Saving Rose Red

by Maggie Dallen

  “Um—” Her brain froze. Oh, this was so not going as planned.

  His friend made a tsking noise. “Spence, don’t be rude.”

  Holly and Spencer ignored her. Spencer was waiting for her to speak and she finally found words. Shoving the plate in front of her she blurted out, “I brought cookies.”

  Ugh. Self-disgust had her wincing before she could catch herself. What kind of idiotic line was that? She was supposed to be effortlessly charming and charismatic like Eve, not an awkward dork like she’d been in high school.

  I brought cookies. She might as well have said, “I carried a watermelon.” At least then she’d make Lexy laugh when she told her this story. A hardcore love of Dirty Dancing was a shared Hallister sister trait.

  Spencer wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement at her complete and utter awkwardness. He kept eye contact with her when he told his friend, “It seems she brought me cookies.”

  “Oh, how sweet!” the woman said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “Thank goodness someone’s looking out for you while I’m gone. I was afraid you’d start turning into Howard Hughes on me.”

  Spencer looked up to the ceiling as if praying for patience. “Muting you now, Andie,” he said, though he made no move to adjust the volume so they both heard her whining.

  “Ah, Spence, don’t mute me. I’ll be good, I swear.”

  He didn’t respond. Instead he looked up at Holly with that blank expression and all-seeing gaze. “So, what’s with the cookies?”

  She licked her lips. “Uh, they’re just your basic sugar cookie.”

  She heard herself talking but barely recognized the voice. Why on earth did she sound so high-pitched? She tried to take a deep, calming breath but then he frowned and her stomach twisted with nerves.

  “No,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a dimwit. Or a stranger who’d arrived on his doorstep with cookies and a voice that was meant to lure neighborhood dogs. “I meant, why are you bringing me cookies?”

  “Um….” She hadn’t known what to expect from this assignment but she never would have imagined someone taking such a hostile attitude toward cookies. Not that he was overtly hostile, but she sensed suspicion beneath that unflappable demeanor.

  Smart man.

  He arched a brow as if in challenge and in her mind she heard the whistle from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

  “I thought you might like them.” Her voice had lost its dog-whistle sound but it was still breathy as though she’d taken to impersonating Marilyn Monroe.

  His brows lowered in a scowl and the panicky sensation was back in full force. “I mean, I just moved into the apartment down the hall and I thought Christmas cookies might be a good way to introduce myself and—”

  “So you’re bringing cookies to all the neighbors.” It was a question posing as a statement.

  “Yes.” She experienced a flash of pride at not having paused before that little lie. Maybe she was getting better at this.

  He leaned forward in his wheelchair. “I didn’t hear you at the Fischers’ or the Cabrals’.”

  Who the heck were the Fischers and Cabrals? It clicked a second too late. The other neighbors on this floor. She’d never been any good at lying, why did she think she could start now?

  Because her family needed her to, that was why. Desperate times, called for blah blah blah. No time for pep talks, she had to think quickly. She’d read that the key to a good lie was staying as close to the truth as possible. She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I haven’t gone to their apartments yet.”

  He pounced on that. “Why not? Why start with me?”

  She blinked in surprise at the harshness in his tone and for the first time some of her nerves faded, replaced by irritation. She’d brought the guy cookies. It wasn’t like she was robbing him blind.

  Andie’s groan cut through the tension. “Way to go, Spence. A hottie bombshell shows up on your doorstep and you start grilling her.”

  Holly’s mouth opened but she only got out a choked sound. She suspected this Andie lady thought she was muted. If there was any doubt, the woman continued on as Holly stood there in shocked silence.

  “Come on, doofus, invite her in already.”

  The doofus in question was still giving her that challenging look but she saw amusement flicker in his eyes at his friend’s blithely ignorant voiceover of this ridiculous scene. That glimmer of amusement made him seem a hundred times more approachable and she overcame her nerves long enough to speak. “I heard voices coming from your apartment,” she said. That was true enough. “I figured you were home. I’ll be bringing cookies to the Fischers and the….” She blanked on the other name but it didn’t matter because her vow to bake cookies for the other neighbors was rudely interrupted by a loud groan coming from the tablet on his lap.

  “Ugh. You’ve got a hot woman on your doorstep practically begging to come in and you’re playing cookie police? Invite the girl in and make your move already.”

  The woman made it sound like she was there propositioning him with her cookies. Holly licked her lips, trying desperately to hide her embarrassment. “I’ll, uh, I’ll give them their cookies later but since you were home I thought you might want some—”

  Andie’s voice took on a ludicrously raunchy tone as she lowered it about ten octaves. “Aw yeah, he wants some.”

  Holly’s eyes widened and she hurried on before the woman could keep talking. “I-I was baking….”

  “Come on, Spence, invite her in. What are you waiting for?”

  “And I thought maybe it might be nice to share them….”

