Jennifer Crusie Bundle by Jennifer Crusie

about this later. Right now, I’m going to look around the outside of your house. You stay inside.”
    Lucy stood, too. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œInside. You. And the dogs.” Zack looked down at Heisenberg. “Stay. All of you.”
    Lucy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Who do you think you are?”
    â€œMe?” Zack said on his way out. “I’m the guy who saved your life, so you owe me. Stay put.”
    He glanced back and grinned at her as he went out the door. Lucy said, “Listen, you, you didn’t…” and then he was gone.
    â€œWho does he think he is?” she asked the dogs. “He just comes in here, out of the blue, and tells me somebody’s been shooting at me, and orders me around. Just what I needed. Somebody else ordering me around.”
    Only she hadn’t let him. She’d fought back.
    And it really felt good.
    â€œI think I’m on to something with this independence thing,” she told the dogs. “I really enjoyed arguing with him.”
    Of course, it hadn’t had much effect on him. He’d just glared at her and charged on ahead. And he hadn’t been all that mad, anyway. A minute after the glare, he’d been grinning at her again. She pictured him again, those bright blue eyes heating her and that crazy grin scrambling her thoughts, and she had to remind herself that she was mad at him. “This is my problem,” she told the dogs. “I’m too easygoing. I should be mad at him. I should want to kill him.” She stopped on the last thought.
    He’d said somebody was trying to kill her.
    Who would want to kill her? That was ridiculous. That was something that happened on TV. A car back-fired and kicked up a stone. People did not go around shooting guns in downtown Riverbend.
    He must be wrong.
    Wrong, but gorgeous.
    She pictured him again, much against her better judgment. That grin, that swagger, those blue, blue eyes that connected with hers with such impact on her breathing. “The thing is,” she told the dogs, “even though I know he’s a policeman, he doesn’t look like a policeman. He looks like a very, very sexy bad guy.”
    She heard a noise in the vestibule and looked up to see Zack leaning in the doorway, and she blushed so hard she almost passed out.
    â€œYou talk to the dogs,” he said.
    â€œWell, of course I talk to the dogs.” Lucy prayed he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “It’s not like I talk to plants or anything non-sentient.”
    â€œWhat I was going to ask was why you have such expensive locks on this place. You must have dropped a small fortune on the front doors alone, and from what I can see from the front, the windows are locked, too.”
    â€œOh, they are,” Lucy said, eager for a change of subject. “Even the attic windows. Did they really cost a lot?”
    â€œSo they weren’t your idea.” Zack looked satisfied. Smug, even. “Bradley ordered them, right?”
    â€œNo. It was my sister.”
    His satisfaction disappeared. “Your sister was afraid you’d be robbed?”
    â€œNo, my sister hates my ex-husband. She did it to annoy him. She said it was to keep him from taking anything out of the house that I might possibly be able to strip him of in the divorce. My sister plays hardball in divorce court.”
    â€œI bet she does,” Zack said, taking out his notebook again. “And when was this?”
    â€œOh, she had them put on as soon as I told her about…the blonde. I mean, within the hour, the locksmith was here with a crew. That was about two weeks ago.” Lucy thought back. “The end of January.”
    Zack went out to the vestibule. “Do you have burglar alarms?” he called back to her.
    â€œNo.” Lucy followed him. “Look at this place. Does it look like it needs a burglar alarm?”
    Zack glanced around the