Mr. Right Next Door (11 page)

“What a pity,” Kim said.

They ended up spending three hours at the emergency vet’s. The wound wasn’t all that bad. Just a scrape really, Kim had to admit, not that deep but long and painful. When they examined Cleo, they found several teeth that the vet felt needed to come out—an infection risk, he said, as cats got older, made worse by the wound, but still, something their regular vet could take care of in the next few days.

“Since you’re going to have her sedated anyway, why don’t you go ahead and pull them,” Kim said with a great deal of satisfaction.

The vet looked puzzled. “It would cost a lot less if your regular vet did it. Our fees aren’t cheap.”

“I know, but it’s fine. Nick will pay,” Kim said. She smiled up at him. “Might as well get everything taken care of while we’re here, right honey?”

Nick gritted his teeth and smiled and reached for his credit card again.

“How did you say this happened?” the vet asked one more time.

“Broken glass,” Nick claimed. “The cat jumped through a window, scraped its paw on the way out.”

The vet frowned, obviously not convinced. “Because I’ve never seen a broken-glass wound quite like this.”

“Really?” Nick feigned innocence so well it was frightening.

“It looks more like a gunshot wound,” the vet said.

“Why would anyone shoot a cat?” Mr. Innocent asked.

Kim rolled her eyes at that, and Nick elbowed her, as if to say,
Back me up here, would you please?

“But she is going to be okay, isn’t she?” Kim asked.

“Sure. You just need to watch out for infection, that’s all.”

“We will,” Kim promised. “Won’t we, Nickie?”

“I’m not going anywhere near the cat and the cat had better not come anywhere near me,” he muttered, then excused himself to go take a phone call.

Kim smiled up at the vet, a model-slim pretty brunette close to six feet tall. “He and Cleo are still getting to know each other, but I’m sure they’ll be able to come to terms.”

The bill ended up being a thousand dollars.

Kim was extremely pleased.

“Mrs. Baker was saving up the money to have the teeth taken care of, but with all the expenses of opening the B&B, it would have been a while, and…well, you deserve to pay,” Kim said as they climbed into Nick’s car with a sleepy, still half-sedated cat.

“Fine. I’ll just have to find a way to explain it on my expense account,” he said.

“I’m sure you’ll be very creative. After all, you’re a great liar—”

“Kim, I couldn’t tell the vet—”

“It’s not about the vet. It’s about you and everything you’ve told me—”

“What do you think it is I’ve told you that wasn’t true?”

“Oh, I don’t know…. everything? If you’re a parks planner, I’m Miss America—”

“I’m sure you could be, if that’s what you wanted—”

“And don’t be nice to me. Not now. I’m not in the mood, and it’s not going to work.”

“Okay. Okay,” he said.

“Okay, you’ll tell me everything?”

“Yeah. Okay,” he said, grim-faced and looking…

She couldn’t quite say how he looked.

Different.

Completely different.

More serious, completely capable, not nearly as nice and understanding as he’d been, like a man who didn’t have a gentle bone in his body, although when she’d been in his arms, she’d have sworn he did.

He’d been extremely gentle with her. Hungry for her, no mistaking that. Her heartbeat kicked up a notch just thinking about it, about the things he’d done to her and how it had felt. About the way she’d gone so willingly into his arms, telling herself she just had to do it a second time to see if it had really felt as great as she feared.

And she’d been right.

It had been great.

Fabulous.

Thrilling.

Everything, she decided.

Everything a woman wanted to feel with a man.

And in a way she couldn’t begin to explain or understand, so much more than she’d felt with the man she was supposed to be in love with, the one who seemed to have abandoned her without another thought, for reasons she would probably never understand.

She’d made a mistake, a big one, in falling for Eric and thinking she was in love with him and telling everyone about it. She felt so foolish for that, so naive, so stupid. But she had a sad feeling that the bigger mistake was believing everything Nick Cavanaugh had to say. Trusting him. Going along with him and a half-dozen suggestions he had made.

Kissing him.

Liking it so much.

Even falling for him a little along the way.

She felt so incredibly stupid.

“Do we have to do this now? On the road?” he asked when she wasn’t saying anything. “Or can it wait until we get back to town?”

“I guess it can wait that long,” she said, trying to extract a promise from herself not to cry all over him.