  “Holy jeez, this chick is hot and you are single. Take that woman’s cookies while they’re hot.”

  “I wanted to meet my neighbors and—”

  Andie’s “Bow chicka wow wow” was so loud and so crass Holly could no longer pretend like she was oblivious. She couldn’t even remember what she’d been rambling about.

  Spencer finally, mercifully put an end to her misery. “Andie, darling?”

  There was a short pause. “Yes?”

  “We can hear you.”

  There was another longer pause before Andie spoke one syllable in a small voice. “Oh.”

  Spencer grinned and she found herself blinking rapidly at the sudden transformation. His smile made him…sexy.

  He wasn’t handsome—not by traditional standards, anyway. His features were a bit too sharp. There was something hard and angular about him. But when he smiled…oh wow. It softened the harshness and added distinctively adorable new features, like creases around his mouth and crinkles near his eyes. He might not be handsome but he had sex appeal in spades.

  She was staring. The moment she noticed she dropped her gaze back down to the cookies. It was too late to hope that she could make a success out of this visit, but she could at least accomplish what she’d set out to do.

  In a quick motion, she shoved the cookie platter in his direction so he was forced to take it from her. She started backing away before he could give it back.

  She needed to regroup and come up with a better game plan. Plying her new neighbor with baked goods had been an epic failure, but she could try again. And that pretty blue platter that held her cookies? That would be her in.

  With a wave and another broad smile she backed out the door and fled back to her temporary apartment.

  This was not failure, it was a tactical retreat.

  “Why didn’t you want to take that woman’s cookies?” Andie demanded the moment his mystery neighbor left.

  He ignored the question, instead asking, “How do you manage to make the word ‘cookies’ sound so dirty?”

  “It’s a skill, and you’re avoiding the question.”

  She was right. He was avoiding. Maybe it was because he felt an unfamiliar prickle of guilt at the way he’d made his visitor so uncomfortable. Not that he could’ve helped it, really. Becoming a jerk was just what he did when he met someone new. Particularly when that someone
was a stranger with an agenda.

  “Spencer,” Andie prompted.

  He sighed as he headed back to his office with his tablet and the much-discussed cookies in his lap. “I don’t like cookies.”

  Andie snorted. “Since when?”

  As far as lies went, it was a bad one. He and Andie went way back. They’d been taken in by the same foster family when he was twelve and she was eleven and had been pseudo-siblings ever since. If there was anyone in the world who knew he had a sweet tooth, it was her.

  He didn’t answer and she let it drop, shifting effortlessly back to the conversation his neighbor had interrupted. Andie started up with her badgering as if the whole bizarre cookie incident had never happened. She’d been trying to convince him to join her and her boyfriend, Cole, for Christmas in Peru. The two lovebirds had decided to traipse around the world while Cole, an undercover cop, let the heat die down from his most recent investigation and figured out what he wanted to do next career-wise.

  Spencer could honestly say he was happy for them—Andie needed a fresh start just as much as Cole. She’d recently discovered her real family and had undergone a bit of an identity crisis as a result.

  Travel was good. Perspective was great. But there was no way he was going to get on an eight-hour flight to South America just to play third wheel during the happy couple’s first Christmas together, no matter how much Andie nagged.

  “Come on,” she whined. “Why must you be the Grinch Who Stole Christmas about this?”

  “I’m not stealing your toys, Cindy Lou, I’m just not joining in on the Whoville fun.”

  “Exactly, because you’re a Grinch.”

  He shrugged. There was no use arguing with her when she got like this. Sometimes it seemed like they both reverted back to children when they interacted, for better or for worse.

  “So what are you going to do for Christmas, then?” Before he could answer, she started spouting off ideas. “You could go spend it with Kate—”

  “Your lonely neighbor? No thanks.”

  “She’s not lonely anymore, she met someone on that singles’ cruise. How about Hunter and Jenna? They’re throwing a party on Christmas Eve and I’m sure they’d love for you to go.”

  He only half listened to her as he propped the tablet on his desk and stared down at the cookies. Covered in icing, they looked sweet. Like the baker. The curvy brunette was the very definition of sweet with her big Bambi eyes and bright smile.

  Sweet, but up to something, which was never a good combination.

  There’d been something off about her. She hadn’t seemed like a friendly neighbor looking to make an introduction. She’d seemed nervous. Scared, even. And that had been before Andie opened her big mouth.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Andie’s loud demand broke into his train of thought.

  “No.” Honesty had always been the best policy with Andie.

  He heard her weary sigh coming from the tablet. “Fine. I’ll stop with the Christmas plans for now. But I’m not giving up on you.”

  “Of course not.” His best friend was an eternal optimist and that lunacy led her to believe that there was hope for him yet. The problem with that line of thought was—he didn’t need saving. He preferred to be alone, but his best friend couldn’t seem to grasp that concept.

  “So,” Andie drawled, her tone too casual for his liking. “How about that cookie lady?”

