Trouble In Bloom Read online

  As always, for my family.

  And to David McG, because he asked so nicely.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication Page

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Nina Quinn Mysteries by Heather Webber

  Copyright Notice

  About the Publisher

  One

  Thou, Nina Colette Ceceri Quinn, shall never, ever, resort to a bad comb-over if thou should happen to go bald.

  I hoped I wouldn't, but if I did, this commandment would zoom to the top of my personal list fast. Right up there with never wearing dark socks—or any socks for that matter—with sandals and never letting the hair on my upper lip grow to the point where someone thinks I have a moustache.

  Some things in life were just a given.

  Horrendous was the only way to describe the comb-over on Willie Sala. Five thin greasy clumps of dark brown hair swooped from his left ear to his right, hugging his shiny head for dear life.

  Maybe five-five, 160 pounds, Willie also had the darkest, beadiest eyes I'd ever seen.

  Fortunately, he had good teeth. A girl could overlook a lot for good teeth.

  Willie Sala was the producer/director of the local TV reality show Hitched or Ditched, which filmed right here in Ohio. Forget WKRP, HoD was currently Cincinnati's claim to fame. Sad as that was to say.

  It was a show where couples signed up to test their re lationships. Ultimately, the home audience would decide whether contestants should get hitched . . . or ditch each other.

  I glanced to my right. The man sitting next to me in the Cracker Jack–sized conference room at the HoD studio was tall with shoulder-length wavy blond hair and broad shoulders—an overall great build. Beautiful light blue eyes crinkled at the corners from good humor, and his lips were tantalizingly kissable. The Florida sun had bronzed his fair skin to golden perfection. He was the epitome of the allAmerican boy next door.

  It helped that he was calm, confident, gorgeous, sexy, and good in bed.

  His name was Bobby MacKenna, and I knew about that bed part because I'd slept with him.

  Notice the past tense?

  He looked over, caught me ogling and winked. He'd been raised in Texas and had the wink down pat.

  Bobby and I happened to be one of the couples on this week's show. Mario and Perry were the other couple. The four of us, along with HoD's boyishly charming host, Thad Cochran, and a handful of TV people, listened to Willie bark about being "real" on TV yet "dramatic" enough to keep viewers tuned in every night.

  My life leaned toward dramatic, so I didn't think I'd have trouble with that part.

  The "real" part might be a problem. Seeing as how Bobby and I were pretend contestants, here on the show undercover to help Bobby's lawyer cousin nail Willie for sexual harassment.

  "We want to see everything." Willie spoke in short staccato bursts, a rapid-fire verbal machine gun. "Little things. Washing dishes, to work, to fights. We love fights." His weasely voice bounced off the cracked mushroom-colored walls, but the smarmy edge was undercut by the dark industrial carpet so old it was probably laid in 1932, when the studio was built. "And sex! Lots of sex too! A ratings booster if there ever was one."

  Bobby's eyebrows waggled.

  Danger! Danger!

  It would be hazardous to my mental state to pick up our sex life where it had left off.

  Just over six weeks ago Bobby had left Ohio to take a job as an elementary school principal in Tampa, Florida, and it hadn't been any bond with me that brought him back. Mac, his grandfather, had fallen and injured his hip and needed Bobby's help finding long-term care.

  Murky would be a good way to describe the relationship between Bobby and me right now. There were still feelings between us. His move hadn't changed that. I'd fallen for him hard and fast soon after the breakup with my ex-husband Kevin Quinn. And because I'd been so confused about my sudden feelings, Bobby had gone ahead and taken his dream job in Florida. We'd agreed that a long-distance relationship wouldn't be fair to either of us.

  Which was true.

  But now he was back in town—on a temporary leave of absence to help Mac, and to do the show.

  And to use Bobby for sex while he was here would be wrong.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Or so I told myself to keep sane.

  I'd thrown a serious pity party for a good solid month when Bobby first left. Then I woke up one morning wondering who the hell I was. What defined me? What did I really want out of life? I burned with questions I'd never taken the time to figure out. All I knew was, I didn't like who I'd become, all mopey and depressed.

  So here I was, currently on day ten of a serious self-discovery quest. With resolutions for a healthier lifestyle, some serious self-examination, and most important: no men.

  The whole kit and frustrating caboodle.

  The no men part had been fairly easy with Bobby gone. But now he was suddenly back in my life.

  As if that alone weren't bad enough, we also had to pretend to be engaged in front of the whole Cincinnati viewing area.

  Fate?

  My temples throbbed. Pondering fate gave me headaches.

