Well, he’d picked on the wrong woman if he thought he could intimidate her this time, in her own home. Losing A.J. had forced her to toughen up in a great number of ways. She knew how to stand up for herself and not let anyone boss, shame or bully her.
With indignation and fury building, she matched him stare for stare. She could almost feel his gaze shift and linger. Never had she met anyone with such audacity.
“You won’t intimidate me again,” she muttered, fuming.
But her defiance didn’t have much effect on him, either. The only movement came from the birds flying between their houses in search of breakfast for themselves and their hatchlings. Cardinals, chickadees, wrens and bluebirds sailed by, singing their praises of the May sunshine. Farther off she heard a woodpecker work diligently at a dead pine tree; the staccato, hollow tapping that came through the screen echoed the pulse pounding in her throat and at her temples. All that sweet innocence only made the broad-shouldered shadowy figure next door all the more surreal, and menacing.
Feeling her confidence wavering, she tossed her brush onto the counter. Back in the bedroom she grabbed her leggings, and shoes, and shot through the doorway. Awful, awful man, she seethed, stomping down the stairs. She wished her bare feet and modest weight created the thunderous acoustics that her annoyance craved. Did he sleep by that confounded computer? Was this what she had to look forward to from having him as a neighbor?
To think she’d been so pleased to have double windows in the master bedroom. It meant she could better enjoy the view of the ancient wisteria that rose from Zachary Denton’s backyard and nearly engulfed everything in its path as it crept over fences and trees in search of sunlight. Bad enough to have missed this year’s blooms; was she going to have to keep everything tightly shut and lose the view altogether? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair!
Downstairs she dropped her things by her new telephone and angrily stepped into her leggings and shoes, then jerked open the front door. She’d give him credit for one thing, though—he’d raised her blood pressure so much she didn’t need any caffeine to finish waking up!
Outside, she took a welcome, deep breath of fresh air. Yesterday’s rain had soaked everything through and through, and lingering humidity made the air heavy, the grass and shrubbery dew-drenched. The sun peered through the haze, its warmth stirring a potpourri of scents from the countless varieties of wildflowers and trees that flourished in the piney woods of East Texas. Willa let the promising day and the fresh air soothe her. It lasted only until she realized her paper wasn’t on the driveway as she’d hoped.
“Not this, too?” Sighing, she checked on the other side of the van in case the delivery boy’s aim had been way off.
It wasn’t there, either. But as she scanned her yard, she spotted the plastic-bag-enclosed paper tied to her mailbox. Relieved that a black cloud of bad luck wasn’t settling in over her house after all, she went to retrieve it.
Easier said than done, she decided, realizing how well the boy had secured the thing to her mailbox. She had to tug hard to free it, and the force of the move jerked open the aluminum box’s lid. Inside, was a folded sheet of letter-size paper.
“Oh, happy day,” she drawled, almost amused. She hadn’t even finished moving in yet and already she was the recipient of her first piece of junk mail.
Curious to know who had been this ambitious, she drew out the paper and unfolded it.
It wasn’t an advertisement, and for a moment she frowned down at the cut-out, odd-shaped letters from magazines and newspapers that had been glued unevenly to the sheet. Her mind simply refused to make sense of it.
“Too tempting for words.”
What on earth was this? Who would put something so ridiculous and—
The nerve! Oh, yes, she understood now. Did he think she wouldn’t be able to put two and two together? From what she could tell of the few other residents who lived farther down the road, they were either elderly or working people with no children. Hardly the type to indulge in such a tasteless gesture. But she had no such confidence in her nearest neighbor.
What had been his plan? Did he think she was going to be fooled into believing the Vilary stalker had chosen her as his next victim? It would serve him right if she phoned the police this minute and turned him in. Let him explain away his unbalanced behavior to them!
But that would probably bring every reporter in the state upon them like a swarm of those killer bees said to be invading from South America. Willa drew her lower lip between her teeth. No way did she want to cope with something like that. She was no recluse, but the ads and interviews she occasionally did for her store was enough “media” for her. In comparison the press who’d haunted her every step after A.J.’s employer had tried to blame his crash on pilot error had been like being chased by a pack of starving wild dogs.
Her resentment growing, she eyed Zachary Denton’s house. No, she didn’t want to go over there again; however, she would. She could handle this herself, and enjoy it! Let him have a taste of what it was like to be threatened.
She underhanded her newspaper in the direction of her front door, and this time used the street to reach Zachary Denton’s front walk. It wasn’t a much better choice than the tall weeds, though. Maybe she’d avoided the ticks and chiggers this way, but the number of potholes made the trip a different challenge. Thanks to yesterday’s flooding, every one of them was brimming with muddy water. Apparently the county road department didn’t like him, either.
By the time she reached his porch, her once pristine jogging shoes and leggings were splattered with East Texas red clay. Disgusted, she pounded on the screen door.
“Don’t you dare ignore me!” She glared up at the unblinking eye targeted on her. “Open up or this goes to the press.”
