“I know. And I’m sorry,” I said again.

He shook his head. Then let a little half smile play at the corner of his mouth. He reached one hand out and fingered a lock of my hair. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute, you know it?”

Generally I’m not fond of being called cute. Cute is for drooling babies, dogs in sweaters and cartoon teddy bears with rainbows on their bellies. I prefer “beautiful,” “sexy,” even “da bomb” in certain situations. But somehow, delivered with Ramirez’s husky growl and dark bedroom eyes, the word “cute” instantly switched my lever from cold to hot in two seconds flat.

Suddenly being in the backseat of his car didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

His hands left my hair, snaking around my middle as his lips moved in slow motion toward mine. The heat from his body suddenly washed a menopause-worthy hot flash right through me. His tongue brushed against my lower lip and he let out a low groan. Or maybe I groaned. I wasn’t sure which. In fact, I wasn’t sure of anything except the warm, wiggly feeling settling somewhere in my panty region and the fact that I was a freaking idiot for not sleeping with this guy last night. Seriously, what was I thinking?

His hands slid down my arms, encircling my wrists as his thumbs caressed slow, small circles on my skin. He was kissing me in earnest now and I was so engrossed in the heady rush of hormones Mr. Big Guns had coursing through my body that I didn’t even realize what he was doing until I heard the unmistakable click of metal on metal.

“What the-?”

I broke our lip-lock just as I felt something cool circle my left wrist. I looked up. Ramirez had handcuffed both my hands to the headrest of his car.

My turn to give the death glare. Remember that whole cold-to-hot thing? I could go the other way too. Much faster.

“What the hell is this?” I yelled, jingling the two-inch metal chain between my wrists.

“This,” he said, gesturing to the handcuffs, “is to make sure you’re still here when I get back.”

I stuck my chest out, mustering up as much indignation as a woman handcuffed to an SUV could. “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

Ramirez pinned me with a look. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

And with that he shut the car door and I heard the automatic locks click down as he walked away.

Great. Oh, this was just great!

I admit, in those lonely weeks of waiting for my phone to ring, I’d played out more than one scenario involving me, Ramirez, and a pair of handcuffs. But none had ended like this! That was it. This whole couple/non-couple thing we had going on was so not happening. If he though he could treat me this way and still get a sneak peek at my sexy Frederick’s lingerie, he was more delusional than both Mrs. Rosenblatt and her spirit guide!

Men. They were nothing but trouble anyway. I mean, really, look where the men in my life had gotten me. Handcuffed, fingerprinted, jailed…then handcuffed again! That’s it, I washed my hands of the whole lot of them. In fact, I was actually looking forward to flying home, sitting in my cozy studio and spending the evening alone with Joanie, Chachi and the Keebler elves. Now those were my kind of men.

Minutes ticked by, during which my hands grew increasingly numb and my list of tortuous ways to get back at Ramirez grew increasingly longer. I was up to number five (stuffing rotten eggs down the seats of his precious SUV) when my purse rang on the seat beside me. I looked up at my hands. Crap. I shimmied my butt over to the far side of the seat and lifted the purse strap with my foot. Had I actually attended Dana’s Power Yoga classes instead of just signing up and blowing them off in favor of a pint of Chunky Monkey, I might have been able to lift my purse high enough to grab the phone with my teeth. As it was, I made it to my belly button before the strap slipped off my foot and the bag fell to the floor. Luckily, my cell spilled out onto the floor mats. I slipped off one slingback and managed to hit the “on” button with my big toe.

“Hello?” I shouted in the direction of the floor.

I leaned as far down as I could to hear the response. It was faint, but I could make it out.

“Maddie, it’s Felix.”

Fabulous. Speaking of men I’d like to seek revenge on.

“What do you want?” I shouted, stretching my head down between my knees to hear the response.

“I need to talk to you.” He paused. “Are you alone?”

I looked around the backseat. Unfortunately.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because I have someone here who wants to speak to you.”

I heard noise as the phone was passed. Then an all-too-familiar voice rose up from the floor mats. “Maddie, honey?”

I froze.

Larry.

Chapter Seventeen

“Larry!” I shouted, leaning so far south metal cut into my wrists. “Where are you?”

He hesitated. And I feared for a minute I’d lost the connection.

“Larry? Can you hear me?” I asked, my voice starting to go hoarse from shouting.

