Her short dark hair curled softly around her heart-shaped face, and her eyes had to be the darkest shade of brown he’d ever seen in his entire life.
The first time Rob had seen her, when he’d first moved to Sarasota, to this neighborhood, he’d known that she was someone he should stay far, far away from. When he’d first spotted her with Kelsey, he’d fervently hoped that she was happily married. He prayed that she had someone that she loved, someone who adored her, someone who would protect her.
Naturally, she was divorced, a single mom. She wasn’t seeing anyone, wasn’t even dating. His bad luck just never seemed to quit.
Still, he’d kept his distance. But he couldn’t keep from watching her. He noticed her when she played in her yard with Kelsey. He watched her when she worked in her garden. He spied her when she grocery shopped, early every Thursday morning, like clockwork. He’d even watched her cooking dinner through her uncurtained kitchen window. He also went to her shows, and listened to her play her guitar and sing.
She had a smile as sweet and welcoming as a warm spring morning, and eyes as mysterious as the darkest night sky. Her voice, with its gentle southern accent was velvet—husky and soft and unbearably, achingly, painfully sensual.
When the Hendersons had written him of their impending return, he should have moved clear across to the other side of town. This woman didn’t need the kind of trouble he brought with him. But she had seemed as desperate to find a tenant as he’d been to find a place to live.
“You want sugar in that?” Jess asked him, gesturing toward the tall glass of iced tea she’d handed him as she crossed to the cabinet and took down a sugar bowl. Her jeans shorts fit her perfect derriere snugly and she swayed slightly, naturally, as she walked. Sweet God, if she only knew what he was thinking, she’d be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt of his heterosexuality. “Or would you like some lemon?” she added.
“Sugar,” Rob heard himself say. “Thanks.”
He should be getting out of there. He should go into his new apartment and organize his things, set up his weight-lifting gear, watch some mindless television sitcom. He should be leaving Jess Baxter alone, not standing in her kitchen, looking at her legs, thinking dangerous thoughts. Instead, he sat down across from her at her kitchen table.
“You know, I realized I don’t know that much about you,” Jess said, taking a sip of her iced tea and gazing at him with her bottomless dark eyes. She pushed the bowl of sugar and a spoon in his direction.
She was going to ask him some questions. Some personal questions. Rob stirred sugar into his glass, carefully keeping his face passive, fighting the hot surge of anger that pulsed through him. God, he hated questions. He hated lying, he hated all of it. He hated his entire life, loathed what he’d become. Boring, he reminded himself. Make yourself sound unbearably boring. She’ll change the subject soon enough. “There’s not that much to know,” he said blandly. “I work for Epco, Inc., downtown. I work with computers, you know, software consulting. It’s pretty mundane.”
God, he hated small talk. But that’s all he ever did—all he ever could do. It was too risky to have any kind of real conversation, too nerve-racking to say anything that would make someone take a closer look at him. So he always stuck to small talk. Always. For the past eight years, he’d had his real conversations in his head, with himself. Sometimes he felt well on his way to being certifiably nuts. But he had to keep his interactions with other people to a minimum. He had to be boring. He had to remain invisible.
“I travel a lot,” he added, “but I only see the insides of office buildings.”
Jess nodded, still watching him. “That’s too bad.” Her eyelashes were amazingly dark and incredibly long. And she didn’t look the slightest bit bored. In fact, she looked interested. More than interested. Attracted. Beautiful, vibrant, sexy Jess Baxter was actually attracted to dull, mild-mannered, boring Rob Carpenter.
Her cheeks flushed very slightly as Rob met her eyes and held her gaze, wondering if she could see past his disguise, wondering if somehow he’d slipped and given himself away. She looked away, embarrassed or nervous. Damn straight she should be nervous around him.
“With my schedule, I don’t have time for anything besides work,” he added, hoping she’d pick up his double meaning. He didn’t have time for anything else, especially romance. He couldn’t risk the sweet intimacy of a lover’s quiet questions or the expectations of shared secrets and whispered confessions.
Jess took another sip of her drink, removing a stray drop of tea from her lips with the tip of her tongue. It was sweetly, unconsciously sexy on her part, and Rob felt his body respond. Man, it had been too long…
“No hobbies?” she asked, one elegant eyebrow arching upward. “No clog dancing classes?”
Rob had to laugh at that. “No,” he said. “Sad to say, I had to give it up.”
“Music, then,” Jess prompted. “You must have an interest in music—I’ve seen you at some of the folk festivals, and at some of my gigs. You even brought along that friend of yours—Frank. I appreciated your helping pad the audience.”
Rob nodded. “I like music,” he said. That was true, but he’d really gone to those festivals and concerts expressly to see Jess sing. “But I never brought Frank. We’re not friends—more like acquaintances. We both happened to show up at one of the folk festivals and we got to talking—we both work at Epco.”
Jess nodded, taking a sip of her iced tea. “How about movies?” she asked. “Kelsey and I saw you a couple of times at the Gulf Gate Mall theater.”
Now this was something he could talk about. Rob smiled and let himself relax a little. But only slightly.
