by Stuart, Anne
“Fine. I’m in no hurry.”
“I have to feed someone’s cat.”
She could feel his golden eyes watching her in the gathering darkness of the car interior. For once she kept her attention on the road, trying to ignore the heat of his gaze. “Whose cat?”
They’d managed to avoid the subject all day, but she should have known her luck wouldn’t hold. “Leona’s,” she said.
“Leona’s out of town?”
“She had to go over to Burlington for a few days. She asked Mary Philbert to ask me to feed her cat. I usually do when she goes away.”
“Does she go away often?”
She wasn’t fooled by his casual tone of voice. “Just when she needs to deposit the money she stole from her friends,” she replied coolly.
“Whose money does she have this time?”
“Why don’t you lay off her? She’s harmless, as innocent as the rest of the people in Danbury. Why have you picked her to harass?”
Nick shrugged. “Maybe because of the way she tries to manipulate you.”
“She doesn’t manipulate me!” she cried in exasperation. “We’re friends.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. I still think her behavior is suspicious.”
The Subaru skidded to an angry stop outside the converted farmhouse that now served the tiny town of Danbury as apartments for the elderly. The Davis Apartments were a model of warmth and efficiency and easy access for the less than nimble, and their waiting list was a mile long. It had only been through a stroke of fortune that Leona had managed to get a spot when she first arrived in town. Helen Sinclair had had a bad fall, sending her to the hospital for a month, and when they finally released her it had been to the nursing home. Helen sublet her apartment to her new friend, Leona, who had been visiting at the time of the accident.
No one had ever figured out how that skateboard had ended up at the top of the back stairs outside Helen’s apartment. There wasn’t a single inhabitant under the age of sixty-five, and they weren’t in the habit of riding skateboards, but no one could come up with an explanation other than the carelessness of a visiting grandchild, and no one had come forward and confessed. And Leona had moved into Helen’s apartment and stayed.
“Stay in the car,” she ordered, not giving him any choice. “It’ll only take me a minute.”
He was out before she was. “The hell I will,” he said pleasantly. “It’s cold and dark out here. You can watch and make sure I don’t steal anything from Saint Leona.”
She stood there for a moment, wondering whether she ought simply to get back in the car and drive away rather than risk having Nick invade Leona’s privacy. Snow was falling more rapidly now, clinging to her eyelashes, dusting Nick’s shoulders. “You touch anything and you’re dog meat,” she growled, turning on her heel and stalking toward Leona’s front door.
“For your killer hounds? I think I’m safe. What’s that in your hand?”
She was fiddling with the front lock. “What do you think it is? It’s a key. Leona gave me one for times like these.”
“I thought no one locked their houses around here. I thought it was so safe and bucolic that people didn’t worry about burglars and their ilk.”
“Leona does. It’s not her fault; she comes from an area of Massachusetts where there was a lot of crime.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she could have bitten her tongue. The last thing she wanted to do was give Nick anything he could use against Leona. If he wanted to delve into her past he could do it without her help.
But he didn’t seem to notice her slip. “Then it’s understandable,” he said smoothly, following her into the compact little apartment.
As always, it was spotlessly neat. Sybil used to tease Leona that she lived more like a monk than a little old lady. Every other inhabitant of the Davis Apartments had knickknacks, oddments, owl collections and spoon collections and Avon bottle collections and even Danish porcelain collections, and during the month of December the women decorated every square inch of their cluttered apartments.
Leona’s place had a narrow bed with white sheets and a plain white bedspread, a desk, two hard chairs and an old TV. Unlike all the other residents she hadn’t put up an artificial Christmas tree on Black Friday, and two weeks into December it looked as cozy as a jail cell. There wasn’t a sign of a Christmas card anywhere.
“Cozy little place, isn’t it?” Nick murmured behind her.
“Leona lives an uncluttered life. You only have to look at her apartment to see what little use she has for the things money can buy.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, peering around the place. “Doesn’t she have any family?”
“Why do you ask?”
“No pictures. Not even a snapshot. Was she ever married?”
There was no reason not to answer him—the questions were innocuous enough and the answers were common knowledge. “She was married. Her husband died ten years ago, and they were both only children with no kids of their own. The only kin Leona has is Gladys.”
“Gladys?” he echoed.
“The cat,” Sybil said. “And she doesn’t look pleased to see you.” That was an understatement. Gladys had never been the most even-tempered of cats, but the low, scratching sound in her throat was ominously close to a growl. She had just stepped out of the kitchen, her fat, marmalade-colored form delicate as always, when she caught sight of Nick and began that threatening rumble of sound.
“I usually get along with cats,” he said.
“Maybe Gladys is more perceptive than most.”
“Is she?”
“Actually, she’s nastier than most. She’s the sort that if you pet her she turns around and bites you,” Sybil admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know why Leona puts up with her.”
“Maybe they’re kindred spirits.”
“Nick . . .”
“Sorry. Why don’t you go feed that ravaging beast before she decides I’d be a tasty morsel?”
