Fast & Loose

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Enough, Lulu, she told herself. Let’s just get this over with.

  As quietly as she could, she opened her car door and exited, making her way down the uneven sidewalk the way she had a million times before when finishing up her evening walk. Automatically, she sidestepped the gaping crack in front of Mrs. Krautheim’s house and the spot where the root of Mr. Leonard’s sycamore had buckled the concrete. She slowed her pace as she approached her little bungalow, having never really paid attention to it from outside in the dark before.

  Cole Early had left on the same light in the living room she generally switched on at night herself, and something about that heartened Lulu. As she drew nearer, she saw that he’d left on a light in the kitchen, too, the one over the stove that she left on when she knew she would be out after dark. From where she stood, all was calm and bright, the house glowing cozily in the pitch-black night.

  She told herself she should be satisfied with that, that Cole Early didn’t appear to have done anything too horrible to her house…yet. But even though she could see a bit of the living room through the windows, and it appeared to be as tidy as she left it, she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave without going inside.

  She’d just take a little peek, she told herself. Just buzz through the house to make a quick survey and reassure herself that all was well. It would only be a few minutes. And Cole Early would never know. Her desire to go into the house had nothing to do with her curiosity about him that had been growing ever since she met him.

  She made her way stealthily up the driveway to the back door and inserted her key into the lock, turning it swiftly and pushing the door open wide. She left it ajar behind her as she strode into the kitchen, noticing right away that her guest had made himself at home. The wine rack on the counter that normally held only one or two bottles of wine now housed four. There was a short stack of periodicals about the Thoroughbred industry sitting on the counter near them. An empty glass was sitting in the sink. Through one of her glass-doored cupboards, she saw both a bottle of what looked like very expensive cognac, and another of what looked like very expensive Scotch. A man’s jacket was slung over the back of one of her chairs. Striding toward it, Lulu ran an idle finger over the fabric, noting not just its fineness, but the faint aroma of something spicy and masculine that was stirred by her fingers.

  So he smelled good, she thought. So what? Lots of men smelled good. He probably didn’t fit any of her other criteria for what made a man attractive. To prove that to herself, she moved to the refrigerator and opened it, then pulled out the drawer of the meat keeper, which usually held only cheese. Yep. There was a package of roast beef from Kroger and a package of bacon, though that latter had yet to be opened. He clearly was not a vegetarian. And—just a shot in the dark—she bet he didn’t bake bread, either.

  She noticed a few other additions to her refrigerator that weren’t normally there—a six-pack of imported beer, eggs, doughnuts—but nothing that would endanger anything more than someone’s weight or cholesterol level.

  Little by little, Lulu made her way through her house, double-checking to be certain Cole Early hadn’t used anything he wasn’t supposed to, and making note of any missing possessions. She only noticed one, however—a glass vase on the marble-top table by the front door that had been one of her first completed pieces, and she hadn’t been all that crazy about it anyway. She’d only had it on display to remind herself of how far she’d come as an artist. Still, she was curious to know what had happened to it. Then she saw a ding in the plaster on the wall beside the front door that was about knob size, and she made an educated guess. Door opened too hard, slammed with enough vigor to shake the vase free. Still, as damage went, it would be easy enough to fix. Certainly easier than sobering up drunken debutantes or disposing of drug paraphernalia and appalling—if somewhat interesting—sex toys.

  The rest of the house, she noted as she passed through it, looked just the way she’d left it…until she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and switched on the light. Here, Cole Early had clearly made himself at home. The bed was barely made; he’d done nothing more than toss the sheets and spread up over the pillows. Clothes were draped over it and the chair, and her computer had been pushed to the far side of the desk to make room for his briefcase. She checked to be sure the note was still attached and the computer was still off—yes to both—then wondered why she bothered. Even her untrained eye could see that the guy’s laptop on a nearby chair was state-of-the-art and couldn’t possibly lack anything her desktop might have on it. There was a scattering of papers on the desk, too, topped by that day’s racing form, and some phone numbers scribbled onto a scratch pad she recognized as her own.

  Okay, so the guy wasn’t the tidiest person in the world, and he didn’t think twice about appropriating someone’s scratch pads. He hadn’t done anything to her house that wouldn’t be fixed by his vacating it. There was no reason for her to hang around.

  Except that, for some reason, she wanted to hang around.

  Her hand hovered over the papers by his briefcase, and she had to halt herself from sorting through them. Snooping like that would be tantamount to his having turned on her computer and rifled through her files, and no way would she tolerate an invasion of privacy like that. So she turned and started to make her way out of the bedroom and back downstairs. From the corner of her eye, however, she saw something else that was different from the way she’d left it, something that halted her in her tracks. The photograph of herself and Bree and three of their friends from high school who lived elsewhere now, but with whom they vacationed every summer, had been moved from her dresser to the nightstand.

