Mr. Right Next Door (5 page)

But no. Cleo ignored her completely and went to sniff at Nick’s left leg instead.

“Cleo, no,” Kim whispered. “He’s tired. Poor guy. He didn’t sleep well.”

But Cleo couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to meet her or fuss over her. Shy, she was not.

Before Kim could stop her, the cat jumped up into Nick’s lap.

He came awake in a flash with a menacing-sounding growl.

Nick, not the cat, growling.

His hand was at his left side in a flash, searching but unable to find the cat.

That was odd.

Cleo weighed twenty pounds if she weighed an ounce. How hard could it be to find her on someone’s lap?

Kim watched as Nick’s right hand fumbled around on his side, near his left shoulder, while the cat stood up on all fours, back arched, hissing in Nick’s face.

“What the hell?” Nick said, pulling off his sunglasses and throwing them down, breathing hard and staring down at the startled cat.

“Rrrrraaarrrr!” the cat howled.

Kim could practically see the cat’s claws sinking into Nick’s lap in what had to be truly unfortunate places.

Ouch.

“It’s okay. It’s just the cat,” she said.

He looked over at her with the same kind of expression he’d used upon finding the cat in his lap, like he couldn’t quite believe she was that close to him and he hadn’t known it. Like he didn’t quite know where he was or didn’t believe what his own eyes were telling him.

Had he been drinking or something? Maybe taking some pain medication for his shoulder?

Kim looked at him with genuine concern.

He scowled back at her.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No, I am not all right,” he said, enunciating each word carefully and distinctly, like he didn’t quite trust his own powers of speech. “What the hell is going on?”

“You fell asleep,” she said, using her best calm-down-the-panicking-kindergarteners voice on him, because he looked about as freaked out as those kids did on the first day of school when their mommies left. “You’re on the patio at Mrs. Baker’s house. Remember?”

He looked like he thought she was spinning lies that he wasn’t about to buy, but then did a slow, careful study of the backyard, ending up with his gaze locked with Cleo’s, his expression one of a man who might never have seen a cat before.

Cleo, for her part, gave him a regal stare, as if he were a peasant ignoring the needs of his queen, who was ready to be fussed over. The arch came slowly out of her back. Kim thought the cat sheathed her claws, hoped so for Nick’s sake. Cleo tiptoed around in a circle on his lap, picking her spot ever so carefully, then settled down against him once more and waited, looking at him as if he might be a complete imbecile.

“Rrrraaarrrr,” she said demandingly, then proceeded to wriggle around until she was lying on her back, paws curled up in the air, presenting him with her huge, furry belly.

Nick looked even more insulted than the cat.

“She just wants you to pet her,” Kim said.

“Yeah, well I want a lot of things that I don’t think I’m going to get today.”

But his hand settled carefully along the cat’s belly just the same.

He didn’t seem to have any trouble controlling his hand now, Kim noted.

How odd.

What had he been doing before?

He didn’t pet the cat. It was more a hand to hold the cat in place, Kim decided.

Cleo once again shot him her you-can’t-possibly-be-that-stupid, you-must-know-exactly-what-I-expect look.

It did no good.

Nick looked over at Kim, like a man trying to figure out how he came to be in this place, how she came to be beside him and what might have gone on before the cat jumped in his lap.

“You fell asleep,” she said again. “Remember?”

“That’s impossible,” he claimed.

“Why? You don’t sleep?”

“Not in a public place,” he claimed.

So…he had a phobia about sleeping in public?

“Then you were just relaxing with your eyes closed for quite a while,” she said, again as she might explain to a five-year-old. You just couldn’t argue with some people. In these cases she tended to simply state her position and move on. She wasn’t that invested in when or where the man slept, so she was more amused than anything else by his whole attitude.

Mrs. Baker would just be glad he wasn’t dead.

Cleo gave another little roar and wriggled around into a more comfortable position. She was clearly not pleased about the lack of attention being shown her.

“
It
sank its claws into me,” Nick said.

“Well, you startled her.”

“I think she’s clearly the one who startled me,” he said.

“Well, maybe she thought you were just relaxing with your eyes closed, not sleeping. Maybe she knows you don’t sleep in public, so she thought it was perfectly safe to jump up there and not have to worry about pulling you abruptly out of sound sleep and startling you,” Kim reasoned.

Nick looked even more annoyed.

She fought the urge to laugh. He was just out of sorts, but his confusion was so complete and seemed so genuine, she found it amusing. He didn’t seem like a man who was often confused or caught so unaware.

