Chapter One
If I hadn’t been one of the chosen ones, “junk in my trunk” would’ve been a nod to my super-cute fat ass, but instead, it was just my luck that it was a reference to the dead body currently stuffed in the truck of my brand new Dodge Challenger.
Number one, it was going to be a bitch to get the brain matter out of the trunk liner. Of course, since I was a fucking professional—as was my soon-to-be-ex-husband—I’d wrapped the bastard in plastic, but when they were particularly juicy, some transfer of matter couldn’t be helped, regardless of what we see in the movies.
By the way, the bastard wasn’t my soon-to-be-ex. Just the guy he’d given a one-two tap to the back of the head.
Lucky for the corpse, he was already dead. I may be middle-aged, but I’d still kill a motherfucker twice for breaking into Marc’s home and trying to kill him. We were getting divorced, but he was still the love of my life. Not to mention the father of the daughter of my heart. I hadn’t baked that child in my own lady oven, but she was every inch my kid. Right down to her smart mouth.
“So where are we dumping that junk in your trunk?” Marc asked again, nodding to the trunk.
I studied him in the pale, wan light of the dimly lit garage and I was disappointed in myself that all I could think about was climbing him like a tree. God, but I missed him. I missed the way he smelled, the heat of his hands on my skin. The sound of him singing in the shower. Instead of noodling on an answer to his question, my eyes were drawn to his broad shoulders, the way his veins stood out on his forearms and the backs of his hands after exertion.
Surely, it would be more fun to fuck me than dispose of a body?
Hopefully?
However, sex had never been the problem.
“Margie. Eyes up here,” he teased with a wink.
It absolutely wasn’t fair he was flirting with me. So I decided to repay the favor in kind and leaned over the trunk, showing him my ample goods that I knew looked damned good in my Torrid jeans.
“This junk?” I shook my ass.
“You’re an evil woman,” he groaned and moved to stand behind me, his hands on my hips. “So evil.”
I’d admit that while I wanted this with him, part of me just wanted to know that I could still turn him on. Because in my head, that fixed all of our problems.
He still loved me.
He still wanted me.
And I was still the one he called to help him get rid of a body.
Problems solved, right?
Obviously, the answer was no, but the part of me that was still so in love with him refused to get the memo.
“Margie, we can’t do this,” he whispered. “Mostly because we need to get rid of this fucker.” Marc reached around me and tapped the side of the trunk.
It felt so good to feel his hard body pressed against me. Not just because he was shredded all to hell, but because the weight of him, the heat of him was familiar and good.
“He’s not going to get any deader.” The proverbial devil on my shoulder answered for me.
“Maybe not, but he’s going to drive Vlad insane.”
“Come on, you—” Shit, he was right. One whiff of Dickhead McGee, and my sweet puppy would shred the interior of my car to get to the trunk and obliterate it.
My vampire pit bull, the most ridiculous dog to ever walk the earth, but who had some serious real estate in my heart. Murder scenes drove him nuts. We weren’t sure if it was pheromones, or blood, or what. But Vlad was like a canine murder detector. He got near the scene of a murder less than five years old, and he’d destroy it. Try to obliterate it from existence.
I turned in Marc’s embrace to face him and looked up at the face that had been so dear to me for all of my life. The way the halogen lights in the garage made his amber eyes seem to glitter. Sweat glistened on his dark skin. Seriously, how did even halogen make him look good? It was his place, so I wouldn’t have put it past him to set the lighting just so. Marc knew he was a handsome man.
We’d sort of grown up together, although Marcus had been part of the popular crowd. He’d been