“I don’t trust you.”
“So what else is new? I’m not going into the kitchen with that damned cat, not even for you, Saralee. Go and feed the little monster and we’ll get out of here.”
“You won’t touch anything?”
“What is there to touch?” he countered, skirting the issue.
Besides being a royal pain, Gladys was a picky eater. She turned up her nose at the open can of kitty tuna in the almost empty refrigerator, ignored with a look of disdain the can of salmon surprise Sybil offered, and finally, grudgingly accepted the can of Bumble Bee albacore that Leona kept for feline emergencies. Gladys cast her one evil look, as if to say, “Don’t you dare pat me,” and then settled down to pick at her feast.
Sybil didn’t make a sound as she walked out into the main room. Nick was standing there in front of Leona’s now open desk, staring at the contents.
“Don’t you have any conscience?” she demanded.
“Not a trace,” he replied instantly. “Come here and see this.”
“I don’t want to. You may have no qualms about invading someone’s privacy, but I do.” Her feet were edging toward the desk anyway.
“I’m forcing myself,” Nick said.
Curiosity finally got the better of her. “What did you find?”
“That’s what’s so interesting. There’s nothing here.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“No, that’s bad. Any normal person would leave canceled checks, letters, bills lying around, if for nothing else than for taxes. This desk is completely empty.”
“Maybe she knew you were coming,” Sybil snapped.
He shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”
“That’s a rotten thing to say!”
“Then why are you peering into her desk yourse
lf?”
Sybil jumped back. “You tempted me.”
“The devil made me do it? I don’t know if that would hold up in court.”
“Damn it, Nick . . .” she began, beside herself in fury, guilt and that continuing, niggling doubt.
“Who’s James Longerman?”
“What?”
“The only thing I found was a scrap of paper that must have missed her eagle eye. It was stuck in the back of the drawer and it says James Longerman, 32650. Any ideas?”
“Not the slightest. Close the damned drawer and let’s get out of here. I’m feeling rotten enough as it is.”
“Anything in the kitchen?”
“Nick!”
“Well, we’ve already gone this far,” he said reasonably. “May as well be hanged for sheep as well as lambs. Besides, wouldn’t you like to know your suspicions are unfounded?”
“My suspicions?” Her voice was high-pitched with rage. “You’re the one with suspicions, not me.”
“Wouldn’t you like to prove me wrong?”
“I don’t think an affidavit from the pope himself would convince you,” she shot back. “And there’s nothing in the kitchen.”
“Nothing?”
“Just food,” she said. “And not much of that. Leona leads an austere life.”
“Leona leads a mysterious life.”
“We’re leaving,” she announced.
Gladys chose that moment to reappear in the main room of the apartment. When she caught sight of Nick, her fat back began to arch, her elegant tail to thicken and that low, evil growling began once more.
He was eyeing the cat. “We may as well. There’s nothing more to discover here.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to discover!”
“Maybe,” he said, his voice showing strong doubt, and he followed her out into the night air with only a single backward glance.
Chapter Eleven
SYBIL STARED DOWN at her tangled knitting. She’d been working on it since October, and while it was steadily getting bigger, it wasn’t getting any better. Of course, there’d been that three-week period when she couldn’t remember how to decrease, and it was only Leona’s providential return from a trip to Massachusetts that had saved the sweater from growing to gargantuan size. As it was, it would fit Emmie’s husband, the six-foot-one beanpole. It would fit someone who was six feet three and had broad shoulders even better and the color matched his eyes.
She was not going to give Nick a Christmas present, she reminded herself sternly. If there were only some way she could juggle her schedule she’d arrange it so she didn’t have to see him again. As it was she had no choice but to work in the office in the morning and in her tiny bookshop all afternoon, trying to ignore him. All that time Nick worked overhead, his measured footsteps vibrating through the old house, vibrating through her sensitive body.
He’d been in Danbury for ten days, and things weren’t getting any easier. He’d been remarkably, frustratingly polite during office hours. So polite, in fact, that she’d been tempted to slash the brand-new studded snow tires on his beloved Jaguar just to see his reaction. She’d controlled the temptation, just as she controlled the almost hourly urge to head up the narrow staircase and ask him some trumped-up question. If he could be immune to her, she would return the favor.
It would be nice if her dreams would stop. Every morning she dutifully wrote them down, then did her best to analyze them over morning coffee. Most of them were erotic and embarrassingly detailed. Fortunately, dreams seldom meant what they at first appeared to mean. Just because she had explicitly sexual dreams about Nicholas Fitzsimmons and woke with her heart pounding and her body covered with sweat didn’t mean she actually wanted him. No, it had to mean something else, but she was damned if she could figure it out. Despite Dulcy’s prying, there was no way she was going to share the intimate details with her nosy friend, even if it meant discovering that fantasies of making love with Nick in the library of the SOWW building meant she didn’t trust her father.
No, that was Freudian, not psychic, she reminded herself. But Nick was becoming tantamount to an obsession. Thank God she was flying down to Princeton that very afternoon.
