Just Fooling Around(30)

However, she was a Franklin.

Cursed. People thought curses were cute and funny, and only happened to pretty people. Oh, yeah. If only that were the case.

Being the most rational Franklin, she knew the safest path to a relatively pain-free day. Hibernate in bed until midnight and wait the disasters out. It was what the rest of her family called Devon’s Ostrich Solution.

She hated when they said that. Maybe it wasn’t the most daring (Cam), optimistic (Darcy) or academic (Reg) strategy. However, it remained an undisputed fact that of the four siblings, Devon had a lower incidence of medical traumas. From an early age, as soon as she understood the eventful complications of the Franklin curse, Devon had hunkered down and opted for maximum protection against whatever bad things came on April First. Sure, it meant that her life wasn’t nearly as lively…

Oh, boo hoo hoo.

Now she’d done it. Completely debated herself into wakefulness when she wanted nothing more than to sleep. Devon sunk down farther into the blankets, waiting for the sounds of silence to wash over her and hopefully deliver her back into the sleepy arms of Morpheus, who was the only man who dared come near her on April Fools’. Yes, that was what she was doomed to for her sex life. Imaginary Greek gods.

Instead of sleepy silence, hard rain rapped like coins on the old roof of her tiny cottage, quaintly set in the middle of Middle America.

Maxbass, North Dakota. Nothing ever happened here. Devon had picked the town three years ago for that reason.

She craved nothingness. She ached for nothingness. A booming blast of thunder scoffed at her nothingness, rattling the double-paned, tornado-proofed, hurricane-secure windows.

Outside, another sound mixed with the rain. An unsettling dragging sound and some sort of howling. Not quite an animal. But it could be an animal. A bear. A lion. A zombie. In Devon’s mind, all were highly probable.

From outside the house, the moaning noises continued, but there was absolutely no way she would investigate. Nope, she would bury her head under the duvet and live out the next twenty-four hours in blissful ostrich-buried-head-in-the-sand-I-know-nothing mode.

But what if it was something bad? asked that incessant voice inside her head.

The doorbell rang, and Devon lifted the comforter away from her face, opening one cautious eye. On the wall opposite her bed, the bank of security monitors showed an empty doorstep, with a dark shadow hovering just beyond the porch. An intruder?

Statistically, in a town with a population of four hundred and thirty-seven, intruders or burglars were unlikely. As her wretched inquisitiveness began to take hold, though, she lowered the covers another inch. Over the years she had learned that no matter how she tried, problems didn’t go away when you ignored them, they merely smashed through windows (April 1, 2000), or roofs (April 1, 1982), or drove through the living room (April 1, 1993).

But Devon was more determined than most of her family. She’d finally wised up and had pimped out her tidy two-room cottage into a modified nuclear bunker, outfitted with a state-of-the-art monitor and surveillance system, all nooks and crannies visible from every room, and best of all, fashionably accentuated in a cheery yellow.

Each room contained a row of screens that displayed a live feed of all the other rooms in the house, including the exterior perimeter. If disaster was going to strike, Devon wanted to know in advance.

The ordinary citizen would consider the elaborate setup overkill. However, the ordinary citizen would have suffered a psychotic breakdown from the streak of April firsts that she’d had.

Devon, never a dummy, had learned.

The doorbell rang, and this time the shadow was fully visible on the monitor. Not Morpheus, no, this was a man. Human, living, breathing, and looking almost…sane.

His dark T-shirt clung to a brawny chest, and flexing arm muscles were artfully displayed as he leaned on her doorframe.

Thanks to the rain, his dark hair was plastered like a skullcap to a nicely formed head, and in spite of the weather, he seem calm and fairly controlled. The overhang of her porch wasn’t doing much to keep him out of the storm. A wave of drops washed over his face, and he dragged a hand through his slicked hair, pushing it away from his face.

A magnificent face. Chiseled and thin, with a dimpled chin and a mouth that looked as tasty as ice cream, maybe tastier. His eyes were the best feature. Pale underneath black brows and spiked black lashes, they gleamed as if he were actually enjoying himself.

Although it was 3:00 a.m. on April Fools’ Day, Devon’s lady parts were especially wide awake.

For a few dazzling seconds she stared as the rain sluiced over his face, along the broad shelf of his shoulders. It was like watching a guy in one of those soap commercials, those devious marketing ploys where the product was for a male, but the target audience were women who would be goggle-eyed over a bare-chested young man relishing his sensual time alone in the shower.