Home Sweet Gnome (2 page)

“Sahara Desert? Yeah, right. I thought you said Thailand. Ma’am, have you been drinking?”

I screeched so loudly birds flew off out of the field beside the road. The last thing I remember about Detective McHottie before the world went black was that he had a little scar in his left eyebrow.

CHAPTER TWO

“Daphne.” I heard my name through a fog, my brain not able to make any of my body parts work. Including my eyes. “Really, Carl, a stun gun?” It sounded like Aunt Velma, but everything was confusing. Why couldn’t I wiggle my toes?

“McCade says she went crazy and punched him.”

Ah, I could feel my fingertips.

“That doesn’t sound like Daphne,” Aunt Velma replied.

My whole body jerked all at once, as if my brain and my muscles finally decided to become friends again.

“There, she’s coming to now. We can get her side of the story,” the man replied.

I was able to control my eyes, which might not have been a good thing, because the first thing I saw was Aunt Velma’s generous cleavage. She knelt beside where I was lying and sighed in relief, her bosom heaving as she did so. She was sixty-five, had hair dyed fire engine red and wore makeup in a way only a Mary Kay consultant or a Texas housewife could achieve. Her shirt was also fire engine red with a plunging V neckline, leaving little to the imagination. Behind her, the walls were cinderblock and painted white. Fluorescent light cast a harsh white light.

Sitting up carefully, I pushed my hair back from my face and realized where I was. Jail. The little metal toilet built into the wall was the giveaway. The concrete bed—if that was the word for it—was very hard and very cold beneath me. The smell of institutional-strength cleaning products and something else I didn’t even want to consider was strong in the small room. Rubbing my face, I tried to get my brain synapses working again. “What happened?” I muttered, wiping a copious amount of drool off my chin.

“Stun gun,” Aunt Velma muttered. She rose from her crouch on the floor and stood tall in front of me. My aunt had been described many ways including big boned and an Amazon, or a big-boned Amazon. Both were valid, but to me she looked more like the retired roller derby queen that she was. She epitomized the big hair, tight spandex with no bra combination, and no-holds-barred behavior. She hadn’t changed much from the picture of her on the fireplace mantel from her lengthy stint with the Fargo Roller Dolls from 1979 except now gravity had set in and she’d discovered the alluring properties of a wonder bra.

No one messed with Aunt Velma. She was allowed to be crazy for decades and no one questioned. I go insane for five minutes and I get stun gunned and tossed in jail.

“I’m sorry about this, Daphne, but JT did say you were off your rocker.” Now that the cobwebs cleared, I knew the man standing next to Aunt Velma. Fortunately, he was wearing more clothes than just the plaid boxers I’d seen him wearing just this morning in the kitchen. Carl Dobbs was police captain and in charge of the detective squad, the one that included stun-first-ask-questions-later McCade. He was also the current man
du jour
of Aunt Velma and I knew more about Carl than I ever wanted. I could personally confirm that he was not a premature ejaculator and he had the sexual endurance of a college kid in Florida on spring break. Lucky Aunt Velma. Thailand wasn’t far enough to escape the horrors I’d listened to from the dynamic duo the night before.

“Off the rocker? Is that what he said?” How dare the man! No matter how hot he was.
Off my rocker.
I’d show that man off the rocker. I realized I was grumbling it aloud instead of just in my mind.

Carl looked a little apprehensive. “You…you did punch him in the face.”

I punched—oh yeah, it was coming back to me now.

“Who taught you to hit like that?” Aunt Velma didn’t even try to hide the pleased gleam in her eye.

“You did. Summer after tenth grade, right after Ryan Grasselmeyer got a little too frisky at the movies.” She’d spent the entire Sunday morning, instead of going to church like a normal family, giving me pointers on how to make a fist and where to strike on the face.

Aunt Velma nodded, her gold hoop earrings swinging with the motion. “Right. I heard he weighs over two hundred and fifty pounds now and sells used cars up in Great Falls.”

“Ninety in a forty-five, Daphne, that’s a little over the top, don’t you think?” Carl asked, his whiskers making a rasping sound as he ran his hand over his chin.

