Undercover with the Mob

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Strangely, even after he’d managed to get the door open, he didn’t move away from her. Instead, he continued to hold his body close to hers, as if he were reluctant to put any distance between the two of them. Which was just fine with Natalie, since she could stand here like this all night. It was, after all, the closest thing she’d had to a sexual encounter for some time. Now if she could just think of some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing…

“You, uh, you wanna go inside?” Jack asked as she pondered her dilemma.

And then Natalie realized the reason he hadn’t moved away from her was simply because he was waiting for her to move first. And because she’d only stood there like an imbecile, he was probably thinking she was, well, an imbecile. Either that, or he was thinking she’d been enjoying the feel of his body next to hers too much to want to end it, and might possibly be grappling for some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing, and how embarrassing was that? Especially since he was right.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, forcing her feet forward. “Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”

Like how nice it would be to have her door opened this way every night. And how nice it would be if Jack followed her into her apartment every night. And how nice it would be if they spent the rest of the night rubbing their bodies together every night.

Oh, dear.

Hastily, she strode to her minuscule galley kitchen and set her bag of groceries on what little available counter space was there. Jack followed and did likewise, making the kitchen feel more like a closet. He was just so big. So overwhelming. So incredibly potent. She’d never met a man like him before, let alone have one rub up against her the way he had, however involuntary the action had been on his part.

The moment he settled his bag of groceries on the counter, he turned and took a few steps in the opposite direction, and Natalie told herself he was not trying to escape. As she quickly emptied the bags and put things in their proper places, he prowled around her small living room, and she got the feeling it was because he wasn’t quite ready to leave. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. In any event, however, he made no further move to escape. Uh, leave.

“You got a nice place here,” he said as he looked around.

And why did he sound as if he made the observation grudgingly? she wondered. She, too, looked around her apartment, trying to see it the way someone would for the first time. Five years of residence and a very small space added up to a lot of clutter, she realized. But he was right—it was nice clutter. Natalie wasn’t the type to go for finery, but she did like beautiful things. After she’d graduated from college and found this apartment, she’d haunted the antique shops and boutiques along Third Street and Bards-town Road and Frankfort Avenue, looking for interesting pieces to furnish her very first place. Her college dorm had been stark and bland and uninteresting, so she’d deliberately purchased things of bold color and intrepid design, striving more for chimerical than practical, fun instead of functional.

Her large, overstuffed, Victorian velvet sofa, the color of good merlot, had been her one splurge. The coffee table had started life as an old steamer trunk, and the end tables were marble-topped, carved wooden lyres. An old glass cocktail shaker on one held dried flowers, a crystal bowl overflowing with potpourri took up most of the other. Her lamps were Art Deco bronzes, and ancient Oriental rugs covered much of the hardwood floor. Dozens of houseplants spilled from wide window ledges, while other, larger ones sprung up from terra-cotta pots. Brightly colored majolica—something she’d collected since she was a teenager—filled every available space leftover.

All in all, she thought whimsically, not for the first time, the place looked like the home of an aging, eccentric Hollywood actress who’d never quite made it to the B-List. It was the sort of place she’d always wanted to have, and she was comfortable here.

Nevertheless, she shrugged off Jack’s compliment almost literally. “Thanks. I like it.” And she did.

“Yeah, I do, too,” he told her. “It’s…homey,” he added, again seeming somewhat reluctant to say so. “Interesting. Different from my place.”

His place, she knew, was a furnished apartment, but it was much like the rest of Mrs. Klosterman’s house, filled with old, but comfortable things. Still, it lacked anything that might add a personal touch, whereas Natalie’s apartment was overflowing with the personal. And that did indeed make a big difference.

She had expected him to leave after offering those few requisite niceties, but he began to wander around her living room, instead, looking at…Well, he seemed to be looking at everything, she thought. Evidently, he’d been telling the truth when he said he found the place interesting, because he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his black jeans and made his way to her overcrowded bookcase, scanning the titles he found there.