It was the first time she’d looked forward to visiting her family in years. Usually their glorious perfection did nothing but intimidate her, but not this time. This time she was going to revel in her mediocrity, blend into the woodwork and not even think of Nick Fitzsimmons, much less dream about him. Each night she’d have to come up with a new excuse not to join her parents in their endless rounds of holiday parties, and she could fake only just so many headaches. It would certainly consume all her attention.
According to the ladies at the Davis Apartments, Leona would be back sometime tomorrow. She wasn’t usually gone for such long periods at a time, and Gladys had gotten progressively nastier as Sybil tried to tempt her with shrimp salad from the Come and Eat, frozen haddock fillets and even herring in sour cream. What she usually got for her trouble was a disdainful sniff and occasionally a hostile swipe from Gladys’s cookie-size paw.
But Mary Philbert would take care of the cat tonight, and tomorrow Leona would return. Dulcy had already taken the dogs back to her house while Sybil was gone, and for the time being her only duty and concern would be her family, which would be more than enough to keep her busy. If she could just weather the five days down there then she’d be free to concentrate her energies on resisting Nick’s seemingly irresistible attraction. And if she couldn’t resist . . .
Sybil set the knitting down, cursing. Somewhere along the way she’d dropped another stitch, and if she didn’t notice when she did it there was never any way she could get it back. It would serve Nick right if she gave the sweater to him. Not even her worst enemy deserved such a mess.
Not that Nick was her worst enemy. He was simply a distraction, an irritation and a royal pain in the ass. It was bad enough when he was hanging around, flirting with her. It was worse having him ignore her, which he’d done for the past week since their shopping trip.
Maybe it would help if there were more things she had to do to get ready for the holidays. She’d already decorated the offices and the bookshop, she’d even earmarked the perfect blue spruce growing in the field behind her house. It would make a lovely Christmas tree, and thank heavens she didn’t have to deal with some damned man when she finally allowed herself to cut it.
They were the orneriest creatures when it came to Christmas trees, she knew to her sorrow. Send them out to buy one, and they came back with the scraggliest, scrawniest, most pitiful reject ever to make it to a Christmas tree lot. But send the dear man out to chop one himself, or even worse, go with him, and you were in for an all-day marathon, a twenty-mile hike and a case of the sullens when he finally had to compromise his high standards and settle for less than perfect symmetry.
Her father had been like that, her brothers-in-law, her ex-husband. She had no doubt whatsoever that Nick would fit the pattern. She was lucky indeed that she didn’t have to put up with anyone’s standards but her own.
At least she could bake. When she got back she’d find the two-hunted and thirty-seven cookie cutters and start in. She could start wrapping the presents she’d accumulated, she’d make sugar cookies and ginger cookies and Julekage and stollen and eat anything she wanted, and she wouldn’t even think about Nick Fitzsimmons.
Of course, it didn’t help that every time she looked at her tangled knitting she thought of his mesmerizing topaz eyes. And it didn’t help that Christmas made her long for someone to curl up with on a snowy winter’s evening.
There was no pleasing her, she thought in disgust. It would be the best possible thing for her to get out of town. It would be worth putting up with her family, worth everything just to be in another state away from the man. With all his nose-to-the-grindsto
ne hard work he’d probably be finished with his research way ahead of time, maybe even have moved back to Massachusetts by the time she returned.
No, that was impossible. She was going to be gone less than a week. Nick would still be here, still burying that aristocratic nose in those ancient books upstairs, still having tea with the ladies at the Davis Apartments, still roaming the countryside, without her, talking to farmers and such about water witching. No, he’d still be here when she returned, whether she liked it or not.
Thank God.
NICK STRETCHED his long legs out under the library table, turned to stare out at the winter afternoon and shivered. The upstairs rooms at the Society of Water Witches wasn’t the warmest place on earth, and if he didn’t think Sybil above such petty actions he’d suspect she had turned the heat down on purpose. He could see the wind whipping the snow past the frosted window, however, and knew his suspicions were unfounded. When the wind blew, there was no way this drafty old building could stay warm.
He sat back, listening to the wind howl around the eaves, to the creaking of freezing wood settling, to the sound of Sybil singing to herself one floor below him. She didn’t realize how every sound, every sigh, every breath carried up to him. She didn’t realize he could sit there and hear every word of her conversations with her various customers, conversations that would, more often than not, involve the interesting newcomer to Danbury.
To his surprise Sybil was always charitable. Much as she tried to detest him on a one-to-one basis, she was unfailingly generous when answering the Muller sisters’ curious questions. She even put up with their sly matchmaking attempts with admirable calm, a calm that never failed to amuse him.
She didn’t like the distance he’d been putting between them. A brief grin lit his face as he put his fingers together and contemplated that distance. It was almost harder on him than it was on her. Of course, he had the advantage of knowing he was in control, that he was playing the game most suited to driving her crazy and into his arms. That still didn’t mean he wasn’t frustrated as hell, knowing she was one floor below, knowing if he pushed it he could have her.