That would be the ultimate humiliation.

“Just tell me one thing,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Does this have something to do with Eric?”

Nick nodded.

“He’s not who I thought he was, is he?”

“No.”

She nodded.

Okay.

There it was.

She’d been a fool.

She took a breath, a shaky one, a weak I’m-not-going-to-cry hiccupy breath and hated herself just a little bit more.

“And you’re not at all who I thought you were, either, right?” she asked.

“No, Kim, I’m not.”

T
hey got back to the B&B that morning to find a worried-looking Mrs. Baker on the porch.

Kim had left her a vague note about leaving early with Nick on an errand, not to worry, that they’d be back soon. She was waiting for them when they pulled to the curb in front of the B&B, a still-sleepy, well-medicated Cleo curled up in Kim’s arms.

Mrs. Baker gasped at the bloody clothes, as Kim explained, kind of, what had happened and that they’d taken Cleo to the vet, but she hadn’t needed stitches, just a big bandage and some antibiotic ointment. She wasn’t quite sure how to explain the teeth coming out at Nick’s expense, so she didn’t even try at the moment. For now, the cat was fine.

“I’m so sorry for all the trouble. I should have warned you that she thinks the bed you’re in is really hers,” Mrs. Baker told Nick, the sleepy cat now in her arms.

“Don’t be silly. It was all Nick’s fault,” Kim said.

“It was?” Mrs. Baker looked confused.

“It was,” Kim said and didn’t try to explain that, either.

She was starting to realize that maybe she didn’t have to explain everything to everyone and it suited her at the moment not to, so she didn’t.

“All right,” Mrs. Baker said, confusion evident. “Well, I should pay you for the vet visit—”

“Nick paid,” Kim told her. “He insisted.”

“Oh. Well…thank you, Nick.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“I…uh…tried to get into your room, Nick, to clean up the mess, but the door seems to be jammed or something….”

Nick nodded. “I didn’t want you to have to clean it up. I fix my own messes.”

“Oh…Okay,” Mrs. Baker said. “If you insist.”

“He does,” Kim said, taking him by the arm. “Come on, Nick. I’ll help you clean up your mess.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Baker stood there, puzzled, as they walked away. “Okay. Well…I was going to the grocery store. I have to pick up some things. But maybe I should wait. Poor Cleo…”

“She’ll be fine and the vet said she’ll probably sleep for hours,” Kim said, turning around and taking the cat from Mrs. Baker. “I’ll take her inside and put her in her favorite spot on the sofa by the front window.”

“Well…okay.”

“Don’t worry about anything. We’ll all be fine,” Kim called out over her shoulder as they marched inside.

“Will I be fine?” Nick asked.

“Shut up,” Kim told him, dropping his arm the minute they got into the house and away from Mrs. Baker’s prying eyes.

For a moment out there, mild-mannered Nick, the parks planner, had been back, nonthreatening and almost ordinary as could be. It had been truly unsettling and a little scary to see how easily he made the transformation from the man she’d known to the one she’d discovered with a gun in his hand, aimed at her and the cat, the night before.

She truly didn’t know him.

She put Cleo down on the sofa, fussed over her for a moment and told her what a good kitty she was and that she could sleep the day away if she wanted to.

Mrs. Baker stuck her head in the front door and said, “Kim, I forgot. Gwen brought the dogs over. She said you needed them for something? Some kind of art project?”

“Yes, I do,” Kim said.

“They’re in the backyard.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Baker.”

She left once again.

“Dogs?” Nick asked. “What are we doing with dogs?”

“You’ll see,” Kim said.

He followed her to the back door and outside, where a beautiful tan-colored Australian shepherd and a little white fur ball were curled up together in the shade under an oak tree. They scrambled to their feet and barked out a greeting as they spotted Kim and headed for her.

Nick backed up a step and made a face.

She got down on her knees and greeted the dogs, fussing over them one by one and telling them how much she missed them, how glad she was that they’d come to visit.

“This is Nick,” she told them. “He’s a jerk.”

The dogs cocked their heads to the side, as if trying to discern the meaning of the word jerk.

“Kim—”

“This is Romeo and this is Petunia.”

Nick frowned. “Am I supposed to shake their hands or something?”

