The Mane Event
Page 3

Maybe God would decide to smile down on her and shed be able to piss off Missy so much the woman would do something stupid. Oh, if Missy would only hit her. Then Dez could handcuff the bitch and dump her butt in a holding cell for a few hours. Maybe the hookers would make her cry. Like she made Dez cry all those years ago on that muggy late-August day.
Youll never be good enough for him.
Thats what they told her as all four sisters circled her like a pack of wolves. She never forgot those brutal words, but she never let them hold her back either. Far from it. She probably should thank Missy. Without her inherently evil nature, Dez may not have had the guts to become a cop. She decided then and there to prove Missy Llewellyn wrong, and as far as she could tell, she had. Dez realized now these people, with all their money and connections, werent nearly good enough for her.
Desperately fighting the smile that threatened to spread across her entire face, she suddenly realized all her fantasies seem to be coming true at one time. The thought of putting Missy in a squad car actually made her nipples hard.
Nope. This was quietly turning into the best day ever. Like someone hit her in the head with her Christmas gift five days early. It almost brought a tear of happiness to her eye. Nothing would ever beat this. Absolutely nothing.
So where the hell have you been?
Dez shuddered. Man, that voice sounded familiar. She only knew of one person with a voice like that. A freaky little kid who had to be the smallest fourteen-year-old shed ever remembered seeing with the lowest voice shed ever heard. She spun on her heelonly to be faced with a god, if she did say so herself. Big. Like some kind of beautiful linebacker. A shaved head with a serious five oclock shadow issue, and gold-colored eyes. Eyes that, at the moment, were staring at her like a slab of prime rib. No. This couldnt be Mace Llewellyn. Her heart dropped. True, this man was pretty, but she saw pretty every day. The Mace she remembered wasnt pretty, but he always knew how to make her smile. She learned over the years that was a hell of a lot more important than looks.
Wellanswer me.
Uh-oh. Nutcase alert. How come all the good-looking ones were insane? Imuhsorry. Do I know you?
He crossed big arms over a big chest and smirked at her. Take a minute. Let it come to you.
She blinked and tried to remember all the exits out of the room in case the gorgeous nutcase went postal.
Still waiting.
It hit her. Like a slap to the forehead. Butno. It couldnt be. It wasnt humanly possible. But that superior tone. That haughty expression. That damn smirk. That killer voice that had deliciously matured with age. All together, they really could only belong to one person. The one person shed been waiting morethan twenty years to see again.
What happened to the boy she remembered? Apparently, thisthisman replaced him. Oh, and what a man!
But no matter how different he looked, she still knew. Maybe those freaky gold eyes gave him away. Or those gorgeous full lips that, even at fourteen, she hadnt been immune to.
Or maybe the way he stared at her. Like he spent every waking moment imagining her naked.
Only one person ever looked at her like that. Well, only one person ever looked at her like that where she didnt have the overwhelming desire to rip eyes from sockets.
Oh my GodMace?
Time had done wonders for her. Some women never looked as good as they did in high school, especially at thirty-six. But she did. Better. She still had those killer eyes. Gray with flecks of green. He used to stare into those eyes during biology class as they faked their way through the experiments. Of course, thats when he wasnt staring at that beautiful face with that cute, little pug nose or that incredibly hot body. Shed been an early bloomer, wearing a healthy C cup while the other girls were just moving from training bras. All of that didnt matter, though. Not to Mace. That was just the cherry on top.
For him, it had been more than her big tits and luscious mouth. Dez actually liked him back then. Just the way he was. Ninety pounds soaking wet, barely five foot three, a head of hair he couldnt control, and the attitude of a giant. Most people didnt like Mace. Dez, however, found him funny and smart. Even his sisters never saw him that way. To a fourteen-year-old, that meant everything to him.
Then she left him. Walked out of his life and never came back. At the moment, Mace was completely ready to push her up against the wall and demand she tell him how she could leave him like she did.
For years, a part of him kept expecting to see her again. Although he always wished he could forget about her. Lose himself in some of the other women he met since he last saw her saddle shoes walking down the school hall and out of his life. But he never could. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget about her. Hell, he still dreamed about her. She was older in his dreams, thank God, but his dreams didnt do justice to the woman now standing in front of him, an NYPD badge hanging on a chain around her neck.
Mace Llewellyn? Is that you?
So, she did remember him. Good. Now he could tell her what a bitch shed been for leaving him. For breaking his fourteen-year-old heart into a million pieces and stomping on it with her saddle shoes. He geared himself to do it, toountil she smiled at him. A smile that practically knocked him on his ass.
After all these years, the woman leaped beyond perfect. Especially when she literally threw herself at him, her arms looping around his neck.