Free Jennifer Crusie Bundle by Jennifer Crusie

them down, opened the door, picked them up again, and threw them down the stairs, watching them turn and smash against the steps as they fell.
    â€œToo bad there wasn’t anything breakable,” she told the dogs, and shut the door.
    Then she went back into the living room and studied it. Beautiful. Bradley-less. Un-Bradleyed.
    Almost.
    His chair still sat in the middle of the room beside the love seat. It was ugly—a recliner upholstered in synthetic olive-green flecked with red. If Bradley had been born a piece of furniture, he would have looked like that chair. Practical, boring, and irritating. The fact that he’d loved it and wouldn’t let the dogs on it only made it more Bradley-like. The dogs had been napping on it regularly since he’d gone, but it was still an annoyance.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Lucy asked the dogs. “Getting rid of a perfectly good chair would be totally irresponsible, right?”
    The dogs cocked their heads at her.
    â€œRight. Just think how proud of us Tina will be.” Lucy opened the basement door. Then she pushed the chair to the doorway, shooing Maxwell away just in time, and shoved the chair down the stairs. Halfway down, it hit the stair rail and broke through it, tumbling over the side of the steps to smash on the concrete below in a small cloud of dust.
    â€œIndependence Day,” Lucy said, and slammed the door.

Four
    â€œS o then she said, ‘You mean that hood is following my sister?’ and tried to take off after you,” Anthony told Zack an hour later. They were back in the squad room, their feet propped up on their desks in the thin warmth of the dusty late-afternoon sunlight that filtered through the dirty windows. “I almost let her have you. I was hoping she’d rip that damn jacket off you and shred it. But then I remembered you were my partner, and I saved you.”
    â€œThank you.” Zack was stretched out in his desk chair, feeling every bruise that Lucy had given him that afternoon. “I gather she did finally talk to you?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œThere’s no ‘Of course’ about it,” Zack said. “Lucy told me about her sister. You’re lucky you’re still in one piece.”
    â€œWe had coffee in the diner.” Anthony stretched and put his hands behind his head. “She was no problem at all.”
    â€œYou get the mean one, and she drinks coffee from your hand. I get the nice one, and she tries to beat the tar out of me. God, to have your luck.”
    â€œIt’s not luck. It’s charm,” Anthony said. “You don’t have any.”
    Zack gave up. “So what does Tina Savage know about Bradley Porter?”
    â€œThat he’s a womanizing, weak-kneed, slime-covered scum who made her sister cry, so he should be shot, strangled, drawn, quartered, and castrated. I don’t think she likes him at all.”
    Zack scowled. “He made Lucy cry? I’m with her, then.”
    â€œBut the problem is…”
    â€œHe’s not our Bradley.” Zack nodded. “I know. Lucy explained that. I’d hoped for a while there was a chance he might be, but she says it’s no-go.”
    â€œI know,” Anthony said. “But I floated the possibility by the sister anyway, just to see what she’d say.”
    â€œAnd?”
    Anthony grinned. “Oh, she’s in favor of it. The thought of Bradley in jail for bigamy, embezzlement and tax fraud perked her right up. She was completely cordial by the time she’d thought it through.” Anthony shook his head. “This is a waste of time, Zack. Granted somebody shot at you today, that still doesn’t necessarily tie Lucy Savage’s Bradley Porter with our John Bradley.”
    Zack scowled. “He’s not Lucy’s Bradley. He’s nobody’s Bradley, the rat. And there’s got to be a tie. Come on, Tony. We get a tip that John Bradley’s