Undercover In High Heels

“I’ll be fine.” Just as soon as the urge to vomit passed.

Ramirez seemed to understand, wrapping one arm around my shoulders and hunkering down beside me. I’m not sure how long we sat like that, but finally the world stopped feeling like a Tilt-A-Whirl and I peeked my head up.

“Thanks, ” I said.

He forced a grin. It wasn’t very convincing. “Anytime. So”-he gestured up to the mirror-“maybe you should tell me again about the other threats you received.”

I took in a big gulp of air, letting it out on a breath that was shakier than I would have liked. “Okay. They started with the squirrel. Then the bird and the nasty note. Then he tried to run me off the road yesterday. Now this.”

“What? Wait, back up-run you off the road?” Ramirez blinked at me.

Oops. I bit my lip. I forgot I hadn’t told him about the whole road-rage thing.

“Uh, well, he kind of ran into my Jeep. A little. But Dana and I were fine. Just a couple bumps on the head and some minor whiplash. No biggie. Besides, I’ve got Mrs. Rosenblatt’s pepper spray now.” I said, trying to make light of the whole thing. Which, by the way, I think was very brave of me, considering my apartment had just been vandalized and I was fetal on my bathroom floor.

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Ramirez’s jaw tightened, and I could tell it took all he had to keep that vein in his neck under control.

“In my defense, this did happen during the we’re-not-speaking-to-each-other phase.”

“Please tell me you at least filed a police report.”

“Um, well…not really…”

Ramirez looked at the ceiling and muttered something in Spanish. I had a feeling the words blonde and last nerve were in there somewhere.

“You’re mad again, aren’t you?”

He gritted his teeth. “No, ” he lied.

“Then why is that vein bulging?”

Ramirez looked at me. His jaw clenched. His eye twitched. Then he consulted the ceiling again, blowing out a long breath. “I’m not mad at you, Maddie. I just…” He trailed off, shaking his head. His gaze rested on the death threat-via-Maybelline on my bathroom mirror. “I just sometimes wish like hell I had a normal girlfriend.” He stood up and brushed off the set of his jeans. “Look, I’m going to go call this in. Don’t touch anything!”

I watched him walk out into my living room and pull his cell from his pocket. But I honestly couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. I was staring after him, utterly stunned.

Did he just say girlfriend?

Fifteen minutes later my apartment was swarming with crime-scene guys taking photographs of my bathroom mirror, checking the window locks, and dusting my design table for fingerprints. I winced as black print dust settled on my pair of white leather Gucci boots. That stuff washed off, right?

It was after I told one guy with a bulging gut and a bulbous nose to please, please, please not spray any of that fluorescent body-fluid-magnifying stuff near my two-hundred-dollar Kors sandals that the police chased me downstairs and back out to Ramirez’s SUV. I was instructed to wait there. Which I did. Though the longer I waited, the more anxious I felt.

As glad as I was that Ramirez had taken this threat seriously enough to call in the big guns, the sight of said big guns turning my apartment into something out of CBS’s prime-time lineup was less than comforting. It was one thing to watch police gather evidence on TV. It was another when it was your trash they were pawing through for clues and your drains they were checking for hair and fibers. The fact that the place I’d always associated with safety and home was now being treated as a crime scene was a little unnerving. Okay-it was a lot unnerving. So much that I was back to doing the head- between-the-legs thing by the time Ramirez finally came down the stairs to check on me.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Uh-huh, ” I lied.

Ramirez lifted my chin with his finger, forcing me to look at him. He raised one eyebrow.

“I know, I know. I’m a terrible liar.”

Ramirez grinned and pulled me toward him. He wrapped both arms around me and planted a kiss on the top of my head. “Come on, ” he said. “Let’s go home.”

I gestured up the stairs. “Home’s currently being invaded by the LAPD.”

“I meant my home.”

I blinked. “Oh.” More blinking. “Okay.”

So, here’s the thing. I’d only ever been to Ramirez’s place once before, and, even then, I hadn’t actually made it inside. His pager had gone off while we were necking in the car, and he’d had to turn around and drop me off at my place on the way to a murder-suicide in the Hollywood Hills. Ramirez lived in a two-bedroom bungalow in West L.A. It was an older neighborhood that might have been advertised as “family friendly” back in the fifties when the little stucco structures had been built, but fifty years later it was bordering the fringes of neighborhoods where you didn’t walk alone unless you were carrying an industrial-size can of Mace. For a guy like Ramirez, this wasn’t a problem. He fit the neighborhood perfectly, just a little on the fringes of dangerous himself. But for a barely-tall- enough-to-make-the-height-requirements-at-Six Flags blonde wearing a cake-covered pink sundress and matching rhinestone-studded pumps, it was the kind of neighborhood where I wouldn’t want to loiter on the front porch.

But it wasn’t his shady neighbors that had me biting the traces of frosting off my lip.

First he showed up to take me to a family function, then he used the G-word, now he wanted to take me home? This was more attention than I’d gotten from Ramirez in weeks. Months. Maybe ever. The neurotic side of me started to wonder if it was because he liked me, or because I’d suddenly turned into a case.

Though I didn’t have time to wonder long.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice so close that his hot breath tickled my ear. My body responded immediately, sending a quiver through my belly that ended somewhere slightly lower.

I told Neurotic Chick to give it a rest. Haven’t-gotten-any-in-longer-than-Dana Chick needed a night out.

“Ready.”

Half an hour later I was standing in Ramirez’s living room wondering if everyone in L.A. had a nicer place than mine.

Heavy wood furnishings filled the room, along with overstuffed chairs and a dark leather sofa. A copy of the L.A. Times, opened to the sports section, littered the top of a maple coffee table, along with a remote control that looked like it could land the space shuttle. A big-screen TV took up one wall, while a fireplace with a thick wood mantel spanned the other. The walls were painted a warm coffee color and decorated with family photos, dozens of smiling, framed faces staring back at me. Overall, the room was cozy, yet completely guy. I’d never really pictured Ramirez as having a home, but now that I was standing in it, I realized it fit him perfectly.

“Nice place, ” I said, peeking down the small hallway to the right. I could see a couple of bedrooms and what I assumed was a bath at the end.

Ramirez took off his jacket, throwing it casually over the back of a La-Z-Boy pointed at the TV. “It’s old, needs a little work still. But it’s a nice place to come home to.”

“Well, it certainly beats my place at the moment.”

At the mention of my apartment-slash-crime scene, he got a slightly pained look, his eyebrows pinching together in concern. “Look, Maddie, I need you to promise me something.”

I licked my lower lip. “Okay…”

“Promise me that if you ever see this guy again, see his car, or see any more boxes on your doorstep-promise that you’ll call me first.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Ramirez talked right over me.

“Not call Dana to pull another Lucy-and-Ethel act. Not call Mrs. Rosenblatt to borrow a can of pepper spray…”

“She forced that stuff on me!” I protested. “I didn’t even want it!”

Ramirez crossed the room in one quick stride, standing just inches from me. “Please, Maddie, just promise me