Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

Artie had to look. He pretended to stop and feel his watch. Only shock kept him from showing how shook up he was. And then Dante’s goons grabbed Luci out of the Nash, slamming the door, but leaving the keys dangling in the ignition. He turned away as the dark car snaked past him and turned the corner. Was this the solution to his problem? Or an escalation of his problems? Why would Dante want Luci—

He didn’t have time to finish that thought. It was replaced by the realization that Fern and Donald’s car had drifted off course with the street and on course with him. It was moving slow, but not so slow it didn’t clip him as he tried to leap out of the way. He landed behind a familiar looking small hedge. In a distant sort of way, he heard the car continue on until it crunched into a large oak, releasing a shower of acorns to pelt it and him.

Dante was working on a new sketch when Cain and Abel thrust Benny’s “Jane” into his office. For purposes of intimidation, he kept writing. First there would be the inevitable burst of indignation. Then the demand to know what was going on, why she’d been brought here. When he didn’t answer, she would subside into an uneasy silence. A full minute after that, he would look up and ask his questions. And she would rush to answer them.

So he smiled and continued to fill the silence with the scratch, scratch of his pen...until she strolled past him to stare out the glass window of his office into the warehouse where his Persephone waited the Mardi Gras call.

He looked at his guys first. They lifted their shoulders in identical shrugs. And, he noted with a deepening frown, they looked odd. Cain and Abel didn’t do odd. He tapped the pen against the desk, faster and faster as hope faded that she would crack first. Okay. He spun his chair around. Her back was to him, but even so, she wasn’t at all what he imagined Benny’s “odd bird” would be. Tall and reed slim, she was wearing a yellow sundress with clean, graceful lines that flattered the greyhound lines of her body. On her feet was something that might have been sandals, so brief were they, and on her head she had a bright red cap with the brim pointed back.

He got up and joined her, finding no sign in her pure profile that the elongated silence or getting snatched by his boys troubled her in any way.

A feral smile edged up the corners of his mouth. He did love a challenge, and “Jane” looked to be a bit of one. “Benny didn’t say half enough about you, Miss Jane.”

“Who?” Luci gave him a brief, questioning glance before returning to her examination of the float, a critical and assessing look on her face that seemed to assume he’d invited her here solely to get her opinion on it.

Not sure whether to get mad or laugh, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Not that I buy your name is Jane.”

She looked at him for a long unnerving beat. Her eyes were green x-rays that seemed to look right into his soul.

“I would hope not.” She returned to her study of the float, her head tipped, as if a new angle would solve the conundrum. After a pause, she added, “Luci Seymour. And you are?”

“Dante.” Seymour. He’d heard that name before, but in what context?

He looked at her, but before he could ask, she said, as if she heard him thinking, “The stiff in the freezer. On the news.”

“Oh yeah. Guy looked exactly like my tailor. They find out who it was?”

Luci shook her head, her thoughts still missing from her expression.

For a moment he could feel his temper—or was it something else?—trying to slip the leash. Cain and Abel, who knew what happened when he lost his temper, reached inside their jackets for their guns.

“The boobs,” she said, turning to face him. “They aren’t—”

“Aren’t what?” His temper jacked up another notch.

“Very real. I mean, look at them. They’re the same size. Real boobs aren’t the same size.” She didn’t say it, but the question was implied: didn’t you know that?

“Of course I know that,” he snapped, adjusting his jacket in a defensive movement. “They’re art.”

She looked at him, one brow arching. “They’re fantasy.”

Cain and Abel started to pull their guns clear of their jackets as Dante teetered on the brink of letting his temper turn deadly.

“If you had them you wouldn’t be so fascinated with them.” She turned from the float and her gaze passed over the goons as she surveyed his office. “Have you been doing boobs long?”

It had been a long time since anyone had tried to startle Dante, let alone succeeded. He examined the novel feeling from all sides and decided it was rather intriguing. He laughed. Not loud, not long. More of a snort, really. But a snort with amusement in it.

Cain and Abel looked at each other, as surprised as they were capable of being. Then they put away their guns.

“Benny was right.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “You are…unusual.”

Luci stepped away from him, toward the desk and the plans spread out there, so as not to appear to be avoiding him.

“Benny?”

“He works for me.”

No surprise there. Not that she had a clue what he was talking about, but it didn’t seem prudent to tell him that. “Oh.”

“The shoebox he brought me was most interesting.”

Not only did the light bulb go off, so did alarm bells. He wasn’t one of her aunts’ intimates, so how did he know about the shoeboxes? It was all weird enough to keep Mickey’s headache going into the next new millennium if she were stupid enough to tell him about it. It was obvious she needed more information. Could she get it without giving any away?

She