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“Sure.”
Lou inserted her hand in the crook of his elbow and they walked along, not speaking, their footsteps echoing on the nearly deserted sidewalks. This close to Will, she felt so small. Which made sense—he was a foot taller than she was.
But it was more than that, always had been. It had to do with the power of that personality of his and the effect it used to have—still had?—on her. Will reduced her somehow, robbed her of a firm sense of who she was. She felt so…not helpless, exactly, but sapped of strength, as though all her energy—whatever wasn’t being utilized by unrequited love—was needed just to keep up. She didn’t care for the feeling, not in the least.
She shot a sideways glance at him. Lit as he was by the moon and the occasional old-fashioned streetlamp, his face was all planes and shadows. Maturity agreed with him; he was more filled out, less bony. His face, with lines across his forehead and around the mouth and eyes, had not just beauty but character. If she was thirty-three, that made him thirty-six or thirty-seven. He was in his prime, the years when a man finally grows into his face and a woman’s begins to droop.
She was contemplating the unfairness of Mother Nature toward her own sex when Will broke the silence. “Have you always lived here?”
“Since I was thirteen.”
“And before that?”
“We moved around a lot.”
“Your dad’s job?”
“No, my mom’s. Dad was a ship’s captain in the Merchant Marines. He died when I wasn’t even a year old.”
So, Will thought, if his suspicions were correct, Janice McAndrews had invented a father for her little girl and had never given her a reason to doubt his existence. “What a shame,” he said, “to lose your father so early in your life.”
“You can’t really miss what you’ve never had.”
After passing a series of storefronts, they both stopped and stared at the sign in one window. Susanville Courier, Est. 1957, it read. Lou smiled. “And just think, instead of writing for the Times, all this could have all been yours.”
“Never wanted the job.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’m surprised.”
“I know, everyone took it for granted. But, trust me, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I hated the paper.”
“Why?”
A sense of bitterness tinged with sadness pierced him then, a feeling he hadn’t allowed himself to experience in years. “It robbed me of a father. He was always here, at the paper, hardly ever at home.”
“A workaholic.”
He nodded and they continued walking toward the clinic. “The man invented the concept. He couldn’t come to my soccer games because of a story, unless he was covering the game. Couldn’t visit me in the hospital when I had my tonsils out—deadline on an issue. He was editor, publisher, chief reporter, and I was pretty low on the list of his priorities. Yeah, I hated the Courier.”
He was shocked at how much passion he still felt about the subject and had no idea why he was telling Lou about it. A man who never talked about his disappointment with his father—not to anyone—Will was letting Lou in, as though they’d been intimate friends for years.
She cocked her head and gazed up at him, her deep brown eyes once again filled with understanding. “And yet you went into the newspaper business.”
“I am my father’s son, I guess.” He’d gotten that little insight a while ago—that he was way, way too much like his old man for comfort. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, etc.” He shook his head. “Wow. I sure hadn’t planned on telling you all that,” he confessed. “Let’s pretend I didn’t.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll pierce your manly armor and find out you have emotions?”
Will chuckled. “Busted.”
“Men.” It was her turn to shake her head.
“Uh-oh. Is that disdain for my sex I hear? What’s the story there?”
“None of your business,” she said lightly.
“I showed you mine, you have to show me yours.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
He grinned. “In a manner of speaking. Hey!”
This last was directed at the backs of two men who, out of nowhere, it seemed, ran past them, obviously in a hurry, nearly knocking Lou and him over.
“Hey!” Will called out again, putting his arm around Lou’s shoulder and pulling her close. But the men didn’t stop; instead, they sped up and disappeared around the corner. “Idiots,” he muttered.
In another half block, they were at the clinic. “This where your car is?” he asked.
“Where my house is.” She pointed upstairs. “Mom and I—I mean, I,” she amended, “live upstairs.”
Together, his arm still around her, they walked up the alleyway at the side of the building where a flight of wooden steps led to the upper floor. At the foot of the stairs, Lou turned, slipped out from under his arm and said, “Well, thanks for dinner. See you at the wedding on Sunday.”
