Killing Time

Louise obviously saw his disbelief. “Men. You’re all thick. Didn’t you realize why Mrs. Richardson crashed her brand-new Buick into the back of your neighbor’s old AMC Pacer? She was watching you, watching all that sweat mix with the dirt and grass on your shoulders and your arms. Trying to see what we all want to see.”

His hands instinctively dropped to the front of his pants.

Louise giggled again. “Not that.” Then she stammered and looked away. “Well, yes, that. But also, your, um, you know…”

“My…” Hair? Back? Earlobes? What was the woman talking about? And who the hell knew women were as lewd as men when it came to ogling the opposite sex, even if it was a complete stranger? Of course, no one was really a stranger in Derryville.

“Your thingie,” she whispered.

His thingie. A number of thingies on his body tightened up as he waited to hear what all the women in town wanted to peek at.

“My what?” he asked, hoping she meant his checkbook, which should be enough to scare off most women. But he doubted it.

“Your…tattoo!”

He stiffened, his jaw clenching, the response as instinctive as it was predictable. Few people knew the origins of his tattoo, the one spread across his lower back, just below his hips, riding his ass like a low-slung pair of jeans. The tattoo was one subject that was off-limits in his life. As was the woman who’d originally inspired him to get it.

“Forget about seeing my tattoo or anything else. I’m not taking off my clothes.”

Her smile broadened. “Oh, yes, you are.”

“Put down the gun. You already said you wouldn’t kill me.”

She lowered the gun and took careful aim at every man’s Achilles’ heel. The one between his legs.

Muttering another curse—which earned him another tsk—he yanked off his shirt, dropping it to the floor. His Northern brain had no part in that decision. The Southern one had simply taken over in pure self-preservation.

“That’s better. Keep going.”

He hesitated, wondering how this could be happening in his nice little real estate office on the nice main road of this nice small town. If any of his poker buddies ever found out a woman had held him at gunpoint and made him strip, they’d die laughing. Of course, if the story had involved one of his more typical female friends, they’d probably be jealous as hell.

When he didn’t move fast enough, Louise let out an impatient sigh. “You know I wouldn’t kill you. But I can shoot well enough to make sure you behave from now on.” Her stare followed the direction of her pistol, and she let out a quivery sigh as she looked at his pants. “I guess I’d like to see what all the women fuss and carry on about.” Then she squared her shoulders in self-sacrifice. “But if it comes right down to it, I don’t mind having a marriage without those carryings-on between the sheets. Whatever it takes, I’ve got to save you from yourself.”

Marriage and no sex. Funny, at the thought of being married to Louise, he could suddenly understand the appeal. “That’s very kind of you…but I promise, I really don’t mind my reputation.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I do,” she said fiercely. “You’re the nicest man in this stinky town. I’m sick of everyone thinking you’re nothing but a walking cock-a-doodle-doo.”

The cock-a-doodle-doo bit almost made him laugh, particularly because a brilliant flush had darkened Louise’s cheeks when she’d said it, as if she’d uttered an unforgivable swearword. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

Her expression told him she wasn’t. “It’s because they’re jealous you don’t take up with local women. You go casting your rod into the ponds of other towns, ’steada right here at home.”

She was right. That was one of his unspoken rules, which he’d adhered to for the past several years. Never fish in a tiny lake where it’s not so easy to throw one back.

“But I know with those Hollywood floozies coming to town, the urge might be too much for you. So I’m going to save you.”

Hollywood floozies. It took a second, but he finally figured out what she meant. Derryville was about to be invaded by a TV crew. A new reality TV show called Killing Time in a Small Town was set to film right here. That was the reason for this morning’s meeting. One of the producers was looking for a short-term rental, since Derryville’s only inn was going to be filled up with the cast and camera crew of the show.

“I know you’re not ready to settle down, Mick, but that’ll change once we’re married. Daddy should be here in fifteen minutes or so, after he takes my brothers to football practice. That gives us enough time to get you naked and me—” she flushed again, more brilliantly than before “—mussed.”

Fifteen minutes. Knowing Louise’s no-good old man, who was late on everything from his mortgage payments to his own weddings, that equaled more like an hour. Meaning he had that long to convince her to give up her crazy idea.

A number of possibilities quickly ran through his mind. He could sweet-talk her, reason with her, cajole her…

Or, given her brilliant blushes and the fact that she had never had so much as a date, he could do one thing that was sure to send her scurrying out of here like the scared virgin he knew her to be.

Exactly what she asked him to.

Without another word, Mick Winchester dropped his pants.

THE DERRYVILLE REALTY office was easy to spot on the main street of this small town. Caro Lamb smothered a sigh when she saw the sign, complete with engraved drawing of mom, dad, kid and dog playing happily on the lawn in front of their little house.

A sign like that in L.A. would have to show a hillside mansion and a kid being shuffled between Mom and her pool boy, and Dad and his trophy girlfriend. The dog would be replaced by low-maintenance, no-pooper-scooper fish. The lawn would become a skate park.

Home. A word of infinite definitions. None of which had really rung her bell as yet.

She parked the rental car, which she’d picked up in Chicago after landing there late the night before. Then Caro grabbed her briefcase and stepped out into the bright Illinois morning. “No smog. I don’t think my lungs can take it,” she mumbled.

“Eh?”

She hadn’t even realized an older man pushing a broom was standing on the sidewalk near her car.

“Nothing,” she mumbled, embarrassed to be caught talking to herself. Talking to oneself was something that could really start a rumor in Hollywood. Do that on Rodeo Drive and by the time you got back to your studio office, the execs were calling Betty Ford while your office mates planned your intervention.

Nothing was as “in” in L.A. as the occasional breakdown. Of course, as fun as they were, they also spelled death to a production career in TV. Stars, talk show hosts, radio deejays—they “got well” or “got clean” or “got acquitted” and the studio loved them. But lowly assistant producers hoping for a shot at a lead gig on a prime-time network show and an escape from the lowliest cable fodder featuring an ’80s one-hit-wonder sitcom refugee?

Huh-uh. Death. Absolute death.

There was, of course, one thing worse than the lowliest cable fodder featuring an 80s one-hit-wonder sitcom refugee.

“You’re here for that reality TV show, aren’t cha?”

That’d be it.

“I can tell by the rental plates. And your clothes. And the bored look on your face.”

Caro’s eyes widened. “I’m not bored. I’m just—” procrastinating “—thinking.”

“Bout?”

About being stuck here for three weeks with her entire future on the line. About trying to salvage her third-rated network by riding on the reality TV wave that had crested last season.

“About what a nice, normal town this is.”

That was true. Derryville certainly seemed to satisfy all the requirements the network had laid down when planning for this next volley into the reality TV arena. Killing Time in a Small Town was supposed to take place in an average, all-American place where neighbors were friendly, doors weren’t locked and movie stars’ wives didn’t end up dead in their cars or on their doorsteps.

No crime. Peaceful. Serene. That was what was called for. And then the show would spice it up with a fake murder mystery, with the contestants competing to solve it before getting “bumped off” themselves.

“You been up to the Little Bohemie Inn yet? I hear there was some camerapeople up’t there to do some picture taking.”