by Nancy Warren
Walter stood warily at the edge of the British India rug, obviously uncertain how to handle her. A worried frown played around his eyes.
How well he fit into this room, she thought. An old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned room. He probably had no idea his tie was too narrow, or that he’d been wearing that sweater so long it was almost back in style.
She used to belong in this room, too. Now she no longer did. In fact, for a while she hadn’t felt like she fit into her own body. But in the last week, despite the ghastly disaster of the sex thing, she felt like she was starting to get it right.
She hadn’t seen Walter since Friday, when he’d left her naked, tied up and forgotten. Oh, he’d called later that night, sounding tired and harassed. The delivery had been difficult. He was sorry he’d had to leave. He was doing hospital rounds for the next few evenings, but why didn’t they have dinner at her house Tuesday?
Cynthia thought about the mother and baby; she was glad they’d survived and Walter had made it happen. She forgave him, of course, but still felt he should grovel a bit after what she’d been through.
Now here he stood. No flowers, no apology, no wine. Not even an invitation to a restaurant. As usual, she was cooking dinner for Dr. Tightwad. If he’d come across the room, take her in his arms and whisk her off to bed, she’d forgive him completely.
She glanced toward him with what she hoped was a sultry, come-hither look.
He rubbed his hands together with enthusiasm. “Is that pot roast I smell? I’m starved.”
Her mother, who’d been over forty when her only child was born, had a rule about controversy at the dinner table: it was bad for the digestion, bad manners, bad, bad, bad. So Cynthia, who had spent her entire life until last Friday being good, made polite conversation while inside she was more stewed than the pot roast.
She did the dishes while Walter read the paper. After the dishes were finished, she made coffee and they drank it in the living room like a normal pair of seventy-year-olds.
She gazed down at the cup and saucer in her hand. Red cabbage roses covered the china, faded after thirty years to old-bathrobe pink. Cynthia made a discovery. She didn’t like the china.
Not only was she drinking out of her mother’s china, she was living her mother’s life. Only she’d skipped the part about being young, and morphed right into advanced middle age.
The cup began rattling on the matching saucer, like frenetic castanets. The body-hugging little top felt a couple of sizes too small. She couldn’t seem to get her breath.
Across the room newspaper rustled as Walter turned a page.
A scream built in her throat. It was a year since her mother had died. And Cynthia had this sudden Twilight Zone vision of herself returning from the funeral service to become her mother.
She’d loved her mother. And her father. But somehow she’d lost herself, and she had to do something to get back on track. Maybe it wasn’t Walter and her sex life that was the problem.
Maybe it was this house.
“I’m thinking about selling the house.” She said it aloud, rolling the idea in her head as the words rolled off her tongue.
“Hmm?” The paper rustled again as Walter neatly folded it in quarters and placed it on the table beside him.
“I’m thinking about selling the house.”
After staring at her blankly for a moment, Walter smiled. She recognized that smile. It was the patronizing don’t-worry-everything-will-be-all-right-I’m-a-doctor smile that always made her want to smack him. “That’s perfectly normal.”
“Pardon?” Maybe she hadn’t heard him correctly.
He rose and crossed the room to settle beside her on the gold damask couch. He gazed right into her eyes and spoke soothingly. “You’re a woman in a delicate stage of her life. You’re approaching your mid-thirties—”
“I’m thirty-one!”
He carried on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Your biological clock’s ticking.” He brushed his finger across her nose as though she were a fretful child. “I think we should move up the wedding date.”
The tightness in her chest was becoming a burning. “Why?”
He patted her knee. He actually patted her knee. “You’re acting out, exhibiting behavior that’s out of character. I think you’re sending me a pretty clear message.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a postpartum patient. I’m your fiancée.” And where were the words of love she equated with choosing a mate? The romantic gestures, the sex?!
“I just want to help you, guide you.”
Control me, she thought, and the burning intensified.
He took her left hand, where a tiny diamond gleamed weakly. She’d tried to convince herself the ring was tasteful, but really it was just cheap. “I could make some room in my schedule in April. We could get married then.” He glanced at her head doubtfully. “Will your hair have grown back?”
Maybe she wasn’t being fair. For him, deciding on a wedding date a mere seven months away was being spontaneous. She tried to kindle a little enthusiasm. “We could take some of the money I get from the house and go on a really great honeymoon.”
He gave her that smile again. “Do you have any idea how property values are rising in this neighborhood? We’re only forty-five minutes outside Seattle. The house is close to my practice and your job. It’s a wonderful place to raise a family. After we’re married you’ll settle down.”
Their clasped hands were starting to sweat. Visions of Venice and Aruba faded. “What about our honeymoon?”
“It’s already arranged. I’m swapping Myron Slavinsky an extra week of hospital rounds for a week at his time-share in Palm Desert.”
“Practicing your golf game for your retirement?” She pasted on a phony jovial smile. The burning was so bad she gasped. Maybe she was having a panic attack.
He pushed his glasses back on his nose. “Golf is growing in popularity with younger people, too. You’d be surprised.”
