drawing an audience. Even an audience of one.
Liza wasn’t put off. She was still hung up on that “ma’am.” All husky and direct, in that I-can-take-care-of-anything tone they must teach them at the law enforcement academy. She shivered, just a tiny bit. Apparently she’d repressed more uniform fantasies than she’d thought. “I can see that,” she responded, smiling, not going anywhere. “Totally under control. I’m sure the citizens of Canyon Springs sleep better knowing that you’re on the job. Protecting them from killer birds.”
He merely stared at her. “Thanks for stopping. Please be careful when you pull back into traffic.”
She glanced over her shoulder. He must be kidding. Traffic? Sure, the town had a steady little bustle of cars and trucks streaming up and down the main road, but traffic? Obviously he’d never seen Long Beach Freeway at five-thirty on a Friday.
“I think I can handle it, Officer,” she said with great seriousness.
“I’m sure you can.”
She smiled then. So, there was a real man lurking behind the badge. And that oh-so-official tone. She wondered what it would take to put a shudder in that “ma’am” of his. No, bad Liza, bad. No playing with small-town sheriffs.
But wasn’t she on this personal odyssey for the express purpose of discovering new things, new ways of life? In addition to an appreciation for mountain scenery, she’d discovered she had appreciation for uniforms. That was totally new. Liza had spent the past eight of her twenty-nine years hopscotching around the globe, making sure her celebrity clients were all well pampered and cared for, and she’d never once lusted after a man in blue. Or brown and tan, as the case may be. So this could be seen as a positive step.
Maybe this was a test of another kind. “And maybe you’re trying way too hard to rationalize an afternoon quickie,” she murmured. But the longer she looked up in that tree, the harder it was remembering why celibacy had been an absolute rule on this journey of hers. Yes, she’d watched her oldest and dearest pal, Natalie, fall headlong into love earlier this year, and yes, her own heart had taken a tiny ding when she’d stupidly allowed one of her playmates to become more than a playmate. In her mind, anyway. And okay, so it had been more than a tiny ding.
More like a wake-up thwack in the head. And heart. But those weren’t the only reasons Liza had taken stock and decided that success didn’t always equal happiness. She supposed she’d been heading toward that epiphany for some time. Natalie’s wedding and Conrad’s infidelity had simply been an impetus to examine why it was that the more successful Liza got, the less fulfilled she felt.
Sure, she’d kicked ass as the hottest public relations consultant on the West Coast, and just as certainly, she’d enjoyed the wealth and the wide variety of perks it brought her way. Hard work and hard play had made Liza a very happy girl. For a time. But somewhere along the way she realized that while she enjoyed the limelight she garnered for her clients, at the end of the day, when she went home to her glossy, Century City penthouse condo, she went alone. She’d substituted clients for real friends, and flings with the man of the moment for real intimacy.
She could put together an A-list party at the drop of a hat. But if she wanted someone to hang out with? Talk to? Just kick back and be Liza with? Other than Natalie, who lived three thousand miles away—or had before meeting the man of her dreams—she had exactly no one. In fact, outside of her work persona, she wasn’t even sure who the real Liza was. Hence her personal odyssey…and hence swearing off men until she figured out how to have fun without one.
But…but if she knew it was just a fling, a teeny tiny little detour, something to take the edge off—after all, it had been two months, for God’s sake, and a vibrator could only do so much; she had needs, dammit—wouldn’t that be okay? Sort of a little reward for being so good for so long?
That rationale took on more and more logic the longer she stood there looking up at the sheriff’s gorgeous chiseled face. Even his scowl turned her on. She had no idea why he was so irritated with her; she was only trying to help. Well, okay, maybe she wasn’t helping, exactly. But she certainly wasn’t keeping him from doing his job. And usually men were more than happy to let her help them. She’d built an entire career on that specific ability. Her clientele had been largely of the male persuasion simply because she understood their needs, their sense of pride and that little boy insecurity they never seemed to outgrow.
That was the part she missed most. Being needed, being the one they called to make it all better. She knew it was more of that faux intimacy thing, but without that, the gaping void in her life loomed even larger. Actually, it had sort of come as a surprise to her that she didn’t miss much of anything else. Not the parties, the tours, the openings, the award ceremonies, the press conferences. The wild, uncontrolled sex with the Hollywood hottie of her choice. Okay, so maybe she missed that last part just a little bit. But she didn’t miss the empty feeling that came afterward. The little pangs of neediness that postcoital snuggling no longer fulfilled.
Only, she wasn’t quite sure how to transcend the arm-candy-at-the-latest-premiere followed by the fun-in-the-sack part. Probably she had to be friends with a guy first, find a man who satisfied her on levels other than sexual, a guy whose sole credentials weren’t that he owned his own tux and looked damn fine in it. Then the rest would probably just happen. Wouldn’t it? She thought of Natalie and had to grin. Her best friend had found her man in exactly the opposite way. An exclusive, purely sexual relationship that had led to real love.
So why couldn’t it work that way for her?
Because it never has before, Liza, that’s why. Nat had just gotten lucky.
Well, she’d like to get lucky, too, Liza thought with a wistful sigh as she watched Sheriff Sexy Ass lever that impressive torso of his up a bit higher, trying to reach his quarry. A quarry with an awfully big beak.
“Does he bite?” she asked.
Mango strutted some more and let out another one of his ozone-disintegrating screeches.
“Never mind,” she called up. “Who needs the beak when you can defeat your predators by deafening them first?”
She thought she heard Sheriff Sexy Ass snort under his breath, but when he looked down at her again, his face was an impersonal mask. “Really, we’ll be fine up here, ma’am. Thank you for stopping,” he repeated. “Please be careful when you pull back into traffic.”
Brown. She was pretty sure his eyes were brown.
“Do you always come to the rescue of your feathered citizens?”
“Do you always refuse to take a hint?”
She merely grinned.
He sighed. “I do when it’s this one.”
“She belongs to you, then?”
“God, no,” he said, his tone one of horror. Mango strutted closer and he turned his attentions back to the bird. A minute or two passed, but he didn’t look her way again.
She was being dismissed. Had been being dismissed for the past several minutes. Problem was, she wasn’t ready to leave yet. An occasional drawback of hers, true, but more often a hallmark of her success. She never left something alone until she was done with it, no matter if it was done with her.
Staring at the flex of muscle in the good sheriff’s thighs as he pushed himself up even higher, she freely admitted she wasn’t done with him yet. In fact, right at that moment there was nowhere else she’d rather be than standing on a street corner in downtown Canyon Springs.
Suddenly Mango lunged, and Liza squealed and pointed. “Look out!”
He might not have flinched at Mango’s scream, but he did at hers. Mango made a beak-dive for the nice, shiny star on his pocket just as he lost his balance.
Liza gasped. He slid from his branch and fell, butt first, into the V of branch and trunk just below. Mango flapped his wings and raced up and down the branch overhead, screeching the entire time as the