“We love going to movies,” she continued, pushing a stray curl back behind one ear. “We go to everything a six-year-old can see, that is. I’ve become a Disney expert.”
“I’m more into Pulp Fiction than Pocahontas myself,” Rob admitted. “I’m a Spielberg fan. And I like James Cameron, too. He did the Terminator movies, remember those?”
“Aha.” Jess smiled at him as she took another sip of her iced tea. “You do have a hobby, if you watch movies enough to be a fan of a specific director.”
“I don’t know, it’s slightly more passive than clog dancing,” Rob said, smiling back into her warm brown eyes. God, she was pretty.
“So is stamp collecting.”
“You win,” he conceded. “I guess I have a hobby.”
“We also saw you in Books-A-Million,” she said. “Buying a stack of books about two feet high.”
“I also like to read. Fiction, mostly.”
“But I didn’t see you move in boxes and boxes of books,” Jess said, resting her chin on the upturned palm of her hand as she continued to gaze across the table at him.
Rob shrugged. “I don’t usually live in a place big enough to keep bookshelves. I read ’em, then donate ’em to a local nursing home.”
Her big dark eyes softened. “That’s sweet.”
God, he could lose himself in those eyes. He could just fall in and disappear forever, drowning, suffocating, pulling her down with him. They’d both simply vanish, never to resurface.
“You moved down here from up north,” Jess said, wondering if he could hear the breathlessness of her voice, wondering if he knew it was caused by the way he was looking at her. “Didn’t you?”
Across the table, Rob nodded, pulling his gaze away from her and giving his iced tea another spoonful of sugar and another stir. She’d been wrong about him, Jess realized. She’d thought he was shy, but there was nothing in those brown eyes that suggested shyness. In fact, his gaze was confident and steady. Rob Carpenter wasn’t shy at all. Just…polite. Reserved. Quiet. And as attracted to her as she was to him.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“All over the place,” he answered, glancing up at her and giving her a ghost of his earlier smile.
Could he be any more vague? Jess took another sip of her tea. “I grew up here i
n Florida,” she said. “Out on Siesta Key. My parents still have a beach house there. I use it sometimes when I’ve got a gig at the Pelican Club.”
He didn’t comment or offer any information on the location of his own childhood. He just watched her.
“My folks are up in Montana right now,” Jess continued, more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d be interested in the whereabouts of her parents. “They’re retired and doing the RV thing. You know, the enormous silver cylinder on wheels? Camping without the nasty outdoors part?”
That got another genuine smile out of him. And a response. “They’re in Montana, huh? It’s pretty out there—different from Florida.”
“I’ve never been to Montana,” she admitted. “Have you?”
He nodded, yes, but didn’t elaborate. She’d asked another faintly personal question that he wasn’t going to answer at any length. Apparently, he was willing to converse about superficial things but he didn’t like to talk about himself. But then, to her surprise, he actually volunteered some personal information. “I lived out west for about a year and a half.”
“So you really are from all over the place,” Jess said. “Where did you grow up?”
His smile faded quickly, but he still gazed at her. There was something else in his eyes now. It wasn’t amusement. It had a harder edge. Maybe it was alertness. Or was it wariness? Why should a question about his childhood make him wary?
“Jersey,” he finally replied. And as if he somehow knew that he was being too vague again, he added, “Near New York City.”
“Really?” she said. “Where exactly?”
“Just across the Hudson River.”
So much for “exactly.” “Does your family still live up there?”
“I don’t have a family.” He was still watching her.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, instantly backing down.
“I’m not.” He said it so matter-of-factly, it took her a moment for his words to make sense. How could he not be sorry that he didn’t have a family?
The first thought that occurred to Jess was that Rob Carpenter didn’t want her to know the name of the town he’d grown up in because he’d done in his entire family and was now living under an alias, on the lam. It was a thought that would have made Doris proud. It was also ridiculous. Wasn’t it…?
The man was clearly hiding something. Wasn’t he? Or was he simply a private person, unwilling to talk about personal things to a near stranger?
Rob gazed across the table at Jess. She was watching him steadily, warily. He knew he made her nervous, he could see it in her eyes. But he could also see her attraction to him, too. It simmered between them like something living, ready to devour them both.
He knew without a doubt that if he reached across the table and put his hand over hers, she wouldn’t pull her own hand away. And he could only imagine where that one touch would lead. But that was part of the problem. He could imagine. He could see it quite clearly.
Rob pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I should get going. Thanks for the drink.”
Jess stood up, too. “Feel free to drop by anytime,” she said. “Kelsey and I are home most evenings.” She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans shorts, a sweetly nervous gesture that exposed another half inch of her flat, tanned stomach. “We’re neighbors now. I hope we’re going to be friends.”
Friends. Rob put his hand on the screen door’s handle. He and beautiful Jess Baxter were going to be friends. He couldn’t help but wonder just how friendly she intended to be.
Damn, he shouldn’t have moved in here like this. For Jess’s sake, he should have gone far, far away. Because he knew damn well he wasn’t going to be able to resist her. If he was reading her right, and she was attracted to him, he didn’t stand a chance at keeping his distance. If she made even the smallest attempt to seduce him, he’d surrender. He was strong, but he wasn’t that strong. And where would that leave him? Where would it leave Jess?
