by Leslie Kelly
Had to be hunger. Max’s heart hadn’t been involved in any relationship with a woman in years.
“I’m prepared. I have something in my pocket….”
He shifted away a bit, giving her more room on the dirt path that led to his grandfather’s new white elephant. “Please don’t mace me, I was just asking a question.”
She pulled her hand out of her pocket, and he saw her cell phone.
“Were you going to ring-tone me to death if I turned out to be Freddy Krueger in disguise?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m awake—not dreaming—so you can’t be Freddy,” she murmured, tucking her phone back into the pocket of her white slacks.
Considering they were delightfully tight, he wondered how she had the room, but quickly figured it out. God bless spandex. Spandex is my friend.
“I had my finger ready to speed-dial my friend Butch.”
“Butch?”
Color rose in her cheeks and she cleared her throat before explaining. “The ex-Marine turned bouncer.”
It was all he could do not to tsk, knowing she was lying.
She might have made a flip comeback, but she had also stepped away from him on the path. He hadn’t intended to scare her. Honestly, he found her openness and trusting spirit incredibly attractive…if a bit naive. “There’s no Butch.”
“Says you.”
“If there’s a Butch, he’s a five-foot-six engineer trying to counter his geekiness and ninety-eight-pound physique by having a tough nickname.” Her audible sigh of defeat told him he’d hit home. “Sorry if I just offended your…boyfriend?”
Shaking her head, she reluctantly laughed, and little sparkles of delight seemed to spill out of her and bathe him in her good humor. “No, no boyfriend.”
Hallelujah. He’d already noticed there was no wedding ring.
“But there really is a Butch…”
“Oh, yeah?”
Instead of meeting his eye, she glanced down at her feet, kicking a small branch away with one sneaker-clad foot. “He’s my dog. A toy poodle.”
“Is his name really Butch?”
She tugged one corner of her lip between her teeth before slowly shaking her head. “It’s Giorgio.”
Max snorted. “Who named him?”
“Me.”
Shaking his head, he mourned for poor old Giorgio. “That should be against the law. Saddling a completely hideous name on another living creature.”
“I like Giorgio. It’s very…Mediterranean.”
“Bet he gets the snot beat out of him by the other pups at the doggie park.”
“He’s got a bit of a Napoleon complex,” she admitted. “So he does tend to get in trouble with some of the bigger dogs. That’s why my younger sister decided to start calling him Butch once she moved in with me.”
A sister who lived with her. He filed the information away for future use. Not that he knew for sure that he’d ever be invited in for coffee and an all-night sex-fest after one of their inevitable dates. But he was hoping. And a live-in sister could make things a little…crowded.
Now, however, wasn’t the time to be thinking that way. Not until he was out of this whole book jam. Best behavior, he reminded himself. You’re Mr. Boy Next Door. Because, though he wanted to believe this woman was in Trouble for exactly the reasons she claimed, he wasn’t ready to completely discount the possibility that he was being played.
A player was always on the lookout for anyone who wanted to play him. And once upon a time, Max had been one of the best players around.
“So whose speed-dial number did you have your finger on?”
“The Trouble Police Department. They are programmed into my cell phone.” She shuddered lightly, though the day was warm and comfortable. “I put them in there when I arrived and found out my landlord likes to get naked and prune the rosebushes in his backyard on the weekend. Which, to me, seems like a dangerous combination—thorns, hedge clippers and nudity.”
“Ah. You’re staying at the Dewdrop.”
“Yes.”
“Could be worse. You could be staying at Seaton House, which used to be open as a hotel just north of Trouble.”
Cringing, she admitted, “I saw pictures on the Internet of that place, hulking over the town like a gargoyle hovering over its still-bleeding prey.”
Good visual.
“I had this image of a nightmarish version of Satan’s Hotel where demons turn down your bed and you realize it’s full of snakes. You check in and you never check out. It looked as if Norman Bates and his mother lived there.”