“Her name is Cleo. She’s Mrs. Baker’s. I’m surprised she hasn’t granted you an audience before now. She usually can’t wait for everyone to admire her.”

Cleo purred contentedly now that she’d found her spot snuggled into the furrow of his thighs.

“No claws,” Nick ordered.

“You might as well just pet her. She won’t leave until you do and I’m betting she’s more stubborn than you,” Kim told him.

“You think I’m going to be held hostage by a cat?”

Kim just laughed.

For some reason the sights and sounds of Nick Cavanaugh annoyed, amused her.

“Did you need something?” he asked, as if he were still trying to figure things out.

“Actually, I just came to make sure you weren’t dying.”

Oh, that thoroughly confused him.

Kim could tell.

And found herself enjoying the moment even more.

He looked once again like he had when he’d been startled into consciousness by the cat.

“You wouldn’t happen to be one of those people who are addicted to coffee, would you?” she tried.

“What?”

“One of those people who simply can’t function without a few cups first thing in the morning? The kind of person you don’t even want to speak to until they’ve had a hit of caffeine?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I know you didn’t sleep well, but surely—”

“What do you know about how I slept?” he barked at her.

Okay, time for the soothe-the-five-year-old thing again. “Mrs. Baker said you didn’t sleep well—”

“She talks to you about her guests’ sleeping habits?” he asked incredulously.

“She was concerned. She heard you up pacing all night and then with you complaining about being ill—”

“I am not ill,” he said, doing that enunciate-every-word-with-a-hard-and-distinct-beat thing again.

“You told her you were when you begged her for a room. She told me so—”

“So she does tell you everything about her guests?”

“No. She was worried. She was afraid you weren’t just asleep out here. That you’d collapsed or something.”

His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Kim couldn’t tell if he was more insulted or furious.

She fought to hold back a huge grin and added, “She just didn’t want you dying in your sleep back here and no one noticing.”

He cocked his head to the right, as if he might hear the words differently with his head at a different angle.

Kim giggled. She couldn’t help it. “It would be a bad omen if her first guest died and she’s big on omens and signs and things.”

“So this is all about some weird superstition she has for the inn?”

“No. She’s concerned about you, too. She’s a nice lady.”

“I. Am. Not. Dying,” he said rather loudly.

Cleo got up on all fours, gave him her highly indignant look, jumped onto the patio and ran into the bushes.

“Sorry,” Kim said.

“Do I look like a man who’s dying?”

“No. I didn’t say that—”

“I’m thirty-eight years old, for God’s sake. I’m not dying!”

“Okay. Sorry—”

“I may be aching in a few places, sore in a few others.” He rubbed at his right shoulder as he said it. “But I am not falling apart. Not yet.”

“Okay. Good.”

His hand fell to his side, no difficulties controlling it that Kim could see, and she felt bad now about enjoying his little temper tantrum so much. She put her hand on his shoulder, because touch could have a powerful calming effect. She used that with the kindergarteners, too.

His shoulder muscles were in knots. She rubbed her thumb lightly along the tightness there.

He threw her a look once again like he’d just been jerked out of a sound sleep.

Did the man have trouble waking up?

Maybe it was some kind of superstrong pain reliever whose effect hadn’t yet worn off.

“You poor thing,” she said. “What did you do to yourself?”

He was looking down at her hand on his shoulder like he had trouble believing she was touching him.

Drugs, she decided. Had to be.

He must be in so much pain.

“I fell down,” he said. The kindergartener words coming out of a big, tall, grown-up man struck her as funny once again. A fall didn’t seem like enough to do lasting damage to a grown man.

“Okay,” Kim said, determined not to laugh once more. He’d looked so insulted when she’d done that before. “A long way down?”

“No. I just had help getting there.”

Kim nodded. “You got into a fight?” Bloody nose? Grass-stained pants? Boys will be boys?

“Not exactly,” he said, fountain of information that he was.

His muscles tensed even more under her light touch.

So, he’d fallen down and gotten a boo-boo? And she supposed there’d been no one around to kiss it and make it better.

Because he seemed to be a man in desperate need of soothing and some serious caretaking.

“Well, then…it’s good that you came here to rest,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and made a sound of disgust, turned his head to the side and swore softly under his breath. “You really think I’m falling apart?”

“No. Just that you’re hurt, and I’m betting that you don’t often get to slow down and rest. That you’re not happy about it.”

“No, I am not happy,” he said, agreeing with her for once.