She pulled her hand away. “I can’t do it, Walter.” Funny how calm she felt now she’d made her decision. If she married Walter, she wouldn’t just be settling, she’d be sinking to subterranean depths. She’d be buried alive. No wonder she couldn’t breathe.
“But Myron says the course is very good. And anyone staying in the time-share gets a discount on the golfing.”
“Then maybe you and Myron should go, since you both like to golf and I hate it.” The burning was spreading, from her chest to her whole body. Kind of like a heart attack, she supposed, except instead of blocking, her arteries felt like they were unclogging. New life pumped through her veins. She jumped up.
“Since when do you—”
“Since always. I’ve always hated golf. And bridge. Only you never listened to me. I think you should listen now, and listen carefully. I’m not marrying you, Walter. It would be a disaster.”
To her absolute fury, his patronizing smile didn’t falter. “You’re upset, irrational.”
“I’m angry!” And she was, angrier than she’d ever been. She stalked across the living-room carpet, energized by her fury. She felt sharp, as if all the fuzzy edges of her brain had burned clean. “I’m so angry I want to throw things, swear, have sex with a stranger.”
Walter cleared his throat. “It keeps coming back to intercourse, I see. I don’t want to hurt you, Cynthia, but perhaps I could arrange for you to speak with one of my colleagues who, um, understands these stages women go through—before you do something you regret.”
Her pacing stalled for a moment. “Talk to a colleague? You mean a psychiatrist?”
“There’s no need to use that tone. It’s perfectly all right to seek professional help when you’re feeling confused, and acting…different.”
“Don’t you see, I’m not different. This is the real me. I’ve only just realized it. And I’ve also realized we’d be terrible together, Walter. I—I want different things. Excitement, romance, travel. I don’t want to spend my thirties saving for retirem
ent.”
She’d hit him where he lived, she knew. The man was obsessed with money and security. She had a hunch it was her accounting background that had first attracted him to her.
He looked lost for a moment, sitting there staring at her. “Don’t do anything rash. Take a week or so to think things over and we’ll talk again.” He gazed at her, looking truly troubled, and for a moment she thought maybe he did love her after all. Then he said, “Promise me you won’t put this house on the market.”
“Goodbye, Walter.”
After he left, Cynthia felt as if she’d come out of a tunnel into fresh air. She was bursting with the need to get started on her new life.
No wonder the FBI agent hadn’t believed this was her house. It didn’t reflect her personality at all. The Hummels stared at her from their big-lashed innocent eyes, as though anticipating their doom. “Sorry, guys,” she said. “You’re the first to go.”
She ran down to the basement and collected a few boxes and mounds of tissue, then ran back up to the living room. She wrapped each little figure carefully before stowing it in the box. Aunt Lois, her mom’s younger sister, would love them.
Cynthia packed up the cabbage rose china, the hand-crocheted doilies, the pinwheel crystal and her mood rose. Music, she needed music.
She put on Shania Twain, bounced, bumped and swayed as she worked, and reminded herself to feel like a woman. A woman in charge of her life.
After Cynthia finished in the living room she had four boxes neatly packed and labeled.
Next she hit her bedroom. Ruthlessly she dragged out every suit more than twenty-four months old, and a few that were newer. If her colleagues at the cement company didn’t like her new image, that was their problem. She gazed at the stifling array of suits, which had most likely been designed for middle-aged women. She must have been crazy to have bought them. She chucked the works in a big green garbage bag to be donated to charity.
She dragged the bulging bag into the living room to join the boxes. She was just wondering whether she had enough energy to haul it out to her hatchback when the doorbell rang.
Her lips thinned. She’d made Walter return her house key before he left—she glanced at her watch—less than two hours ago. He’d been smugly certain she’d change her mind and resume their engagement, but did he really think she was going to change it in two hours?
It wouldn’t take her two minutes to set him straight.
She marched to the door and flung it open.
Jake Wheeler stood there, all he-man tough and semi-dangerous, lounging in her doorway, a quizzical expression on his face. “You should have checked through your peephole first,” he said by way of a greeting.
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Your jaw’s hanging open. Either you have an advanced case of lockjaw or you’re surprised to see me. I’m guessing you get a regular tetanus shot.”
It flashed through her mind, as she took in the blue, blue eyes and the black hair, the craggy face and the body, that he could have been a model for Raunch Magazine’s fantasy issue.
Even as the thought germinated, a blush began on her cheeks and spread. This man had seen her naked. She shut her mouth with a snap. “You’re right. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I like the hair.”
“You do?” The color probably matched the full-body blush.
He chuckled. He had a very attractive chuckle. “Let me guess—you change your hair color as often as you change your men.”
She laughed back, realizing it was absolutely true. She’d colored her hair once and dumped her first boyfriend. In only thirty-one years. “You’ve got me pegged.”
“You going to invite me in or are you already entertaining?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Of course. Come in.” She stepped back, and he walked into her house and straight into the living room, where he jerked to a stop.
“You’re not moving, are you?” He sounded almost panicked.
“I’m thinking about it. No. I’m finished thinking. I’ve decided. I’m moving. Yes. Yes I am.”