“They might. Or so says the Trouble gossip mill. The hotel closed down a month ago, leaving the Dewdrop as the only lodging option within twenty miles of here.” He grinned. “Nicely worded description by the way.”
“Thanks. I guess I’ve got a lot of practice trying to paint pictures with words.”
“Ah. You’re a writer?”
She didn’t answer right away, staring at the ground in front of them as if afraid she’d trip and fall over a jumbled mound of brush. Finally, though, she said, “I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was a kid.”
Though he had no fondness for writers lately, he admitted, “Well, you’re good. As long as you stick to fiction and none of that tell-all crap.”
Like Grace. But this blonde was nothing like Grace, who wasn’t really a writer at all. She was merely a spoiled brat who was never happy if she wasn’t messing with someone’s life.
His companion stumbled a little and Max grabbed her arm to steady her. “Careful.”
“Thanks,” she said, her voice low.
They walked in silence for a few yards, then Max said, “Just so you know, I’d read your books. You’ve got me convinced to never set foot in Seaton House, much less sleep in it.”
He wondered if she’d believe him if he told her there was somewhere she could be staying that was even more frightening—the house where they were heading. The one where he currently resided.
Because hearing a few dozen screaming cuckoos every hour had to be worse than sleeping one thin wall away from the owner of the Seaton House, a man most of Trouble apparently considered a murderer. Or from Al Fitzweather, whose goods, one would hope, would at least be hidden by his beer gut whenever he was walking around the house in the buff.
“Remind me to do a narrative passage on Al Fitzweather and the Dewdrop Inn, just to keep you safe from that place, too,” she said.
“If there’s a law against bad pet names, there should also be one against unattractive people getting naked in public,” he said, inwardly cringing at the mental picture of the inn owner, and then of the old lady in his cockpit a few weeks ago.
“I think there already is.”
“In Trouble? One can never be sure…”
“Good point.”
Thinking about her comments regarding her cell phone, he added, “You know, even with your speed dial, I don’t think any of the three officers on the Trouble P.D. could get here fast enough to save you if I turned into Jason or Pinhead.”
“You have a thing about horror movies?”
“You obviously do, too, since you know exactly who I’m talking about, including Norman Bates.”
They were passing beneath an enormous elm and a bit of sunlight peeked between its leaves to bathe her hair in a warm, soft glow. He wondered if the color was natural and thought it might be—a cascading jumble of golds, blondes and light browns, it probably couldn’t have come from a bottle.
His body chose that moment to remind him of that lack of breakfast again, because Max felt something roll over, deep inside. Definitely food related. Not female related. Uh-uh.
“I think I’ve seen every horror movie ever made, even though we weren’t allowed to watch them in our house growing up,” she explained. “My friends would have terror marathons whenever I slept over. I was a bad influence.”
Oh, right. This soft, curvy-looking woman was probably about as bad as Mr. Peanut.
�
�A couple of times I’d go to the movies to see something PG rated but sneak into Child’s Play or another bloody flick.”
She had a naughty side. He wouldn’t have predicted that—though he should have, given the sarcastic, earthy wit that she exhibited at unexpected moments. “How very shocking,” he said, sarcasm heavy in his tone.
“Anyway, I learned enough to know that the girl who fights back is the only one who makes it out of the dark and scary house alive, so when I moved to the city I took a self-defense course from an ex-cop. I could hurt you…just so you know.”
That he wouldn’t have predicted. “You telling me another Butch story?”
Shaking her head, she lifted a golden brow, as if daring him to find out. That gleam in her blue eyes told him he’d better not. So maybe the pretty blonde wasn’t naive at all—just confident of her ability to defend herself.
Not that she needed to. Max had never so much as yelled at a woman, much less lifted a hand to one. Seductive whispers or sweet, playful words were so much more effective than shouted ones, in his experience.
Except with his ex-wife. And with her, his lawyer had done all the yelling.
Max had stuck to drinking.
