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“I didn’t say that.” Nicole took a long, steadying breath. She could handle this. She’d handled everything else until now. She just didn’t know how yet. “They’ve just never made house calls before.”
God, what a fool Craig had been. Could she have really been in love with him? Could she have really been so damn blind and missed all these defects when she had agreed to run off with him?
She knew the truth now. She hadn’t been running away with Craig so much as running away from home. And her father.
Nicole ran her hands along her arms. She felt cold, even as the heater was turning over.
“It wasn’t enough for him to have it all,” she murmured, half to herself, half to Dennis. “Fame, women hanging on him, money, it wasn’t enough.” Sadness rimmed her smile. “He wanted more.”
She looked at Dennis, who was patiently listening to her. Why, she still hadn’t figured out. Just as she didn’t know why she was even saying this, except that it had been bottled up for so long and he was a stranger, not a friend. Sometimes it was easier to talk to strangers.
“There were a few pockets of time when he gambled away more than he earned, even with all the endorsements coming in.”
They’d come, she remembered, courting the new king of the track, and he had eaten it up. Anyone else would have been set for life. But not Craig. With him there had been this huge hole that no one and nothing seemed to be able to fill.
She sighed as she looked at the door she had slammed in Standish’s wake. He’d be back. She didn’t know what she was going to do when he came. She was almost positive that she didn’t have anything that might belong to him. “I guess this is one of those times.”
She looked so small, so vulnerable. It made Dennis forget for a moment that he wasn’t supposed to get involved in anyone’s troubles.
“So, what are you going to do?” he repeated.
For a moment, she’d forgotten that he was here. She’d been talking out loud to herself. But he was here, and he shouldn’t have been. She distanced herself from him. “That’s my problem.”
He’d had a feeling she’d say that. Feisty didn’t begin to describe her. Though it got in his way, he had to admire that. “Living next door to you kind of makes it mine.”
The logic escaped her. “And just how do you figure that?”
Dennis grinned at her. “It’s that neighborly thing again.”
As she had said, it wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t anyone’s problem but hers, courtesy of Craig. She’d find a way out. Tomorrow, when she was less exhausted and could think clearly. After all, she couldn’t give Standish what she didn’t have. He had to be satisfied with that—didn’t he?
Nicole blew out a breath as she looked at Dennis. “There’s such a thing as being too neighborly. Don’t worry about it.”
The woman had more courage than brains. There was no doubt in his mind that she hadn’t seen the last of Standish. “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”
Nicole stared at him. Where had that come from? She was exhausted and hugely pregnant. That should have turned anyone off.
“No.” As soon as she turned him down, something small within Nicole wavered, afraid. She buried it quickly. She was a big girl now, and had been on her own for a long time.
The offer seemed like the right thing to say. Besides, though he was next door, he didn’t like the idea of her remaining alone for the night. Standish might decide that a week was too long to wait and return in the middle of the night. If the man entered through the door, it would trip the alarm system he had rigged, but if he entered through the sliding patio door, Standish could harm Logan’s widow before he had a chance to reach her.
“Would you rather stay at my place?” He kept the suggestion low-key. “I’ve got a sofa that folds out in the den. You could have my bed.”
God, he almost sounded chivalrous, but she knew better. No man was altruistic. They always wanted something in return. “No.”
She was being difficult. It only stood to reason that she’d feel better with someone she knew. “Do you have any other place to stay?”
“If I wanted to.” Her eyes met his. She saw the question he was about to ask. “I don’t want to. It’ll be all right,” she added with an assurance she only hoped was true. Maybe if she said it a few times, she would eventually believe it.
He’d hidden his surveillance equipment while the delivery was being made, but he was going to set it up again as soon as he left her. And it looked as if he were going to be staying up late tonight. He knew that Dombrowski would cover for him while he slept, but somehow, that didn’t seem good enough just now.
Dennis noticed a pen in the corner of the counter. Leaning over the table, he pulled out a blue napkin from the plastic holder and wrote seven digits on it.
“Here.” He held out the napkin to her.
She stared at it, making no move to take it. “What is it?”
It was like trying to lead a mustang to water. He was getting kicked for his trouble. Dennis took her hand by the wrist and placed the napkin into her palm. “My phone number.”
She wasn’t helpless and she didn’t accept aid from a stranger under any circumstances. Despite the meal they’d shared, that’s what they were. Strangers. She didn’t know any more about him than she knew about Standish.