  Willie stood while the rest of us sat. He jabbed his finger in the air to punctuate his choppy speech. "For four days cameras will record parts of your normal lives. Each night you'll come here to play Rendezvous." He wiped a bead of sweat from his head, dislodging one section of his combover. It flopped down over his forehead like a wilting daisy.

  Rendezvous was HoD's ripped-off version of the Newlywed Game. It was filmed several hours before actual broadcast, in order to edit out any bleeps or blunders.

  Thad Cochran, the picture-perfect host of HoD, motioned to Willie's wilting hair while saying to us, "Be honest with your answers, people. The truth always comes out in the end." He had a deep cleft in his chin that bobbed when he talked.

  Willie pushed the errant hair back onto his moist head. It stuck without a fight. "I'll be up front. Big name executives will be in and out of the studio all week. HoD is going national. We must make this week a good one. Nothing can go wrong. Got it?"

  Great. Added pressure.

  One of Willie's assistants poked her head in the door and said, "Mr. Sala, Mrs. Sala is here."

  A sultry feminine voice said, "Willie, sweetheart, may I have a moment?"

  I craned my neck to see what kind of woman would marry that kind of man.

  She stood in the doorway. Six feet of perfection. Long ebony hair, dark exotic eyes, fl awless olive skin, curves in all the right places.

  Perry, one of the other contestants, leaned in toward me. He had a smooth deep voice full of inflection. It rose and fell as he spoke. "That's Genevieve Hidalgo Sala, Willie's brand-spanking new wife." His eyes sparkled. They were a shade of gray-green I'd never seen before. "She's also the new hostess of the show. She's Vanna to Thad's Pat Sajak." His pale eyebrows arched, liftin
g his whole forehead a half inch. "Wonder how she got that job, wink, wink, nudge, nudge."

  Ooh, that was an interesting tidbit. "What happened to Jessica Ayers?" I whispered, playing dumb. After being abruptly fired eight weeks ago, Jessica Ayers claimed she'd been sexually harassed by Willie while on set, and hired Bobby's cousin Josh, a two-bit sleazeball lawyer, to file a lawsuit.

  "Oh, that! Well, I've heard—"

  "Perry, stop gossiping," Mario chastised.

  With dark hair, dark eyes, and beautiful mocha-colored skin, Mario was Perry's significant other. Partner? I wasn't sure of the proper term these days for gay lovers. In the few hours I'd known the two of them, they seemed headed toward ditched, in my opinion. Mario was a stick in the mud. He hadn't stopped griping at Perry since they arrived, nitpicking about this, nagging about that. He kind of reminded me of my mother.

  "We'll talk later," Perry whispered.

  I'd make a point of it. Curiosity burned. Did he know anything that could help Josh's case? After all, that was why I was here.

  Participating in this torture.

  All because of a favor. One Bobby promised Josh in order to get off the phone when we'd been, ah, indisposed.

  True, I probably could have finagled my way out of doing the show. However, I felt as though Bobby and I had both made the promise to Josh that day, and if there's one commandment I strictly adhere to, it's keeping my promises.

  And, since the HoD cameras would be following me during the day, it would be great—free—PR for my landscaping company.

  But, I confess, I'd had another motive to do the show. I'd wanted to have this week with Bobby. To see if I had made the right decision in letting him go. To see if we were well and truly over for good.

  That had been my grand plan, at least. Unfortunately, it had only taken two minutes of seeing him again to know I'd probably made the biggest mistake of my life by breaking things off with him.

  I loved him. Simple as that. I loved him, and I'd let him go.

  But I'd made my decision, and now I had to live with it. There was no other option. I couldn't ask him to come back—being a principal was his dream job. And I couldn't leave Ohio. This was where my family was, my job, my friends.

  It was clear I was just going to have to suck it up, live with the decisions I'd made, stay strong, and get through this week without falling back into that dark hole I'd been in after he left.

  This week would be all about self-preservation. Of keeping my distance from him, physically and emotionally. Easier said than done, though, because I wanted nothing more than to fling myself at him.

  Another reason why self-discovery could only be a good thing for me.

  "Give me a minute," Willie said to all of us as he walked over to his wife. Genevieve towered over him by a good four inches. He kissed her hand (Perry awwwed) and led her into the hallway, closing the door behind them.

  Bobby brought his head close to mine. He smelled good, a little bit laundry detergent, a little bit of coffee, a little bit of just . . . him. It was a scent I couldn't quite describe, but it did funny things to my stomach.

  "This is going to be fun," he murmured.

  The way my stomach fl ippity-flopped, this was going to be cruel and unusual punishment, spending a week with him, pretending to be his fiancée. "What doesn't kill us."

  "You'll cave."

  He'd already tried to get me into his bed twice since being back.

  "Nope."

  A lazy grin crept across his face. "Oh, you will."

