Valentine's CYOA, Chapter 14

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Chapter Fourteen

I dove for the machete.

"All right, I've had enough!" I screamed, brandishing the machete like an unlimited charge card at a Nordstrom's One Day Sale.

"Holy crap, Mel! Take it easy with that thing." Jayson held up his hands, eyeing the slashing blade with genuine concern as one of my wilder swings nearly reduced his condom size from Emperor to Mini Mouse.

"Take it easy? Take it easy! It's freakin' Valentine's Day! My house is shot up, my pool's shot up! Harold here busts in waving guns in my face-and neither one of you boneheads who claims to love me has sent me anything for Valentine's Day. Not even chocolate!" I gave a primal scream and leaped towards Mr. Lexus, slashing the machete through the air again for emphasis. "I need chocolate, dammit! I'm a woman on the edge!"

Mrs. Peterson's poodle, agitated by the whipping edges of the sheet wrapped around my body, leaped from her arms and attacked my sheet hem in a wild poodle frenzy.

The sheet fell free, giving gun-toting Harold an unimpeded, eye-popping view of my naked boobs and whimsical heart-shaped trim job.

He dropped his guns. They went off with a bang.

I screamed and lost my grip on the machete. The poodle burst into a series of earsplitting yips.

Mrs. Peterson cried, "Twinkles!" as tufts of curly white poodle hair flew up in the air.

Jayson dove for the guns and wrestled Harold for possession. I dove for the machete and wrestled the poodle trying to get my sheet back. Thanks to my accidental machete whack, the aggressive little furball now sported a half-mohawk instead of her earlier neat poodle poof.

Mrs. Peterson leaped towards me with a maniacal look in her eye. She plowed into me, grabbing my machete wielding hand in a surprisingly firm grip.

I grunted as I hit the floor. The pair of us grappled for control of the machete while Jayson and Harold continued duking it out over the guns. Mrs. Peterson and I rolled back and forth, the machete waving wildly. Twinkles yipped again. More poodle hair flew.

Mrs. Peterson caught a handful of my hair and yanked hard. I replied with a sharp jab to her left cheek.

Her nose came off in my hand.

"What the--?" I stared in horror at the pulverized proboscis in my palm. Holy crap! I raised slow, fearful eyes to her face. One too many late night zombie movies left me half expecting to see some gory gaping hole where her nose had been.

Instead, I found another nose. A smaller, definitely younger looking nose. Sticking out from the hole in her face where her other nose had been.

"What the--?" I muttered again.

Mrs. Peterson gave a shriek and the battle for the machete resumed in earnest. Two more chunks of the woman's face fell off during out struggle, and her normally neat gray bun-a wig, I now realized-skewed around sideways to hang over one ear like a furry one-sided ear muff, then fell off completely to reveal long blonde hair. Who was this woman?

The click of a cocking gun hammer made us both freeze.

"Get up." Jayson held one gun to Mrs. Peterson's head and kept the other pointed at the now-subdued Harold Peterson. Jayson spared a quick glance and a charming grin for me. "You okay, Cara?"

I nodded. "What the heck is going on here? Who is she?" I grabbed my sheet and wrapped it around my body-or at least the parts of it that weren't being enthusiastically masticated by Twinkle's tiny canines.

Jayson prodded Mrs. Peterson with his gun. "Ditch the disguise."

With a fulminating glare, Mrs Peterson peeled off what was left of her crumbling flesh-toned mask.

"Cara Heart…meet Imelda Branchos."

Imelda? "But I thought-" I broke off in confusion. It was very late, and I'd had all the twists and turns I could take for one night. None of this made any sense. "If she's Imelda, then who was the other Imelda? The one who looked like me?"

Jayson shrugged. Magnificently. I have to give props where they're due. The man had a fine pair of shoulders. "One of her look-alikes, no doubt, meant to throw us off the track of the real Imelda."

"I don't understand."

