Dixie twisted her fingers in the white sheet as she lay
perfectly still on the examining table and tried to
remember to breathe. Fear settled in her belly like sour
milk. She was scared! Bone-numbing, jelly-legged, full-
blown-migraine petrified. It wasn't every day that her
left breast got turned into a giant pincushion.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the ultrasound
machine or think about the biopsy needle or anything else
in the overly bright sterile room that would determine if
the lump was really bad news.
She clenched her teeth so they wouldn't chatter, then
prayed for herself and all women who had ever, or would
ever, go through this. Waiting to find out was more
terrifying than her divorce and wrapping her Camaro around
a tree rolled into one.
God, let me out of this and I'll change. I swear it. No
more pity parties over Danny's dumping her for that
Victoria's Secret model, no more finding comfort in junk
food, no more telling people how to live their lives and
not really living her own. And if that meant leaving
Whistlers Bend, she'd suck it up and do it and quit making
excuses.
"We're taking out the fluid now," the surgeon said.
"It's..."
Dixie's eyes shot wide open. "It's clear."
Dixie swallowed, and finally got out, "Meaning?" The
surgeon's eyes stayed focused on what she was doing but
they smiled, Dixie could tell. She'd developed the ability
to read people from having waited tables at the Purple
Sage Restaurant for three years and dealing with happy,
sad and everything in between customers.
The surgeon continued. "Meaning the lump in your breast is
a cyst. I'll send the fluid off to the pathologist to be
certain, but the lump appears to be no more than a
nuisance."
A nuisance! A nuisance was a telemarketer, a traffic
ticket, gaining five pounds! Still, the important thing
was — she'd escaped. She said another prayer for the women
who wouldn't escape. She dressed, left the hospital and
resisted the urge to turn hand-springs all the way to her
car. Or maybe she did turn handsprings — she wasn't sure.
She was on her way home. In one hour she'd be back in
Whistlers Bend. Her life still belonged to her, and not to
doctors and hospitals and pills and procedures. She fired
up her Camaro and sat for a moment, appreciating the
familiar idle of her favorite car as she stared out at the
flat landscape of Billings, Montana. This was one of those
definitive moments when life smacked her upside the head
and said, Dixie, old girl, get your ass in gear. You've
wanted action, adventure, hair-raising experiences for as
long as you can remember.
Now's the time to make them happen!
"NICK ROMERO." He stood on the piece-of-junk ladder he'd
found in the back room of the Curly Cactus and unscrewed
the curtain rod with the electric-pink curtains that gave
him an upset stomach just looking at them. The bracket let
go, swung free, and the material slid off the rod onto the
floor with the green rug straight from someone's garage
sale.
Not that he understood the inner workings of garage sales.
Twenty years in the FBI didn't lend itself to that unless
the garage contained something stolen, smuggled, dead or
held hostage, and the sale was guns, drugs, cars or even
people.
But all that would soon be over. He was quitting the
bureau and getting lost in some little town where no one
would know he was ex-FBI. Anonymity would increase his
chances for old age. He'd open a restaurant that really
was his and not a front for an investigation like this one.
He'd had enough action to fill two lifetimes. It was the
main reason he'd had a girlfriend, not a wife, who'd left
him for a high-school history teacher. The FBI had been
his life, till he'd woken up one morning and couldn't
remember if he was in his apartment or on assignment
because both places looked the same, and he was alone.
He wanted permanence in his life for a change. He wanted
his primary concern to be perfecting an Alfredo sauce, the
only thing fired his way compliments on his linguini, the
biggest danger an overbaked casserole of Nonna Celest's
ziti.
He dragged the ladder to the other side of the window and
was undoing the other bracket when he heard "I'm too sexy
for this town" coming from the back entrance. A woman in a
denim skirt, scoop-necked green blouse and a cowboy hat in
hand pranced into the room, oblivious to him on his ladder.
He jumped down, noticing great brown eyes, soft skin, a
woman in her early forties, who smelled like heaven on
earth, and had the most sensual mouth he'd ever seen.
