Fiancee for Hire by Tawna Fenske Page B

happened!”
    …
    The sight of Griselda sobbing and hysterical sent a rocket of ice down Mac’s spine. He felt the pinch of the shoulder holster holding his pistol beneath his suit jacket, and calculated how quickly he could detach Griz and push both women behind him while drawing the weapon to defend them against whatever waited inside.
    Mac rested one hand on Griselda’s back as her arms twisted around his neck and she sobbed into his coat. He shot a look at Kelli, knowing she was probably terrified. She met his eye with a questioning look.
    “Go back to the car,” Mac whispered. “Let me assess things here and—”
    “Don’t leave me!” Griselda wailed. “Come quickly, both of you.”
    With that, Griz grabbed Mac by one arm, Kelli by the other, and pulled them into the foyer. Mac was on high alert now, his hand reaching for the pistol, his eyes scanning the room for the threat, for a body on the floor, for a hostage situation for—
    “A lizard?”
    Mac blinked as Zapata stepped into the room cradling something that looked vaguely like a dinosaur. Judging from the slump of Zapata’s shoulders, it had to weigh fifty pounds. The animal flicked its tongue at Mac, assessing him as though he were a meal.
    “An Argentine black and white tegu,” Kelli whispered reverently, her bare arm brushing Mac as she step forward. “He’s beautiful.”
    “He’s dying; we must take him to the hospital now,” Zapata barked, his accent more pronounced than normal as his eyes made a frantic scan of the guests. “I apologize for dinner, but we must go quickly.”
    Mac looked at Kelli, who was studying the large reptile with professional calmness. He felt a surge of pride as he touched her arm.
    “I may not have mentioned it, Señor Zapata,” Mac said. “but my fiancée is a veterinarian.”
    The arms dealer looked at Kelli with wide eyes. “This is true? Dios mío , you will look at Felix?”
    “Of course,” Kelli said, setting her purse on a bench beside the door and taking a step forward. “What seems to be the problem?”
    “His manhood,” Griselda wailed. “It has exploded.”
    Mac winced as Zapata angled the large lizard up and he caught sight of something that did indeed look like an exploded manhood.
    “Holy shit,” Mac murmured. “His dick blew up. They probably didn’t cover that one in vet school?”
    “Of course they did, sweetie,” Kelli replied, looking bizarrely calm. “It’s a prolapsed hemipenis, very common in reptiles.”
    All three pairs of eyes swung to her, looking baffled. “A hemi-what?” Mac asked.
    Kelli was already crouching low, inspecting the lizard from beneath. “A hemipenis or hemipene. Many kinds of reptiles have not one, but two intromittent sex organs everted for reproduction via erectile tissue. The hemipene is one half of the paired, erectile, copulatory organ protruded through the cloaca.”
    Mac blinked, as distracted by the view down the front of Kelli’s dress as he was by the words coming from her mouth. “Lizards have two penises?”
    “Sure, so do snakes, sharks, koalas, kangaroos—well, technically the marsupials have a bifurcated penis, which is more like one penis that splits into two.” She looked up at their dumbstruck hosts from her position on the floor at their feet. “Have you had him long?”
    “Only a few weeks,” Zapata said. “He was a gift from a collector. Is he dying?”
    “No, but we need to treat him. He’s not going to be able to retract the organ on his own. Where is your bathroom?”
    Griselda touched a hand to her throat and sniffed loudly. “There’s a powder room down that hallway and to the left.”
    “Not a powder room, a bathroom. With a bathtub.” Kelli stood up and looked at Griselda. “I need you to bring me sugar and some mineral oil. If you don’t have mineral oil, we can use a sexual lubricant like KY Jelly, if you have it.”
    Griselda blinked, then nodded. “The kind that warms when you blow on it?”
    “I