  Huh. That was odd. Why would he move a photograph? Then she gave herself a mental smack. Because it was a photo of five women in bathing suits, that was why. Well, four women in bathing suits and Lulu in one of the oversized T-shirts and ball caps she always wore to the beach to keep herself and her fair complexion from spontaneously combusting. She waited for the disdain she told herself she should feel at his having appropriated her memories for his own salacious enjoyment. Instead, what she felt was a tiny thrill of something that felt suspiciously like pleasure.

  You’re nuts, Lulu. Absolutely nuts.

  She stood there looking at the photo for as long as it took to work up the righteous indignation she knew she must be feeling. But that, unfortunately, took way more time than she would have liked, so she finally gave up on feeling it. Not certain why she did it, she moved the photograph back to her dresser. There. Let him make of that whatever he wanted. It was time for her to go. Past time, really.

  Oh, hell. She never should have come here at all. Because instead of reassuring herself that Cole Early wasn’t turning her little bungalow into a brothel, all she’d done was magnify her curiosity about Cole Early even more than before. And the guy was already using up way too much of her mental energy, popping into her head at inopportune times, even invading her dreams from time to time at night. She barely knew the guy, but there had been times when he commanded more of her attention than she gave even to her work.

  She really was nuts.

  She turned to look at the stack of papers sitting next to his briefcase again. They were right out there in the open, she rationalized. So it wouldn’t really be snooping. Never mind the fact that they’d been left in the open because Cole Early hadn’t thought anyone would be breaking into his house.

  But it wasn’t breaking in, she reminded herself. And it wasn’t his house. And it would only be a few minutes. And he’d never know.

  Rationalization—however lame—completed, Lulu made her way back across the room to her desk.

  Twelve

  IT WASN’T UNTIL COLE WAS ALMOST AT THE FRONT door of his rented house that he realized something was wrong. He hesitated before inserting the key in the lock, trying to figure out what had set off his always reliable internal alarm system. The street behind him was silent, and the front door was locked. But something niggled at th
e back of his head, just out of reach…

  The bedroom light, he realized. It had been on when he pulled in the driveway. But he distinctly remembered turning it off before he left. Living in California—or, more accurately, paying electric bills in California—a person got used to never leaving things on frivolously. Habits weren’t broken just because one was out of town, so he was no different with a house he was renting than he was with his own. Just as he did at home, he always left on a living room light and a kitchen light when he went out, because he was never sure which door he’d come in when he returned.

  Just to make sure he hadn’t been seeing things, Cole silently descended the porch steps and looked up at the bedroom window from the front walk. Yep, the light was on. Not only that, a shadow moved in front of the closed curtain as he was looking at it, telling him someone was up there poking around.

  He started to reach for his cell phone to call the police, but the light in the bedroom went off, indicating whoever was up there might be on their way out. Instinctively, he made his way around to the back of the house and saw a finger of timid light filtering through a crack in the back door, an indication that it was ajar. Whoever was inside had entered through there, so it was a good bet that was where the intruder would be exiting, too. Quickly, Cole darted into the kitchen and pushed the door back the way he’d found it. Then he moved to the stove and switched off the light there and pressed himself into a dark corner, just in time to hear footfalls coming down the stairs that lay behind the door opposite him.

  His heart rate doubled when that door swung open and a shadowy figure emerged, hesitating before moving forward, clearly uncertain what had happened to the light. Cole didn’t waste any time. Lunging forward, he tackled the shape and knocked it to the floor in the hallway. In the handful of seconds it took to complete the action, he registered a surprising number of things.

  First, that the figure was a lot smaller than he’d initially thought. Second, that because of that first thing, both he and the figure landed on the hallway runner a lot harder than he’d planned. Third, that because of that second thing, he discovered the figure was a lot less masculine than he’d realized. And fourth, that because of that third thing, he would be going straight to hell, since, in an effort to subdue the previously-thought-to-be-masculine figure, he accidentally cupped the man’s, uh, woman’s, breast and was, for the briefest of moments—but still a hell-worthy amount of time—just the tiniest bit grateful and just the tiniest bit aroused.

  He had just enough time after marveling at the fact that he had been turned on by a common criminal trying to steal his stuff—and after making a mental note to go out and get himself laid as soon as he got back to California—to form the words What the hell? Unfortunately, the words never quite made it out of his mouth, because they were cut off by the way the figure freed an arm and belted Cole in the mouth—hard. It surprised more than hurt him, but it made him reel backward just enough to give the figure leverage that allowed her to pull herself up and shove him backward—hard.

  Then she was on all fours, scrambling to get up and run, something she was almost able to do. But Cole regrouped quickly enough to grab her around the waist and pull her backward and upward, off the floor and against his body.

  Man, for someone who didn’t weigh anything and fought like a girl, she was one tough, tenacious dame.

  He dodged her fists as well as he could as he felt along the wall for the light switch, but he still got socked a few times. She kicked, too, landing her heels again and again in his shins, his calves, and his knees. It was because of that last that, just as he found the light switch and flicked it on, his legs buckled beneath him, then both he and his captive went tumbling onto the hallway runner again. He caught himself on his forearms before he would have squashed her, but pressed his body hard on top of her to keep her from wriggling free again.