He grabbed her hand before she could bolt up the stairs. “Not so fast. You were about to let me in on the reasons for the ‘I hate men’ attitude.”
“I was about to do no such thing.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t hate men.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s boring.”
“Try me.”
She shook her hand loose. “God! You don’t give up, do you? Okay. It’s just that…” She shrugged. “The opposite sex and I don’t mix well. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Nope. I always get my story. You can’t win. Are you going to invite me up for a cup of coffee?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, then. I guess we’ll do it here.”
He plopped himself down on the second-to-bottom step. Sighing loudly, she joined him, but on the step above. She was eye level with him now, illuminated solely by the bug light from the porch above them. Stray strands of wiry hair were backlit in yellow. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
He watched her as she gazed down at her hands, played with her knuckles as she spoke. “It’s just that, well, I’ve had just about nothing but trouble with the male of the species all my life. The heartache kind, the being-lied-to kind, the being-left-feeling-useless-and-ugly kind. Mom had a boyfriend for a while, then he stole money from her and took off. I had a husband and he cheated on me. No dad, no male role model while I was growing up. Stuff like that.”
She raised her gaze to meet his; the expression in her eyes was one of rueful resignation. “I prefer my animals. They always tell the truth. If they’re hungry, they let you know. If they want to be left alone, they go off. They’re soft, eager to please and never leave you.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Now who got naked?”
He sat still for a moment, taking in all she had told him. This woman moved him, deeply. Words seemed shallow, but he managed to say, “Thanks for trusting me.” He took one of her hands in his and squeezed it.
She looked down at their joined hands, then back up at him. “Actually, I’m not sure I do.” Her expression was both sad and apologetic at the same time. “But then, that could be more about me than about you.”
“A real possibility,” he said lightly, wanting her to trust him, but knowing that, at least on one level, she had a right not to. The personal and the professional again.
He lightly massaged each of her small fingers, one at a time, thoroughly enjoying the physical connection. The hitch in her breath let him know the sensation was mutual.
“Back to the animal thing,” he said. “The comparison doesn’t hold up. Humans have certain needs—for verbal communication, for the touching of flesh that isn’t all fur. And,” he added with a grin, “unless you’re twisted, there are some fairly basic needs that can’t be filled by them.”
“Um, yeah, I’ll give you that.”
He really wanted to ask her what she did for that one specific, very basic need—namely, sex. But he had a feeling it would disrupt the fragile sense of trust they’d established. Instead, he set her hand down on his bended knee and picked up the other one, rubbing the fingers, one at a time.
Frozen in time and space, Lou simply couldn’t move. Will’s touch was everything she’d fantasized all those years ago. Firm and sure of itself, yet gentle at the same time. Her pulse quickened, her breathing grew louder in her ears.
“Why did you move so much?”
His question startled her out of a sensual haze. “Excuse me?”
“When you were little.”
“Oh.” Still reacting to his touch, she heard herself answer as though from a distance. “Mom worked as a nanny, for newborns, mostly, and they were short-term jobs.”
“And so you moved every time a job ended?”
She managed a shrug. He was massaging the palm of her hand now; there was something amazingly intimate about the whole thing. Hands, knees, touch, warmth. “I guess so. I didn’t question it—I just thought that’s what you did. A job stopped, it was time for a new town. She made packing and moving an adventure, so it wasn’t too bad.”
“Why’d you finally settle here?”
You, was what she nearly blurted out. But she was not ready to get that naked with him. In fact…
Withdrawing her hands from his ministrations, she clasped them around her bent knees. “I begged her. I was thirteen years old and I wanted to start and end a school year in the same place. She managed to get a nice job with the Griswalds as a full-time housekeeper, and she came into a little money from an inheritance so we could put a down payment on this place. I got jobs after school and we got by.”
“Tell me about her. Do you mind?”
“Not at all. She was a sweet woman, totally devoted to me. To her detriment, I’m afraid. Not that she martyred herself, trust me. She had hobbies that she loved and good friends. We made a nice life here.”
And Mom’s had been way too short. Lou felt her eyes filling with tears. “You know what, Will? I’m tired.” She rose from the steps and realized she was actually exhausted.
