Joanne chuckled. “I’ll meet you outside.”
She left. Rose returned Bella to the apartment, made sure the water bowl was filled, and closed the door tight on her way out. She wished the living quarters had an outside lock. She’d ask Meg about it later today.
Rose neared the car and realized she’d forgotten money. She hurried back inside and was surprised to find Leo standing in the kitchen, staring into one of the cabinets.
“Hello,” she said.
He nodded and went to the refrigerator without a single word.
Rose hurried to her apartment, curious if Leo had overheard any of her conversation with Joanne. She needed to be more careful.
Bella waited on the other side of the door, her tail wagging full force. “Sorry, Bella-bug. I forgot something.”
She started toward the bedroom to her money stash: a manila envelope hidden inside her luggage. On her way there, she spotted the change from a fifty broken for groceries last night sitting on the coffee table. She grabbed that instead.
“Back soon,” she said to the dog, a twinge of guilt over leaving her alone hitting hard. She shut the door quickly while stuffing the cash in her purse.
On her way through the kitchen, Leo glanced her way as he opened the pantry door. “Leaving?” He raised a brow, a little too much hope in his expression.
“Yup.” She hurried to the door. “But I’ll be back.” She peeked over her shoulder, just in time to catch Leo’s optimism wither into a grimace.
* * * *
The brooding literary type?
Leo bristled over the remark and peered out the kitchen door. The visitor’s car pulled away, his new tenant riding shotgun. Connecticut plates. So her friend was a fellow author, living in the state. His attention drifted back to the comments the women made. Who’d called him brooding? A thinker perhaps, not exactly extrovert, but brooding?
This was the very reason he needed her gone. Too many people. Too much noise. All equaling less concentration on his writing.
Guilt over eavesdropping gave him a not-so-friendly swat. He hadn’t intended to snoop on Emily’s…Eileen’s…God, why couldn’t he remember her name? No matter. With her gone, the book would be done in no time.
He turned away from the door armed with new information about the stranger. From the tidbits he’d caught this morning from the top of the stairs, she played the part of a travel agent on the run from her ex-husband. Did that explain the changed appearance her friend had talked about? Or the name change?
His head pounded while he tried to retrieve the name she’d asked her friend to call her. Argh, what the hell was it? Emma! That’s it! He’d been friendly with an Emma back in college so mentally thumbtacked the connection to the name in his brain.
He opened the refrigerator and removed the half-grinder left over from yesterday’s lunch as his mind drifted to the conversation about the lake’s original name. He remembered the summer he’d learned how to pronounce Puttacawmaumschuckmaug Lake—no easy feat. For a brief few seconds, the irritation weighing him down subsided with fond memories of the cute local girl who’d taught him. Only as he grabbed a Coke and sat at the table to face his lunch, the nasty comments he’d just heard returned.
His appetite shriveled with thoughts of the visitor’s description of his writing career. To state that the book he’d written after his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “didn’t do well” was a severe understatement. Try bombed, at least from the critics’ perspectives. Fans had received it fairly well, but it wasn’t a blockbuster like his Pulitzer Prize winner, or even the bestselling novels before it.
And what right did Emma have to call him grouchy? The night she arrived, he wasn’t quite himself. Well, okay. So maybe she had grounds. But not being able to write made him irritable! Fury swelled, rushing in angry streaks to the tips of his fingers. He clenched his fist. Writer’s block. Something he’d read about, heard other authors discuss. Not once in a lifetime of writing had he suffered. Only now, it owned him.
He banged the table. The dog whined from the other room, but caught up in his situation, he ignored the cries and took a long sip of his soda.
Finished beating himself up, he turned to the newly discovered facts about his “roommate.” The friend had shown surprise at Emma’s altered appearance. So what had she changed? He tried to imagine her with black or brown hair, or clothes more suitable for someone old enough to drink legally. Plus, those glasses that didn’t fit had to be fake. And who was John? What had he done that might send her to prison?
