The One I Want, page 15
Stephanie laughed. “No, I’ll be fine. I know lots of people in the building.”
“I believe you also know a cop who makes house calls.”
“I’m not that desperate.”
“All right. Call if you change your mind and want to come over. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The ringing phone pulled Matt out of the deepest sleep he’d had in weeks. He woke on the first ring and was fully alert by the second. He noted the time was a little after two when he picked up and answered, “Tanner.” He was out of bed and reaching for his jeans when he remembered he wasn’t a cop anymore, which was also the same moment a breathy, female voice whispered, “Matthew?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Chloe.” She was whispering and she sounded scared.
“What’s up?”
“Have you got a gun?” It was a crazy question, at a crazy hour of the night, but he didn’t call her on it. Not yet. He’d ensure her safety first, as he’d been trained to do. Then he’d yell.
“Yes. Why?”
“I think I might be in trouble.”
His eyes rolled, even as he walked, naked, to the window and peered between the slats of the blinds out onto the darkened cul-de-sac. Before Chloe moved in, this had been a
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haven of peace and tranquility, exactly the place for a burned-out ex-cop who’d seen all the action he ever wanted to see in his life and who craved nothing more than peace and quiet.
He felt like he could count on the fingers of one hand the minutes of peace he’d had since that English gal had moved in next door.
“I don’t see anything in front of your house,” he told her.
“No, I think he’s trying to break in at the back.”
He ran the length of the upstairs, grabbing his gun from his sock drawer on the way. From the window in the back bedroom he saw . . . nothing. “The motion detector light isn’t on. I can’t see anybody out there.”
“Oh, never mind. It was probably an idle threat.”
He felt his hair stand on end. “Threat? What threat?”
“You won’t like it.”
“I’m sure of that. I already don’t like it. So tell me what’s going on.”
He ran back to his room, found his jeans, grabbed a shirt from the pile of clean laundry he hadn’t got around to putting away, and shoved the stuff on while Chloe said, “I had a phone call an hour or so ago.”
“Who from?”
“A man. He didn’t give his name. He told me to close down my business or I’d be sorry. Naturally, I asked him what exactly was the trouble, but he hung up.”
“What’s going on now?”
“I thought I saw something in the garden. It’s probably nothing.”
“Stay put. I’ll check it out.”
He sprinted down the stairs, shoving his feet into sneakers when he hit the kitchen, then slipped quietly out of the house.
The air was warm and heavy with humidity. He stood still and silent, only his eyes moving as he scanned the area. He didn’t see any movement, hear a sound. He waited another full minute, and then still seeing and hearing nothing out of
162 Nancy Warren the ordinary, he decided to take a walk around the perimeter of the properties before calling an overdue meeting with his neighbor and tenant.
He walked noiselessly alongside the hedge that separated the houses until he reached the bottom of the joined lot; then he edged between a mountain laurel and a pistachio tree to emerge at the bottom of his neighbor’s garden.
All was quiet. He caught the scent of nighttime, and in one corner he made out the shapes of the cacti in the low-maintenance cactus garden. Matt was a big believer in the low-maintenance garden.
A rustling sound to his left had him tensing, only to see Mitzi the cat, who lived three doors down, out for a night’s hunting. Pointedly, the cat ignored him and went about her business.
He’d finish walking the perimeter—because he liked to finish what he started—and then he and Chloe would be having their meeting.
Based on the temperature already, it was going to be a hot one tomorrow. And then his musings about the weather were silenced as he saw a figure run out from the alley and throw something toward the house. He caught no more than a glimpse of a thinnish man before the guy was running back the way he’d come.
Matt started to yell, “Police, freeze,” but got halfway through before changing the yell to “Son of a bitch.” He was already halfway to the back porch, thinking it was a bomb. A light snapped on, and he yelled, “Chloe! Get down.”
By the time he got to the porch and saw that the bomb was no more than a rock that had bounced off the window without breaking it, he was furious. Nobody messed with his property, his tenant, and his night’s sleep. Barely breaking stride, he pelted to where the guy had disappeared. He leapt the fence. Saw a car’s lights flare and the shriek of an ignition being cranked too hard. Anybody whose pitching arm was so lame assed they couldn’t throw a rock with enough force to
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break a window, wasn’t somebody who’d run down a man standing in front of his Honda sedan.
At least he hoped not, because Matt was not going to let this punk go without a fight.
His feet hit the dirt. He landed hard, and as his brain told his legs to run, the impact of his feet hitting the gravel shuddered through him until he felt his knee pop out from under him.
“Shit!” he yelled as he crashed helplessly into the ground and watched in impotent fury as the Honda squealed past him. His eyes were clouded with pain and dirt, so all he got of the license plate was a 4 and maybe a 3.
Great. Just great.
He lay there for another minute, not sure whether he was angrier with the rock thrower, Chloe, or himself for forgetting he’d left that macho shit behind after a bullet took out half his knee.
It took him a couple of painful minutes and a lot of sweat and cursing to get himself to a sitting position with his back against the fence.
