Let Me Be the One

by Christa Maurice

  Learn more about Christa at

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/29516

  Chapter 1

  Katherine Pelham hefted the hammer and pounded the For Rent sign into the frozen ground.

  “Happy Val-En-Tine’s Day,” she emphasized each syllable with a thwack. A truck slowed on the street, but she resisted the urge to look. She’d probably smash her thumb. Already this morning, she’d stubbed her toe, spilled hot coffee, and ripped a hole in her skirt getting it out of the dryer. Going back to bed sounded ideal.

  She stepped back to admire her handiwork. The sign wasn’t crooked and the post hadn’t snapped. The perverse Ohio weather that transformed her yard to concrete had warmed the air until she only needed a sweatshirt. With the apartment done, she needed a reliable tenant. Then she could handle the mortgage, the credit cards and her leftover college loans. She started toward the front door and stopped. It wasn’t her door anymore. Her apartment opened from the side.

  The servants’ entrance.

  Oh, she could have taken the first floor, but it still would be half the house. And the half closer to the basement spiders. She walked around the side and up her new steps. As she reached for the door, a car pulled into the drive.

  A truck actually. A green pick-up. A tall, broad-shouldered man climbed out. He looked as if he’d stepped out of an action adventure movie.

  “Hi. You have a place for rent?”

  His warm tenor voice worked its way through her ears and made straight for other parts of her body. She nodded.

  “Do you take pets?”

  “What kind of pets?” she asked.

  “A dog.”

  A dog. She’d never had a dog and envied people who did. When other girls wanted ponies, she’d wanted a puppy. How wonderful would it be to have a dog romping in the back yard? How wonderful would it be to have this gorgeous man romping in the backyard with the dog? “What kind?”

  “A big mutt.” He held his hand two feet above the ground. Katherine wondered if that meant head height or shoulder height. Either one wasn’t bad. Plenty to play with.

  “Sure.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Six hundred.” Everybody said it was too low, but it sounded high to her. It covered the mortgage payment, freeing up her paycheck for other non-essentials like food.

  “Plus utilities?”

  She shook her head. “I cover utilities, but I control the thermostat.”

  He nodded. “What’s the deposit?”

  “One month’s rent.”

  “And the pet deposit?”

  Katherine bit her lip. Should she charge extra for pets? How much damage could it do? She supposed that depended on the animal, but the landlord book hadn’t mentioned that, and she didn’t want to take advantage. “Even for the dog.”

  He blinked. “Wow. Can I see the place?”

  “Now?” Katherine’s mind reeled. She’d just hammered the sign in the yard. She hadn’t even put a notice in the paper yet. Everyone warned her it might take a month or, God forbid two, before anyone answered her ad. The book said she might show it dozens of times before an acceptable tenant came along. She’d braced herself to show the apartment until summer. This could be another annoyance in an already bad day, or a sign her luck was turning.

  “If you’ve got time,” he added.

  “Of course.” She walked back down the steps and tried to get a better look at him. Did he look crazy? No, he looked nice. Tall, well-proportioned, dark blond hair. His expression seemed to settle into bright-eyed amusement, as if life entertained him. He filled out his blue fleece jacket nicely. She caught her breath as she stepped past him to the door, wanting to run her hands over his fleece to see how soft and warm it was. What had gotten hold of her? His height? She didn’t know many adult men anymore. Most of the males in her life were high school boys, or high school janitors who acted like juveniles.

  “My name is Jack. Jack Conley,” he announced, holding out his hand.

  She caught his gaze sweeping up her body. He was checking her out. For a split second it annoyed her, but pleasure swamped that reaction. She waited until his eyes met hers before shaking his hand. His eyes were extraordinary. Golden brown and smiling even when his face was serious. He had a good grip, firm, not crushing. His touch spread a liquid shiver up her arm.

  “Katherine Pelham. Pleased to meet you,” she said, struggling to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  “Pleased to meet you, too.” He raised one eyebrow.

  She unlocked the front door. The foyer still looked strange with the stairs blocked off. It seemed cramped even though she’d painted the walls a pale tan to make it appear larger.

  “The back door lets into the yard. This is the foyer, and there’s the living room.” She gestured through the archway as he pushed the door closed. She jumped away at the soft click. Her nerves hummed, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant, which confused her more.

  “What?” he asked. His hand rested on the doorknob.

  “Nothing.” She stared at his hand. His fingers were long, graceful and ringless. She forced herself to meet his eyes.

  He searched her face—his lips tightening to the closest thing she’d seen to a frown on him. “So. This is the foyer?”

  Katherine forced herself to take a deep breath. She was acting like a fool. She couldn’t deny a certain sense of tension around him, but it didn’t feel like the tension of a scary situation. More like a warm ache she remembered feeling once or twice, a long time ago.

  “It could be anything you want. It was the foyer before we divided the house. Through here is the kitchen.” She started down the hall, pointing to another door. “This leads to the basement. This is the bathroom.” She pushed open the bathroom door. “The shower’s behind the door. It’s very small.”

  He crowded behind her to peer into the narrow bathroom, which she’d painted mint green to brighten the windowless space.

  Katherine found herself leaning toward him rather than away. He smelled good. His firm jaw came to the top of her head.

  And he was looking down at her with those amused eyes.

  She frowned, but didn’t move. “It’s very small,” she repeated.

  “It’s fine.”

  She fled to the kitchen and waited for him, swearing she would gain control over this interview right now.

  “This is the kitchen. The bathroom used to be part of the kitchen, so it was much larger. There’s plenty of room in the nook for a table, but the floor gets cold in the wintertime. I don’t think there’s any insulation under there.”

