Neighborly Complications (Stories of Serendipity #1) (4 page)

“Looking for the treasure?” Summer nudged her gently.

Frenchie came for the sink, Skinhead came for the vent hood, and the nice older man came to get the microwave.

“So, you’ve heard the rumor too?” Claire asked, curious as to what the woman knew about the gold.

“Yeah, the source of the treasure varies, anywhere from Confederate gold, to stolen pirate bootie, but everybody says it’s still here somewhere. My nana used to talk about it, especially right before she died…”

“Well, I haven’t found it yet.” Claire said, laughing.

Summer stood. “I hate to leave, but I’ve got to go open my store. I run a bookstore called A Summer Place, downtown. You should stop by if you get bored.”

Claire stood with her. “Thanks for coming by, Summer. And thanks for the goodies.”

“Welcome to the neighborhood. I’ll see you around.” Summer waved as she walked back next door.

Claire went inside to check the progress of the appliance movers. Back in the kitchen, they were installing the sink. It was looking good. Claire thought briefly about hiring Max to remodel the kitchen, thinking that she had stuff to trade. Then she blushed, realizing what she was thinking about trading for a kitchen remodel. Wondering if he would ever tell her his story, she waited for the men to finish before continuing her treasure hunt.

M
ax had seen Bob and Charlie at Claire’s house yesterday, and as much as he knew it was none of his business, he still had a hard time not going over there to check on her. He didn’t know them well, but knew
of
them. He had heard plenty of stories. They were meth-heads and would do just about anything for money for drugs. He was honestly amazed that they were holding a job, although it was probably the perfect job for them. All day long they made deliveries and cased houses for possible break-ins. He felt the need to warn Claire.

And he wanted to see her again.

He was coping with the window thing, managing to stay downstairs until he knew that her light would be out. But he couldn’t stop himself from imagining her, there in her room, right across the hedge from him. And his picture of Katherine.

He parted the azalea bushes that separated their houses, and heard her humming to herself. Her voice was soft and sweet sounding, as she hummed what sounded like an old Glenn Miller ballad.

Interesting
, he thought to himself, as he walked to the back of the house, where he found her pruning the rose bushes back, almost to the ground.

“You are supposed to wait until Valentine’s Day to prune your roses.” He said it softly as he walked up behind her.

She didn’t even look at him, just continued with her task. He wouldn’t have known she had noticed him, except she’d quit humming.

“String of Pearls?” He asked her.

“Yeah,” she said simply, still not turning to him.

“You’re cutting too much off. They’ll never grow back.”

Finally, she stopped and turned to look at him, standing with her dainty little hand on her hip, eyes full of fire that sent a spark to Max’s groin. He had been right; they were hazel.

“Did you come back to make another offer on the house?”

“Um…No. I just stopped by to check on you.”

Her eyes flashed, then she looked at her feet, shuffling them back and forth. Her old sneakers amused him for some reason. They used to be white, but she’d painted them bright green, and he found himself utterly intrigued by this creature standing awkwardly in front of him. “Why would I need checking on?” Her eyes rose to meet his, defiance shining bright.

“Well, you let a bunch of strange men inside your house yesterday, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but to his ears, it came out sounding that way, and he regretted it instantly. But he was too late. He’d angered her.

She stomped directly to him and stuck out her finger, poking at his chest. “I had stuff delivered by professionals. Women do that every day in this lovely country of ours. What the hell is your problem?”

He grabbed her finger, before it could poke through to his spine. “My problem is,
I
know those guys, and they’re bad news. That’s all. Just make sure you lock up your house when you leave, now that they know where you live. Jees, woman. What is
your
problem?” He hadn’t meant to, but he was in her face, and talking louder than necessary. Something about Claire got under his skin.

Max watched as her eyes darted skyward, as if a memory were being replayed in her mind. “My problem is guys like you who think that women are all helpless little simpletons, who can’t do anything without the help of big strong men.”