“Only if you want yours taken off in one bite. Romeo was my mother’s dog. He’s police-academy trained. You don’t want to mess with him. I say
Bite
and he says
How hard?
And he doesn’t often get to attack people, so he usually does it with great enthusiasm.”

“Okay. What’s the other one here for? The flower-dog?”

Romeo growled at Nick, as if he got that insult completely.

“She’s my sister-in-law’s dog and the love of Romeo’s life. She goes everywhere he goes.”

“Okay, but really, Petunia?”

“My sister-in-law found her abandoned behind a flower shop. Don’t make fun of her. Romeo doesn’t like it, right Romeo?”

He growled again, right on cue.

“Good dog,” Kim said. “Let’s go inside and get this over with.”

“Get what over with?” Nick asked.

“Your lame-ass explanation.”

“It’s not lame,” he said.

Kim didn’t bother to stay and argue. She went inside, calling the dogs to follow her. They trailed after her upstairs and to the door of Nick’s room, which Kim couldn’t open either.

“What did you do to it?” she asked, as Nick came to stand beside her by the door.

“Just jimmied the lock. I was afraid if Mrs. Baker saw all the blood, she’d have a heart attack.”

He did something to the lock that Kim couldn’t see and, within seconds, they were in.

The dogs must have smelled the blood, because they went instantly on alert, Romeo growling and sniffing his way around the room.

“No dead bodies, I promise,” Nick said.

Romeo snarled at him and Nick backed up.

“Okay,” Nick said, then turned to Kim. “You’re afraid of me now?”

“I’m being smart, that’s all.”

She’d called her sister-in-law from the all-night vet’s and asked her to bring over the dogs, just in case. Now that she was alone with Nick in his room, she pulled her can of mace out of her purse.

Pointing the mace at him, she said, “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

He shook his head and swore softly into the air.

Kim took a seat by the window then told the dogs to sit by the foot of the bed, so they wouldn’t get near the broken glass left on the floor on the other side of the room. She was ready for this and she was not going to cry. She was going to find out who this man was and what he was doing here and then she was going to deal with it, whatever the problem was.

She was not going to be stupid anymore.

“All right,” she told Nick. “Tell me. Everything. What are you doing here? Start with that?”

“I’ve been following you,” he admitted as he stood by the chest of drawers against the side wall, standing straight and tall, looking incredibly alert, completely in control for someone who’d hardly gotten any sleep.

It was so irritating, she wanted to throw something at him.

“Why are you following me?” she asked.

“Because you’re one of the few links we have to Eric Weyzinski.”

Kim took a breath. She could handle this. “And Eric Weyzinski is—”

“The jerk who seduced you on the ship.”

Her face flamed at the word
seduced
and all it entailed.

“You’ve been following me since I got back from the cruise?” she asked.

“No, Kim. From the time you were on the ship. We were on the ship, too. We saw the whole thing go down.”

“Go down? You mean, the attack?”

Nick nodded.

“Eric saved me from them,” she insisted. “He shoved me down when they started firing and shielded me with his own body.”

“Which made him look like he had nothing to do with the attack. Yeah, we know. We were there.”

“You keep saying,
We.
Who’s
We?
”

“I’m with a hush-hush division of Homeland Security. A counterterrorism agency.”

“Agency?” Her mouth gaped open. “You’re some kind of secret agent?”

He nodded once again, maddeningly calm while he told the most outlandish tale.

She had befriended him, worried over him, laughed with him, kissed him more than once and there he stood, telling her he was a spy, living next door to her in Mrs. Baker’s B&B?

“I would really like to smack you right now,” she said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, shaking his head.

Kim closed her eyes, thinking of what he’d already told her and what she still didn’t know. “What did Eric do?”

“We’re not sure. We thought at first that he was part of the pirate’s attack. That they’d planted someone on the ship to help them get aboard and when they couldn’t, he had orders not to blow his cover, so they could try again with another ship at another time—”

“Wait. Pirates? What’s up with the pirates? I mean, how can there be pirates in the twenty-first century?”

“There are people ready to rob other people everywhere, always have been and always will be. Including people on boats. And the water’s good for them. It’s not like you can call 911 and have the cops show up in ten minutes when you’re on the water.”

“So, it’s just about money?” she asked.

