Kiss the Girl (5 page)

Nixie’s heart thudded into her throat.  Karl had tried to warn her about DC –- the murder rate, the muggings in broad day light.  But for crying out loud, she was living in the
Watergate
.  That hadn’t been a hotbed of crime since the Nixon era.  

But as she stood there, watering can hovering over the ivies, she was willing
to
concede this one to Karl.  Footsteps clomped purposefully across the foyer, and Nixie knew she would be
eyeball to eyeball with the intruder
--
oh
God
, the possibly
armed
intruder
--
any second.  She set down the watering can before her trembling hands made a sprinkler of it
, b
reathed deep and prepared to face down the enemy.

CHAPTER
THREE

Dr. Erik Larsen shook his head, scattering tiny droplets of melted snow all over his mother’s smooth, polished foyer.  He smiled grimly.  Served her right.  He didn’t have time for this.  The snow had snarled traffic until it was practically moving backward through the space-time continuum, and now, thanks to his mother’s mysterious summons, he would surely be late to the clinic.

Erik hated being late.  It was one of the many reasons he and Mary Jane got along so well.  She was as pathologically punctual as he was, and would not look kindly upon his failure to show up on time for a meeting
regarding their jointly run clinic
.  Especially not an emergency meeting of the how-are-we-going-to-pay-the-rent variety.   

He raked a hand through the crust of slush melting on his hair
--
damn, it was coming down out there
--
and rounded the corner. 

He
moved
through the living room at a near jog
.
  His mother’s little
surprise
s
were almost always time-sucking disasters, and he was already late enough.  She’d promised this one was a no-brainer
--
You’ll know it when you see it, dear
--
and Erik prayed she was telling the truth.
 

He gave the
living room a cursory glance, then
headed for the kitchen.  He was halfway there when
his brain registered what he’d seen, and he froze
mid-stride. 

He turned and looked again at the window.  His stomach sank.  Yep, there she was.  A woman, standing
absolutely still
in his
mother’s miserable
collection of
dying
plants
, hands knit tog
ether, mouth pursed, an expression
on her face
that wavered between friendly interest and
I-have-
911
-on-speed-dial
. 

Oh, Christ.
  His mother had left him a
woman
?
  She’d thrown any number of horse-faced debutantes at him over the years, but she’d never booby-trapped her apartment with one before. 

He
stared
her
. 
She was
taller than usual, but thin to the point of near-transparency in her well-worn jeans and
the
sort of loose,
gypsyish
top
only found at third
world bazaars and Goodwill
.  She stepped away
from the window, a mop of red
curls bobbing around
sharp cheekbones
and enormous eyes the color of pasture land
.  Her feet were bare.
 

She was no horse-faced debutante, but he made a mental note to kill his mother anyway. 

“
One of us probably doesn’t belong here
,” the woman
said with an oddly familiar half-smile.  “Is it you or me?”

“Since this is my mother’s apartment, I’m going to
say
you,” he said. 

“Senator Larsen didn’t tell me she had a son in town.”

“Should she have?  Who are you?”

“Oh, sorry.  I’m in 616.  Across the hall?”  She wiggled one finger toward the door.  “I came over to borrow an onion and ended up rescuing the plants your mother seems determined to starve to death.  She said I should just lock up when I was done.”  She tipped her head and studied him.  “You have the look of her, don’t you?  Your mother.”

He frowned.  The Senator was approximately five feet nothing and built like a bird.  “Nobody’s ever said so.”

“It’s not a physical resemblance so much as a similar energy.”  She pursed up her lips and nodded slowly.  “
You
feel
like her
.” 

“Right. 
Similar energy.
”  Erik glanced around the room in the rapidly dwindling hope that his mother had left him something other than this woman.  “Listen, did my mother happen to mention that she was leaving something here for me?”

“
Like what
?”

“I don’t know.  She said I’d know it when I saw it.”

“Oh.  Mysterious.”

“
That’s my mom.” 
S
ubtle as a
sledge hammer
.
  He checked his watch, barely suppressed a wince.
 
He stalked into the kitchen,
hoping the woman
would
leave while he was in there,
and
thus spare him the duty of
e
xplaining his
mother’s
fixation with his marital status
.  He
jumped half a foot when
her
voice sounded at his shoulder. 
God
, she was quiet in those bare feet.   

“
Does she do this often?” the woman asked.  “Send you on scavenger hunts?
” 

“
No
.”  He gave the empty c
ounters a desperate look
.
  Nothing.
 
Not that he expected anything. 
He turned to
her
and found
that oddly familiar smile still on her lips
.  He
frowned. 

“Do I know you?” he asked.  “Who are you again?”

“Apartment 616,” she said.  “The plant savior?”   Her smile widened cheerfully, and it made the freckles on her nose stand out like nutmeg sprinkled on cream.  That smile wasn’t just weirdly familiar, he realized.  It was famous.

“Like hell,” he said, staring.  “You’re Nixie Leighton-Brace.” 

She lifted one of those sharp, bony shoulders in a half-shrug.  “That, too.” 

“
Of course you are
.” 
H
e
closed his eyes, just a little longer than a blink
.
 
“You’re it
, aren’t you?
”

“I’m what?”  Her mossy
eyes went wide, and one hand crept to her throat. 

“You’re what my mother left me.”

Okay, now Nixie was a little alarmed.  At first she’d been strangely comforted by him.  He looked like nothing so much as a Norwegian farm hand
--
large,
blonde
, perpetually sunburned
--
but he radiated energy in big, fat,
buzzy
waves.  She’d spent her life in the company of men and women like this, people whose ambitions were too large to be contained in a single body and spilled over into the air around them. 

She’d been tempted to move closer and warm herself
, like he was a cozy fire on a
cold night.  It was a weakness, she knew.  Back sliding.  Not on her Normal Life Game Plan
.  The next guy she fell for was going to be an accountant with a thing for
minivan
s
and tuna noodle casserole.
  The kind of guy who’d pass out cold if Sloan ever flashed him the come-hither.
 

But Nixie didn’t have anything right now in terms of a life, normal or otherwise.  It was grey and nasty out, she’d
been thoroughly chastised by
the closest thing she had to a father
, and she’d just turned her last onion into charcoal.  Surely she could be forgiven for clinging to the familiar?

But now she wasn’t so sure.  He wasn’t radiating that beautiful en
ergy any more.  Now he was looking at her with a familiar speculation, the kind she’d seen on strangers’ faces her whole life
. 
He wanted something from her
.   

“Listen,”
s
he said, “I don’t know what you and
your mom have cooked up here, but whatever it is, forget it.  I’m retired.
”

“
Hey, d
on’t look at me.  My mom works alone
. 
I just get caught in the cross fire
every now and then
. 
But
for once, I don’t mind.
”

“
Well
,
I do.
”

“Yeah
?  Mind what?
” 
He flashed her a grin, and she immediately revised her initial impression.  This man wasn’t a farm hand.  He was a Viking.  Big,
blonde
, wide enough to
sac
k
entire
villages
without breaking a sweat
. 

“What?”

“You said you minded.  Mind what?”

Nixie frowned.  “
Being manipulated.
”

“Have you been?”

“I...”  She broke off.  “I don’t know.  All I know so far is that I’
ve
been co-opted as the grand prize of
a
scavenger hunt my
new
neighbor set up for her adult son.  Does that strike you as weird, or is it just me?”