Harper Allen - Dressed To Slay

Okay. Remember what I said about not having a premonition when Tash took her chain off, and how, if I had, I might have been able to change our fates? Well, the premonition thing finally kicked in as Tash looked through the security peephole. Big whoop, since it was already too late to stop what was about to happen, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.

“Don’t open the door,” I said in a rush. “Those stories you mentioned that are going around about the strip club aren’t the only weird things that have been happening in Maplesburg, Tash. The other day I overheard Popsie telling Grammie that the police have gotten more than the usual number of complaints about Peeping Toms in the last couple of weeks. The thing is, more than half of the women insisted someone was standing outside the upper-story windows of their homes. And like you said, there’s been a rash of job absenteeism and disappearances lately, not just of young guys, but girls, too. Something’s going on in this town. I don’t care if Heath Ledger’s body double is standing on the front step, it’s midnight and we’re three women alone. We’re not going to open the door to a stranger—”

“Oh. My. God. ” Tash’s hand was already groping for the doorknob. As I reached her side she turned towards me with an expression on her face that could only be described as glowing. “If I can’t answer the door to a stranger, how about to our fiancés?” she said, her tone oddly breathless. “Because that’s Lance and Todd and Dean out there, sis. But there’s something—” A flush of pink rose up beneath her skin. As her lashes swept down over the blue of her eyes, she bit her bottom lip, as if to stop it from trembling.

I’d seen her like this once before, when I’d barged in on her and Todd going at it hot and heavy in the cloakroom of the country club the night he’d proposed to her. Except that time I’d been pretty sure she’d been faking it, and this time I didn’t think she was.

Her lashes swept dreamily up. “There’s something different about them,” she said in a purr Kat might have envied.

“They’re Lance and Todd and Dean,” I scoffed. “And we agreed earlier that they don’t exactly get our motors racing, so what’s with the cave-girl routine?”

“I’m with Meg.” Kat drifted up beside us, her hand at her mouth to cover a delicate yawn. “We all know what our hubbies-to-be are here for, don’t we? They’ve just come from a stag party. They’re probably a lot drunk and a little frisky—and from one or two unfortunate experiences with former boyfriends, I can tell you that drunk almost always wins out over frisky. If we let them in, we’ll be spending the next two hours stroking their—”

“Egos,” I said firmly. “So turn out the porch light, Tash. That should send the message they’re not getting any tonight.”

Tashya’s hand slid slowly from the doorknob, the dreamy look fading from her gaze. “I guess you’re right,” she said in a puzzled tone. “It’s not like I want Todd thinking he can have it any old time he wants it. What kind of marriage would that be?”

“You think one day Dr. Todd might regret dumping mousy Bev Simmons for our sister?” Kat mused as we turned away.

“Big-time,” I agreed promptly. I hesitated. “Kat, we need to talk. Are you sure you don’t remember spouting off about roles and duty and the closing of the circle by—”

“Oh, merde .”

Her disgusted response wasn’t directed at me, I realized as I followed her gaze and saw Tash looking through the peephole again. Even as I headed grimly back to the door, Tash’s fingers flew over the security keypad to disable the alarm.

“I can’t help it, Meg,” she said in the same breathy voice as before. “I mean, look— have you ever seen three hotter males in your whole life?” She flung the door open as she spoke, and I skidded to a halt. Two feet away, just over the threshold, stood Lance and Todd and Dean.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly too dry. Tash was right, they were different.

They were incredibly, sexily, irresistible.

Better take another time-out here.

The thing is, our fiancés weren’t irresistible. Lance had a beefiness about him that even his Armani suits couldn’t conceal, and Todd had boyishly tousled chestnut curls that Kat and I suspected were the result of a body perm. Tash swore they were natural but even so, his eligibility stemmed more from his tax bracket than from devastating good looks.

As for Dean, the two times we’d done the horizontal mambo together I’d nearly nodded off while he’d sat on the edge of the bed folding his boxers and meticulously cuffing his silk socks into flat balls, as if he were packing for camp. When he’d finally joined me, I’d realized that watching him fold his clothes had been the thrilling part, and for the next five and a half minutes—oh, please, every girl checks her watch when she’s with a man like Dean—I occupied myself by weaving a highly creative fantasy that included a couple of gorgeous firemen from the Maplesburg FD, a cop whom I’d flirted out of giving me a speeding ticket the previous day and the sexy mechanic who’d worked on Popsie’s Mercedes the time I’d borrowed it and done something unfortunate to the steering. They’d been hot. Dean and Todd and Lance weren’t.

Except now they were. Dean’s open shirt revealed washboard abs that almost rippled as I looked at them, instead of the incipient little paunch I was used to seeing on him. His thinning blond hair was thinning no longer, but swept back from his forehead in a thick golden cascade that ended up somewhere around his collar. His cheekbones were more prominent than I remembered, hard slabs that matched the new firmness of his jaw.

This last one almost broke through my reverie. Dean’s weak profile had always been his least attractive feature, even trumping his hair. In the dim recesses of my mind a feeble alarm bell rang, telling me that if Dean Hudson the Third had suddenly acquired bone structure a supermodel would sell her soul for, something was really, really wrong with this picture. Instead of listening to it, I impatiently shut it off as my gaze strayed south of Dean’s belt. I sagged against the hall armoire.

My boyfriend had a package. I blinked, shook my head in disbelief, and looked again. It was still there. My boyfriend had a real, honest-to-God package , and it wasn’t the kind that came wrapped up in pretty paper and ribbons, it was the kind that usually came wrapped in a well-worn pair of Levi’s on a bad-boy biker in my daydreams. Dean’s investment-banker suit trousers were straining over the unmistakable bulge, and even as I watched, his zipper notched down a trifle.

I heard a tiny moaning sound, realized it was coming from me and sank my teeth into my lower lip in an effort to get control of myself. Beside me, Tash was making the same kind of low moan.

“So adorable of you boys to drop by.” Kat came up behind us, her sex-goddess drawl tinged with regret the way it always is when she’s about to puncture a male’s hopes. “But you’ll have to take rain checks all round, sweeties. You don’t—”

Her drawl cut off abruptly. I heard her swallow, heard her moan like Tash and I had, and then I heard her huskily ask Lance if he felt like a nightcap…and just as she did the mute button on the alarm bells in my head suddenly released.

“No!” I turned swiftly to her. “Whatever you do, don’t ask them in, Kat! They’re—they’re—” My protest sputtered off as I tried to figure out why I was making it.

“We’re what, honey?” Dean’s voice had a sexy note I’d never heard in it before. “A little bit drunk? A little bit horny?” His eyes, their normal pale blue now a glowing sapphire, met mine and again I felt heat lapping over me.