The dog woofed then let out a long whimper. A little ache singed Leo’s heart. The second he saw the basset hound on the night of Emma’s arrival, it had reminded him how much he loved having a pet. Camille had never wanted one, despite Leo’s stories about his memorable first dog, Max.
A psychologist had recommended the Drakes get Leo a dog shortly after he’d been adopted. His mother’s death from an overdose and his subsequent placement in foster care had left Leo distrusting, even of a family trying to do good things for him. Philip Drake, his newly adoptive father, had taken him to the kennel and pointed to a purebred collie recently turned in after the owner passed away.
Instead they’d left with Max, the sandy-colored mixed breed in the next cage with a fanlike tail and floppy ears.
A mutt. A dog whose heritage nobody really knew. Like Leo, who’d never known his father or his mother’s family. Each time he’d asked her for answers, she’d concocted another story. Fiction had become a part of Leo’s reality long before he started writing and loss had become just another part of living.
The basset hound whined again and, this time, scratched at the door. Leo swallowed back the pain of losing his close canine companion right before he went off to Princeton.
Another scratch to the door, followed by the fast click of paws on hallway hardwood floors. Leo suddenly remembered how the door latch in the apartment sometimes didn’t click tight. Bella rushed to the table and danced around his legs while grunting throaty noises of excitement.
“Okay. Okay. Relax.” Leo leaned over and rubbed her chest. She stretched her chin upward, taking in the ecstasy of a good scratch, then dropped to the ground and rolled onto her back. He rubbed her belly and calm flowed over his body. “Sorry I’ve been ignoring you. You’re a good doggy, aren’t you?”
He stopped and reluctantly stood. Attachment wouldn’t be good. “Let’s get you back where you belong.”
When he called the dog’s name, she followed him down the hallway and walked straight back into the apartment. He closed the door, giving it an extra tug until the latch clicked tight.
As he returned to his lunch, Bella howled from behind the closed door for at least a solid minute or two. Leo got up and turned on the counter radio, but the dog seemed to bark even louder. He ate, read his book, and tried to ignore the poor basset’s pleas for release. Each second of the dog’s sadness became his own.
She finally stopped, and he felt oddly relieved.
Leo finished his meal, enjoying the quiet. He put down the book and lowered the radio. Nope, not a peep from the dog. In fact, it was strange she’d stopped barking so suddenly. A friend of Leo’s had lost a black lab while away at the office. The dog had found a smaller ball meant for his cocker spaniel and swallowed it whole. It had become lodged in the lab’s throat and she’d died.
Worry took hold of Leo. Had Emma dog-proofed the apartment? He had no idea what could be lying around in there. What if something happened to her pet and she blamed him?
He walked down the hallway, waiting to hear Bella’s bark or a scratch at the door. Nothing. He opened the door. “Bella?”
She didn’t come. Glancing around, he didn’t see her anywhere in the main living area. He stepped inside and peeked into the bedroom. Bella lay on the large bed, spread out like a queen and sound asleep.
“There you are!” Leo had never been more relieved to see an animal.
Bella�
��s eyes flashed open and her tail thumped on the mattress. She scrambled off the bed and rushed Leo. He squatted to pet her and she jumped up, put her paws on his knees, and dragged a wet tongue across his cheek, throwing him off balance.
Leo laughed and plunked onto the floor. Bella sat, too. Leaning against his side, she flipped back her head and gazed at him with bloodshot adoration. Leo ran his hand along her neck. “What’s your owner up to, huh, girl? I wish you could talk.”
Leo sat that way for a long minute, aware of sense of pure peace settling over him, a weight lessening in his usually stiff limbs. Tight for too long with worries about this book and a general sense of anger about life that had consumed him since losing his wife.
Yet at this exact moment, all the resentment driving him had disappeared. Why couldn’t he work harder to feel this good around people? He hadn’t always felt so distant from others, so uninterested in being a decent guy.