  The sudden eruption of bright light into the hall blinded him momentarily, but it also halted her fists—momentarily. Nevertheless, it was long enough for him to grab both her wrists in his hands and push them high above her head, pinning them to the floor as effectively as her body was pinned beneath his. She began to jerk wildly when she realized how thoroughly he’d incapacitated her, but her slight build was no match for his. In the chaos, he couldn’t get a bead on her features, but her scent he recognized immediately. And that faint hint of patchouli brought his gaze to her face pronto. When he saw that that face was obscured by a riot of auburn curls, he knew without question that he was indeed the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

  Good things came in threes. Three times lucky. Third time’s a charm.

  On three occasions now he had encountered her, through nothing but sheer dumb luck. That had to mean something, he told himself. If he could just figure out what…

  “Hortense?” he said softly in disbelief. What was she doing breaking into houses? Or, more specifically, this house? How had she found him? More to the point, why had she gone to the trouble to try? And, most important of all, why had he not noticed before what great breasts she had?

  At the sound of her name, she immediately stopped struggling and shook her hair out of her eyes as best she could to see who had said it. “Cole?” she asked in the same incredulous tone.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She slumped back against the floor, all signs of struggle gone. For some reason, though, he wasn’t quite ready to lift himself off of her. Not until he had answers to some of his questions. Especially that last one.

  She blew out a long, weary breath. Then, very softly, she said, “I live here.”

  It took a moment for that to register. And even when it did, because it was just too weird a development, he said, “I’m renting your house?”

  She nodded.

  Definitely weird. Maybe a little too weird?

  In fact, the whole scenario bothered him on a number of levels. It was, after all, a pretty major coincidence that he was renting the house of a woman he’d decided only the day before he wanted to employ as a buffer against overenthusiastic groupies. But what if Hortense was one of those very overenthusiastic groupies he was trying to avoid? She’d been at the realty office when he arrived—had she known in advance he was coming? That he was the one who’d be renting her place? She’d turned up in not one, but two, bars where he’d gone for a drink, too. Had she been following him? Maybe since his arrival? Cole wasn’t so self-centered that he thought someone would go to so much trouble to make his acquaintance, but it wasn’t unheard of for whack-job fans to follow—and even stalk—the objects of their affections.

  And what if this wasn’t her house? What if she’d just broken in knowing this was where he was staying—on account of she was stalking him—to steal a souvenir of some kind while he wasn’t here? Or, worse, to try to get to him while he was here?

  “Prove it,” he said.

  She lifted her head from the floor and narrowed her eyes at him in confusion. “What?”

  “Prove this is your house,” he told her.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You must have some paperwork somewhere with your name on it. Bills, checks, library card, something that says Hortense Waddy.”

  She slumped against the floor again. “No, I don’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my name isn’t really Hortense Waddy.”

  He had a mixed reaction to the news. On one hand, he was relieved that she hadn’t been saddled with such an unsuitable name. On the other hand, it wasn’t looking good for the stalker thing.

  “Look, I can explain everything,” she said. “Let me up.”

  “Nuh-uh,” he said.

  She snapped her head up again, and this time her eyes flashed with annoyance. “Let. Me. Up,” she repeated with significantly more nerve.

  “No,” he said just as adamantly. “Not until you tell me what the hell is going on and who the hell you are.”

  “My name is Lulu Flanne
ry,” she said. “Eddie Mahoney, the guy you rented the house from, is a good friend of mine. He convinced me to rent out my house for Derby weekend, then, when a request came through from someone who needed a place for two weeks, he called in a few favors.” With clear reluctance, she added, “And he reminded me how much my Home Depot bill is.”

  Cole eyed her warily. “Home Depot?” he repeated.

  She nodded. “I’ve spent way more on the house than I planned since I moved in.”

  “You’ve been fixing this place up yourself?”

  Another nod.

  Well, that explained the cracks in the walkway and the crumbling stairs. Obviously, she was working from the inside out.

  “Okay, so let’s say you’re telling the truth,” he said, “and that this is, in fact, your house.”

  “It is my house,” she insisted.

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “How do you explain the fact that, virtually every time I turn around, I see you standing somewhere in my immediate vicinity?”

  “Oh, please,” she muttered indignantly. “What? You think I’m your number one fan girl or something?”

  He shook his head. “Actually, I’m beginning to think you’re my number one stalker girl or something.”

  She gaped at that. “Stalker? Are you serious?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who keeps showing up everywhere that I am.”

  “Or maybe you’re the one who keeps showing up everywhere that I am,” she countered. “Who says you’re not my stalker?”

  He gazed at her in amusement. “Because your reputation didn’t precede you, sweetheart. When I left California, I had no way of even knowing who the hell you are. You, however, were inundated with information about me from your local press.”

  “I wasn’t inundated,” she said snottily. “And I wasn’t impressed, either. And besides,” she hurried on before he had a chance to say something snotty back, “I myself have a very popular website in the art glass community.”