Except that he didn’t make her blood run cold, the way Standish did. And he smelled good.
“Why would I want that?”
This one put a new spin on stubbornness. He wondered if it was her pregnancy that had her behaving this way, or if she had always been so bullheaded. “So you can call me in case you have any strange visitors in the night that don’t go ‘Ho-ho-ho.”’
Nicole frowned at the napkin, but she didn’t crumple it and throw it away the way he half expected her to. Instead, she folded it in half as she looked at him.
“Why would you want to get involved in this?” she challenged.
There was nothing in it for him. She had long since passed the point where she was dazzled by a sexy smile and a drop-dead body. And if she had once wished for love and acceptance, well, that had fallen by the wayside as well. The price tag was too high and the returns too low on the emotional investment that was required of her. Love was a highly overrated emotion. So what was he doing, offering to be her protector?
She was suspicious of his motives. He wondered if she had something to hide, or if she was just being prudent. If that was the case, he couldn’t say he blamed her. Craig Logan might have been a winner on the track, but he was a real loser otherwise. He could understand her being leery of men.
“Let’s just say I’ve always had a secret fantasy about rescuing a damsel in distress.”
Nicole’s frown deepened. Did he really expect her to believe him? “In this case, the damsel probably outweighs you.”
Dennis laughed. She was large, there was no disputing that, but she was also petite and that exaggerated the image. Having seen a photograph of Nicole before she had become pregnant, he knew exactly how stunning she could be.
“I sincerely doubt that. I hit the scales at 185.”
And all of it looked pretty solidly built from what she could see. Nicole shook off the thought. She was being adolescent. “If you think I’m telling you what my scale says, you’re more naive than I thought.”
Naive, now there was a word that wouldn’t have described him, not since he was nine years old. Children of gamblers grew up quickly.
He leaned against the doorjamb and smiled engagingly. “And why would I be naive?”
She glanced at the remainder of their meal. “For getting involved with a pregnant widow whose late husband seemed to have ran afoul of the wrong crowd.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop casually. “What’s life without a challenge?”
She didn’t need a challenge. She needed a little smooth sailing for a while. Maybe forever.
“Life is challenge enough,” she murmured, looking out the window. She hoped that Standish would keep his word and stay away for a week. Maybe by then she’d be able to find whatever it was that he was looking for.
It would have helped if he had been more specific. Dennis saw the worried look flitter through her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want—”
“I’m sure,” she said abruptly, cutting him off before he could try to change her mind. This time, she might just let him. “Thank you for dinner.”
He enveloped her hand between his. It felt small, frail. Her manner had almost made him forget just what a delicate woman she really was. “The pleasure was all mine.”
He was being incredibly polite. Her mood at dinner had been rather surly and then Standish had made his appearance. All in all, it didn’t make anyone’s listing of top ten evenings.
“Then I would say that you have a very low threshold of pleasure, Mr. Lincoln—”
He arched a brow. “It’s Dennis, remember?”
She sighed and nodded. “I remember.”
“And my threshold isn’t low at all.” He had a feeling that she had very little to smile about. Maybe he could do something about that. His smile widened beguilingly. “Maybe we can discuss that threshold some time.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, closing the door behind him. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” she added quietly.
Nicole tucked the napkin with his phone number into her pocket and went to clear the table.
Surveillance equipment in place, Dennis maintained vigil until two in the morning. He knew that Dombrowski had spelled Winston in the converted VW van that was inconspicuously parked in the carport. Two sets of eyes were better than one.
Accustomed to snatching catnaps whenever he could and able to run on next to no sleep, he managed to get a few hours in the recliner beside his monitors. Even then, he slept lightly, anticipating the telephone ringing at any moment.
It didn’t.
When he opened his eyes again, it was a little past seven. Immediately, he looked at the monitors. Nothing had changed in the parking lot. The same cars that had been there last night were still in their designated spots. The second monitor showed only an empty room. Nicole wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Dennis sat up. Rotating his shoulders and stretching, he was instantly awake, instantly alert.
That was due to his training. By nature, he wasn’t really a morning person. His sister Moira was one of those. Bright and cheerful before her first cup of coffee. He didn’t understand it.
He needed a cup of coffee now, he thought. A strong one.
Still wearing the jeans he’d had on last night, Dennis padded out to the kitchen. He turned on the coffeemaker and opened the front door to get the paper.
