Authors: Amy Jo Cousins
Calling His Bluff
Only in Vegas…
It has to be Vegas’s glitzy, seductive atmosphere that made Sarah Tyler trade her
straitlaced persona for that of a cardsharp in a red halter dress and heels. But when
the Chicago vet wakes up next to her longtime crush—with a ring on her finger—she
knows she’s in serious trouble.
Fifteen years ago, Sarah was madly in love with JD Damico, her brother’s best friend.
She didn’t expect to ever see him again…until the bad-boy-turned-Hollywood-photographer
persuaded her to accompany him to the city of sin for a whirlwind weekend. Now Sarah
thinks they’re lawful husband and wife. Only, JD isn’t a stick-around kind of guy.
Worse, he no longer believes in happy endings. Or does he?
Book 3 of The Tylers
Calling His Bluff
Amy Jo Cousins
Harlequin E Contemporary Romance
Dedication
For my sister, without whom my wardrobe would be all black, my musical education would
have stopped in the ’90s and my adventures would be far less awesome. I know you scratched
“I hate Amy” inside the closet door in our room twenty-five years ago, but I loved
you even when you couldn’t spell. You’re my own personal rock star, Kelly. Can’t imagine
life being nearly this much fun without you.
Chapter One
After the second drug deal went down on the corner, with the dealer shooting hard
looks her way in between casual reaches into the open window of cars that were too
nice for this shitty neighborhood, Sarah’s freak-out reached epic proportions.
And J.D. still wasn’t answering the door.
She gave it fifteen seconds before she became a statistic on a news graphic about
how even the cold winter weather didn’t have a suppressant effect on the violence
in Chicago’s less-gentrified neighborhoods.
“Dead meat. That’s what he is.” Sarah clenched her jaw tight to stop herself from
grinding her molars together. She fisted her hands at her sides and bounced a little
on the balls of her feet, toes sore already in spiky high heels. She glanced back
at the corner. The dealer slouched toward her, skullcap pulled low over his eyebrows.
“As soon as he answers the door, I’m going to kill him.”
She stabbed a finger at the cracked plastic button of the doorbell buzzer and then
pounded again on the solid steel door. Her left hand drifted down toward the nylon
medical bag resting at her hip, her constant companion. Maybe she should grab a scalpel,
just in case. She could find it in an instant in the precise order of her bag, even
one-handed and in the dark.
And why wasn’t he answering the damn door?
“Open up before I get mugged!” she shouted at the door.
And this was the last time she’d listen to Christopher Robin Tyler. She imagined with
pleasure the feel of her brother’s thick neck throttled between her hands.
If she ended up as body parts found in a Dumpster, she was going to haunt her brother
forever and do nothing but call him by the two names Tyler had stopped answering to
years ago.
“You’re corpse number two, Christopher Robin. I swear it.” She shook her head as she
heard her brother’s words echoing in her ears. This time, she could hear the slickness
of a con in his voice in the message he’d left guilting her into this crazy trip.
“Remember J.D.? Didn’t you always like him? He’s back in town and his cat is dying
or something. You gotta go see him right away. Like now.”
Yeah, right.
Remember J.D.? Sometimes it felt like she’d never gotten over the man, much less forgotten
him, which was a sorry way to feel about a guy she’d never even kissed. Except for
the one time…
And as soon as she was done murdering J.D., she was heading straight back to her brother’s
pub to hunt her sibling down and kill him. Let Grace try to protect him. Her sister-in-law
wasn’t standing after dark in the middle of this abandoned warehouse district west
of the Loop in Chicago, dressed in a twelve-hundred-dollar suit that might as well
have had
Mug Me
written across it in fluorescent letters. She loved Grace, but fair was fair. Her
brother was a dead man.
He might at least have mentioned that her old crush was staying in a wasteland. She’d
imagined J.D. inhabiting an upscale, fifty-story Lincoln Park condo building. In that
scenario, the “I just ducked over from a cocktail party at that chic little place
around the corner” excuse could have justified the Armani. God knows she wasn’t going
to admit that she’d gotten desperate enough last week to click the “Will Attend” RSVP
link in one of the urban professional speed-dating emails that kept arriving in her
inbox with intimidating regularity. She’d obviously ended up on a mailing list for
hopeless losers who were sucking black holes of relationship doom, attracting men
who hid their wedding rings. Telling her brother she couldn’t help his best friend
because she was on her way to be so fucking charming for sixty seconds at a time that
the perfect man would fall in love with her across a tiny bistro table was a fast
lane to eternal sibling torture. She’d bypassed the Loop and headed for the warehouse
district with a sigh.
If she’d also gotten a little thrill out of the idea of J.D. seeing her at her polished
best, Tyler didn’t need to know that, either.
Now she just looked like an idiot. Like an overdressed veterinarian suffering a breakdown
from the idea of an old, unrequited flame wanting to see her.
An uneven thumping noise, muffled but audible, came through the door.
“At last,” she muttered, and then banged on the door again for good measure. “Get
a move on, poky!” She smoothed nervous hands over her long, straight dark hair and
felt her stomach twist again.
Fifteen years. That’s how long she’d gone without seeing the man she’d adored with
the white-hot passion only a teenager can sustain. Fifteen years of dating the wrong
men and wishing secretly, in the dark corners of her heart, that J.D. Damico would
come back home and sweep her off her feet.