“At first. And then the pirates became better organized, better armed, started working together in bigger groups. It was only a matter of time before one of them got the grand idea to knock off a cruise ship. The cruise lines have been training to handle something like this for years.”

Kim was horrified. “Who knew? I never knew. I never imagined.”

“Not many people did. Don’t feel bad about that.”

“So, the attack on my ship…? You don’t think that was just about money?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, the groups are getting bigger, better armed. It’s not hard to imagine someone taking over a ship for other reasons.”

“Like…terrorism?”

Nick nodded.

“That’s why you were there, watching my ship?”

“We picked up some chatter about a possible move against the ship. That’s why we were there.”

“And you stopped the attack?”

“We helped,” he said.

“But the pirates got away. You were there and you didn’t catch them?”

“Not exactly. Sorry, I can’t talk about this part of it with you. We’re still…We’re not done, Kim. We didn’t just let them get away.”

“Okay.” She took a breath, tried to take it all in. She might have been caught up in a terrorist attack. As bad as she felt right now, things could have definitely been worse. “What about Eric? You think he’s a terrorist? You think I’m involved with a terrorist?”

“I don’t know,” he said, staring at her.

“I am not a terrorist!” she cried.

“I know that,” he said, finally losing the stone-face that she hated, being exasperated as the Nick she’d known so often was.

“Okay, then that means…I’m just stupid and have no idea who I’m involved with,” she said, very near tears. “A stupid, stupid woman.”

Romeo lifted his head and whined at her, obviously worried.

She patted his head and he gave her a look that said,
You’re upset? I’m sorry. I still love you.

And she only wanted to cry more.

“I love you, too,” she said.

“What?” Nick bellowed.

“I’m talking to the dog!” she said, contemplating her own foolishness.

She’d been an absolute fool.

And everyone in town was going to know about it sooner or later, except for the dogs, who’d love her anyway, thank goodness.

But still, she was an idiot of gigantic proportions, she realized, face flaming.

She’d fancied herself in love with a terrorist!

“He’s a con man, Kim. This is what he does for a living. He convinces people he’s someone else, someone quite different than who he really is. His success depends on how good he is at putting up a front, so you can imagine he works hard at it. He’s had years of practice. He’s very, very good at it. It’s hard for people like me—people trained to spot criminals—to figure out who the bad guys are at times. People like you—”

“Stupid women—?”

“Normal people—nice, law-abiding people—don’t stand much of a chance if somebody like me can’t even figure out who the bad guys are.”

She gave up and started to cry. There was no more holding back, nothing she could do.

Romeo whined and batted at her side with his head, comforting her as best he could; Petunia crawled into her lap and snuggled against her. They really were the sweetest things.

Kim wrapped her arms around Petunia and let Romeo give her a little kiss. Dogs truly didn’t care if their people were stupid. They loved their people anyway. Even stupid people could get lavish, enduring love from dogs.

She should give up on men altogether and go run a kennel or something.

Kim sat there, miserable as could be, sniffling and taking what comfort she could from the dogs. Nick stood like a statue across the room from her, grim-faced and angry.

“I’m sorry,” she said, impatient with herself and hating that he got to see her this way. It was humiliating enough to believe herself in love with a terrorist, but to let him see her falling apart this way only made it worse.

“No, I’m sorry. Sorry he ever got near you. Sorry that people like him exist in this world, and sorry that I haven’t caught him and locked him up, so he can’t terrorize women like you—”

“Women who don’t know any better,” she said.

“No, that is not what I meant.”

Kim buried her face in Petunia’s fur and a worried Romeo tried to lick her tears away.

Some vicious watchdog he made.

She was losing any chance she had to convince Nick to be afraid of the dog.

Not that she needed him to be afraid of the dog anymore.

She believed him about everything.

He was a government agent, tailing her, waiting for her criminal of a boyfriend to show up.

Kim shook her head miserably, unable to see how her life had come to this.

She sniffled, determined to stop crying, to understand exactly what she’d gotten into, so it never, ever happened again.

“Eric,” she said. “Tell me about Eric. I need to know. He’s really a terrorist?”

“We’re not sure. He’s stolen things in the past. Granted, nothing as big as this, but he’s a thief, all right. And there are some vague links between him and suspected terrorists. The whole pirate attack might have been a diversion—”