He released her hand, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Claire. I never meant to give that impression. I believe you are capable — of a lot of things. That’s obvious to me.” He had quieted his voice but was still in her face. He couldn’t bring himself to take a step back, as he should. He knew he was invading her space, but something she was emitting, some sort of radar, pheromones, whatever, was humming to him.

Her anger was a palpable presence in the yard. He could almost taste it. Her chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths, and her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes flashed dangerously as they watered slightly, a vivid green that melted into brown pools around the dilated pupils. Was she crying? Had he made her that angry? Beautiful.

“Why are you here then? Checking on me? Sounds like you don’t think I’m capable, certainly not capable of handling
deliveries
.”

Of its own accord, Max’s hand brushed a wisp of hair off her cheek, and tucked it behind her ear. “You’re right. It doesn’t seem like it, does it?” Contrition filled his movements, and he wished he could start over somehow. Always wanting to go back in time. He rolled his eyes at the thought, willing it to go away.

He heard her suck in a breath and wondered if she was as attracted to him, as he was to her. She answered his question by grasping his hand and throwing it down as if his touch burned her.

Maybe it did.

“Please don’t touch me again, Max. In fact, please don’t come back over here without an invitation.”

Stung, he mumbled a curse before turning to leave. Before reaching the hedges, he stopped and tossed over his shoulder, “Get some fucking curtains on your bedroom window.”

He didn’t have to turn around to see the blush climb over her cheeks.

C
laire finished pruning the roses in record time. Anger did that to her. She snipped stems, pulled weeds, and turned dirt with renewed ire. For some reason, Max had wormed his way under her skin, and she didn’t like it one bit. He made her think of Tom.

Tom was gorgeous, charming, and a complete snake. They’d planned a September wedding, in the hopes that cooler weather would bring more guests. Tom joked that more guests meant more presents. That should have been a clue. So should his desire to not have anything to do with the planning stages.

So, Claire had planned the entire wedding, paying for it herself, knowing that Tom would support her when they were bound together by God and the law. For no man to tear asunder.

And then he’d got caught with his pants down. Literally.

Instead of accepting that he’d screwed up, he turned it around on Claire. He’s said she wasn’t relationship material, she was too independent for any man to take care of her. That was the problem between them, not his own indiscretions. Her head knew he was just diverting attention, but her bruised heart wouldn’t listen to her mind.

After working in her garden, Claire got in the shower, excited to have hot water. She luxuriated in it. The stream of hot water cascading down her head, running over her shoulders, down her body was absolute heaven. After spending all week jumping in to get wet, turning off the water, soaping up, and then jumping in to rinse off as quickly as possible in the freezing cold water, this was paradise. The mirror was actually fogging up.
Awesome.
As she was sitting on the floor of the tub, cleaning out from under her toenails, while the conditioner sat for the required two minutes in her hair, she saw a shadow pass outside the shower curtain.

Despite the heat of the shower, Claire felt chilled.

“Hello?” That was dumb. No psycho-killer in his right mind would answer that. Suddenly, Claire remembered Max’s warning about the guys that had delivered yesterday, and she realized she hadn’t locked the back door behind her when she came inside.

She peeked out the edge of the curtain to see that whoever had been in there was gone. Sighing a relieved sigh, Claire gingerly stepped out of the shower.

A soft giggle sounded from somewhere behind her, and Claire screamed. She looked at the mirror and saw a perfect circle drawn into the fog on the glass where there had only been fog moments before. She screamed again and ran out of the room.

Her goal was to get down the stairs and to the back door and out of the house before the psycho-killer could catch her. Never mind that naked women always got the axe first in all those horrible movies. She couldn’t stop screaming. It was like she was possessed and couldn’t clamp her mouth shut.

She stumbled down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw Max coming up them, panic in his eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She screamed at him. Three steps down from her, his eyes were at eye-level with her breasts, and she watched his pupils dilate, turning his eyes a rich chocolatey brown. Then he looked at his feet.

Claire immediately moved cover herself, finding her hands weren’t adequate.