As he bent over the mat, reaching for the newspaper, he heard her.
There was a gasp, followed by a cry of anguish and then a few choice words that could have only been evoked under duress.
She was in trouble. Damn, how had Standish managed to get in without either he or Dombrowski seeing the man?
Moot point, he admonished himself.
She hadn’t called him, but then maybe she hadn’t had the opportunity. Maybe she had been overpowered instantly. It was the only thing that made sense.
Adrenaline pumping, Dennis banged his fist on Nicole’s door.
“Nicole, are you all right?” he demanded. There was no reply. He pounded on it again. “Nicole, open the door!”
It was a fire door. He could dead lift twice his body weight, but there was absolutely no way he could force the door open. But he could break open a window.
Dennis turned away from the door and toward the kitchen window when the door swung open.
She stood in the doorway, wearing a pink dress that was far more cheerful that she was at the moment. The apron that no longer fit around her waist was slung over her right shoulder.
Exasperation filled her voice as she snapped, “No, I am not all right and why are you yelling like that?” He’d scared her half to death, banging on her door. She thought it was Standish.
Her sharp tone faded a little as she realized that he was wearing only his jeans and that he had failed to close the snap. It hovered more than an inch below his navel, adhering to tapered hips that belonged in an exercise video. She’d already guessed last night that he was muscular, but she hadn’t realized just how well developed those muscles were. His torso had almost perfect definition. If her hands weren’t already damp, they would have become so.
“What’s wrong?” Dennis demanded as he looked beyond her shoulder into the apartment. There was no one there.
She wiped her hands on the edge of the apron. “You’re the one yelling and banging, you tell me.”
Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t Standish. “I heard you gasp and cry out.”
Her brows drew together as she fisted her hands where her waist used to be. “What are you doing, standing at my door and listening?”
“No, I was getting the paper.” He raised it to substantiate his story. “When I heard you gasp I thought that maybe Standish had forgotten how to count and turned up. I was worried,” he added for good measure. It irritated him that it was partially true.
What he said made her feel guilty. He didn’t deserve to be the target of her waspish tongue. It wasn’t Dennis’s fault that her garbage disposal had decided to pick today to throw up. Lately, that seemed to be the way her life was going.
She sighed, dragging a hand through her hair, her expression softening. “Well, you can rest easy. No one took a contract out on me during the night. Except, maybe, for my garbage disposal.” She glanced over her shoulder. “It seems that it’s not up to grinding chicken bones anymore and has sought retribution by clogging up my sink.”
The tension created by the spontaneous flow of adrenaline began to ease from his body. A grin lazily crept over his lips. “They run independently of each other.”
She didn’t want logic at a time like this. She wanted an unclogged sink. Annoyance raised its hoary head again.
“Well, something is clogging up my sink.” She gestured toward the kitchen floor angrily. “I was rinsing out a frying pan and suddenly, I’ve got a lily pond in my kitchen.”
Not waiting for an invitation, Dennis walked into her apartment. Barefoot, he picked his way gingerly across the wet floor to the sink. He flipped the switch closest to the door and was rewarded with a whining noise that sounded like a car slipping a gear. A moment later, a wisp of smoke emerged from the midst of the rubber covering over the in-sink eradicator.
He shut off the disposal quickly. Squatting, Dennis opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink and looked in. He began moving aside an army of cleansers as he worked his way to the wall.
Nicole tried to bend down and peer over his shoulder. The ache in her back curtailed the effort. “What are you doing?”
He found the cord and followed it to the plug. He worked it free from the wall. “Unplugging your disposal before you have a fire.”
She looked down at the floor. It wasn’t exactly a lily pond, but there was enough water to remove the wax shine. Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed.
“The water would put it out,” she said wearily.
Dennis rose, brushing his hands off on his jeans. “Got a mop?”
“Of course I’ve got a mop,” she said defensively. Just because she wasn’t a neat freak like Marlene didn’t mean she was an utter slob. “Why?”
Justifying everything to her was getting a little old. “I want to dry the floor before one of us lands on our butts.”
He said “us” but he meant her. She could tell by the way he looked at her. She didn’t need someone inferring that she was a klutz. “Well, leave and then you won’t be in danger.”
He only laughed and shook his head. “Nicole, you are definitely a challenge to be neighborly to.”
