Mr. Right Next Door (4 page)

God knows Nick fooled enough of them into thinking everything he said was genuine, when hardly anything that came out of his mouth was.

Which, he realized, meant he had a lot in common with the crook who was about to break her heart.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” he told Harry once he got back to the B&B.

Kim had walked.

Nick had followed her very, very slowly.

Watched her stroll along like a woman without a care in the world, smiling, stopping to talk to a dozen people along the way, staring up at the blue sky, stopping to smell the flowers.

It was like something out of one of those sickening long-distance commercials.

They were all so happy.

Nick didn’t know what to make of it.

“What’s the problem?” Harry said agreeably.

He said everything in that same I’m-your-buddy tone and it wasn’t natural to be that happy. Nick tended to be suspicious of happy people. Harry and Kim and most people in this town were way too happy.

“I have no idea what’s going on. That’s the problem,” Nick said, deciding to ignore the too-much-happiness thing for the moment. He had other more pressing concerns.

“You didn’t hear anything at the diner?” Harry asked.

“No, I heard everything at the diner. That she might be engaged. That the guy was coming here, either the next day, the next week or the next month. Take your pick. That he’s from Colorado or Cleveland or maybe Pittsburgh. What the hell?”

Harry laughed.

It was starting to annoy Nick every time Harry made that sound and Harry made it quite often.

“It’s a small town,” Harry said.

“So?”

“So people talk. All of them talk. All the time. But only about twenty percent of it’s true, and that’s just a guess. It might be less than twenty percent. I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were trying to confuse me,” Nick said. “That all of them are in on it and they’re deliberately trying to confuse me.”

“No, they’re just talking. They gossip. All about each other. Trust me, this is normal.”

“Then how the hell am I supposed to figure out what’s going on?”

“You follow her, Nickie. You stay really close to her. So close you can smell her pretty perfume. And you don’t trust anything except what comes out of her sweet, little mouth and maybe not even that. Meanwhile, I’ll look for your guy in Colorado, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the guy’ll show up tomorrow.”

“Or maybe we won’t.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Harry chuckled. “Hey, I got the blueprint from the conversion they did on her house, when they cut it up into apartments. Am I crazy or is your view even more spectacular than we thought it might be?”

Nick said nothing.

“I mean, I don’t have the same vantage point as you. But looking at it from street level, I’d have to say the angle is highly favorable. You could look into her living room and, off to the right, see through the doorway into her bedroom—”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“You know you don’t deserve perks like this, right? No man could be that lucky—”

Nick cut him off again.

He had hours before it got dark. Before she turned on the lights in her apartment and closed the blinds a little more tightly.

Would she do that? Or would she think she was far enough off the ground that no one could see in?

Maybe she wouldn’t bother. After all, glancing around, he thought his was the only window with the perfect vantage point to be spying on her this way and if the B&B had been empty for some time while it was being renovated…Well, she might not have worried about anyone looking in on her.

Please let her close the blinds, he thought.

And please don’t let her be in love with a crook who was going to break her heart.

S
he made a few phone calls while sitting on the floor of her apartment doing some stretching moves that looked like yoga. Nick knew because he watched her every move. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, looking down into her apartment from what was, as Harry guessed, a perfect vantage point and watched nothing but her for hours.

She had the light on, as light was fading outside, and he kept his light off, his window blinds angled downward, his own private pipeline to her living room and tiny kitchen and, off to the right—yes, indeed—was the open door to her bedroom and bathroom. Not a great view into those rooms, but a view.

Nick listened in on the calls as she made them.

Two friends from high school, another from college. Fellow teachers at the elementary school where classes had ended only two weeks before. All wanting to know the same thing—what had happened on her trip?

Was he mistaken or did she sound less excited with each recitation of events? Did she sound a little sad? Maybe a little worried?

He thought she did.

And he had a name the guy had given her.

Eric Daniels.

An occupation. Something vague having to do with investments.

Yeah, right.

The place? Apparently, the guy moved around a lot because she did indeed mention the guy being in Colorado and Cleveland. No Pittsburgh. And apparently, his home base was California. She didn’t mention a city. So half of what Nick had heard at the diner had some basis in reality? How was he supposed to function in this town?

She vacuumed and dusted her apartment, and he watched. She cleaned out the refrigerator and wiped down the counter-tops, and he watched. She went into the bathroom and, judging from the time she spent in there and the way she looked when she came out, she must have taken a bath. Nick, thankfully, saw nothing but the closed bathroom door and a view of her that made him groan out loud when she emerged, hair wrapped in a towel with a few damp curls escaping down her pretty neck, a flimsy, shimmering robe—God help him—clinging to what had to be still slightly damp curves, bare legs peeking out from the slit in the ends when she walked. Bare feet, he thought. Bare toes. With his high-powered binoculars, which he’d gotten out and used out of sheer curiosity, he caught a hint of bold color on her toenails and felt like a complete voyeur.

Which he was.