  I had a sinking feeling he might be right. I was weak where he was concerned.

  Since I had goals for my mental health, I needed to stay strong about the sex part. Wrong, wrong, wrong to use him, I told myself again. But it would be so easy to give in . . .

  Wrong!

  Perry leaned in. "What are you mumbling about?"

  My cheeks flamed. If he only knew. "Nothing, really."

  His eyebrows dipped. "You bipolar?"

  I laughed. "No." Glancing at Bobby, I easily saw him naked in my mind's eye. Suddenly warm, I tugged on my shirt collar. "Ever been on a diet, Perry?"

  "Have I ever." He patted a slightly rounded stomach.

  "And could use one again," Mario put in, clearly eavesdropping.

  Perry rolled his eyes. "Ignore him, he's nervous. He's always crabby when he's nervous. Go on."

  "Well, you know that feeling of wanting something really badly but not being able to have it?"

  Solemnly, he nodded.

  "Let's just say I need a cookie."

  He squeezed my hand, seeming to know I wasn't talking about cheating on my low-carb diet. I'd just started it, hoping to lose a couple of pounds, and it was killing me.

  As was the no-sex thing.

  Self-discovery was a bitch.

  "You know what you need?" Perry asked.

  "What's that?"

  "A little makeover. Something to spruce you up a bit. Make you feel better."

  "It will do wonders," Mario piped in.

  Ordinarily, I would have turned him down flat. But that was the old Nina. The new Nina took a second. "No way."

  Perry picked up a lock of my dull brown hair. "Really?"

  "Is it that bad?" I went cross-eyed trying to look at the piece he held.

  Mario leaned forward, looked at me. "Yes."

  "But you probably think everyone's hair is bad." He had that kind of air about him.

  Perry nodded. "She's right about that."

  Mario pointed at my head. "But yours especially needs help."

  "Come on," Perry urged. "The makeover's on me." He slid a business card over to me. "Come in tomorrow afternoon and I'll squeeze you in. By tomorrow night you'll be one hot mamacita."

  I looked at the card: PERRY OWENS, STYLIST. He worked at Azure, a hip downtown salon I'd heard ads for on the radio.

  Being a hot mamacita had to be good for anyone's selfdiscovery. But . . . "I can't tomorrow afternoon. Work."

  "Tuesday, then?"

  I hemmed. I hawed. I agreed. "All right. It's a deal." All in the name of self-discovery. I tucked his card into my backpack and leaned back in my chair as Thad stood up, paced the tiny room.

  About forty, Thad didn't look like a stereotypical lowbudget game show host. No slick hair, slick smile, or slick way of talking. He was more Mr. Rogers than Wink Martindale. He had a pristine reputation, was big into charities and family. Yet, he hosted a game show with questions like, "If you and your significant other were playing strip poker, what item of clothing would your partner remove first?"

  Maybe that's why Thad thrived as a host of HoD. He wasn't the norm. He brought fresh-faced sincerity to the show.

  While we waited for Willie, Thad explained there would be several taped interviews while we were at the studio today, and then tomorrow, Monday morning, bright and early, we'd each meet our cameraman and field producer.

  Since the show was low-budget, our houses only had one camera, in the bedroom (they'd put one in my living room, since it was currently being used as my master bedroom). The installation process hadn't bothered me all that much. What were a few more holes in the walls of my house when half my living room ceiling was missing due to a leak in the upstairs master bath?

  I was having serious construction issues. Absentee workers, mostly. I could only imagine what my mother had done to scare them away. She was currently in charge of the remodeling, and I debated firing her. Not that I'd hired her, but still. Enough was enough.

  Thad stopped pacing, put his hands on the back of a chair belonging to a blonde production assistant who'd been making eyes at Bobby the whole time we'd been sitting there.

  I tried not to jump across the table and strangle her. I told myself she should be grateful for my new self and accompanying newfound restraint.

  Thad's voice rose and fell as he spoke. "During the week, online votes from home viewers will be tallied and will ultimately determine who should be hitched and who should be ditched. On Friday
night, everyone will meet back here for the results show, which will be broadcast live."

  Raised voices carried through the door. We all quieted as Willie Sala loudly told his new wife to mind her own business, and she told him she'd damn well do what she pleased.

  So much for newlywedded bliss. Sounded like they were on the road to ditched.

  Thad cleared his throat. "Okay, people. That's it for now."

  One of the crew looked at his clipboard. "Mario? You're first for the interviews. Follow me."

  The room pretty much cleared out, leaving Bobby, me, and Perry alone.

  Now would be a great time to question him about Jessica Ayers, but before I could, he asked, "You're here to test your relationship . . . who's having the doubts?"