Read Online Sudden Exposure by Susan Dunlap - Free Book Online

but none of them interrupted. I knew exactly what he meant. I’d wanted Howard to realize what it was like to be a woman confined by society’s proscriptions—don’t walk alone after dark; don’t wear seductive clothes; never stop in a bar alone; always, always be careful—because if you break these rules and lure some man to attack you, it will be your fault. I’d engineered a sting of my own so that he, the six-foot-six cop, used to walking where he wanted with gun and baton could really feel bound by the walls inside which women have lived. I’d shown him, but the manipulation of that sting had left him with a debt unpaid. Now he was calling it in. I had no choice but to say, “Okay.”
    “You want to know what it’s like to give up something I care about as much as this house?” he said.
    I didn’t, of course. Murakawa and the rest of them really didn’t want to know. I could see Connie Pereira behind Howard and her expression said she would have given up almost anything just to get out of the room. “Okay.”
    Howard lifted his hand off my leg. “I’ll stop working on the house for the rest of the month, Jill, if you will make a similar commitment.”
    I’d have been better off dealing with Sam Johnson. Not for nothing was Howard known as the king of sting. On the spur of the moment he could come up with great gotchas. Given a week’s preparation time, he created cons worthy of Hollywood. He had had over a year to lick his wounds from my sting, to recall how easily he’d fallen in with it, to grasp vainly for the signs he should have seen, the things he should have done, to take to heart how the sting had changed things between us. To plot his revenge. With a year’s prep time Howard could make the Trojan horse look like a lawn flamingo. I squeaked out, “Just what kind of commitment do you want me to make?”
    “Give up junk food.”
    “Junk food?” Relief washed over me. Howard was letting me off easy. It would be no big deal to adjust my food intake for the rest of the month. Food was not a big item in my life. I ate what I could grab. So I’d grab something different.
    “Starting now.”
    “Okay.” Ridiculously easy, but I wasn’t about to argue. I leaned down and gave Howard a kiss. “Okay, leave your work clothes in the closet. Tahoe, here we come. Hey, we could even drive partway tonight. I’m getting a second wind, how about you? I can make us a thermos of coffee. And there’s still some pizza in the fridge, right? We can eat that—”
    Howard grinned. “I don’t think so.”

Chapter 6
    A FTER FORTY, THEY SAY , dimmed light is a boon. In the case of Howard’s house, that was an understatement. The neighbors to the south had already complained about the sagging porch off the corner bedroom that looked like the top of an antique canopy bed. At least they didn’t have to worry about a noisy neighbor sitting out there at night listening to the A’s game. (The last tenant who had used that balcony was a large man who did, in fact, sunbathe with the A’s. He went through the floor one bright afternoon, sort of a pop fly unto himself.)
    We had had a call from the neighbor to the north about the decrepit garage, and one from the guy across the street about the condition of the wood shake roof. But we already knew the shingles were thin, old, cracked, and separated. We had discovered that during the previous rainy season.
    The six-bedroom house had many flaws. But at night, in the softening glow of the moon, it stood dark and appealing under the graceful umbrella of the jacaranda tree in front, crowned by the evergreen in the back.
    At 3:30 A.M. the tenants—an increasingly motley array Howard had been forced to accept for need of rent—were most likely asleep, or at least in their rooms. Howard and I had decided to leave for Tahoe in the morning. Now all I could think of was food. I headed inside.
    So I wouldn’t have pizza. Like as not, the remains of last night’s pepperoni