He contemplated dragging himself to his feet and hopping home, but the pain radiating from his knee all the way to his teeth made the idea of sitting here in the gravel for what remained of the night more appealing.
Rustling sounds near him heralded the arrival of Mitzi, who walked around him a couple of times, giving him a wide berth, her tail swishing. When he didn’t move, the cat circled closer, and finally close enough that he could pet her. Her fur was warm and sort of dusty, and she seemed to look at him with indulgent disdain that he couldn’t manage a leap she did so effortlessly several times a day.
Then he heard much louder rustling and, finally, Chloe calling him in a low voice, “Matthew? Where are you? Are you all right?”
He ignored her for a while, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to give up, and he finally figured that answering her
164 Nancy Warren would be less aggravating than listening to her call for him all over the neighborhood as though he were a lost pet.
“Over here,” he finally called, keeping his voice soft. No reason for the entire neighborhood to see him like this.
She appeared on the other side of the fence, looking over and down at him. Her face was pale in the darkness. Her hand went to her cheek.
“Oh, no. What happened?”
“Old knee injury,” he said, trying to drag himself up to his one good leg, feeling like a damn fool. He forgot about the knee every time he should be most careful to remember it.
Pain twisted through him and he grunted as he almost toppled.
“Don’t move,” she ordered, and his mind was taken off his pain momentarily while he watched the least athletic attempt to climb a fence he’d ever witnessed. However, a lot of visible thigh was involved, which took his mind temporarily off his pain and made him happy his neighbor was no athlete.
“A gentleman wouldn’t stare,” she told him.
“I was wounded in the line. Give me a break.”
She slid to her feet and then brushed off her palms before taking stock of the situation, which didn’t take a hell of a lot of summing up.
“I can’t walk.” He didn’t even have crutches anymore.
He’d given them away the moment he was walking again.
“Right,” she said. “You’ll have to lean on me.”
“I’m too heavy for you.”
“Nonsense. I’m stronger than I look.”
“Who was that asshole throwing rocks at your window?”
“We’ll talk inside. You must save your strength.”
She came toward his injured right side and he clenched involuntarily. But she was so smooth, she could have been trained. She slid under his arm, put her arms around his waist to anchor him, and then looked up. “All right?”
He nodded and let go of the fence. With slow, painful hops,
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they started the long way around to the front of the house. It didn’t take long for him to realize that she’d been right. She was stronger than she looked and also had an instinct about how and when he was going to move. He relaxed against her and the going got smoother.
“Good,” she said softly. “You’re beginning to trust me.”
“Like a mouse trusts a bull snake.”
She trilled her laugh. “I love it when you talk Texan,” she said, and he found himself grinning.
“What else am I gonna talk?”
The night was so quiet but for their footsteps and his hopping shuffling the gravel. Mitzi, after rubbing past his legs, took off and he and Chloe had the night to themselves. Odd when he was full of pain and furious at his own stupidity, but he noticed the feel of her body against his, slender and elegant. Her breast was pressed against his side out of medical necessity, but still, he noticed how nice it felt.
She smelled good too. He couldn’t stand perfume and he doubted Chloe wore any. But she sure smelled good.
“We’ve made it more than halfway. How are you holding up?”
“Better than you. You’re panting.”
When they got around to the front of her house he knew she didn’t have it in her to get him all the way home to his place, but he thought she could make it past her car.
“Lean on the hood for a minute,” she panted. “I’ll run in and get my keys.”
Keys? “What for?”
Even in the dark he could tell she was giving him that look again, like he was stupider than dirt. “To drive you to the hospital.”
“No, I know the drill. I’ll go to my doctor tomorrow. All I can do tonight is ice it and keep it elevated.”
She looked as though she were going to argue, so he said a word he never uttered to a woman if he could help it.
“Please.”
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“You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?” she scolded, but she also rearranged herself under his arm and they continued walking.
The steps were tough, but he’d done this before. So, it seemed, had Chloe. She got him inside and to the big armchair in her living room where he eased himself down stifling a groan. She pulled one of the dining chairs over and lifted his foot carefully onto it. “Ice?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t have an ice pack,” she said from the kitchen, where he heard the sound of ice cubes being snapped out of trays.
Then she came in with a lumpy looking dish towel and eased her homemade ice pack around his knee.
She took a good look at him under the light of a standard lamp she’d switched on. “All I have in the way of painkillers is Advil.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t be a bloody hero. You’ve got some heavy-duty meds at home, I’m certain. Something strong enough to ease those lines of pain.” Here, she touched him, a soft stroke of her index finger down the center of his brow. It was such a dumb thing, hardly personal at all, but he felt that light touch and knew that he wanted to know more of it. He wanted to feel her hands on him. Put his hands on her. Something of his thoughts must have communicated themselves to her, for he saw heat leap into her eyes. Her lips parted slightly and she leaned closer. “If circumstances were different,” she said in that soft but husky voice, “I’d kiss you all better.”
He could barely breathe. Lust was pummeling him even as the fact that Brittany trusted him held him rooted to the chair like carpenter’s glue.