He’d spent a good year completely intoxicated following their shocking breakup. Which was why he currently had a twelve-step card tucked safely in his wallet. And why he hadn’t had anything more alcoholic than a Butter Rum Lifesaver near his lips in three years.
“He said I was the best student he ever had,” she said. “And I liked it so much, I went on to become an instructor at a local community center.”
Hmm…a self-defense instructor at a community center? Didn’t sound like the monied type—the type who’d be able to take this albatross called Trouble off his grandfather’s back and let Max and his brothers return to their regularly scheduled lives. Then again, maybe she was an eccentric, altruistic rich person.
Max certainly was acquainted with a few of those. Some of whom were related to him. Like the one who’d bought this monstrosity of a town to try to breathe financial life into its carcass before rigor mortis set in.
“You know,” he murmured as they crested the hill, reaching the edge of the tangled, overgrown yard surrounding his grandfather’s new house, “it wasn’t the girl who fought back who survived a night with Freddy, Jason or Norman.” Hiding a smile, he continued. “It was always the good girl. The virgin.”
He gave her a look of complete innocence, remembering at the last moment that he was not allowed to tread deep into dangerous, sexual waters with any woman just now. Frankly, he thought he’d been doing pretty well at keeping things light, friendly and above the waist with all this talk of blood, murder and psycho killers. But that last comment had shot his good intentions straight to hell.
He somehow didn’t think she’d mind. He had the feeling that despite her angelic looks, this woman was not the sweet type. Which was good. Max didn’t much care for sweet girls. Not when bad ones were so much more…entertaining.
“Well,” she replied, “I guess it’s a good thing you’re not a Jason or a Freddy, then, or my guts might be hanging from a tree back in the woods right about now. Because my virginity was history long before Jason killed his hundredth victim.”
Sassy comeback. Damn, he really liked that. On top of everything else he already liked about this stranger, who’d popped into his mind several times the night before when he’d been trying to sleep. “Considering he probably hit a hundred by the second movie, I somehow doubt that. You would’ve been in preschool.”
“Thousandth victim, then. At least five movies ago.”
“Okay.” Since they were now discussing her virginity—Lord have mercy on his wicked soul for those mental images—he figured introductions might be good. “What’s your name, anyway? We never did the how-do-you-do stuff. Some self-defense expert you are.”
“It’s Sabrina. Sabrina Cavanaugh.”
He stuck his hand out. “Mine’s Michael. Michael Myers.”
She rolled her eyes, instantly recognizing the name of the psycho from the Halloween movies. Smiling, Max opened his mouth to offer his real name, but before he could, Sabrina—pretty Sabrina—cut him off with a surprised gasp.
“Oh, my God.”
Wonderful. The woman had obviously seen Hell House. Sighing, Max steeled himself for her obvious dismay when she realized just how bad it was. She’d run as fast as she could when she saw the kind of accommodations the owner of this crazy little town would get to live in.
And there was more. He simply couldn’t wait until she met Mortimer.
CHAPTER FOUR
ASIDE FROM GETTING lots of attention and feeling the baby moving around inside her, being pregnant sucked the big one. Not that Alicia Cavanaugh knew much about sucking, big ones or little ones…her single sexual relationship had been short-lived and pretty straightforward. Vanilla. None of the icky stuff.
Just a three-week game of wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and here’s an up-yours to your sister, too. That pretty much described her one and only grown-up romance with Peter “the Prick” Prescott, who’d screwed her over but good, all to screw over her big sister, Sabrina.
Frankly, Peter the Prickface was the reason Allie was feeling especially yucky today. Well, Peter and the extra twenty pounds sitting squarely on her bladder. And the…other stuff.
It was beyond awful. Twenty years old and she had stretch marks and hemorrhoids. Unbe-freaking-lievable.
All of which Peter had provided. God, she wanted to kill him, especially after last night.
“It’s okay, Lumpy, he was just being a jerk. He didn’t mean it.” She didn’t know who she was trying harder to convince—the lump wriggling around on her kidneys, or herself.
