Miranda's Revenge by Ruth Wind

going to be here tomorrow, aren’t they?”
    Juliet took a breath, blew it out. “Sadly, yes. They’re staying at the hotel.”
    â€œAll the better to avoid them.”
    â€œRight. Well, maybe it won’t be so bad. They’re getting older now, you know. Mom just turned sixty-nine. How much trouble can two old people be?”
    Miranda just looked at her. “My mother,” she said succinctly, “will never be an old person.”
    Juliet chuckled. “True. But it’s my wedding. You can’t blame me for hoping.” Tugging the scrunchie from her hair, she said with an arched brow, “So…James. A little chemistry there, huh?”
    â€œNo,” Miranda said, as if her sister had lost her marbles.
    Juliet snorted. “Right.”
    â€œThere isn’t. Or if there is, I’m not going to let it go anywhere.”
    â€œYou’ve got to let your guard down sometimes, sister dear.”
    â€œSee, there’s where you’re wrong. No, I don’t.”
    Juliet nodded, her mouth tipped in a tiny smile. “That’s what I thought, too.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure there’s nothing more annoying than a woman smugly in love with one of the last five good guys on the planet.”
    â€œTouché.” Laughing, Juliet stood. “I’m going to take a shower, let you make your phone calls.”
    Miranda shrugged. But as Juliet left her, she wondered what was going on in James’s mind, to make him come on to her, then put up walls to keep her out. She fingered her cell phone, brought up the outgoing calls list and saw the Hotel Mariposa on there. What if she just called and asked? Reasonably. Maturely.
    Nice trick, that.
    And yet, she was tired of wishy-washy men. Seeing how Tam looked at Desi, and the way Josh lit up when Juliet came in a room made her want the real thing for herself. This business of hot and cold, up and down, madly in love, then…not. Forget it.
    The number she did dial was for her friend Alexis, a fellow artist who would know the numbers Miranda needed in the art community. She planned to talk with Renate under the guise of being an artist seeking a gallery, but she also wanted to call other galleries, see what the art community had to say about the Bavarian dealer and her famous dead client.

    Back in his hotel room, James lay flat on the bed with the idea of a nap. His body eased into the mattress, and he mentally ran over his body, checking for sore or tight spots. A little weariness on the back of his left hamstring, up into the glute. Running uphill, he tended to lead a little hard with his left foot. His shoulders were tight. Low in his groin was thick tension.
    Not from running, at least physically. He was adamantly running away from Miranda Rousseau and her blasted lace bras and Botticelli hair and quivering lush lips. The taste of her lingered in his imagination—hints of chocolate and spice and the long heat of a summer afternoon. It was all too easy to imagine her long white body stripped of all its protective layers, beneath his in this very bed. Her skin would be delicately white, run through with bluish veins, her pubic hair as red and startling as her hair.
    With a groan, he rolled over on his belly. Enough.
    He hadn’t been smitten by a woman in a long time, not since RitaValdez when he was twenty-one, and his ego and self-esteem were freshly bruised by his recognition that he did not have the temperament to be a good priest. He’d gone to the police academy instead, and Rita had sauntered into class that first morning, all siren curves she tried to contain and could not, her long, dark eyes and red lips an invitation she tried not to issue.
    They were from the same general area, the high, secluded mountains of northern New Mexico, and she had as many bruises as he did—her heart had been broken by an early divorce, and she’d come to Albuquerque to get away from the reminders