sexy?”
Ramirez looked down at my fishnets again and grinned. “Maybe. Just a little bit.”
“You know…” I said, taking a step closer. “I don’t have to give the costume back until tomorrow…”
Ramirez paused a moment, looked down at my dress again, going from the low neckline, to the healthy dose of cleavage the empire cut popped upward, to the touchably soft velvet trialing down my torso…
Then his eyes hit The Bump and immediately turned from dark chocolate to a flat brown.
“You know, I’m just not really in the mood tonight, Maddie.”
I blinked. Trying to process the words that had just come out of his mouth. My husband, the testosterone machine, the walking sex drive, was not in the mood. Not in the mood! What the hell was that supposed to mean?!
“What is that supposed to mean?” I blurted out before I could pause to decide if I really wanted to hear the answer to that question.
Ramirez cleared his throat and focused really hard on a non-existent piece of lint on his sleeve. “It just means that I still have a lot of paperwork to do tonight.”
“A lot of work.”
“And I’m kind of tired.”
“Kind of tired.”
“And I have a bit of a headache.”
“A bit of a headache,” I repeated doing a fabulous imitation of a parrot as my mind went nuts trying to read between his lines.
“Look, I’m gonna go call in this info about Alexa’s missing friend,” he said, looking everywhere but at me and my fishnets now.
“Uh huh. Sure. Great.” I watched his retreating back duck into the other room and close the door, not sure if I wanted to scream at him, cry, or just plain give up.
Chapter Twelve
“Ramirez thinks I’m fat.”
Dana gasped and put a hand over her mouth. “He did
I shrugged. “He didn’t say it, but he won’t sleep with me,” I told her over what was fast becoming our morning chamomile ritual. “And I’m sure it’s because I’m fat.”
“You are not fat,” Dana said. “You’re pregnant.”
“Dana, you are a great friend. But there is not a baby in my ass, and my ass has grown to twice its size. That is a fat ass.”
Dana peeked behind me. She bit her lip. “It’s just to balance out the front. If your butt didn’t grow, you might fall right over forward.”
“Fab. So I’m exponentially expanding all over?”
“I’ve heard that breastfeeding makes the pounds melt right off,” Dana reassured me.
“So I might be able to lose the ass, but I’m trading it in for saggy breasts?”
“Don’t worry,” Dana said, waving me off. “There’s always plastic surgery for that. Oh, have you heard of the mommy makeover?”
I hated to ask… “What’s the mommy makeover?”
“Ohmigod, it’s great. They do your breast, tummy, and saddlebags all at the same time.”
“Saddlebags?” My eyes flew to my thighs. “I don’t have saddle bags, too, do I?”
Dana blinked at me. “No. Of course not,” she said, her eyes wide and innocent.
“Oh, God, that’s your lying face. I do have saddlebags!”
“I think we need more tea,” Dana said, getting up to refill my mug.
I thunked my head down on the kitchen table, doing deep, Lamaze breaths, willing myself to come to terms with my whale-like status. It was just temporary, right? With enough hours on the Stairmaster after the baby came, I’m sure I could shrink my ass back to normal size. Some pec-working push-ups, and my boobs would perk right back up. A couple of sea-weed wraps, and I’m sure my thighs would smooth out. And if all that failed, I made a plan to start a mommy make-over fund as soon as my next paycheck arrived.
“You okay?” Dana said, setting my mug in front of me. “‘Cause you kinda sound like you’re hyperventilating.”
I paused mid-deep breath. “I’m fine,” I lied. “Look, let’s just drop the whole subject and go look up that license plate number, okay?”
“Right,” Dana agreed. “So, where’s Ramirez’s computer?”
“Spare room,” I directed, grabbing my mug and leading the way to our guest bedroom slash storage room slash Ramirez’s office slash the baby’s room.
“Whoa,” Dana said stepping through the doorway. “What happened in here?”
I watched her wide eyes take in the room. A stack of Tupperware boxes filled with holiday decorations took up one end and a wardrobe rack filled with overflow from my closet the other. A crib sat at the far side under the window, though it was filled to the top with baby items, still in their packages. Humidifiers, wipes warmers, bottle sanitizers, and about a million other things that I wasn’t sure what they did but my mom had insisted that her grandbaby needed. There was a twin bed somewhere under a pile of baby clothes, and in the far corner was a desk where a laptop hunkered down amidst piles of papers.
I guess all the slashes in our room’s use had kinda filled it to max.
“It’s a little messy, I know,” I admitted.
“Messy? Dude, I’m about to dial
“I’m going to clear it out before the baby comes.”
She looked down at me. Back up at the mess. “You sure you have enough time?”
“Let’s just run the plate,” I said, stepping over a baby excer-saucer and a package of diapers to get to the laptop.
I jiggled the mouse to life, pulling up Ramirez’s desktop. In the top corner was an icon labeled CADMV. I clicked it, and the Department of Motor Vehicles program immediately popped up, a window appearing that prompted me for a password.
“You know the password?” Dana asked, watching the screen over my shoulder.
I shook my head. “Not exactly.” I tried his date of birth, then hit enter.
The screen blinked at me, then displayed a line of text stating I had entered an incorrect password, prompting me to try again.
So, I did. I entered my date of birth. Our wedding date. Our address, phone number, and any other combo of numbers I could think of, before turning to words he might use. I started with “cop”, moved on to “homicide” and even “lapddude”, before finally drawing a blank.
“I’m stumped,” I confessed.
“Here, let me try,” Dana said, dragging the keyboard her direction. After a couple of combos of numbers and letters, she finally smiled, a light bulb going off behind her eyes. “Duh!” she said, her fingers flying. I saw her type in the word “Maddie”, and hit enter.
And the screen switched to the database homepage.
I grinned sheepishly, feeling a flutter of warm fuzzies in my stomach. Okay, so maybe our sex life wasn’t making like rabbits lately, but my husband was thinking of me even when he was running bad guys’ license plates. In a weird way, that was kind of romantic.
“We’re in,” Dana announced, pulling the slip of paper from last night out of her pocket. She quickly typed in the digits she’d written down, hit enter, and we waited a beat before the program spit back a name associated with the vehicle: Lawrence Goldstein. I grabbed a Babies-R-Us receipt from the crib and wrote down the address displayed beneath his name on the back. It was in downtown L.A., and, half an hour later, we were standing in front of it, looking up at a high-rise that gleamed against the bright morning sunshine.
We entered the lobby, which was white marble floors, sleek modern chairs, and a bustle of people filtering past
