pocket park across the street, dodging traffic, dragging Cate behind him. He stopped short when his feet hit grass. He squatted and did a two-minute tinkle. When he was done with the tinkle he chased a squirrel up a tree, sat down in a patch of shade, and refused to budge.

Cate pulled on the leash, and Beast did a little growly sound. Terrific, Cate thought, now he decides to be assertive. Cate didn’t want to annoy the trained assassin, so she sat on a bench beside Beast, and they watched the world go by. After a while Beast flopped down and fell asleep. An hour passed and Beast was still sleeping, but Cate was feeling restless.

“I have things to do,” Cate said to Beast. “And this bench is getting uncomfortable.”

Beast opened an eye, looked at Cate, and went back to sleep.

Kellen had been doing a periodic surveillance of the condo building and was caught off guard when he saw Cate sitting in the little park with the dog. His research hadn’t included a dog, and he felt a stab of jealousy that Cate already had a virile male in her life. The fact that the male happened to have floppy ears, floppier lips, and feet that were two times too big for his body did nothing to help Kellen’s cause. He was going to have to compete with a Bullmastiff. And, what was worse, he was going to have to shoehorn himself into Cate’s bed because he suspected there wasn’t a lot of room left after the dog climbed on board.