"I'm finally beginning to," Jayson said. "It's a triple cross. Mrs. Peterson-the real, Mrs. Peterson-is the treasurer of PETOP, and she had access to all the accounts. Imelda must have seduced dough-boy here into double-crossing his grandma, stealing the account access codes, and then set you up, Cara, to take the fall when the money came up missing. All while she passed herself off as the innocent Mrs. Peterson and waltzed away scot-free with two million Euros. What'd you do, Mel, sleep with the delivery van guy so he'd purposely deliver the money to Mrs. Peterson instead of Cara?"

"What?" Harold stared at Imelda in shock. "You meant to have the money delivered to Grammy? You were planning to take it for yourself all along? You mean…you don't really love me?"

"Of course I don't love you, you buffoon!" Imelda sneered. "Who could love a whiny little grandma's boy like you? My plan was brilliant-and it would have worked too, if not for you, Brant, and that cheap little tart-and that little dog too!"

Twinkles, now sporting a full sleek and spiky Mohawk and a kick-ass abstract body-shave, growled, gave a series of ear-splitting high-pitched barks, and trotted over to lift a leg over Imelda's furry pink bunny slipper.

"Why you mangy little-"

"Hey!" I snatched up Twinkles and glared at the pretend protector of poodle pulchritude. "Back off the dog."

An hour later, as the clock struck midnight on my sex-and-chocolate deprived Valentine's Day, I stood beside the bullet-riddled remains of my front door and watched Imelda Branchos and Harold Peterson ride away in the back of an FBI vehicle. An ambulance carrying the real Mrs. Peterson, who'd been discovered in her bedroom closet bound with a dog leash and gagged with a chew-toy, had left a few minutes earlier.

Once again fully clothed and looking positively edible, Special Agent Jayson Brant stood on my front porch and said his goodbyes. "Look, I've got to wrap things up at the office, then fly up to DC to tie up loose ends with the PETOP task force. I don't know how long I'll be gone. A couple weeks, at least. Maybe I'll see you around when I get back?"

I smiled-bravely, I thought. "Sure. Around." I'd dated enough sexy hunks to recognize a euphemism for never when I heard one. This was it then. Finito. A crappy end to a crappy Valentines. I clutched Twinkles, whom I'd agreed to poodle-sit for the night, and tried not to cry as the hunkiest man I've ever almost had sex with prepared to walk back out of my life. "I understand."

"Brant!" Jayson's partner shouted from the car by the curb. "Let's move!"

"Gotta run." Jayson leaned down to give me a quick kiss…then lingered to turn that kiss into a bone-melting, better-than-chocolate, tonsil-tickling smoochfest. The kind of kiss that made me forget about chocolate and flowers and crappy Valentines and start thinking about supersized condoms and trying all sixty-four positions of the Kama Sutra. When the kiss ended, we were both breathing hard. "See you around, Cara."

Then he was gone. When the tail lights of his black sedan disappeared around the corner, I glanced down at the Mohawk-sporting poodle in my arms and sighed. "Got any chocolate covered dog biscuits, Twink?"

* * *

Four weeks later, my newly-restored doorbell chimed. I peered through the peephole of my brand new, bullet-hole-free front door and found the entire fish-eye lens filled with the padded scarlet satin of large heart-shaped box.

"Special delivery for Cara Heart."

I knew that voice. Low, sultry, as meltingly sinful as my favorite chocolate. I unhooked the chain and opened the door.

Wearing a pair of snug jeans and a black leather jacket and holding the biggest box of chocolate I'd ever seen, Special Agent Jayson Brant flashed his killer smile and said, "Hi Cara. I've got a package for you."

"I can see that," I purred, but I wasn't looking at the chocolate. I stepped aside to let him in, taking the box of chocolates from him and tossing them on the entry table. "It's a little late for Valentines."

"Don't say that." He bent down to nibble my lips. "I was hoping you'd still be wearing your heart."

"Sorry, Jayson." I shook my head. "I'm celebrating St. Paddy's Day now." As his eyes lit up, I gave a sultry smile and guided his hands to my jeans. "Feeling lucky?"

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