Rob stepped out onto the porch, shutting the door behind him. “Thanks again.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond. He turned and headed for his apartment door, down at the other end of the deck.
He liked Jess more than he’d ever imagined. It had nothing to do with the physical attraction that drew his eyes in her direction all the time. It had to do with her warm smile and her friendly conversation, and her funny, easygoing outlook on life.
Yeah, he liked her, and he’d seen an answering attraction in her eyes tonight—for her sake he should clear out right now. He should just get in his car and leave.
JESS RINSED THE ICED TEA glasses and put them in the dishwasher, feeling oddly unsettled. She’d set out to find some facts about her mysterious tenant, but all she had now were more mysteries.
He had no family and yet he was glad about that.
He grew up somewhere near New York City, but when she’d asked him where exactly, he’d continued to be vague.
Jess picked up the newspaper that Rob had brought inside, and went to check on Kelsey. It was supposed to be Kelsey’s job to bring the afternoon paper in each evening, but occasionally her daughter forgot. It was all part of being six years old.
Kelsey was fast asleep, the bedsheets twisted around her like some kind of Roman toga. Jess smiled, pushing Kelsey’s damp brown hair back from her warm, round, freckled face. She hadn’t expected that her quiet conversation in the kitchen with Rob would disturb her daughter. Kelsey would remain sound asleep throughout the noisiest thunderstorm. The kid could sleep through anything.
It probably came as a form of self-protection, from the days when Kelsey’s father was still living with them. Ian Davis, with his shaggy blond curls and mocking blue eyes was the first violinist and concert master of the Sarasota Symphony Orchestra. He was flashy, arrogant and selfish. And interminably loud and often rudely, nastily abusive. Jess’s ex-husband was jealous as hell, and would start a fight with her over something as innocent as a friendly smile she gave to the attendant at the gas station.
Yet fidelity wasn’t in Ian’s vocabulary when it pertained to himself.
Jess could still feel the giddy sense of freedom she’d felt on that day two years ago, when she’d packed up Ian’s things and sent them to the SSO office with a letter from her lawyer.
She carried the newspaper into the living room. Doris had been wrong. As tough as things were financially, Jess didn’t need—or want—a man around. She and Kelsey were getting along just fine on their own.
Of course, Ian still didn’t agree. According to him, their relationship was in no way over. He came around constantly and left the key to his condo in her mailbox, on her porch, in her car. Did he really expect her to come crawling back to him? Jess would send the key back, but she’d just find it again several days later. Finally, she tossed it into her junk drawer. Game over. Let Ian think he won.
As Jess set the paper down on the coffee table, the headline caught her eye. As usual, it was about the Sarasota serial killer. It was amazing. Sarasota wasn’t that big a city. Sure, there was crime, but nothing ever like this. It was disconcerting to think that a madman was out there, prowling the streets, hunting down and killing young women.
The latest victim was twenty-two years old. She had come home from graduate school for spring break, to visit her parents. Her body had been found, raped and murdered, in her own bedroom. Jess shivered as she read the interview with the police.
The killings had been going on for six months now, although the media and the public had only known about it for half that time. The FBI were closemouthed about whether or not they had any suspects. They warned all area residents—women in particular—to keep their doors and windows locked, and to avoid going out alone, particularly at night.
Jess stood and locked the front door.
Of course, with Rob Carpenter living in the attached apartment, she should feel safe. The walls were so thin, she wouldn’t have to scream very loud for him to
hear. Unless of course, she thought with a wry smile, remembering Doris’s words of warning, Rob himself was the Sarasota serial killer.
But that wasn’t really such a funny joke. True, Doris was probably just being melodramatic as usual, but the fact remained that Jess didn’t know very much about Rob at all. He was a stranger. On top of that, it seemed oddly coincidental that he should have moved to Sarasota six months ago—right before the murders started.
Jess mentally gave herself a shake. Oddly coincidental? She was getting as bad as Doris. Sure, he had moved to Sarasota six months ago. But so had lots of other people. It wasn’t odd, it was just plain coincidental.
Rob was just a nice, quiet guy who didn’t like to talk about his past. No big deal. Jess didn’t like to talk about her marriage to Ian. That didn’t make her an axe murderer. Maybe Rob had been married to some stinker. Maybe he’d had a lousy childhood. Maybe he just wasn’t comfortable talking about his personal life. He’d opened up quickly enough when she’d asked him about movies and books. Of course, that was just glorified small talk.
Rob was just a nice, quiet guy.
Still, Jess stood up and locked the back door anyway.
THIS PART WAS THE BEST. He had brought the rope, of course, and the knife. He loved the look on her face when he tied one end of the rope around his own ankle. And he loved it even more when he told her to tie the other end around her leg.
But first, he ordered her to get herself ready—to put on her makeup while he got undressed.
She was crying by then, but that was okay. They always cried around this time.
She would stop soon.
No Ordinary Man Page 2