“Oh, yeah,” he said as he read over them. “I can tell you’re an English teacher. Hawthorne, Wharton, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Twain, James.” He turned around to look at her. “You like American literature, huh?”

She nodded. “Especially the nineteenth century. Though I like the early twentieth century, too.”

He turned back to the bookcases again. “I like the guys who came later,” he told her. “Faulkner. Fitzgerald. Kerouac. Hemingway. I think The Sun Also Rises is the greatest book ever written.”

Natalie silently chided herself for being surprised. How often had she herself been stereotyped as the conservative, prudish, easily overrun sort, simply because of the way she dressed and talked, and because of her job? How often had she been treated like a pushover? A doormat? A woman who was more likely to be abducted by a gang of leisure suit-wearing circus freaks than to find a husband after the age of thirty-five? Too many times for her to recall. So she shouldn’t think Jack Miller was a brainless thug, simply because of the way he dressed and talked. Of course, she didn’t think he was a brainless thug, she realized. She thought he was…

Well. She thought of him in ways she probably shouldn’t.

“I’d have to argue with you,” she told him as she folded up the paper sacks and stowed them under her kitchen sink. “I think The Scarlet Letter is the greatest book ever written.”

He turned again to look at her. “I can see that,” he said. “You don’t seem the type to suffer hypocrites.”

She wondered what other type she seemed—or didn’t seem—to him. And she wondered why she hoped so much that whatever he thought of her, it was good. Then she surprised herself by asking him, “Have you had dinner yet?”

He seemed surprised by the question, too, because he straightened and dropped his hands to his sides, suddenly looking kind of uncomfortable. “No, I was just on my way out to grab something when I…when you…when we…Uh…I was just gonna go out and grab something.”

She hoped she sounded nonchalant when she said, “You’re welcome to join me for dinner here. I wasn’t planning anything fancy. But if you’re not doing anything else…?”

For one brief, euphoric moment, she thought he was going to accept her offer. The look that came over his face just made her think he wanted very much to say yes. But he shook his head slowly instead.

“I can’t,” he told her. “I have to meet a guy.” And then, as if it were an afterthought, he added, “Maybe another time.”

Natalie nodded, but she didn’t believe him, mostly because of the afterthought thing. And she didn’t take his declining of her invitation personally. Well, not too personally. It was just as well, really. She didn’t need to be sharing her table with a hit man anyway. There wouldn’t be any room for his gun.

“Some other time,” she echoed in spite of that.

And later, after Jack was gone and she and Mojo were home alone, she tried not to think about how her apartment seemed quieter and emptier than it ever had before. And she tried not to hope that Jack’s some other time had been sincere.

3

TWO SATURDAYS AFTER Natalie first met Jack in Mrs. Klosterman’s kitchen under less than ideal circumstances, she met him there a second time. Under less than ideal circumstances.

Since his arrival two weeks earlier, she had made it a practice to get dressed and put in her contact lenses before leaving her apartment, but, hey, it was Saturday—and she hadn’t seen him around the place on the weekends—so she hadn’t dressed particularly well today. Her blue jeans were a bit too raggedy for public consumption, and her oatmeal-colored sweater was a bit too stretched out to look like anything other than a cable knit pup tent. Nevertheless, she was comfortable. And, hey, it was Saturday.

On the upside, Jack hadn’t dressed any better than she had. And he hadn’t dressed in black, either—well, not entirely. In fact, his blue jeans were even more tattered than hers were, slashed clear across both knees from seam to seam, faded and frayed and smudged here and there with what she assured herself couldn’t possibly be blood. And the black shirt he’d paired them with was faded, too, untucked and half-unbuttoned. On the downside, he had a better reason for being dressed that way than her lame hey, it is Saturday. Because he was lying prone beneath Mrs. Klosterman’s sink, banging away on the pipes with something metallic-sounding that she really hoped wasn’t a handgun.

Oh, stop it, she told herself. After all, not even mobsters fixed their kitchen sinks with handguns. They could blow their drains out.