He was a damned Peeping Tom.

Night had fallen.

Her living room was lit with the light of a lamp in the corner. She had window blinds, but they were angled up toward the sun, no doubt to let the light in. But Nick was sitting there by his window, maybe five feet higher than hers, and he could see everything.

It looked like she was talking to herself, humming or maybe singing—some silly song about being in love, he feared.

He watched the robe billow out and flow behind her as she walked, the fabric swishing slightly this way and that with the movement of her hips. She grabbed a bottle of lotion out of the bathroom, propped her leg up on the coffee table in the living room and started smoothing it down her legs and onto her feet. That was…okay. He could handle that. He’d seen her put on sunscreen lotion on the ship and survived to tell the tale.

Then her hands started working their way up, slipping under the ends of the robe, to her pretty thighs. Had to keep that tan looking good, he suspected, groaning as he watched her hands move over herself. It was so much worse than what he’d seen on the ship. Her out-in-public touching herself had been difficult enough, but her alone-in-her-nightclothes touching herself was something out of an erotic film. She hadn’t really looked up at him and said,
Do you want to touch me here?
Had she?

No. She hadn’t.

It was just all too easy to imagine that she had, imagine his hands following hers.

They could play a game.

His hands following hers, wherever they went, wherever she wanted.

Nick made a pitiful, whimpering sound.

Honest to God, he was pathetic.

She pushed up a sleeve and spread lotion over one of her forearms and then the other.

Okay. That was better.

Then one of her hands slipped inside her robe, working on her neck, her shoulder and, he suspected, her chest.

Nick decided it was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen. Pretty Kim Cassidy rubbing lotion all over herself, her hands slipping beneath her own robe, caressing her own bare skin.

You’re going straight to hell for this one day,
Nick told himself.

Straight to hell.

What was it about a woman touching herself that did this to men?

He’d never understood it, never bought it.

The man should want to be the one doing the touching, right? Not the other way around.

His hands on her. That’s what a man should want.

But with her he got the whole fantasy thing.

Got that silly male voyeur thing and the effect of her with her hands all over her body and what it was doing to him. It was like an invitation, he decided. He could imagine her whispering,
See what I’m doing? Come here. You could be doing this, too.

Or she could simply be giving him some helpful hints.
See this? I like this. I like to be touched like this.

Fine by him.

He had a raging hard-on and couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He imagined her getting ready for a date to show up. For a lover. Soaking in her bath, the water a little murky, just enough to keep him from having a perfectly clear view of her. Her hair would be piled on her head, her face and arms damp with moisture from the heat and the bath. Her eyes would be closed, dreamily, her knees breaking the surface of the water as she hunched down in the tub and maybe the tips of her breasts visible, too. She’d lie there, sweet perfume in the water seeping into every inch of her skin, and then she’d get out, water running down her body in ways that made him groan. She’d towel herself off or maybe he’d dry her. She’d slip into that silky robe and maybe he’d watch while she rubbed lotion all over herself, getting herself ready. For him.

She’d smile when he showed up at the door, greet him wearing nothing but the robe and hold out her welcoming arms to him. He’d pull her to him, feeling every bit of the heat of her and her pretty curves through the thin silk of the robe, then slip his hands inside, as he’d just watched her do, running his hands over soft, silky, still-damp skin.

She’d open herself up to him in every way.

Would he carry her to the bedroom or stop at the couch, too impatient to go any farther? Or have her right there against the wall, that robe still wrapped around her, but pushed aside so he could see her breasts, her pretty thighs? He wasn’t sure if he’d have the patience to take it off of her. To do anything more than he absolutely had to do to get where he wanted to be, which was inside of her.

He could just imagine what she’d feel like in his arms, how she’d taste, the little sounds she’d make as…

As…

The lights went out.

Nick blinked once, then again.

He couldn’t see anything anymore.

No more Kim in her pretty robe, her hands all over herself.

She’d turned out the light!

And left him sitting here practically panting after her, having some damned sexual fantasy worthy of a seventeen-year-old Peeping Tom.

Nick groaned, a mixture of disgust at himself and frustrated desire. Completely inappropriate for a man in his position but, honestly, he was just a man and she’d been…Well, she’d been doing things any woman might do in the privacy of her own apartment. In what she believed was the privacy of her own apartment.

How many women expected someone like Nick to be watching their every semierotic move while in the privacy of their own apartment?

Nick fought the urge to beat his own head against the wall.

Women who fell in love with crooks and potential terrorists should expect exactly this sort of treatment and should exercise some caution all around. He wanted to go give her a lecture on the subject, to yell at her until she listened to him and understood and promised to be more careful in the future. He wanted to tell her she didn’t love that jerk, that he was nothing but a manipulating bastard, far more experienced in using people than she would ever be, and that she shouldn’t feel too bad about this. It was just a simple mistake that innocent women like her made all too often.

He was fairly certain she was innocent in all this. Way too trusting and falling in love too easily and just not taking the kind of care with her emotions that she should take.

