Baddest Bad Boys(3)

So she’d better get cracking, before he got another girlfriend. Which would happen in, like, five minutes? Jon always had a girlfriend. He went through women like popcorn. Worse yet, he could get married again. His marriage to Vicki the blond bombshell had shattered Robin’s heart. The subsequent ugly, vicious divorce had promptly mended it.

She left the stall, and stared at herself in the mirror. Danny and Mac went ballistic when she showed off her navel, so she made a special point of it. Still, she wasn’t glamorous enough in the snug, lime green blouse and mini, bare midriff or no. She’d have to do better than this.

And she’d been in too much of a rush this morning to do anything interesting with her hair that would bother her brothers, like a towering neo-punk beehive, or the purple and lime green streaks with matching eyeshadow, or the space alien checkerboard of knobbly buns. It was just pulled up into a fountaining brown ponytail. But for this, she’d wear it down and loose. Down was sexiest, or so she’d been told.

She gave her body a critical once-over. She’d been working out like a freak to get ready for the Circo della Luna Rossa’s training program, so no problems there. She was lithe and trim. Had the taut tummy and the boobs happening, thank God. They weren’t excessive, but they were perky and cheerful, and they did their divinely ordained boobly duty of filling out her bra and dragging mens’ eyes away from her face. Jon had never looked at them yet. So she’d wear something sheer. Put those boobs to work. About time they stopped bouncing aimlessly around on her chest and started earning their keep.

She smiled experimentally as she studied her own face, trying to see what Jon would see. Hmm. She knew, objectively at least, that she was relatively cute, particularly with some cosmetic help, but she still saw her awkward younger face superimposed over her actual face, in spite of all the changes. The glasses, now exchanged for contacts. That thick dark mono-brow, now carefully shaped into normal eyebrows. The buck teeth, finally, blessedly, fixed. And of course, her embarrassing emotions. Sprawled out there, for all to see and marvel at.

That was one of the reasons she’d been attracted to clowning in the first place. Facial transparency was an actual asset. Expressions had to be exaggerated and super-readable by necessity. Once she stuck that red nose on her face, something kicked in, and set her free, like a bird in the air. She hit the zone, and people laughed. Beautiful.

But Danny and Mac didn’t get it. She wondered if Jon could.

Then again. He was a cop, after all. It was a dark, tough, serious job. Probably clowning would seem silly and frivolous to a guy like him.

But hey. It wasn’t like she needed approval for her career choices from Jon Amendola. She needed something very different. Very specific.

She gave herself another smile. It looked tense, false. Scared. She let it fade, and in that naked moment, she saw a flash of something different in the mirror. Her future. Her woman’s face. Older, more defined. Vulnerable too, but in a different way. A deeper, realer way.

It occurred to her how different life was going to feel once she abandoned her protective shell. She usually blamed her brothers for it, but she’d done her own part in creating it and maintaining it. It had kept her focused on her goals, sure. And it had also kept her safe.

It was too small for her now. It chafed and pinched. Pressure from the inside, opposing pressure from the outside. Crushing her.

She didn’t want to start a difficult, challenging adventure like the Circo della Luna Rossa with this extra inner struggle to cope with.

Then again. Once she broke the spell, once she cast off that shell, that was it. No going back. She’d be out in the cold, where the wind whipped and the wolves howled. Where anything could happen. Brrr.

She shivered, and then blew out a sharp breath and straightened her spine to its proudest height. This was no time to wimp out.

Besides. Jon was a wolf, yeah, but not that kind of wolf. He was exactly, precisely the right kind of wolf for this job. And the chance for a good whack at him might never roll around again. Her, Jon, alone and surrounded by the immense privacy of the Cascade Mountains—mmm.

The shiver that rippled through her then was very different—a toe curling, lip biting, thigh clenching tingle of hopeful anticipation. Whew.

Enough already. This potty break had stretched out to unprofessional proportions. She had to get her butt back to the monster console before Eliza got annoyed and sent out a posse to retrieve her.

Danny swept by as she was plugging herself back into the infernal machine, his habitual fierce scowl of concentration on his face. “You coming to Mac and Jane’s for dinner tomorrow?” he rapped out.

She blinked. “Uh…nope. Sorry. Can’t,” she lied. “I’m working back to back birthday parties all afternoon, and I’ve got a Commedia Dell’ Arte class in the evening. Til late. Very late.”

Danny snorted, and charged off on his important CFO business. Both brothers were like that. Alpha didn’t begin to describe it.

She sat in the ergonomic chair and vibrated. Doubts assailed her thick and fast. Jon had said he was bad company. Neck deep in shit. He’d sounded depressed. He’d probably be unthrilled to see her.

Yeah, and that was exactly the kind of chickenshit, cowardly-ass reasoning that produced twenty-five-year-old virgins.

It was now or never. If he blew her off, she’d cope. She might fall into a crack in the ground and be crushed to a fine paste first, of course, but then she would just stick on that red nose and soldier on.