“If your kisses can fix my knee, you’re a miracle worker.”
She smiled that completely female cat smile of hers. “I wouldn’t cure your knee, but simply make you forget you had one.”
Oh, man. He’d tried to deflect the blast of lust with his
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comment, but she’d backhanded it right back to him. “The medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom,” he said. “Prescription painkillers.” He didn’t need the meds as much as he needed to get Chloe out of range until he got his wits back.
He contemplated hauling Rafe out of his bed to come help him home, but he figured there weren’t enough hours of night left to worry about. Besides, it was time he and Chloe had a little talk.
He placed his revolver on the table beside him, beside a bi-ography of Coco Chanel.
She was back in less than ten minutes with his painkillers.
She got him a glass of water and shook out two, offering them on her palm.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the nursing type.”
Her chuckle was low and sexy. “I was engaged to a former Italian Olympic skier who had a knee very much like yours.”
“I doubt it.”
She cocked her head at him. “What kind of injury was it?
Football?”
“Bullet.”
“Good heavens.” Considering it was going on four and she hadn’t had a whole lot of sleep, his neighbor looked far too good.
She wore gray U of T sweats, and with her dark hair tousled and no makeup on, she looked like a coed. “Is that why you left the force?”
“Pretty much. I was given a desk job, but I’m not cut out for a desk job.” He shrugged. “I already had a couple of houses I’d fixed up and rented or sold. It worked out okay, so I kept on doing it. Keeps me busy.” He paused. “Of course, I could always go into your line of work.”
Her eyes widened. “My line of work?”
“Private investigation.”
She recovered quickly. “Exactly. Somehow, I can’t imagine you as a PI.”
“A lot of people would say the same about you.”
168 Nancy Warren She beamed at him. “I know. That’s why I’m so smashingly successful.”
“Speaking of smashing.” He pointed a thumb toward the window that hadn’t broken. “What was that all about?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I have a feeling the attack wasn’t about me, but my employee.” Her brow furrowed.
“I can’t tell you more until I’ve seen her.”
She then took a dark purple throw off the back of the couch and laid it over him, tucking it around him with nim-ble fingers. She got an extra pillow out of the hall closet and tucked that behind his head. “Don’t worry about it now. Get some sleep.”
“I need answers, not sleep.”
She patted his cheek. She actually had the nerve to pat his cheek. “And you will get them. When the time is right.”
He grabbed her hand to stop her from leaving, felt the softness of her skin but remembered the underlying strength in her. “There’s going to be a reckoning between us, Chloe, one of these days.”
She glanced at their joined hands, then met his gaze. “We’re yin and yang.”
“Yeah, whenever I yin, you yang.”
She sent him an enigmatic smile and gave his hand a quick squeeze before pulling free. “Good night, Matthew. Thank you for being my protector.”
“I fell flat on my face,” he reminded her.
“A man is no less a hero for being a wounded knight,” she said, then flipped off the light. He heard her tread softly up the stairs.
A wounded knight. That woman was definitely a few ants short of a picnic. He found himself smiling in the dark. Even though he didn’t think the rock-throwing punk was coming back, he kept watch until it was light.
Chapter 17
Stephanie let out a squawk of alarm and dropped her bag on the floor, which caused the man asleep in Chloe’s living room to jerk awake and then swear violently, clutching his knee.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She recognized him now that she’d gotten a good look at him. He was the man from next door. The one who owned this house. Still, it seemed kind of strange for him to be sleeping in it. “Does Chloe know you’re here?”
He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Ten of nine.” She was early, but then she was usually early getting to Chloe’s since, unlike her previous jobs, this was the most fun thing in her life. Or maybe that said more about how pathetic her life was than how great her new job was.
“Guess I fell asleep. And, yes, Chloe knows I’m here. She tucked me in herself.”
Chloe was obviously a very sexual woman and the neighbor was seriously hot, so what they were doing on separate floors was outside Stephanie’s comprehension.
They looked at each other for a few seconds. “I’m Matt,”
he finally said. “I live next door.”
“I’m Stephanie. I work for Chloe.”
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“Right.” He yawned. “Do your duties by any chance include making coffee?”
She smiled at him. “I’ll be glad to make you a pot.”
“Thanks.” He dug out a cell phone. While she began making coffee, she heard Matt say, “Hey, Rafe. Need a favor.”
An entire tablespoon of Chloe’s very expensive French coffee plopped onto the counter. Was it possible he was talking to her Rafe? Not that the man was her Rafe. Bastard.
“Need you to pick me up at Chloe’s and give me a ride to my doctor. It’s my knee . . . Yeah, long story. Tell you later.
Thanks, man. I owe you.”
She heard footsteps on the stairs, so she poured a third mug of coffee and added a dash of skim and half a teaspoon of sugar. Chloe entered the living room in what Steph thought of as her “at home” business attire. Flowing white sailor style pants and a navy and white striped T-shirt. Her sandals were red and sported tiny crystal anchors.
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