He stood and glanced around the bedroom. The last time he’d been in here was when his adoptive mother’s cancer had worsened and made it hard for her to use the stairs during a family stay. Now a stranger occupied the space.
The double closet held some clothes. Shirts, sweaters, pants, most still carrying tags. A receipt on the dresser caught his attention, so he went over and lifted it. He squinted, his glasses left behind in the kitchen. Target? Three hundred and fifty dollars? Mostly clothes and toiletries. Roanoke, Virginia? Her Escort had Massachusetts plates and she’d made a point of defending her address when they’d signed the lease. He lowered the suspicious receipt.
A suitcase placed on a walnut luggage rack near the dresser sat open. Only a few items remained inside, and when he caught a glimpse of silk and lace, he immediately turned away.
Woof!
The dog stood looking up at him, a plastic toy chirping inside her mouth each time she bit down. “You want to play, huh?”
A healthy tug of war ensued. Leo won.
He ignored the slobber on his hand and tossed the toy outside of the room. “Go get it!”
As the dog rushed off, Leo laughed. On his way out, he caught his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. A smile. Pure joy, so evident his eyes shined. A rare sight, at least these past years. The smile vanished.
He wandered out of the room, making a quick stop to rinse his hands off in the bathroom. Next to a travel toiletry bag was a box of hair rinse, the shade pretty close to the brassy reddish-orange of his tenant. He tried to imagine her with different colored hair, or in a wardrobe she may have left behind.
He walked into the main living area and spotted a leather attaché leaning upright in the corner of the sofa. Moving closer, he examined the high-quality bag. Something like this would run several hundred dollars. Compared to the used car she’d arrived in, this seemed like a luxury.
Psychology journals lay scattered on the sofa cushions. Odd pleasure reading for someone in the travel business. He peered at the unzipped briefcase where papers stuck out, but quickly discarded any notions about searching inside. Doing so would cross a line, further than he’d crossed by entering the apartment.
A picture on an end table caught his eye. A photo of his entire family, taken down at the dock on Blue Moon Lake one summer as they readied themselves for a ride on the motorboat. For a second he wallowed in sadness over losing his adoptive parents, but he shook off the dark cloud as fast as it had rolled in.
The photo gave him an idea for another tool he could use in his plan to scare Emma from the house, as he’d done to the last tenant. He turned it facedown on the end table. This subtle tactic might not get her to leave, but it would make her pause after the picture moved a few more times on its own. That plus a few other tricks far worse than this one he would pull out of his magician’s hat.
The last tenant had been easy to get rid of. Over the course of several days, Leo had let himself in with his key each time the man went to work. Staging a haunting wasn’t hard. Either that, or the guy spooked easily.
As he stood looking at the overturned photo, part of him felt utterly ridiculous considering the scheme again. But Everett had shut him out, refused to listen when Leo said he needed this house to work. Everett loved control. And since their current problems had developed, he loved tormenting Leo. They needed a long talk, but with Leo’s deadline looming, he didn’t have the luxury of time.
He’d try this silly haunting thing one more time. It could end up making him look like a fool. Plus, he almost felt bad for Emma. The night of her arrival, a bit of vulnerability showed in her eyes in spite of the brave demands to stay. The idea Emma required help tickled the part of him that couldn’t stop caring. A danger zone that he needed to veer as far away from as possible.
Time to think about his own needs. Yes…a second haunting might make this new tenant reconsider living here. He couldn’t worry if Emma ran from this place with her tail between her legs because he had a job to do.
But he might miss Bella.
Chapter 5
Only a few days earlier, Rose had enjoyed dinner in her beautiful country kitchen while looking out to the gardens in the backyard. Now, she balanced her salad and chicken in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and was headed for the teeny apartment she called home. A better choice than sitting at Leo Drake’s table. He made her so uneasy she’d probably need an antacid for dessert if she had to eat near him.