  “What about her?”

  “She seemed nice. Hopefully you haven’t scared her off for good.”

  He let out a short laugh. Sure, he might have been a tad rude, but he hadn’t been the one making porno sound effects while she’d been trying to talk.

  “You should go apologize,” Andie continued.

  He shook his head. “I’m still trying to figure out why she came over here.”

  Andie groaned. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “That suspicious look you get whenever someone is nice to you. Dude, you seriously need to work on your trust issues.”

  Maybe. Okay, probably. Andie might have had a point there. There was no denying that he had trust issues. Maybe he could even have been called paranoid at times. But this was not one of those times. He excelled at reading people and that woman had been hiding something. “What do you think she wanted?”

  Andie sighed. “Oh I don’t know, maybe to make friends in her new apartment building? Is that really so terrible?”

  He frowned at the screen. “I don’t do friends.”

  She smirked at him. “What about me?”

  “You’re different. You’re family. I’m stuck with you.”

  “Very true. And you’ve got Hunter,” she continued.

  He scoffed. An old bitterness reared up, making his tone sound more jaded than he felt. “You mean the guy who calls when he needs a favor?”

  There was a brief silence, just long enough for him to feel a pang of guilt at the harsh words. Hunter was a former cop, they’d met back when Spencer was into hacking. He’d been working with some lowlife crooks who were busted. Because he was young and a first-time offender, Hunter had given him a second chance. He’d let him off the hook with the understanding that when the police needed help on the tech side of things, he’d be there.

  He was still grateful to Hunter for giving him a break back then so when Hunter left the force due to an injury and went the private route, Spencer continued to help him. It was more of a business arrangement than anything and that was just the way he liked it. They had a mutually beneficial relationship, which was how Spencer’s world worked. People used each other for their own gain. With the exception of Andie, who was an anomaly, the people in Spencer’s life always came with an agenda. Even pretty neighbors.

  Especially pretty neighbors.

  What was she up to? He hadn’t been able to shut down the curious part of his brain, the part that loved a puzzle. He was intrigued and it had been too long since anyone had intrigued him. Most people were cut and dry. Their motives were shallow and apparent. But the baker neighbor was an enigma. She looked kind and sweet. Almost too good to be true. But her eyes had taken on a decidedly shifty look and her breathing had grown erratic as she talked. Like she was nervous. Or hiding something.

  Was he paranoid? Maybe. But it couldn’t hurt to check it out.

  “So, are you going to go apologize to your new neighbor?” Andie asked.

  He nodded, a plan already starting to formulate. “I am.”

  Andie’s eyes widened in surprise. “Really? I mean… that’s great.”

  He understood her surprise. It was no secret that he was a bit standoffish. Andie and Hunter called him a recluse, but that suggested that he was agoraphobic or something. That wasn’t it. He just didn’t like people, that was all. He’d made the perfect home for himself, filled with the computers, games, and gadgets that kept him busy even when he wasn’t working as a freelance cybersecurity consultant.

  But most of the time he was working. He’d saved up enough to build his dream home far away from the city with its teeming streets and crowded subways. Far from the paper-thin walls of his apartment building and the obnoxious neighbors who filled it. He loved his little apartment but couldn’t wait to relocate his home to a place that wasn’t overflowing with people.

  Andie and her sister, Jenna, insisted on referring to his apartment as his bat cave. Maybe they had a point—it was a small space with limited sunlight where he worked on secret technology. The comparison wasn’t totally off base. But if this was his bat cave, the new home he’d designed would be his Wayne Manor, complete with an upgraded bat cave that would make any superhero green with envy.

  Just a few more jobs and he’d have the funds to pay for it outright. Which meant he needed to stay focused on his current assignments.

  But even as he thought that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus until he dealt with this new puzzle. His personality bordered on obsessive, which was an asset when tha
t concentration was focused on work, but it could be a pain in the butt when his brain got sidetracked with a mystery. And that’s what his new neighbor was—a riddle he needed to solve before he could get back to the work at hand.

  Which was why he was currently shocking Andie by agreeing to go visit the new neighbor. Much as he hated to leave his sanctuary, and much as he loathed the idea of willingly speaking to a stranger, it was the only option. He needed to learn more about this new neighbor and considering he didn’t even know her name, that meant talking to her.

  He needed to catch her off guard so she wasn’t prepared with more lies.

  The best way to do that seemed obvious.

  He’d beat her at her own game.

  To keep reading, head to Enchanting the Beast

  About the Author

  MAGGIE DALLEN IS a big city girl living in Montana. She writes romantic comedies in a range of genres including young adult, historical, contemporary, and fantasy. An unapologetic addict of all things romance, she loves to connect with fellow avid readers. Subscribe to her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bFEVsL

  IG: Mag_Dallen

  Facebook: facebook.com/MaggieDallenAuthor

  Twitter: twitter.com/Mag_Dallen

  Website: maggiedallen.com