Mrs. Klosterman, however, was nowhere in sight, which was strange, because she usually arrived for their Saturday morning breakfasts together before Natalie did. Ah, well. Maybe she was sleeping late for a change. It was a good morning for it, rainy and gray and cold. Natalie would have slept late herself, if her dear—and soon to be dearly departed, if he didn’t stop waking her up so friggin’ early on Saturdays—Mojo would have let her.

“Good morning,” she said to Jack as she placed her teapot carefully on the table. The last thing she needed to do was spill something on him again, after that disastrous episode the first time she met him.

But her greeting must have surprised him, because the metallic banging immediately stopped, only to be replaced by the dull thump of what sounded very much like a forehead coming into contact with a drain pipe. And then that was replaced by a muffled “Ow, dammit!” And then that was replaced by a less-muffled word that Natalie normally only saw Magic Markered on the stall doors in the bathroom at school.

Okay, so maybe he would have preferred she spill something on him again. Because he sure hadn’t used that word two weeks ago.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The legs that had been protruding from beneath the sink bent at the knee, punctuated by the scrape of motorcycle boots on linoleum. Then Jack’s torso appeared more completely—and my, but what a delectable torso it was, too—followed by the appearance of his face. And my, but what a delectable face it was, too. Natalie wasn’t sure she would ever get used to how handsome he was, his face all planes and angles and hard, masculine lines. It was as if whatever Roman god had sculpted him had used Adonis—or maybe a young Marlon Brando—as a model.

Of course, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t have an opportunity to get used to how handsome he was. They ran into each other only occasionally, and he’d made clear his lack of interest in seeing any more of her. Oh, he was friendly enough, but she could tell that was all it was—friendliness. Common courtesy. She hadn’t invited him to join her for dinner again after his initial rebuff, however polite it had been. But he hadn’t brought up the “another time” thing, either. There was no point in trying to pursue something that wasn’t going to happen.

Which was just as well, anyway, because she still wasn’t entirely sure about who or what he was, or why he was even here. She still recalled his half of the phone conversation she had overheard a week ago, and even if it didn’t prove he was up to something illegal, it did suggest he was up to something temporary. He’d told whomever he was talking to that he’d come here to do a job, and that he wasn’t leaving until he’d done it. Which indicated he would be leaving eventually. So it would have been stupid for Natalie to pursue any sort of romantic entanglement with him. Had he even offered some indication that he was open to entangling with her romantically.

“No problem,” he said as he sat up. But he was rubbing the center of his forehead, which sort of suggested maybe there was a bit of a problem. Like a minor concussion, for instance.

She winced inwardly. “I really am sorry,” she apologized again.

“Really, it’s fine,” he told her. “I have a hard head.”

Which had to come in handy when one made one’s living by knocking heads together, she thought before she could stop herself.

“You’re up early for a Saturday,” he continued, dropping his hand to prop his forearm on one knee.

His shirt gaped open when he did, and Natalie saw that the chest beneath was matted with dark hair, and was as ruggedly and sharply sculpted as his facial features were. Nestled at the center, dangling from a gold chain, was a plain gold cross, and she found the accessory curious for him. And not just because he seemed like the sort of man who would normally shun jewelry, either. But also because he seemed too irreverent for such a thing.

“I’m always up by now,” she said. “Mrs. Klosterman and I have our tea together on Saturday mornings. In fact, she usually gets here before I do.”

“Mrs. K was here when I came down,” Jack said. “She was having problems with the sink, and I told her I could fix it for her, if she had the right tools. I found them in the basement, but by the time I got back up here, she had her coat on and said she had to go out for a little while.”

Now that was really strange, Natalie thought. Mrs. Klosterman never went anywhere on Saturday before noon. And sometimes she never left the house at all on the weekends.

“Did she say where she was going?” she asked.

Jack shook his head. “No. Should she have?” Natalie shrugged, but still felt anxious. “Not necessarily. Did you notice if she’d painted on jet-black eyebrows, and mascaraed her lashes into scary jet-black daddy longlegs?”

Now Jack narrowed his eyes at Natalie, as if he were worried about her. “No…” he said, drawing the word out over several time zones. “I don’t think she did. I didn’t really notice anything especially arachnid about her appearance.”