Of course, he couldn’t tell her any of that. She couldn’t even know he was watching.

And he had to keep doing this, night after night, just like this.

Did she take a bath every night? he wondered.

Did she always wear the robe and put lotion on herself like that?

He was doomed, Nick decided.

Doomed.

Kim got up early, ate an apple, talked to her sister Kate on the phone, then dressed in a little T-shirt, shorts and sandals.

She planned to take a walk to the nearby Falls Park to check out the fountain she was redoing as a summer art project with some of the kids from Big Brothers Big Sisters. But as she left her apartment, she happened to glance over at Mrs. Baker’s and there, sitting on the patio all by himself, was Nick Cavanaugh, not moving at all, not even…Was he even awake?

Kim waited, standing just on the other side of the low hedge that separated Mrs. Baker’s property from Kim’s landlady’s.

He was so still she wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He sat in one of the big, comfy, cushioned Adirondack chairs, his head leaning against the back of it, a dark pair of sunglasses on and…No, wait…Every now and then she could see his chest rise and fall, so he was breathing at least. Deeply and slowly. She knew because she watched.

Just to the right of where he sat, a curtain in the window was pushed aside. Mrs. Baker looked out, saw Kim, then motioned for her to wait; Mrs. Baker was coming out.

She stopped opposite Kim, on the other side of the hedge, stared back at Nick, shook her head and whispered, “Poor man. I don’t think he’s well.”

“Really?”

Mrs. Baker nodded. “I was stripping wallpaper in the dining room until all hours and I was being quiet because that room is right below his bedroom. He kept getting up, walking around, going back to bed. Getting up, walking around, going back to bed. Couldn’t sleep at all. I went to the door and knocked, asked him if he was all right and he swore that he was, but I’m not so sure. He practically begged for a room here. Said he’d been up all night on an overnight flight from South America, hadn’t gotten any rest and had a bad back, I think. Or maybe his shoulder. He seems to be favoring both. And he was limping, too. When he couldn’t sleep I wondered if he was in pain or something. And for him to be sleeping outside this morning…I thought the poor man must be simply exhausted when he first came, but now I’m worried it might be something more. Something serious.”

“He wouldn’t tell you what was wrong last night?” Kim asked.

“No. Not a word. Do you think he’s all right over there? I mean, he’s just sleeping, right? I don’t want my first official guest collapsing here or well…you know? I can’t lose my first guest. That would be a terrible omen.”

Kim frowned.

Mrs. Baker tended to worry too much and Kim didn’t think Nick Cavanaugh was dying. Granted, there was something a little off about him and he seemed tired yesterday and a little bit…Not grumpy. Rattled? Distracted? Easily confused? No, not that. Just…off.

But she liked Mrs. Baker a lot and the woman put a lot of stock in her omens and little twinges and all sorts of things like that.

“Would you go make sure he’s okay?” Mrs. Baker asked. “I’d do it myself, but I don’t think he appreciated my concern when I asked him last night. It was like I’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t or…Well, that’s the way it felt to me.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to him,” Kim said.

“I’ll bring you two some tea, to give you an excuse to sit and talk awhile.”

Mrs. Baker went inside to make tea. Kim walked around the hedges and onto Mrs. Baker’s patio, pausing there, trying to decide what to do. She didn’t want to startle him. If he had been up all night in pain, he probably needed his rest this morning. And it wasn’t like the man wasn’t breathing.

Kim sat down in the chair next to his, leaned back and propped her feet up on the comfy stool in front of her chair to wait. If he wasn’t awake when Mrs. Baker came out with their tea, she’d wake him up. Until then, it was a gorgeous, early-summer morning. The sky was a happy shade of light blue, the sun was beaming down on them. There was a perfect, slight breeze and the temperatures hadn’t yet climbed too high.

She could almost imagine she was back on the ship, before the pirates hit, when she hadn’t had a care in the world.

Kim leaned back and closed her eyes, picturing Eric’s handsome face, trying not to worry that she hadn’t heard from him.

She’d been sure he’d call last night but he hadn’t, and she hadn’t been able to reach him at the number he gave her. Oh, he could have been stuck on a plane somewhere and gotten in really late, especially considering the time difference on the West Coast. That was probably it. Surely he’d call today.

She couldn’t wait for him to get here, to meet her family, to see her hometown, just to be here with her.

Love was intoxicating, she decided. Overwhelming. Addictive. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, missing him, dreaming about him. She was sure she had a silly grin on her face and didn’t even care. He was wonderful. He was amazing. He was her dream man come to life and she didn’t care how silly that sounded, either. It was true.

She sighed, stretching her arms above her head and sinking more deeply into the cushions of her chair. At the edge of the stone patio, Mrs. Baker’s cat, a giant black-and-white fur ball named Cleo, ambled ever so slowly toward Kim. Kim held out a hand to Cleo, expecting the cat to jump into her lap so she could pet it.