  She’d loved the big kitchen when they bought the house. She considered it the heart of the house. Now it was the smallest room because she’d had to carve out space for the bathroom. “Through this door is—was, the dining room. I suppose it would make a wonderful bedroom.” She blushed at the image of this room as a bedroom with him in it. She was developing some sort of obsession. Too many nights with a book and a bowl of soup. Nothing to do with the way he looked at her. Or the way she hoped he looked at her. She pushed open a door and stepped through it.

  Jack crossed the room and peered at the inset china cabinet. He ran his finger along the dark mullion windows, studying the uneven glass. “Is this original?”

  “As far as I know. The house was built in nineteen thirteen, and it was very fashionable back then to have built-in cabinets.” Katherine tried to pull herself together. First time in a long time around an attractive man, and she started babbling like a schoolgirl in a chance encounter with the captain of the football team. So what if he was handsome? So what if she could almost feel his strong hands gliding down her spine?

  She clenched her teeth and walked out of the dining room, acutely aware of him behind her. “There’s another little room back here. We used it for storage. It’s not insulated. Anything you put back here has to be able to take huge temperature fluctuations.” She tugged open
the French door leading to the storeroom. It popped open and she stepped through. “That’s the back door. You could put in a doggie door, then your dog could get out if he needed to.”

  “Archer would like that.”

  Katherine found herself trapped between Jack and the door, struggling with the bolt. Blood rushed in her ears, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last taken a decent breath. She seized the doorknob and yanked.

  The door burst open. She stumbled backward. For an eternal moment, Jack’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. Heat rushed to her face as she felt his hard chest through his coat. She wanted to sink into his embrace and stay there.

  “Sticky door,” he said, setting her on her feet. His hand trailed up her arm.

  Katherine tried not to sound like a breathless fool. “It’s worse in the summer when the wood swells.” She pushed through the storm door and took a large step away to gain some room. Unfortunately, two feet of porch wasn’t enough to slow her pulse or clear her mind. “This is the backyard. It’s fenced and it goes all the way back to the alley.” She pointed to the tree line.

  “Big yard.”

  “We loved it when we bought the house, but we never got around to working on it. Our neighbor has a beautiful lawn. I have moss. Feel free to look around.” She hurried inside and perched on what remained of the stairs.

  Not long ago, these two steps had led to a landing and another nine steps to the upstairs. Now they led to a wall. On the other side was her front door, amputating her new home from what she’d always considered its heart. The symbolism was ironic. Katherine leaned back, trying not to think of Jack Conley, who she could hear walking around the kitchen and dining room.

  It would be nice to have a tenant by the first of the month and to have a guy with a dog living downstairs for security purposes. That the potential tenant was gorgeous and that she’d been alone too long had nothing to do with the choice. This was business.

  “Mrs. Pelham?”

  Katherine looked up. He was admiring her legs. A giggle gathered in her throat. She stood, commanding those legs to hold her. “Ms.”

  His eyes swept up her body again. Low heat developed in her belly. “Ms. Pelham, then. It’s a great place. Do you have an application?”

  “Oh yes. Give me a minute, and I’ll get it.” She spun around to dart upstairs, checking herself before she ran into the wall. This chopped-up house would take getting used to. “I’ll be back.”

  Katherine slowed to a walk as she stepped off the porch steps. Why was she running? It was business. Just because he looked at her like a woman and not like a teacher, or a friend, or a conquest didn’t mean anything. She walked to her door and opened it. The applications lay on the steps. Without the wall, she could have handed him one through the banister. She heard Jack walking around, but knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him upstairs. If she wanted to spy, she’d to have to sit at the bottom of the stairs. Or position herself at one of the heat vents.

  Katherine shook her head. Why was she thinking of spying on her tenant? She didn’t even have a tenant yet. She picked up one application, took a deep breath and went back around the house to the first floor. He waited in the foyer studying the cracks in the ceiling.

  “Here you are,” she said. “Drop it off in my mail box anytime.”

  “Thanks.” Jack folded the paper and slipped it into his coat pocket. “You live upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “I’ll have this back today.”

  “In a big hurry to move?” Katherine tensed.

  “It’s Archer. I just got him, and I can’t have pets at my apartment. My landlord wants him out by the end of the month.”

  “I see. Well, you can drop the application off in the mailbox whenever.”

  “Thanks.” He held out his hand. “Nice meeting you.”

  “Nice meeting you, too.” She kept her composure when his hand enveloped hers, but it wasn’t easy. “Good-bye.”

  He grinned. “See ya.”

  Katherine locked the front door as he backed his truck out of the drive. She’d forgotten to tell him about the garage and the basement, but it hadn’t gone too badly. Chances were excellent he wouldn’t bring the application back, and if he did, that he wouldn’t be a good tenant. The book specifically discussed researching prospective tenants. Once they moved in, getting them out was impossible. She suspected evicting Mr. Conley would be the least of her troubles.

  Living in half the house felt strange. Back in her own apartment, she turned toward her kitchen at the top of the stairs. This had been a four-bedroom house. Now, one was her bedroom, another her living room and the third room was her kitchen. Only her office stayed the same in the fourth bedroom. Her office didn’t have bad memories attached to it, so she hadn’t changed it.

  She wandered back into the hall and studied the pictures on the wall. She didn’t know why she hadn’t taken them down. Photos of her ‘happy’ life with a hero. Getting engaged, college graduation, buying a home on a police force mortgage assistance program. All quite dandy until Gary was killed, leaving her with a mortgage she couldn’t afford on her teacher’s salary. And all Gary’s cop buddies lost interest in his not-quite-widow. Four years later, she only rated an occasional drive by.

  That mistake she wouldn’t make again. The next time she married, if she married, she refused to marry a hero.