“Well, we’ll try to make the time you spend here as pleasant and relaxing as possible,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Thank you,” he said, still looking all out of sorts.

What an odd man.

Mrs. Baker picked that moment to push open the door and walk onto the patio with a tea tray, an overly bright smile on her face, as if she knew already that things were not going well on the patio, that her guest found her concern an annoyance at best, more likely an out-and-out insult.

Mrs. Baker shot Kim a panicked look.

Kim shook her head.
No, it had not gone well. No, do not ask how he’s feeling. Do not hover. Do not offer any sympathy.

She tried to convey all of that with just a look and must have done well, because Mrs. Baker now seemed panicked about what to do.

Kim took the tray and sat it on a small table at Nick’s side.

“Thank you so much,” Kim said. “I have to run, but I bet Nick would really enjoy some nice, quiet time on the patio with his morning tea.”

“Of course.” Mrs. Baker shot her a grateful look and practically ran back inside.

“Thank you,” Nick said when she was gone.

He was rubbing at his head, as if that hurt, too, now.

The poor man really was falling apart completely, no matter what he said.

“No problem,” she said, staying on her feet, ready to make her escape, too.

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

She nodded. “Try not to grumble at Mrs. Baker. She’s nervous about opening the inn and she cries easily when she’s nervous.”

“I’ll do my best not to drive her to tears,” he said dryly.

That was it.

Kim escaped, shaking her head, puzzling over him.

What a truly odd man.

W
ith both of them gone, Nick could hear nothing but Harry laughing hilariously in his ear.

Laughing like there was no tomorrow.

Like if the world came to an end in that moment, Harry could die a happy man.

Nick swore long and loud, then turned around in his chair to make sure Mrs. Baker wasn’t spying on him.

The woman was a damned snoop.

She’d hovered outside his door last night after she’d caught him pacing. He was sure of it. He had a sixth sense about these things and, besides, he heard her breathing out there.

“Dammit, Harry,” he said. “You let me fall asleep out here and didn’t say one damned word?”

“I figured you needed the rest,” Harry said, still chuckling. “Hard night, Nickie?”

Pun intended, Nick was sure.

“Shut up, Harry.”

“Great view, huh? I knew it.”

“Harry, I swear to God, before this is over, I’m going to strangle you—”

“I heard she took a bath last night.”

From Nick’s own notes, no doubt, which Harry would have seen when he came on duty this morning.

Not only did Nick have to watch her, he had to write up a report on what he’d seen and e-mail it to Harry.

Not how much of her skin he’d seen or the way her own hands had run over her luscious body. Not that he needed a report to remember that.

“So…what does she wear when she gets out of her bath, Nick? Come on. Tell me. I can take it.”

Nick just growled.

“Those little baby-doll pajama things? I just love those. I put ten bucks on those—”

“You’re betting on what she sleeps in?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of boring here. I don’t have the view you do. What does she wear?”

“You have the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy. You know that, don’t you?”

Harry laughed again. “And you don’t? You weren’t wondering what she’d be wearing when she tucked herself in? You weren’t enjoying the view? You are one lucky son of a bitch, you know that, don’t you, Nickie?”

“Yeah, I know it,” Nick said.

He was lucky she hadn’t given him a heart attack last night.

Did men his age have heart attacks?

He thought they might, in cases of extreme stress or maybe if they had some rare genetic disorder.

Nick wasn’t sure his heart was tough enough to make it through this assignment. He was still sweating just thinking of her coming out of the bath last night and he hadn’t slept a damned bit for thinking of it, either.

Which meant it was no surprise that he’d fallen asleep out here this morning.

Except now she thought he was some kind of cripple. An invalid. A man in danger of dropping dead on Mrs. Baker’s patio.

Nick swore once again.

“How old do I look to you, Harry?”

Harry started laughing, again, so hard that he couldn’t talk.

“Oh, hell, never mind,” Nick said.

“No, no, no. I understand, believe me. We all hit that age.”

Nick was afraid to ask, but forced himself to. “What age?”

“The invisible-to-women age.”

“Harry, she saw me. She might think I’m falling apart, but she definitely saw me.”

“No, I mean as a man. You know. Someone they check out automatically to see if they’re interested. We all hit a certain age where women, attractive women of a certain age, just don’t notice us anymore in that way. They might see us, but they don’t see us. You know?”

Oh, hell. Nick was afraid he did.

He was staring and panting after a woman who saw him as nothing but a non-man? An un-man? An old man!