She held up the sheet of paper to the camera. Several long seconds later she heard the inside latch give. Telling herself that she had to ignore the responding lurch from her stomach, Willa stormed inside.
He sat where she’d found him yesterday, at the top of the stairs, looking like an exiled dictator of some ragtag country who was in a particularly bad mood. She eyed him with disdain. Whatever the man spent his money on, it certainly wasn’t clothes and razor blades.
Intent on giving him a taste of his own medicine and making him as agitated as he’d made her, she quickly started up the stairs. She knew better than to dwell on the wisdom of the move—or rather, the lack thereof. This had to do with principle.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Although his dark, almost wild gaze had the sharpness of a spear lancing through her, she shot back, “I’ll do the talking this time.”
“Not if I decide to call the police and have you arrested for harassment and trespassing.”
“Good idea. Call them! I can’t wait to hear you explain away this.”
“Let me see that!”
With impressive control and speed, he leaned forward and, before she could stop him, he snatched the paper out of her grasp. Afraid he meant to shred it, Willa considered trying to get it back, but she didn’t want to risk destroying it herself. Checking her impulse, she attempted to ignore her sudden disadvantage by studying her strange neighbor from this closer vantage point.
At least he looked somewhat less unkempt this morning, although he still hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were as bloodshot as ever. Finding that they were gray surprised her. She’d expected the same opaque brown of his hair and beard, a shade that in certain light people was often mistaken for black. Then again, the gray was opaque and nearly black, too. And so was his mood, she noted as he shot her a brief, sharp glare.
What a big, fierce man. He looked perfectly capable of launching himself out of that wheelchair and strangling the life out of her; in fact, his hands weren’t anything close to what she’d pictured for a writer. No long, elegant piano fingers here. Zachary Denton’s hands were closer to paws: huge, thick-fingered and callused like a laborer’s. She knew the latter was fr
om wheeling his chair, but it reminded her of what A.J. used to say about Denton’s work. He writes like a man’s man.
What a crazy thing to remember. She’d never quite understood what A.J. had meant, either. In fact she’d argued to him how silly the comment was, insisting that no woman had ever declared a member of her sex, “a woman’s woman.”
However, as she watched the broken, but still-powerful man before her sweep a hand through his thick wavy mane, her increasingly rebellious imagination kicked into gear and suddenly she understood the macho thing. She could visualize how Zachary Denton’s hands would look caressing a woman’s body…how they would feel.
No, not just any female body. Hers.
She gripped the railing more tightly and looked away as an irrepressible quiver centered deep inside her.
“I warned you,” he said, his tone never more grim.
She glanced back in time to see him suck in a deep breath, his broad chest swelling, until it seemed almost too much for the seams of the cleaner, but ancient, black T-shirt. No surprise when even his pale but well-developed biceps were at least twice the size of hers. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me. If you’d listened, this would never have happened.”
Willa was glad for the subtle insult; it served to get her mind back on business all the faster. “Nice try but no Oscar, Mr. Denton. I know this is your doing.”
“Are you nuts?”
“No. But you are if you think you’re going to get away with it.”
“Lady,” he ground out, his glare all but impaling her, “in case you haven’t noticed, this is a wheelchair.”
“Which proves nothing.”
For an instant he looked genuinely dumbfounded, but the rage quickly returned, stronger and more explosive than before. “Excuse me all to hell, but this thing doesn’t come with a certificate qualifying me to be in it. You’ll just have to take my word that when you crash-land a single-engine plane, flipping it twice, there’s a good reason to believe the doctors when they tell you you’re in this thing for the rest of your stinking life!”
No one had ever yelled at her before, at least not quite like this. Between her shock and the sickly feeling that came as he described his living nightmare, she reached for the last shreds of her patience. “With all due respect, Mr. Denton—”
“Let’s get something straight, Mrs. Whitney, you have no more respect for me than I have for you.”
Unfortunately, that was proving true, but the remark still stung. “Fine. Then let’s get down to the bottom line, shall we? I’m here and plan to stay, and I’d better not find anything like this in my mailbox again.” She snatched back the paper.
Sun-dried rawhide couldn’t have stretched any tighter than the muscles on his square-jawed face. “Did you see any mud trail from my house to yours? Any on the porch ramp?”
“No,” she admitted reluctantly. What’s more, it had stopped raining early in the evening.
“And there isn’t any mud on my tires now, is there? So what makes you all-fired certain I did that?”
He had to ask that? After yesterday? “There’s no one else,” she replied, struggling to keep from letting him spook her again.
“Really.” Once again his gaze swept over her, lingering on her breasts. “I think you’re forgetting one crucial point.”
She couldn’t understand how someone in his condition could turn a simple comment into such an insult. Barely able to stay put, Willa replied, “What?”
“Some nut case is out there stalking local women.”