Bella had emptied her food bowl but disappeared.
“Bella?” Rose peeked around the corner into a formal dining room with a Queen Anne table and ugly goldenrod curtains. The dog sat near sliding glass doors, her nose pressed to the window. “Come on, pretty girl. My turn to eat.”
The hound did a double take at the plate and followed Rose.
Once inside her apartment, she put down her food and slipped on ankle-cropped yoga pants. Fishing through the closet, she found a two-dollar, bargain-rack, white lace T-shirt with a stitched-in black tube top. Probably had been hanging in the store since Madonna arrived on the scene. Rose wasn’t leaving this room tonight, so she put it on.
The home’s quiet made her wonder if Leo was even home. When she and Joanne had returned from lunch, Joanne had wanted to meet the famous author. Only he wasn’t downstairs and going upstairs violated his house rules. Instead, they’d returned to Rose’s apartment and done an Internet search on the Drake clan.
They’d found out his parents, Philip and Katherine Drake, had been big into philanthropy, well liked, and both had died before hitting seventy. Mr. Drake had been president of a large firm in Manhattan. Besides the family home on the lake, they owned a place in Manhattan where they’d lived most of the year. Rose recalled the postcard in the pantry and the names took on more meaning.
She sank into the sofa and unzipped her briefcase to remove a study given to her three weeks ago by her editor. Running away or not, she still had deadlines.
She also removed notes she’d started a few weeks ago for the next column of Dr. Rose Says. The column always started with a quick line of advice then three or four letters related to the advice theme. The topic choice for the upcoming issue hit too close to home.
Dr. Rose Says: A strong relationship always has trust.
Anger for John shot through her veins like a hot coil. She’d trusted him, perhaps naively so. She no longer loved him, but had she ever? Maybe all John ever represented was the illusion of a “normal” home, not the tender, hard-to-describe emotion people felt for each other.
At the cocktail party where they’d met, he’d charmed her with his intellect, good humor, and charismatic brown eyes that matched his hair, gone slightly gray at the temples. He worked as a partner in a large Charlotte law firm and carried himself with confidence and grace. John was older and wiser than the other men she’d gone out with and his attention disarmed her usual caution.
The longer they dated, she’d found herself confiding small things to him. Like how she’d been orphaned, that she’d been left a siz
able inheritance, and, eventually, the truth about her famous parents. When he’d proposed six months after their first date and suggested they run off to Vegas and get married, she’d been ecstatic. The quiet family existence of her dreams had seemed a reality. Second thoughts came three months later.
While dining in the dramatic dim light of Del Frisco’s with two other partners and their spouses, John had surprised her by announcing he planned to run for the Senate. As his coworkers shook his hand and vowed to work to get him elected, Rose had sat with a frozen smile that belied the turmoil raging inside her.
Public attention of that type terrified her. Right away, she’d worried the press might uncover details about her old life and her parents’ deaths, even though she had thought she’d buried her tracks. Later that night, when alone, he’d asked about using her parents’ inheritance for his campaign. She’d said no, suggesting they save it for their children’s college. Yet the day he asked for her account numbers and passwords to keep them in a secure place, she’d handed over her PIN without giving the matter any thought. Because she’d trusted him…
What a stupid mistake. She put the pad down and turned to her dinner, spearing a piece of chicken off her plate. Once the PI provided answers about how John had managed to make illegal campaign contributions in her name, she’d have to decide how and when to step forward. Only when she could fully prove her innocence. She wished she could prove to the authorities that he intended to hurt her, but she didn’t even know who he’d discussed doing so with on the phone.
She swallowed the suddenly tasteless food and reached for her wine glass. The stem clinked, caught on a picture frame turned face down. She flipped it upright. Leo as a teenager stood with people she assumed were his family, a boyish version of the man he’d become. The Waspy, blond features of his parents and siblings made Leo stand out as different. Where had the dark hair, lanky build, and intense gaze come from?
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