“I need to talk to you,” he finally answered, so quietly it was barely more than a whisper. “But I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can we meet somewhere?”

I looked back up at the handcuffs.

“Uh…I’m kind of tied up at the moment. Can’t you just tell me what’s going on now?”

“No. No, it’s too…I’d feel better doing this in person.”

I sighed. “I’m not exactly mobile at the moment.” Understatement alert.

“Fine,” Larry responded. “I’ll have Felix come pick you up.”

“No, I-”

But he’d already handed the phone back to Felix. “Maddie, where are you, love?” he asked.

“No,” I shook my head at the phone. “No, you can’t come here. Ram-uh, Bruno will be out any second.”

Felix paused. “What’s going on over there?”

I sighed. “I’m handcuffed in the backseat of Bruno’s car.”

I wasn’t sure being so far away from the earpiece, but I could have sworn I heard Felix laughing. “Kinky.”

“No, not kinky. False imprisonment. And quit laughing!”

I think I heard him snort. “Okay, where exactly is this car?”

“The employee parking lot of the Victoria Club.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“No, Bruno will be back any-” But he’d already hung up.

I hit the end button with my big toe. So much for my date with the Keebler boys.

I watched the numbers on Ramirez’s dash clock crawl by, all the while keeping one eye on the back door of the Victoria. If Ramirez came out before Felix got here, I had no doubt he’d make good on his promise to shove me onto the first flight home, and I’d miss my one chance to see Larry. Maybe forever. I wondered what Larry wanted to tell me. I hoped something bad about Monaldo. Really bad. As in bad enough for the Feds to arrest him and end this whole Godfather meets Tootsie my life had become. Then I could go back to my real life where my biggest worries included finishing the Rainbow Brite jellies on time (which, the longer I stayed in Vegas, was becoming a bigger worry), sitting in traffic on the 405, and wondering when those adorable wedge sandals were going on sale at Macy’s.

I was just wondering exactly when the sales clerk had said those wedges would be on sale when a blue Dodge Neon pulled into the parking lot and killed its lights. I waved the best I could with my foot (since in addition to being immobilized, my hands had completely fallen asleep), and finally Felix spotted me. He pulled the Neon into the empty space beside the SUV and got out. He allowed himself a little smirk for my benefit before trying the door handle. Not surprisingly, it didn’t open.

“It’s locked!” I shouted through the tinted windows.

Felix nodded. Then he went back to his car and returned with something that looked like a long nail file. With a little maneuvering, he wedged it between the doorframe and the window of the passenger side. I kept one eye on the back door of the club, knowing that if Ramirez caught him tampering with his car, Felix was a dead man.

The nail file wiggled and twisted, making a couple of awful grinding noises that I prayed weren’t the sounds of black paint being chipped away. Finally the door locks popped up. I was so happy I could have laughed.

Felix opened the door. He took one look at the handcuffs and did laugh.

“It’s not funny.”

“No, not at all,” he responded, starting to snort again.

“Just get them off, smartass.”

He pulled a pocketknife out of his khakis and flipped it open. To my surprise, it didn’t contain scissors and bottle openers, but a series of different sized and shaped files. He fit one in the keyhole of the handcuffs and after doing the same sort of shimmy and wiggle thing he’d done with the giant nail file, one metal bracelet finally popped off my wrist.

I could have hugged him. That is, if I’d had any feeling left in my arms whatsoever. I shook my hand, feeling little pins and needles race over my skin as the blood surged back into my limbs. Felix made short work of the second bracelet and as soon as I was accessory free, I jumped out of the SUV and into the Neon’s passenger seat.

“Let’s go!” I shouted as Felix tucked his handy-dandy lock picks back into his pocket. “Trust me, you do not want to be here when Bruno sees this.” While no paint had been actually chipped in the making of this great escape, the little rubber strips between the car door and his window were kind of stretched out. And bulging. And there might have been one or two teeny tiny marks on his windows. Those, coupled with the fact that an empty pair of handcuffs was dangling from his passenger seat, were enough to put Bad Cop in a really bad mood. We’re talking back-in-a-holding-cell bad. Not something I wanted to be around to witness.

Felix seemed to get my drift, sliding behind the wheel and gunning the engine. I kept my eyes on the back door, chanting “please don’t open, please don’t open, please don’t open,” as Felix flipped on the lights and pulled out of the parking lot, heading west on Fremont.