Trish Jensen - Without A Clue

Learning to improvise had been so necessary. Checklists and protocols had become evil before she’d even turned into a teenager.

A rap on her office door brought her head up and her brain down from the clouds of memories. She looked at Mr. Checklist himself, standing in the doorway, busy scribbling notes on a legal pad. Great. More lists.

Meg took a moment to realize she didn’t appear all that professional in jeans and a Black Death European tour T-shirt. But they were under the gun and she had to be prepared to do anything from paperwork to housework.

She sighed. “Don’t come in, Mr. Rossi.”

“Too late,” he said, strolling through the door.

She didn’t think she could stuff that legal pad down his throat, but she’d love to give it a shot. “Look, you’re the dead guy. You’ve got one major speech and then you’re gone until you return as the ghost. From then on, you wing it. We’ve been through this.”

“I think we should be caught making love before the murder.”

Meg was never speechless. Right now her vocal chords had gone south. “Huh?” was about as much noise as she could conjure.

He looked at her with something very akin to pity. “You. Me. In bed.”

She needed to swallow. In fact, breathing might be a good idea, too. Fantasizing was out of the question, even if her brain was malfunctioning and doing it anyway.

“I’m—” she kind of squeaked, then cleared her throat “—not sure why that’s necessary.”

“Because we’re having an affair,” he said, tapping his notes. “We need to be caught.”

“I’m not certain that’s necessary,” she repeated. Although it sounded fun in theory.

He sighed and dropped his pad on the desk. “Do you want this weekend to be successful?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then it needs to have a little ‘oomph.’”

She swallowed. Hard. “Oomphing” sounded a little naughty. And nice.

“And you have to kill me.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are my killer.”

“The maid is your killer.”

He looked utterly exasperated. Although he looked really good exasperated, she felt she should own that emotion at the moment. He was driving her nuts.

With the patience of a saint trying to reform a sinner, he said slowly, “What motivation does the maid have for murdering her boss? That puts her out of a job.”

Talk about motivation. She was becoming more motivated by the moment to be his killer. “She’s having an affair with one of the men that you are promising to ruin.”

He shook his head. “Too many affairs happening. Just you and me.”

Meg tossed down her pen. “Why don’t you just rewrite the entire script?”

“As a matter of fact—”

Meg stood, knocking over her chair. “Stop right there. We are one day away from this production. The actors all have their scripts. You’re asking them to change at this point?”

“It’s not a huge change.”

“You’re changing the murderer. That sounds pretty drastic to me.”

“Wouldn’t you like to kill me?” he asked, a twinkle in his brown eyes.

“Right now? Absolutely. And I’m a pacifist.”

“Good. Then you won’t have to fake it.” He sat down and laid all of his notes between them, sideways. “Now here’s how I see it…”

Meg looked down at a detailed checklist.

Murdering him was not going to be a problem.

MATT SPENT the rest of the day checking off, one-by-one, the items on his list. He knew Meg was seriously hacked off at him, but she’d surprised him by going with the flow. He knew if the situation were reversed, he’d be furious. He didn’t like people changing his game plans. He also recognized he was doing exactly that to hers, and it was pretty intrusive. Unfortunately, it was just who he was.

Matt couldn’t pinpoint exactly what explosive event in his life had turned him into the man he was now. Not that it mattered. So far almost every goal he’d ever set he’d accomplished. So that was a good thing, right?

Except he didn’t feel triumphant about it all right now, and he didn’t know why. Megan Renshaw was exactly the type of woman who drove him crazy. She let any change in plan roll right off her back. She didn’t seem to care when things went wrong. She just amended her plans.

Take this morning, for instance. The cook had practically burned his kitchen down by experimenting with a flambé that obviously had a little too much fire power in it. Meg had walked in, calmly doused the flames with an extinguisher, then patted the woman and said, “It’ll be better next time.”

He’d about had a stroke. Meg sailed out of there as if the cook had simply put a little too much salt in the soup.

Matt had followed her, trying to keep from exploding. When he’d confronted her with “That woman is dangerous,” all she’d done was smile and say “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

There was something about Meg that was dangerous, too. And it wasn’t just that she found disasters amusing. Although that was part of it.

He wasn’t accustomed to being indulged. He was accustomed to being listened to. Having his plans followed.

And while Meg seemed willing to follow his game plan to a certain extent, twice she’d looked at one of his proposed changes and just grinned and said, “That’s cute. No.”

But she had given in on his suggestion that her character was having an affair with his character. He liked that. He wasn’t so sure that he was as enthusiastic at her cheerful willingness to kill him.

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