Jennifer Crusie - GETTING RID OF BRADLEY

She stood, shivering from fear and cold, and he looked down at her long pale legs in gloom.

“Barefoot all the way up, huh?” he said, and picked her up.

She buried her head in the hollow of his neck and he carried her into the kitchen, kicking the door shut behind him to get her some kind of warmth. Then he put her down and took his coat off and wrapped her in it while she clung to him.

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him,” Lucy whispered. “I just didn’t realize it until now.”

Anthony held her until she stopped shaking. “I can’t tell you nothing’s ever going to happen to him,” he said into her hair. “Zack tends to attract trouble. But he’s not stupid, regardless of what he looks like, and he’s not reckless, and he likes life a lot” He tilted her head up with his ringer so she could look in his eyes. “He likes it a lot more, now that you’re around. He’ll be more careful because of you now.”

Lucy swallowed, and the back door opened, and Zack came in and stopped. “Very nice. My best friend and my babe. Unhand that woman, you rat. I’m out there getting my butt shot off…”

“Shut up, Zack,” Anthony said, letting go of her. “Getting-shot jokes are not funny right now.”

Zack took one look at Lucy’s pale face and shut up, moving toward her so fast that Anthony stepped back to get out of his way. “I’m fine,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her. “The guy has no aim at all. Never even got close.” He hugged her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. “I am fine.”

“I know,” Lucy said, muffled against his chest “But it was bad there for minute. Does this happen to you a lot?”

“Hardly ever.” Zack put his cheek against her hair. “And even then, crooked accountants are lousy shots. Most of them are pretty nearsighted, too. And of course, I move with superhuman speed.”

“Of course,” Lucy said, finally looking up at him. Her color was coming back slowly and both Anthony and Zack relaxed. She tried to glare at Zack, but it was weak because she was still so worn-out from the cold and the fear, and he held her close while she buried her face in his coat again. “Listen, you big dummy,” she said finally, pulling back from him a little. “If you ever do that again, I’m going to shoot you.”

Zack tried to look annoyed. “Hey. It’s my job. It’s what puts nachos on the table. Not to mention into your dogs.”

“My dogs don’t need nachos that much,” Lucy began, and Anthony interrupted them.

“Well, since things are back to normal here, I’ll just take my coat and go back out front. You should probably go on upstairs and take the dogs with you, Luce. We’ll be downstairs for quite a while digging bullets out of your wallpaper. We’ve got people coming to board up your windows for the night, too, although if I were you, I’d call your sister and have her put in bulletproof glass for you.”

“My windows!” Lucy pulled away from Zack. “That glass was almost a hundred years old. It was beveled!”

“Sorry about that. My coat?” Anthony held out his hand, and Lucy took it off and gave it to him, still fuming about her glass.

“Nice legs,” Anthony said, grinning at Zack, who moved in front of her.

“You can go now,” Zack said. “Some friend.”

The back door opened again and Matthews came in, followed by the four dogs.

“Don’t let them into the living room, there’s glass all over.” Lucy moved around Zack to stop them, while Matthews watched her with great appreciation.

“Okay, that’s it,” Zack said. “Excuse us.” He pushed Lucy into the dining room and picked up her jeans. “Get dressed. And you, sit,” he said to the dogs who obediently sat down in a row, Pete a beat behind the rest. Then he picked Lucy up and carried her through the living room to the bottom of the stairs, crunching glass as he went. “Go,” he said, putting her on the bottom step. “And don’t come down again until you’re wearing shoes.”

“The dogs,” she said, but there were more people coming through the front windows, so she turned and ran upstairs while Zack watched, scowling.

Then he went back to the dining room and carried the dogs to the stairs, one by one, while Lucy stood at the top and called to them, shutting them in the attic so they wouldn’t go back down. Maxwell, Heisenburg, and Pete enjoyed the trip, but Einstein weighed about eighty pounds and was not happy about being carried. Several people in the forensics unit applauded when Zack finally got him to the stairs.

Lucy called to Einstein and then grinned down at Zack, and he forgot to be mad. “It’s a good thing you’re cute,” he told her, still scowling for effect Then he turned back to the mess in the living room.

“Somebody doesn’t like you much,” one of the technicians said. “Three.38s, right through the front windows.”

“I don’t like him much, either,” Zack said. “The difference is, I’m the good guy and I’m going to win.”

ANTHONY STOOD WITH Zack in the wreckage of the living room when everyone else had left.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Zack said. “We could have been killed. This wasn’t a scare thing. This guy wanted us dead. Or at least me dead. He may not have seen Lucy stripping in the dining room. It was dark in mere and he was looking through lace curtains. He was shooting at me.”

Anthony turned to him, interested. “Lucy was stripping?”

“Yeah. This guy is one hell of a chaperon.” Zack scowled. “This was not John Bradley. This was Bradley Porter. Whether John Bradley read about the bonds or not, this was Bradley Porter.”

Anthony shook his head. “You’ve got Bradley Porter on the brain. This is our same guy, trying to scare Lucy out. I’m going to lean on the paper on this one. The bonds, two bombs, and all Lucy’s windows gone should be newsworthy enough for the front page.”

“It won’t matter. It was Bradley Porter,” Zack said. “I’ll make sure Lucy doesn’t go to work tomorrow, just in case. But it was Bradley Porter.”

IT WAS ALMOST TWO before Zack crawled into bed beside Lucy, shoving Maxwell and Heisenburg aside and waking her from an uneasy sleep.

“Move,” he said. “I’m freezing.”

Lucy, still foggy with sleep, rolled against him, wrapping her warmth around him, and the three smaller dogs settled against his back and across his feet. When he put his arm around her, he could feel Einstein radiating heat against her back.

“You okay?” Lucy asked groggily.

“As long as I don’t try to move. It’s a little crowded in here.” He put his cheek against her hair and held her close. “I’m sorry I scared you, honey.”

“Me, too,” Lucy said sleepily. “Don’t do it again. Although I guess it makes us even.”

“How’s that?”

“I scared you last Saturday, you scared me today. We’re even.”

“No, we’re not. You took ten years off my life to have your hair done. I went after a dangerous criminal. We’ll never be even.”

“Oh, have it your own way.” Lucy shifted a little against him. “Have you got enough room?”

Maxwell put his cold nose against Zack’s neck and made him shudder. “We’ve got to get a bigger bed.” Zack shoved the dog down away from his neck. “Or maybe we could get the kids their own room. What do you think?”

Lucy put her cheek against his chest and held him tightly. “You know, for a while, I thought I’d never have you like this again. And I decided then, if I got you back, I’d make every minute with you count.”

Zack lost his breath, both because of her warmth and because of the ache in her voice. “Every minute, huh? You planning on a lot of these minutes?”