If he’d had to listen to someone else making sounds like he and Aunt Velma had, he’d be fleeing town, too.

“I overslept and was running late for my flight.” I turned my gaze to Aunt Velma. “Someone kept me up half the night.”

She had the gall to smile and give a furtive and flirtatious glance at Carl. “Yeah, someone kept me up half the night, too.”

The man’s cheeks reddened like Santa Claus.

I groaned and stood, both Velma and Carl stepped back out of my way. “Can I get out of here now?”

Velma looked me over critically. “At least you didn’t pee yourself. I’ve heard that’s a side effect from being stunned.”

I glanced down my body. Long-sleeved dark blue T-shirt with
Minnesota
across the front, black yoga pants, old sneakers with a gray cardigan wrapped around my waist. My hair was no longer in a ponytail and was wild about my head. Other than having my brain sizzled, I didn’t seem worse for wear. And I hadn’t become incontinent before Aunt Velma.

“The speeding and the stun gun sort of voided each other out, so you’re free to go,” Carl answered. He held out his hand toward the open jail cell and led me down the labyrinth of corridors to the lobby.

I’d missed my flight, I didn’t know where my little car was, nor what I was going to do to replace the Thailand assignment. What I did know was that I was stuck in Montana with Aunt Velma until I could figure it out. I had nowhere else to go. When I’d finished my last assignment in Kiev, I flew back to LA for the short break until it was time to go to Thailand. On arrival, I’d found out that Roger, my boyfriend—if that’s what you called a guy you hadn’t seen in three months—had taken up with another woman. The term boyfriend was a very lax description of him since we barely saw each other. He was a consultant doing some kind of computer security thing and he was a road warrior too. Our schedules never meshed. Fortunately, they hadn’t meshed last week when I’d landed and found the evidence of the new cohabitation arrangement. I certainly didn’t wear six-inch stilettos. So I flew to Bozeman and to Aunt Velma’s, the only place I had to go. Fortunately, it coincided with her birthday, so there weren’t any questions about my surprise appearance.

“Carl Dobbs, what did you do to Daphne?” The question was a shout from across the lobby of the jail. Folks that were sitting in plastic chairs bolted to the floor, most likely waiting for their turn to see an incarcerated loved one, swiveled their heads. I froze in place and took a deep breath.
Great.
The only person crazier than Aunt Velma was her best friend Goldie West. When the two of them got together, it was like combining baking soda and vinegar in science class. A really big show with lots of fizz.

Goldie West was a force of nature. Only a few years older than Aunt Velma, she owned and ran the only adult store in this part of Montana. She knew everyone within a hundred-mile radius and their secrets, too. She was like a doctor, a lawyer and a priest combined. Not only did she keep people’s proclivities confidential, she ensured her customers a healthy sex life, kept the city’s divorce rate down and knew which folks were going to hell.

My friend Veronica, Violet’s twin sister, had compared Goldie to the Tasmanian Devil. She spun in and wreaked havoc and left people stunned and confused in her wake. Her blonde hair was up into a high ponytail, dangly earrings identical to Aunt Velma’s hung from her ears to almost brush against her hot pink T-shirt with the word
Sassy
written in sparkly gemstones across her chest. And when she came across the lobby to join us, everything stopped. Heads turned, conversation ceased. Even the phone stopped ringing.

Veronica had worked part-time at Goldilocks ever since she became legal so I’d been in and out of the store for years. But I’d slipped under the woman’s radar for the most part because I spent my high school years at boarding school in Vermont, then to Minnesota for college and then fell right into my freelance writing, which kept me away from Bozeman for long stretches of time. I loved Aunt Velma, but she was—…exhausting.

“Really, Carl,” Goldie
tsk
ed and shook her head. “Just look at her.”

I must have looked pretty darn bad if Goldie pointed it out.

Carl looked like a little kid who’d been scolded. “I haven’t done anything, Goldie, and you know it. JT McCade caught the girl going ninety and pulled her over.”