Willa wouldn’t buy it. “I think you’d like me to believe this is connected with that. But I find it more than slightly suspicious that after living in Vilary for nearly six years, operating a successful shop in a busy mall and having my photograph in the local paper any number of times, it’s only when I move in next to you that this happens.”
“Maybe the stalker does know about you and your sexy lingerie business,” Zachary Denton countered with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maybe he’s just been saving you for something special.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Willa felt certain someone or something was sucking the air out of the room. Had Zachary Denton triggered another of his ingenuous contraptions, or was he a true fan of hypnotism and testing his skills on her? Whatever the case, she had to open her mouth to get any air into her lungs.
“How do you know about what’s in my store?”
“Maybe I’m psychic.”
“You think mocking me is going to resolve anything?”
“Who says I’m mocking you? At any rate, when you storm into a man’s house, you take what you get.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he gestured for her to save her breath. “All right, you said it yourself, you’ve been in the paper…and as I told you before, when something happens around here that may affect me, I ask questions.”
“A reasonable explanation.”
“You mean this is the start of a beautiful friendship?”
“At least a civil coexistence if you’ll finally admit this.” Willa held up the note again. “Because I still think you did it.”
“Go away, Mrs. Whitney. Go home and lock your doors, because I may be a lot of things, including half-mad. But most of all, I’m no gentleman, and I’m damned tired of pretending for you.”
Hoping he couldn’t see her knees trembling, she nodded. “I’m going. But consider this my final warning. Anything more and I’m going straight to the police.”
His face turned a deep red, his eyes feverish. “If I were you, I’d put up some curtains on my windows first. You wouldn’t want our boys in blue jumping to the conclusion that lonely, young widows who prance around practically naked deserve what they get.”
Until this instant, she’d never wanted to commit physical violence before, and considering the size and build of the man, if she tried it, no doubt she would end up with a broken hand…or neck. But it might be worth it.
For pity’s sake, he’s turning you into a barbarian!
“To think my husband used to rave about your work,” she whispered, her throat raw from tears she’d choke on before spilling. “You’re worse than pitiful. You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re a tease!” A new, almost satanic gleam lit his eyes. The mouth that should have been tender, even passionate, twisted cruelly. “But you’d better be careful. Apparently you haven’t noticed a pattern with the stalker.”
The more he mentioned the dreaded situation, the more she was willing to believe he really knew something. Her tank top began to stick to her back, and she made herself ask, “What pattern?”
“All the women who’ve been followed have been blondes. They all had blue eyes.”
She almost reached up to touch her own hair. “The newspapers haven’t reported anything like that, nor has that been stated on TV.” She knew. This was the one bit of bad news she had been following. All three women had been returning to their homes late at night, and luckily had escaped serious injury. One faint when the stalker put his gloved hands around her neck. Another managed to knock him off-balance and run. And a neighbor out for an evening stroll saved the third from rape, or worse. But little else had been disclosed. “How do you know this?”
“I told you, I’m psychic.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “If you know anything, you have to tell the authorities.”
“No.”
She couldn’t believe his resolute rejection. He was worse than a barbarian. “You must! How can you even consider not telling them?”
“That’s my business. In any case, if the authorities haven’t already picked up on the pattern, they deserve to be fired.”
“Don’t those women deserve something? What are you waiting for? He might rape or kill the next one!” She had to be caught up in some incredible nightmare. Befuddled, Willa rubbed at her forehead and searched for some way to reach him. “If you could help someone, save someone, wouldn’t you want to do that
?”
“I’ve tried, but the lady chooses not to hear me.”
He was referring to her—she understood that much—but was it a warning or threat? “I can’t not pass this on. You can play your mind games, but the police—Oh!”
She’d begun to turn around, intent on getting out of there, but she’d underestimated Zachary Denton’s speed and reach. As he closed his hand around her wrist and jerked her back, she knew she’d said too much, and now there would be hell to pay.
The note sailed out of her grasp. She went sprawling across his lap. The force of her fall sent his chair rolling back a few feet until it thudded to a stop against the wrought-iron elevator cage.
Eye to eye with her captor, she tried to focus, tried to catch her breath…tried not to notice the fierce pain in her left thigh from striking the chair’s arm, tried not to notice his powerful muscles bunching beneath her hand, and beneath them the strong beat of his heart. She failed on all counts.
Not only did she have to deal with a sudden, debilitating fear, the longer their gazes stayed locked, the more she became aware of him as a man. It was impossible. Beyond bizarre, she thought, dazed and edging toward panic when she couldn’t free herself.
“Let me go.”
“When I’m ready.”
What did that mean? What was next? Was he going to fling her down the stairs? He had the strength. The only question was whether he possessed the brutality.
But something other than violence transformed the whiskered pale face so close to hers. To her amazement his gunmetal-gray eyes almost cleared of haunted shadows and secrets, and taking its place came emotions she wasn’t prepared for. Wonder…concern…regret…all proved shocking enough. But desire?
Watching for Willa Page 3
