Venus in Blue Jeans Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyway. I’ve got to get home.” Docia tipped back the last of her wine, then stood as Lee arrived with another plate.
    “Don’t leave,” he exclaimed. “Not when I just brought baked cheese pita chips.”
    “I’ve got to.” Docia smiled at him. “If I eat any more, they’ll be rolling me down the street in a wheelbarrow.”
    “Now, that, I’d like to see.” Ken waggled his eyebrows while Lee shot him a fondly exasperated look.
    “Stay away from the nice straight lady,” he murmured. “She needs to find Mr. Right.”
    Mr. Right, aka Dr. Gorgeous, didn’t seem to be anywhere on Spicewood Avenue when Docia cut over from Main.
    Probably being entertained by half the female population at the Dew Drop . Docia frowned as she dug her keys from her pocket. What made her think he was Mr. Right anyway? She’d only seen him once, at a considerable distance, across a dimly lit barroom. Rodgers and Hammerstein this wasn’t.
    Once upon a time, Donnie Branscombe had also seemed to be Mr. Right—rising businessman, former college football star, popular with her parents, great smile, great ass. None of which kept him from being a first-class slime-bucket.
    Docia sighed. She really needed to stop thinking about Donnie. She hadn’t loved him. She ignored the slight clenching in her stomach. Okay, maybe she had loved him—a little bit. But he definitely hadn’t loved her. She’d found that out the hard way.
    She turned the corner to head down the street toward her apartment door, ignoring the faintly desolate feeling around her heart. Love sucked, even one-sided love. Particularly one-sided love.
    Docia unlocked the door and hiked up the steep flight of stairs leading to her apartment above the shop. Turning to throw the bolt again, she saw the first drop of blood.
    “Dammit, Nico,” she called. “It’s bad enough you have to attack birds in the backyard. Do you have to bring your victims home too?”
    The trail of drops led across the planked pine floor, narrowly missing the vintage Tabriz carpet she’d picked up in Houston.
    “Good thing, too, or I’d have your hide, you stupid cat.”
    Docia followed the droplets across the kitchen tile to the bathroom, Nico’s favorite haunt. “Don’t tell me you’re killing something in the bathtub, you lousy feline. I do not want to take a shower with feathers!” Docia pushed the door wider and stepped inside.
    Nico raised his head slightly as she entered, then dropped it to the floor again as if the exertion was more than he could handle.
    Docia stared at his small black body surrounded by a slowly growing dark red pool.
    “Oh God,” she whispered. “Sweet Jesus, Nico, what did you do to yourself?”

Chapter Three
     
    Cal ambled back up the street from Margaret Hastings’ house, stretching the kinks out of his shoulders. Since he’d reached his full six-foot-five at age fifteen, he’d had sixteen years to get used to his size. While nobody would be signing him up to replace Fred Astaire, given his woeful lack of dancing ability, he considered himself a reasonably graceful man, not prone to tripping over antique furniture or stepping on babies. In fact, in most situations he seldom thought about his size. It was simply a part of who he was.
    At Margaret Hastings’ house he felt like an oaf.
    Worse, he felt like a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk giant, cheerfully flattening villages whenever he put down his foot. He half-expected Mickey Mouse to start squeaking at him.
    Margaret’s bungalow wasn’t particularly small or crowded, but everything looked fragile. He worried about the creaking easy chair he sat in, the porcelain that covered most of the surfaces where he might have placed the iced tea Margaret gave him, the treacherous rag rugs that made fitting his feet between pieces of furniture even more harrowing.
    It didn’t help that Señor Pepe had placed himself between Cal’s boots as soon as he’d arrived and steadfastly refused to move, despite Margaret’s