Hence the satisfaction of being in Armani.
The threat of imminent death was putting a crimp in her enthusiasm, however.
“What’s the holdup in there?” she called out.
An enormous clatter and crash of metal followed hard upon her words, sounding like
a thousand steel toothpicks being dropped on the floor of the devil’s workshop. When
the curses that followed threatened to rattle the door on its hinges, she was glad
she couldn’t quite make out the words.
“Whoops.”
She smiled brightly and nodded as another SUV drifted over to the curb, pulling her
stalker’s attention away from her. A reprieve from dismemberment. Lovely.
“I am going—”
thump
“—as fast—”
thump, thump
“—as I can.” The words rumbled through the door, halfway between a growl and a shout.
On the last word, the door was yanked inward to fly on an arc that only stopped when
it crashed into a brick wall. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
Her apology died on her lips as she opened her mouth. The snotty comment had her snapping
her jaws shut with an audible click. She took a deep breath and tried to remember
that she’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. Waiting, too, for J.D. to
see her at last as someone other than the gawky kid who tagged along after her brother
all the time. In her fantasies, J.D. had been waiting for this moment, too.
Backlit as he was by a flickering yellow-gold glow, she couldn’t see J.D. clearly,
but she could tell that he was on crutches and that a fiberglass cast covered one
leg from the base of his toes to halfway up his thigh. He seemed to be wearing black
sweatpants, the ragged edge of one chopped-off leg brushing against the top of the
cast. A gray Chicago Cubs T-shirt covered heavily muscled shoulders and bunched up
under his armpits where it caught on the cushioned pads of the crutches.
So much for him wanting to impress
me.
At least I know why he’s being obnoxious—he’s clumsy and in pain, not to mention freezing
to death
.
Who wears a T-shirt in March in Chicago?
She’d have known him in an instant, even if he
was
dressed like someone she could’ve bumped into in her brother’s pub. She couldn’t
stop smiling. She hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.
He stood in the doorway, staring at her blankly, eyes flickering from her face to
her feet to her medical bag and back again.
She resisted the urge to run a hand over her hair or check to see if her fly was open.
She’d been heading to a speed-dating event, for Christ’s sake. This was damn near
as good as it got for her, appearance-wise. Maybe J.D. was stunned into silence by
how much she’d changed.
She could break out a Sharpie and scribble e.e. cummings poetry and Edna St. Vincent
Millay quotes on her pants, if that would help him remember who she was. Although
it would be a crime to do that to this cashmere-wool blend.
As the moment stretched out, J.D. still staring at her wordlessly, teenage memories
of overwhelming awkwardness thickening her tongue and tripping her feet came flooding
back in a wave of heat and self-consciousness that she felt as a flush she knew was
visible on her face.
Fuck.
This was exactly how it had happened in high school, too. One minute she was cool
and easy with J.D., always happy when he would seek her out in a quiet moment and
sit with her. The next minute she was excruciatingly aware of the thick curve of muscle
wrapping his shoulder, and unable to speak in his presence.
If he didn’t say something, soon, it was possible she would dissolve into an actual
puddle of goo and embarrassment on the sidewalk and never speak to him again.
His grin rescued her.
The white flash of teeth in that cocky smile beneath high, tanned cheekbones and dark
shining eyes sparked memories of a skinny teenager who’d claimed there was Cherokee
mixed with the Italian blood in his family.
“Hot damn,” he said, the slow grin spreading over his face. He grappled with his crutches,
swinging over to rock her back in a fierce hug. “Sarah Tyler!” He pounded her back
with one hand. She hung on and tried to keep him upright.
After a moment, he pushed her back and held her at arm’s length. “Holy shit, girl.
You’re all growed up, aren’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. Yup, nothing like feeling twelve again. So much for J.D. seeing
her as a competent and hopefully foxy adult woman.
“Get your ass in here, girl, and tell me why I haven’t seen you around Tyler’s place
since I got back.”
So. The big reunion moment was over, she guessed.
That was it?
Tendrils of irritation crept into her attitude.
J.D. left her standing in the doorway and thumped off across the cavern of a room
to the back corner. His dark hair was tied back in a stubby ponytail at the back of
his neck.
Oh, no.
She shot off a quick prayer that he hadn’t turned into an artistic type. Sarah had
always thought of J.D. as the rough-edged boy of her youth, a bruiser more than a
finicky, flighty artiste, even as she’d read about his growing celebrity as a photographer.
After spending a bit too much time at her brother’s North Side Chicago pub, she’d
gotten over her romantic notions about dating artists or musicians easily enough.
She’d learned to spot the type that would lecture her for three hours about Scorsese
or the history of jazz. But based on the crowds of young women that inevitably gathered
around the guys who painted or played or took pictures, she was atypical.
Artists, bah.
Nothing but trouble, and you always had to foot the bill for their foolishness, too.
Of course, she hadn’t fared any better with her most recent disastrous relationship
choices, even if she’d very consciously tried to choose an ordinary, kind of boring,
stable guy. One who never would’ve been caught dead in the chaos inexorably taking
over this space. “Shut the door, will ya?” The words were more command than request.