He couldn’t have meant it. Could not seriously be considering fighting her for custody of this baby once he or she was born.
“Never in a million years,” she muttered as she scoured Sabrina’s refrigerator, dying for something chocolate. It was nearly noon and any reasonable person would assume that a pregnant woman would want chocolate for lunch on occasion. But was there any to be found? Nooooo.
No chocolate. Not even any chocolate sauce lurking behind the nauseating fresh fruits and vegetables and high-protein shakes.
“My kingdom for a Yoo-hoo,” she whispered, staring at all the healthy junk her sister had stocked up on before leaving town yesterday. “Bailing out, more like it,” she added as she slammed the door shut, feeling tears well up in her eyes.
She knew it was stupid to feel this way. Sabrina hadn’t bailed, she had a book expo to go to, a business trip. Her sister hadn’t wanted to leave Allie alone this close to her due date. But she’d had no choice. Now that she was supporting not only herself but her freeloading, knocked-up sibling, Sabrina had to work extra hard.
She probably hated Allie.
A fat salty tear fell out of her eye, slid down her face and landed on her big belly. Quickly wiping it off, she blinked a few times, not wanting the baby to know she was crying. Again. Poor little thing might get a complex before he was ever born, thinking his mommy was a basket case who didn’t love him.
“I do,” she whispered. “And Aunt Sabrina loves you, too. She loves both of us.”
In her heart, she knew her sister didn’t resent her, but her whacked-out hormones had been calling the shots for a good seven months now. So Allie couldn’t stop the tears.
She cried over being a burden to Sabrina.
Over being a single parent.
Over the scene with Peter the Prick-face.
Over the birthday coming up next month that would include no card from her younger sister or brother, no small bottle of cologne from her mother. No sermon disguised as a birthday greeting from her grandfather. No word from home at all.
Most of all she cried over the major screwup she’d made of her life.
Peter made it…
“No,” she said, her voice firm, her tears drying as quickly as they’d burst for
th.
Peter had used her and hurt her, but he hadn’t forced her to open her legs and say aah. Or to trust him with the birth control issue. That was all on Allie’s shoulders. And, oh, they felt mighty small these days.
“I need to tell Sabrina that we ran into him,” she whispered. She was still cursing her decision to take the bus out to an upscale mall last night to window-shop for cute baby clothes she could never afford. Department store jammies were out of the question. Her baby was starting out life as a true American, clothed by Wal-Mart from head to toe.
“Should’ve just gone to the secondhand shop,” she muttered, knowing she never would have run into him if she had. Him…the snob who’d never be caught dead in a non-designer suit. The man she’d hoped to never see again. Her ex. Her sister’s ex. The six-foot-tall pile of shit in Versace known as Peter Prescott.
Sabrina’s gonna kill me.
Disgusted by the very thought of Peter ever entering their lives again, Sabrina had warned her to stay close to home. But figuring Peter was long gone, Allie hadn’t seen the harm in going out for a little while. The apartment was too quiet without Sabrina in it, talking about how adorable the baby would be and what a great job Allie would do as a mother.
She’d thought her sister was being overprotective about Peter. Because once he’d quit his job at the publishing house where he’d worked with Sabrina—quit because of some big hush-hush scandal her sister wouldn’t tell her about—Peter had supposedly left town. Sabrina figured he’d gone to New York. Allie had hoped he’d gone to a back alley in Tijuana and been jumped by some horny drug traffickers who’d kidnapped him and put him to work in a slave labor camp picking corn and cleaning toilets with his tongue.
Or something like that.
But, no, apparently not. Because he was here, in Philadelphia. So either he’d never really left, or he’d come back with his tail between his legs.
Whatever the case, the cat was out of the bag—or more appropriately, the pregnant belly was out of the maternity smock.
Remembering the initial shock on his face when he’d seen her—all of her—she couldn’t prevent a small stab of righteous pleasure. But because her own heart had tumbled at the sight of him, she hadn’t been able to enjoy his obvious dismay.