“I heard he stun gunned her until she peed her pants.” Goldie’s eyebrow went up as she looked me over.

So did everyone else in the waiting room. Word spread in Bozeman faster than a wildfire during a drought. I rolled my eyes.

She held out a pair of pants. “Here. I brought you a pair of jeggings.” She tossed them to me and I caught them without thinking. I held them up. “They’re jeans, but they’re leggings. See? I’m wearing a pair, too.”

Yes. Yes, she was wearing a pair of jeggings with a pair of her usual clogs. The combination prompted me to never wear the pair she’d just handed me.

“Wow, thanks, Goldie, but I didn’t pee my pants.” I said that loud enough so everyone who was listening knew that fact.

“Keep them then. It was one of those TV specials where you buy one pair and they send you the second pair for free. Good thing we wear the same size. Unlike your aunt over there who can share clothes with the MSU football team.”

“Hey!” Aunt Velma retorted crankily. She couldn’t say much more because it was true. While she was close to six feet tall, I was average. Only five and a half feet barefooted, I was so-so on the weight department. I could lose some weight but a donut with my name on it would not be ignored. I had average brown hair of average length, average brown eyes. I was
average.

“Carl doesn’t seem to mind that I’m big boned.”

Everyone in the room looked to Carl. He was one of the few men that made Aunt Velma look petite. He’d been a bronc-busting champion four years running and had been the quarterback of MSU’s football team back in the day. He’d worked as a cop since he rode the beat, but I didn’t know of a police cruiser that would fit him. “No, ma’am, I sure don’t,” he replied with a sly grin.

I wiped a hand over my eyes and looked away and directly into the face of Detective McHottie.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled. Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked a little contrite. A little, which was not enough. I wanted him licking my boots, if I had them on, for making me miss my flight.

“You!” I pointed at him. “You stun gunned me!”

His dark eyebrows went up and I could clearly see that scar that bisected the left one. “You punched me in the nose.”

Yeah, his nose did look a little swollen, but it did nothing to diminish his hotness, especially now that I could see his eyes. And I’d been wrong. His eyes weren’t blue, they were dark, so dark they’d be considered black. With his dark hair, holy cow. His picture was next to tall, dark and handsome in the dictionary.

Carl stepped between us, held his hands up, probably not wanting an incident in the lobby. “Everything balances out and we’re going to forget this incident ever happened. Right, McCade?”

He gave a small nod, but his jaw was clenched so tight I was surprised his teeth didn’t shatter.

“How can I forget?” I tossed my hands up. “I missed my flight to Thailand.”

“Thailand?” McCade rolled his eyes in that way men do when they want to piss a woman off. “You’re still on that? Seriously? You’re off the hook, so let it go. It’s a good thing you don’t talk much in those movies of yours.” He cracked his knuckles.

I narrowed my eyes at him and I swear my blood pressure went to stroke point. “Off the hook? You
stun gunned
me. I woke up in a jail cell.”

His gaze raked over me. My nipples tightened and the way his jaw clamped tight, he’d definitely noticed. “At least you didn’t pee yourself. There’s something to be said in that.”

I chose to let the peeing remark go. I figured I’d covered that one by now. “What’s the deal with this movie stuff? You act as if I’m some movie star or something.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “If you want to keep it a secret, that’s fine, but you might want to consider wearing a different shirt.”

I glanced down. Yeah, my nipples were showing through the old college T-shirt. I crossed my arms over my chest with a huff. “What the hell are you talking about?” I hissed.

He leaned in and I could smell him. Soap, Montana sky and pheromones. As he got closer, I shifted back, but he was taller and I wasn’t a gymnast, no matter how flexible he thought I was, so he was able to whisper in my ear. His warm breath tickled on my neck and that sent goose bumps skittering…everywhere. “Your secret’s safe with me. If you don’t want anyone to know where you go when you leave town, that’s fine. But I know, and let me tell you, Silky Tangles is the center of my every fantasy, especially that thing she does when she’s cuffed. I’ve got my handcuffs if you ever want to practice for the sequel.”