Nick swore long and loud.

She did. She saw him as nothing but someone who might croak on her next-door-neighbor’s patio, bringing on all sorts of bad luck or bad omens or something like that. But nothing of him as a man, except as a broken-down one.

“Yeah, it hurts, doesn’t it?” Harry said. “Especially with a looker like her.”

“She’s twenty-four, Harry,” Nick said, trying to salvage what he could of his pride. “Men our age running around with twenty-four-year-olds look ridiculous, you know?”

“Hell, do you think I’d care how it looked to anyone else, if she’d have me? You think I’d be worried about how anybody but her looked, under those circumstances?”

Okay, Harry had a point.

A good point.

But not one Nick wanted to hear at the moment.

“Just tell me where she went, okay?”

They had to get somewhere on this investigation. So they could wrap it up and get out of here. So Nick didn’t have to watch her apartment while she took her bath and while she walked out of the bathroom after taking her bath, wrapped up in nothing but that robe, and then while she rubbed lotion all over herself, looking like a male fantasy come to life.

He had to get out of here.

She went to the park, five blocks away.

Harry laughed when Nick got in his car and drove. To get there faster, Nick claimed. Harry laughed when Nick flinched as he climbed into the tiny convertible, the midlife-crisis mobile, as Harry had taken to calling it. Perfect for Nick, of course. He laughed as Nick tried unsuccessfully not to limp on his bad knee walking down the path into the park.

It was the slope, Nick told himself. It put more pressure on the knee than he needed right now. And he’d slept funny, when he’d slept, and woken up with the knee throbbing.

Yeah, that was his excuse and he was sticking to it.

When this was over, he was never working with Harry again.

Nick tried not to grimace as he spotted her, standing by a big, round fountain in the middle of the park. She was juggling a notebook, a pen and a tape measure, not too successfully, frowning as she tried to jot something down.

The sun was shining overhead, bright and way too cheery, as far as Nick was concerned. His head hurt. His knee hurt. And he had to talk to her without scowling, without sending her scrambling to get away from him and, hopefully, without picturing her in her robe, her hands running over the bare skin underneath it.

He scowled once again.

“Scary, Nick,” Harry said into his ear. “Scary, scary. Remember, don’t want to scare her.”

Harry was a magician. He was everywhere at once. All-seeing, all-knowing. And annoying as hell.

Nick hit a button, releasing him from the link that piped Harry directly into his head.

Little Miss I’m-In-Love-With-A-Terrorist chose that moment to look up from the notebook she’d been scribbling in to see Nick and frown.

It was quick, gone almost before it began, but Nick saw it and couldn’t blame her for it. He didn’t really want to be anywhere near himself, either, not in this mood.

Unfortunately, nobody asked him what he wanted to do today.

He was stuck with her.

He smiled. He could do that when it was absolutely necessary.

“Small world, huh?” he tried.

She frowned up at him. “Are you following me or something?”

“Who?” Nick looked around, feigning innocence as best he could. It wasn’t his best emotion, but he thought he could do a reasonable facsimile when absolutely necessary. “Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re the only one here. You and I are the only ones here.”

“No. I…I…” He looked around for some kind of answer and his gaze landed on a sign that said Magnolia Falls with an arrow pointing off to the right. “I came to look at the falls.”

Were there falls?

He hoped so, vaguely remembered something about them in the briefing report he’d read last night. The one he was supposed to have been studying while he made like a Peeping Tom staring into her window.

She put her hand on her hips and cocked her head to the side, beautiful blond hair catching the light as she did so.

“You came to look at the falls?”

“Yes. I like…waterfalls. I mean…who doesn’t like waterfalls?”

She looked at him like he might be the kind to enjoy tearing the wings off butterflies or something equally sadistic. Crossing her arms in front of her, she said, “With your bad knee, bad back and bad shoulder, you decided to take a hike this morning?”

Nick, all but on death’s doorstep, gritted his teeth, imagining Mrs. Baker gossiping about his litany of health issues with a superbly-shaped twenty-four-year-old. “My doctor said exercise was a good idea for the knee.”

As if a stroll in the damned park was something he’d ever consider exercise.

She obviously thought it would be to a broken-down, old man like him. Because she accepted his explanation right away.

“Oh. Well, they’re just past that clump of trees, but it’s about a mile from here. If you’d parked on the other side of the park, you would have only been about fifty feet away from one of the nicest views of the falls.”

Nick nodded. “Must have gotten turned around on my directions.”

Now she could think he was feebleminded as well as feeble-bodied.