“Well?! What the fuck, Max?”

Quietly, still looking at his feet, Max replied, “You were screaming. And you left your door unlocked.”

Claire’s voice chilled with dawning realization. “You were in my bathroom.”

Max’s eyes snapped up at the statement, and she saw disbelief on his face before he snapped his gaze back down to his feet.

“No. I was working on my deck, and I heard you scream like you were being skinned alive. I came running.”

“You are unbelievable. You are so far up my ass, I can’t even breathe. Beautiful, yes, but holy shit! Can you be more controlling? I don’t even have anything to do with you besides live next door, and you’re like a man obsessed! Sneaking into my house to prove a point about my locks? Are you for real?!”

“I wasn’t in your bathroom, Claire.” His voice was quiet, strained.

“Then who the fuck was?”

“How do you know anybody was?” He turned to walk back down the stairs.

“You don’t believe me?” Max stopped descending the stairs but didn’t turn.

“Will you get dressed, please?”

“Get the hell out of here, Max.”

Without raising his eyes, he asked plaintively, “Will you at least let me look around and make sure that nobody’s still here? If someone was in your bathroom…”

She didn’t let him finish. If he was in her bathroom, of course he would try to deflect attention by looking for the “intruder.” “NO!” She didn’t really believe he was the one in her bathroom. Something about the blank look he’d had on his face when he’d said he wasn’t there told her he was telling the truth. The sudden tension radiating from him, at her accusations, made her realize he was telling the truth.

Silently, he turned and walked down the remaining steps before turning to look up at her briefly. She tightened her grip on her lady bits, but the desire in his eyes was painful to look at. She was afraid it was mirrored on her own face.

At the bottom of the steps, he turned to walk around the bannister when Claire realized he was right. She was about to be inside the house alone with somebody else.

“Wait.” She called out, torn between the desire for him to get out, and the desire for him to protect her. He stopped without turning. “I’m sorry. Will you wait around while I look?”

His shoulders sagged slightly, and his voice was hoarse as he said, “Sure. I’ll wait here. Unless you want me with you.”

She didn’t know what she wanted. Part of her still thought he might be messing with her, trying to scare her for some reason, but if he wasn’t then that meant there was somebody else in the house with her. Somebody with a girlish giggle? A shiver ran down her spine.

“Just stay there for a minute and let me get dressed, then you can come up.”

She turned and ran up the stairs to her room, pulling her arms through the sleeves of a robe and cinching the belt in one quick move, her eyes never slowing in their perusal of her surroundings. She called out, “Okay! You can come up!”

The old house nearly shook with the treads of his feet, as Max ran up the stairs. When he got to the top, his eyes were a little wild, and his face was flushed, but Claire ignored it, choosing instead to glue herself to his back as he walked through her upstairs rooms. He checked the closets, behind doors, and even took a peak up in her attic, before checking around downstairs.

After he’d looked everywhere, with Claire following his footsteps, he turned to her, concern still evident in his face.

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Yeah, me neither.” She felt a little foolish, but she
knew
there had been somebody in her house while she was showering. Just because they hadn’t found anybody didn’t mean that wasn’t true, and she still wasn’t totally convinced it wasn’t Max himself. Although why he would want to scare her so badly was beyond her wildest imaginings. “Thanks for looking around for me.”

“No problem.” He put his hands in his shorts pocket and rocked back on his heels, watching her. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“Will you call the police?”

“And tell them what? I’ve just moved into this spooky old house, and now I’m seeing stuff? Right.” She clutched the lapels of her robe tighter. “No. I’m going to get dressed and get out for a while. I need some new furniture. Now seems like as good a time as any to go shopping.” She really didn’t want to be in the house right now. She needed to look at something different.

“Lock your doors when you leave?”

“Sure, Dad. Whatever you say.” The stress was getting to her. She didn’t mean to sound so bitchy after he’d just searched her house for her. “I’m sorry. Thank you for looking around. I feel better.” Her attempt at contrition felt feeble at best.