"Who are you?" she asked. "What have you done with Jan?"
She gazed around. "And what in the almighty world have you
done to the Curly Cactus? It's...ruined."
Her eyes turned to slits and her lips thinned. "Is this
one of those makeover shows? I hate makeover shows. The
Curly Cactus doesn't need a makeover. It's perfect the way
it is...was."
He folded his arms and gazed down at her. "Sorry you feel
like that. I bought the place and —"
"You're going to run the Curly Cactus?" She wiggled her
brows and gave him a critical once-over as she sashayed
around him. "Well, you're handsome enough — I'll give you
that. You'd probably get business on your looks alone. But
I sure hope you're good at running a salon, or you won't
last in this town. Women here take their hair real
serious."
She faced the bank of mirrors and went on without taking a
breath. "So, how about starting with me. I need a dye job.
Make the red a little brighter. Mine is sort of drab
auburn. I'm thinking Lucille Ball red. Some pizzazz."
Who the hell was this ball of fire? What had happened to
laid-back, aw-shucks and moseyingand-meandering western?
He'd been warned he'd have to change his big-city ways to
fit in. But this woman wore him out just listening to her.
His cell phone rang, and he snatched it from the counter,
checking the number. Mother, which translated into Wes
Cutter, his contact and partner for the past ten
years. "Hey, Mom," he greeted Wes, who just loved being
called that. "I got company right now. Call you back."
Nick disconnected and said to the gal with the delicious
lips, "I'm not running the Curly Cactus."
"That wasn't a very nice way to talk to your mother. She
raised you, you know. Cared for you when you were sick.
You should call her back and apologize."
Okay, so this was the west. Small-town values, neighbors
and where mother really did refer to the woman who'd given
you life and wasn't a derogatory term men used with one
another. He pointed at the swivel chairs, wash basins and
dryers and tried for a good-old-boy stance. "I'm running a
family restaurant. Moving all this stuff into the shed out
back. Going to sell it on eBay."
The woman's brown eyes shot wide open. "No!"
"EBay's the best." Except maybe in ruralAmerica? "Or I'll
sell it at a garage sale." See, he was getting the hang of
this. That sounded more hometown, right?
"This is awful. Why would Jan sell?" The gal walked
around. "I don't get it. She was happy here. Everybody was
happy here — at least, the females. No matter how bad your
day was you could come to Jan for a manicure and feel
better, leave all your problems behind. This place is —
make that was — great." She stared back at him, none too
happy. "And now you've killed it."
How could anyone flip out over a salon? "Jan was tired of
Montana winters and wanted sun. You can understand that."
And the FBI had paid her a potful of money and thrown in a
new car so they could move in ASAP to try to find some
smugglers. "You're really not opening a salon?" He pointed
to his chest. "I do calamari, not curls, lady."
"Lady? Maybe I should just call you man." The woman
grabbed a handful of her hair. "What am I supposed to do
with this? I need color." She wiggled her fingers at
him. "I need my nails done. I need pampering. I've had a
rough three days."
"Give me some time and I'll rustle you up some grub."
What she gave him was a you-have-lost-your-mind look.
Guess he'd carried the John Wayne attitude a little to
far. He didn't get small-town western for crap — until she
held out her arms, pulling her silk blouse tight over
voluptuous curves and he suddenly got western just fine.
Oh, boy!
"I'm a size fourteen. Do I look like I need grub? I need
new hair to go with my new Stetson. I want Jan back. Jan's
the hair diva."
"Well, she's going to be the diva in Sun City, Arizona.
Nick's should be open soon.You'll have to deal."
"Are you always such a smart aleck?"
"Sorry. I've been working my —" ass off, he almost said,
then settled on " — working really hard since I took over
the place."
At least that part was true. Sheriff Jack Dawson had
contacted the FBI two weeks ago, and since then Nick had
been on fast-forward to get his cover together, learn more
than he ever wanted to know about illegal designer stuff
and move to Whistlers Bend, Montana, before the smugglers
relocated to another town. This was the best lead the FBI
had on these guys yet.