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
Will followed Lou up the stairs, reluctant to have their evening end. There had been something different, something special about it. Sitting with Lou on the steps, talking quietly in the dark, he’d felt an affinity, an intimate connection to her that was rare for him to feel with anyone.
At the door, she pulled her keys out from her purse, then turned to him. “Well, thanks,” she said. In the yellow light, he could see the tired lines under her eyes. Large brown eyes. Kind brown eyes.
“For what?” He handed her the to-go package.
“Dinner. The talk. The hand rub.” She smiled. “It’s been a while since I’ve had human discourse. Conversations with animals tend to be kind of one-sided.”
Without thinking, he placed his palms on her soft cheeks, angled her head up, bent over and kissed her. He felt her body tense for a moment; then she relaxed. Her lips softened, parted slightly. He slid his tongue in and tasted her. Moist. Sweet. His body responded instantly…and way too intensely.
Breaking the kiss, he drew back, dropped his hands.
She gazed at him, eyes wide. “Why did you kiss me?”
It had been a momentary lapse of judgment, following through on something that should never have begun in the first place. He didn’t want to play around in his hometown, then leave. Not with someone vulnerable to hurt the way Lou was.
Still, he owed her the truth. “I told you I was attracted to you. Nothing since has changed my mind. I’m sorry we don’t live near each other.”
“Oh.” He could see she was not sure what to do with that. Embarrassed, she fumbled for her house key and inserted it in the lock. Then she turned again to face him. “Good night, Will.”
“Sleep well.”
Whistling, he began to descend the stairs and was halfway down when he heard a piercing cry shatter the stillness of the night.
Chapter 3
Will rushed right back up the stairs and flung open the door to see Lou standing in the middle of the living room, her hand to her mouth and shaking her head. It was a small, high-ceilinged room with two archways, one that led to the rear of the house and another through which a kitchen was visible. The entire place was in shambles. Lamps were overturned, couch pillows strewn about, the drawers of a tall sideboard pulled out and their contents, mostly table linens and large platters, dumped on the floor. Paintings had been torn off the wall, their backs ripped open.
Quickly, Will closed the door, went to Lou and guided her to a small chair near the fireplace. “Sit,” he ordered, then added, “Stay here.” She did.
He picked up the fireplace poker and quickly searched the rest of the small living quarters. The rear arch led to two small bedrooms and a bath. The first bedroom was in as much disarray as the living room: clothing heaped on the floor of a closet, drawers opened, sheets and blankets tossed about. Whoever it was who had done this had been in a hurry. It looked as though a tornado had tunneled its way through. In the small bathroom, the contents of the medicine cabinet lay scattered on the tile floor. The second bedroom, however, was amazingly neat. It seemed obvious they hadn’t had time to get to this room before they’d taken off.
Will ran back to the living room and checked to see that Lou was still in the chair. She was, though she was still shaking. Then he headed into the kitchen and gazed around. Oven doors were open, cabinets had been gone through, even the refrigerator door stood ajar. He closed it, then returned to Lou.
Kneeling down in front of her, Will took both her freezing hands in his. Her face was white, her eyes huge and vulnerable. “No one’s here. You’re safe.”
She nodded.
“They didn’t get to the smaller bedroom, at least.”
She nodded again.
“Are you in shock? Talk to me.”
She shook her head, then managed, “Just…horrified.” She shrugged, a small helpless gesture. “And confused. Why? Who would do this?”
He stood, took out his cell phone and paced back and forth in front of the small fireplace as he placed a call to 911. After ascertaining that there didn’t seem to be imminent danger, the operator told him she’d report this immediately to the police.
Will squatted on his haunches, again took her cold hands in his and rubbed them together. “They’re on their way. Can I get you something? A glass of water?”
“Yes,” she said, licking around her mouth. “That would be nice.”
After double-locking the front door just to be safe, he headed to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water that Lou gulped down quickly. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she set the glass down on a side table, then gazed around the room again.
“I don’t understand.”
“This happened to me once in D.C. and when I got home I was shocked at first, then really pissed off. It’s a kind of violation, isn’t it?”
