LITMIR.BIZ

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something fierce about you.”

      In her peripheral vision, she could see Dirk. He had stepped into the room and was moving slowly toward them.

      She moved slightly to her right, causing Vittorio to have to turn his back to Dirk in order to maintain his clear view of her feminine assets.

      Giving him her best, dimpled smile, she reached out and ran one hand lightly from his shoulder to his elbow, her fingertips skimming over his biceps. “Maybe you can settle the argument for me.”

      He gulped, his eyes glued to her cleavage. “Ah, sure…I mean…I’ll try.”

      Her hand moved further down, along his forearms, and she leaned closer still, until her chest was nearly brushing his. “My boyfriend said that to get a body like this, you must do steroids. But I said, ‘No way. He gets all those gorgeous muscles from working out. I can just tell.’”

      Vito was breathing hard…hard enough for her to congratulate herself on being able to seduce a guy half her age.

      She’d like to think it was because she was just so danged hot, but she reminded herself that Pretty Vito had this felony voyeurism problem and was, no doubt, a pretty easy mark.

      Dirk was only a few feet behind him.

      It was time.

      She reached down and in a practiced move, snapped one of the handcuffs onto Vito’s right wrist.

      A split second later, she twisted his arm behind his back, and Dirk was ready to grab it.

      Vittorio was so shocked at going from “seduced” to “cuffed” in a heartbeat that he was captured before he knew it.

      And even then, he didn’t seem to get it.

      “What is this?” he asked Savannah, indignant. “You and your boyfriend…you two into something kinky here?”

      “Nope,” said Dirk as he spun him around to face him. “Only one perv-o here, buddy. And you’re it.” He flashed him his badge. “San Carmelita Police Department. And you’re under arrest.”

      “What am I supposed to have done? What are you arresting me for?”

      “Taking naughty pictures,” Savannah told him. “Or should I say, talking some nitwit girl into doing it for you.”

      Vito bristled. “I did no such thing. If she was doing something like that, it was all her own idea! It’s her! Arrest her!”

      As they led him from the locker room, Savannah shook her head. “Shoot, there goes tonight’s fantasy.”

      “What?” Dirk asked, cranky.

      “The chivalrous knight fighting the dragon to rescue the fair damsel fantasy. Sir Galahad here just ruined it.” She sighed and shook her head sadly. “Dadgummit. And with that body he would’ve looked so good in a suit of armor, too.”

      Chapter 2

      “When the hell is she gonna be done messing with that?” Dirk grumbled as he sat on Savannah’s sofa, petting her oversized black cat, Diamante, who was sprawled across his lap.

      Diamante’s only reaction to his complaint was a slight tail twitch to show her own irritation. Diamante and her sister, Cleopatra, held the firm conviction that when a human petted a cat, they should give the task their full, undivided attention.

      Dirk was falling down on the job.

      Besides his preoccupation with Tammy, he had one eye on the television. The Dodgers were down four runs at the bottom of the eighth, which made him even grumpier than usual. And grumpy, distracted guys didn’t give the best pets.

      In the corner of Savannah’s living room, sitting at the rolltop desk, Tammy was working intently at the computer. She had banned everyone, even Savannah, from coming near her while she completed her task.

      As Savannah walked by the desk, on her way from the kitchen, a tray of assorted desserts in hand, Tammy grabbed a manila folder from the desktop and held it over the computer screen.

      “Oh, please,” Savannah said, “it’s not like I haven’t seen your bare butt in person plenty of times before.” She held out the tray. “Here, eat something before you grow faint from hunger.”

      “Like that would ever happen to anybody around here.”

      With a critical eye Tammy glanced over the plate laden with fudge brownies, a piece of pecan pie, a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and something that looked like a strawberry sundae. “Eh, it’s all poison. Pure poison. You really shouldn’t contaminate your body with—”

      “Yours is the one in the corner,” Savannah told her, tamping down her irritation. “It’s strawberries over yogurt over a sliced banana, sprinkled with chopped pecans. I made it just for you.”

      Tammy hesitated, laid down the envelope, and reached for the dish. “You put sugar in it, didn’t you?”

      “Don’t you snerl up your nose at my food, girlie. You’ll eat it or wear it!” Savannah glanced at the computer screen. “And believe you me, it’ll cover a lot more of you than that bar of soap did.”

      Tammy squealed and slapped the folder back over the screen.

      Savannah walked over to Dirk, chuckling. “Here you go, big boy,” she said, setting the tray on the coffee table in front of him. “A little something to take the edge off that ravenous hunger of yours…the one you worked up while pushing away from my dinner table fifteen minutes ago.”

      He merely grunted and continued to stare at the television. That was a bad sign. Dirk ignoring free food? She wondered if she should waste time trying to find his pulse or just go straight to CPR.

      She glanced at the screen. “That bad?”

      “They suck. They just stinkin’ suck.”

      “O-o-okay.”

      Dirk had a real gift for making succinct, pithy, insightful comments; it was part of the wonder that was him.

      But he wasn’t so deeply entrenched in despair that he couldn’t rally enough to reach for a brownie. “She’d better not be ruining my evidence over there,” he grumbled, nodding toward Tammy.

      “She’s not. She’s just fuzzying out her…um…”

      “Her fuzzy.”

      “Sh-h-h!” Savannah sat down on her favorite overstuffed, cushy chair next to him. “If she hears you say something like that, she’ll delete the pictures altogether.”

      “She will not. She enjoys nabbing and prosecuting a perv as much as we do.”

      “True.” Savannah smiled as she scooped Cleopatra, her other black mini-panther, onto her lap.

      Tammy appeared to be a gentle, peaceful, loving soul to those who met her. And most of the time, she was pure human sunshine.

      But, like Savannah, she also had a fierce streak, and her persona could change to Warrior Queen in a heartbeat…in defense of herself and others whom she deemed innocent and in need of protection.

      Savannah knew that, given no alternative, Tammy would have “bared it all” in a courtroom—if there had been no other way to prosecute Vittorio the Peeporio. But Tammy was handy with the computer, and she was particularly good with manipulating photos, so why shouldn’t she guard her own modesty with a few well-placed defocused circles?

      “I mean it,” Dirk said, biting into a brownie, “her messin’ around with those pictures better not jeopardize my case. I want this guy. You should’ve heard the lip he gave me when I was booking him. Comes from a rich family in Twin Oaks. Considers himself above such things as getting arrested. It’s time he had a reality check, and I’m happy to be the one writing it.”

      “Tammy’s not going to ruin your evidence.

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