“But this is a great neighborhood, safe, stable, a—”
“Great place to raise a family? I know. I was raised in this house.” She sighed. “I just need a change, that’s all.”
“So redecorate. It’s a lot easier.”
“You sound like Walter.”
His eyes crinkled. “The doctor who makes house calls? I get the impression that’s not good.”
Why would he care if she moved? He wasn’t planning to arrest her or something—was he? It hadn’t been illegal, what she’d done. Criminally embarrassing, yes, but surely she and Walter were old enough to…to what? They hadn’t even got started. She crossed her arms over her chest as she shook her head. “I’d rather move.”
“Look. If it’s about me seeing you naked, I barely peeked.”
The hot sweat of embarrassment prickled her neck and underarms. “What exactly do you want?”
“Just being neighborly.”
“You’re new to the neighborhood. I’m supposed to call on you.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to show up at my door with a Bundt cake. I was getting lonely.” He rubbed his stomach. “And hungry.”
In spite of herself she had to smile. When he wasn’t scaring her, he had an odd sort of charm. “I’m all out of cake, but I do have some double-chocolate ice cream in the freezer.”
“Sold.”
When she returned with two bowls of ice cream, she found him relaxed on the gold damask couch, staring down at a single Hummel figurine. The little girl feeding birds looked absurdly small and frail in his big hands. “What happened to all her buddies?”
Cynthia pointed to the neatly labeled box.
A glimmer of amusement threaded his voice. “How come she’s missing the party?”
A shaft of guilt shot through her. “Mother bought that one when I was a child. She said she reminded her of me. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of her.”
He gazed at Cynthia consideringly. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the sentimental type.” He placed the little figure back on the antique piecrust table beside the sofa and accepted the bowl of ice cream. “Please don’t leave the neighborhood.”
“Why would you care?”
“You’re the only other person around here who’s both single and not collecting social security.”
Her heart rate increased. He’d mentioned they were both single and that he didn’t want her to move. Could a gorgeous guy like this be interested in her? She gazed at the stunning tough-guy. No. He must have an accounting problem.
“It is mostly young families and older people,” she said. “Why did you move here? There are plenty of condos downtown. That’s where the single people live. That’s where I’m moving.” She stuck her chin out a little, just so he’d know she could fit in just fine in a swinging condo block.
“I moved here because I hate living in a concrete cube. I like the character of these homes. I bought mine from my great-aunt when she moved into a nursing home.”
“Moved into a nursing home…Mrs. Jorgensen is your aunt?”
He nodded.
“But she lived only two doors down. Beside Mrs. Lawrence.”
He nodded again, as if he were enjoying a private joke.
“You won’t tell her…please don’t tell either of them…”
“That I found you buck naked, chained to your own bed?” He chuckled, a richly evil sound. “I don’t want to send either of them to the ER, so don’t worry.”
Her hands trembled as she realized how truly ghastly that experience had been. Every time she saw Agent Wheeler she’d be reminded of how they’d met. “I’m definitely moving.”
“You’d hate a condo after all this space.” He glanced around the living room. “You just need to redecorate. I’ll help. I could be your own personal painter.”
“Just what I need. A nosy guy in overalls to come home to. Anyway, I thought you already ha
d a job. Or was that FBI badge fake?”
“No. It wasn’t fake.” Suddenly his face grew serious, and she recognized the man who’d terrified her when he’d burst into her bedroom with a gun. He put down his ice cream and leaned forward, hands clasped loosely between his knees. “All right. I’m not just being neighborly.”
For some reason, goose bumps danced up her spine.
“I need your help, Cynthia. The government needs your help.”
“What?” Her eyes widened, and her heart began to pound. She’d feel just the same if a guy from the Internal Revenue Service sat here and said, “It’s about your taxes.”
“You could be instrumental in helping the FBI crack a drug smuggling operation.”
“Drugs?” Her voice rose. “In this neighborhood? The only drugs you’ll find around here are blood pressure and bladder control medication. Hardly illegal. But very funny, hah hah.” Jerk. He’d got her all scared for nothing. She scooped up a spoon of melting ice cream and let the delicious flavor soothe her.
“It’s not in this neighborhood.” He hadn’t cracked a smile, so maybe he wasn’t joking after all.
Jake didn’t know how to approach this. He’d checked Cynthia Baxter out. She might be a sexual adventurer, but she’d never been arrested. She was a certified accountant who had indeed been with the same employer her whole working life. His original hunch was bang on the money. She was perfect. She was the rosy answer to a thorny problem and she lived two doors down. Now he just had to convince her to quit her job of nine years, take a new one and spy on her boss.
He had to figure out what would tempt her. He stood and began to pace while she watched him, her hair gleaming like old copper.
Everybody had a hot button. Money? Danger? Excitement? Patriotism?
What was hers?
Her big green eyes were huge in the lamplight, and somehow guileless. Must be a big turn-on to guys that a woman so innocent looking went for the kinky stuff in bed. He swallowed a mental image of her naked and helpless, the way he’d first seen her, lying there like an open invitation.