Wow, that wasn’t like Mrs. Klosterman, either, to go out without her eyebrows and daddy longlegs. “Gee, I hope everything’s okay,” Natalie said absently.

“She seemed fine to me,” Jack said. “But that’s interesting, now that I think about it, that stuff about the mascara and eyebrows. My great-aunt Gina does the same thing.”

Aunt Gina, Natalie echoed to herself, nudging her concern for Mrs. Klosterman to the side. Hmm. Wasn’t Gina an Italian name?

And what if it was? she immediately asked herself. Lots of people were Italian. And few of them fixed kitchen sinks with handguns. Inescapably, she glanced at Jack’s hands, only to find the left one empty, and the right one wielding not a weapon, but a wrench.

See? she taunted herself. Don’t you feel silly now?

Well, she did about that. But she couldn’t quite shake her worry about her landlady. Why hadn’t Mrs. Klosterman mentioned her need to go out this morning? Not that Natalie was kept apprised of all of her landlady’s comings and goings, and you could just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman. But the two of them did sort of have a standing agreement to have breakfast together on Saturdays, and if one of them couldn’t make it, she let the other know in advance.

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked. “You look worried. Like maybe you think Mrs. K is sleeping with the fishes or something.”

Natalie arched her own eyebrows at that. Now, of all the things he could have said, why that? Why the reference to sleeping with the fishes? Why hadn’t he said something like, You look worried. Like maybe you think she’s in trouble. Or Like maybe you think she’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or even Like maybe you think she’s been abducted by aliens who’ve dropped her in the Bermuda Triangle along with Elvis and Amelia Earhart and that World War II squadron they never found. Anything would have made more sense than that sleeping with the fishes reference.

Unless, of course, he was connected.

No, Natalie told herself firmly. That wasn’t it at all. He was just making a joke. A little Mob humor? she wondered. No, just a joke, she immediately assured herself.

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. She and I usually have breakfast together, that’s all, and it’s odd that she didn’t tell me she needed to go out this morning. But you know, you can just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman.”

Jack nodded. “Well then, since she’s not here to have breakfast with you, how about I take her place?”

This time it was Natalie’s turn to be surprised. Not just because of his offer, but because of the natural way he made it. Like he thought she wouldn’t be surprised that he would want to have breakfast with her. So what could she do but pretend she wasn’t surprised at all?

“Sure,” she said, hoping that wasn’t a squeak she heard in her voice. “Fine,” she added, thinking that might be a squeak she heard in her voice. “Tea?” she asked, noting a definite squeak in her voice.

Jack grinned. “Actually, I’m more of a coffee drinker. But that’s okay. Mrs. K put a pot on for me before she left.”

Natalie nodded dumbly, just now noticing the aroma of coffee in the air. Probably she hadn’t noticed it before because she’d been too busy noticing, you know, how handsome Jack was, and the way his shirt was only halfway buttoned, and how the chest beneath was matted with dark hair, and—

Well. Suffice it to say she probably hadn’t noticed it before now because she’d had her mind on other things.

She watched as Jack heaved himself up to standing, tossed the wrench into the sink with a clatter, then crossed the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. And why each of those actions, which should have been totally uninteresting, should fascinate her so much was something Natalie decided not to ponder. But the way the man moved…Mmm, mmm, mmm. There was a smoothness and poetry to his manner that belied the ruggedness of his appearance, as if he were utterly confident in and thoroughly comfortable with himself. Natalie couldn’t imagine what that must be like. She constantly second-guessed herself and she never moved smoothly.

Probably she put too much thought into just about everything, but she didn’t know any other way to be. Jack Miller, on the other hand, didn’t seem the type to waste time wondering if what he was doing was the right thing. Or the smart thing. Or the graceful thing. Or the anything else thing. He just did what came naturally, obviously convinced it was the right, smart, graceful or anything else thing to do. And from where Natalie was sitting, he did his thing very, very well. There was something extremely sexy about a man who was confident in and content with himself and who didn’t feel obligated to make an impression on anyone.