Great.

“Look, I’m sorry about this morning,” he said. “You just startled me. You and the cat. And I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, but that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have taken my bad mood out on you.”

“Is that an apology?” she asked.

He hesitated, not sure of the right answer. “Yes?”

She laughed.

Nick frowned. “The apology needs work, too?”

“No. It’s fine. You just reminded me of someone. One of my students.”

She looked like she made a fine private joke, but Nick knew—she taught elementary school kids.

He reminded her of a little kid? Worse, a little kid in a snit?

And he couldn’t even let her know that he knew she was insulting him.

“I remind you of someone who annoys you?” he said, trying not to sound too peeved. He had to try to get her to like him well enough to chitchat with him about the love of her life, the pirate, after all.

“And amuses me,” she said, blinking up at him with eyes that were as clear-blue as the sky above their heads.

“Oh,” he said.

What could he say?

She got to insult him if she wanted to, while he had to make nice to her and try not to think of her nearly naked. Annoying her would probably not help in that regard. He wondered if Harry had a parabolic mike on them and had picked up the entire conversation. Or if Harry read lips. Nick often suspected the man did. Or had some kind of mystical powers when it came to snooping. Harry knew way too much.

Nick feared he was scowling again.

Kim Cassidy was laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re just…well, you’re a funny man.”

“Funny as in strange?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I was thinking more amusing. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic all the time or just honest.”

“I’ve been accused of having a pessimistic streak and a very dry sense of humor,” Nick admitted.

Which amused her all the more.

“Yes. That!” she said. “Are you annoyed with me or just stating the obvious? I can’t begin to tell.”

Again, Nick had no idea what the right answer might be and he needed the right answer. He needed to stay here with her and find out what was going on with her and lover boy.

“I’m trying not to be…annoying,” he said finally.

“Okay.”

“It doesn’t come easy to me some days.”

She nodded. At least she wasn’t laughing now. She was looking at him like she might feel sorry for him, which he liked even less but probably suited his purpose better.

What the hell was he supposed to say now?

“Nice fountain.” It was all he could come up with.

She was standing by the thing, after all. Sketching it, from what he could see of the pad of paper in her hand.

“It’s my summer project,” she said, flipping through the sketchbook and then turning it to face him, showing him drawings of designs for the bottom of what looked like this fountain. “We’re going to design and install a mosaic on the bottom and maybe on the sidewalk around the edges of the fountain.”

“We?”

“Me and a bunch of teenagers who managed to flunk an introductory art class and were sentenced to summer school.”

“They flunked an introductory art class?”

Kim nodded, a hand resting on the outside wall of the fountain, assessing it with a critical eye.

It was about fifteen feet in diameter, round and shallow, made of weathered concrete with something that looked like a cartoon fairy on top. Or maybe a mermaid. Who could tell? Nick wasn’t exactly an art connoisseur.

“You can imagine, they’re less than enthusiastic about being in class with me this summer,” she said. “I thought being outside, having lots of mallets and being able to pound glass into little pieces might hold their attention, so I talked the city council and the school district into letting us redo the fountain.”

Nick frowned, couldn’t help it. “Are any of them violent? Because being around them with mallets and broken glass—”

“They’re kids who flunked art, not criminals,” she claimed. “Okay…some of them might have been in a few minor skirmishes, but nothing serious.”

“Define
nothing serious,
” he said.

“Now you sound like my brother.”

“Good for him. You should listen to him.”

She got a stubborn look on her face. An annoyed look. And damned if it wasn’t adorable.

“If I listened to my brother, I’d never go anywhere and I’d never do anything—”

“Good for him,” Nick said again, then knew this was as good an opening as he was ever going to get. “Which reminds me, were you really attacked by pirates?”

“No. Not really,” she claimed. “The ship I was on was attacked by pirates, but they didn’t even get on board and they didn’t get anywhere near me. Someone at the diner told you?”

He nodded. It was true. They had. They’d told him fifteen different stories about her and the pirates before he’d lost count of them and given up on remembering them, sure there wasn’t the slightest bit of truth to any of them.

Which he realized could work for him now.

“Actually, they told me at least fifteen different versions of the story of you and the pirates,” he admitted. “It was all very confusing and I’d swear most of their stories consisted of nothing but outlandish lies.”

“Small-town living at it’s best,” she said.

“So do I get to hear the truth? From you? Because I figure there must be some shred of truth to it and, who knows, we might all need to be on the lookout for pirates one day?”