Nerd Gone Wild (10 page)

And there was always the danger that Kurt had given the Anchorage PI the slip and driven up here in some badass Hummer. Or hired someone else to do it. Mitch didn’t have a handle on how much of a threat Kurt posed, but at the very least the guy would probably try to get his hands on some of Ally’s money. At the worst, he’d decide to eliminate her and go for the whole pie.

Mitch flopped back on the double bed and wondered how to spend the next couple of hours. Finally he resorted to his old standby and pulled a worn deck of cards from a pocket in his suitcase. Sure, he had solitaire and a bunch of other games on his laptop, but he liked the tactile experience of handling cards.

At one time he’d toyed with the idea of becoming a professional gambler. With casinos sprouting up on every reservation, a gambler didn’t have to headquarter in Vegas or Atlantic City anymore. Mitch liked figuring percentages and reading his opponents, some of the same skills he used as a PI. In the end he’d ditched the idea because he didn’t like cigarette smoke.

But he still loved a good game of poker. Unfortunately, he needed someone to play against for that, so he was reduced to solitaire. Shuffling the cards, he laid them out on the bed and started to play.

He was about halfway through his second game when the noises coming from Ally’s room changed. Her bed-springs squeaked, footsteps headed for the bathroom, and light shone through the sizable gap between the door and the splintered frame. Ally started brushing her teeth.

Turning over another three cards, Mitch continued with his game. Sort of. He wasn’t really paying attention to it anymore. Instead he listened to Ally, who didn’t let the water run while she brushed. She might have more money than God, but she conserved water. He liked that.

Because she was brushing her teeth, he couldn’t help thinking how straight and white they were. Of course, they would be the best teeth orthodontia could buy. She wouldn’t have been allowed to grow up with any flaws. Yet he was amazed that she wasn’t more high-maintenance as a result of all that pampering.

He went right past a five of hearts that would have played on the six of spades because he fell into a daydream about her lips, which at the moment would be decorated in toothpaste foam. She had a great mouth, the top lip creating a perfect archer’s bow and the bottom one full with a slight pouty look. Delicious.

By the time he realized he’d checked out of his solitaire game, he had a mishmash of hearts and diamonds in one of his suited piles. With a snort of disgust, he gathered up the cards, shuffled, and laid out a new hand. He needed to stop obsessing about Ally’s finer points. And speaking of her finer points, her breasts were two extremely fine points. She—

“Do you cheat?”

He glanced toward the bathroom door. She’d pressed one eye to the crack and was watching him.

“No, I don’t cheat.” He tried to gauge whether she could see the recorder he’d been using to listen in to her activities. He didn’t think so. The angle was wrong. “Do you cheat?”

“Never. If you’re gonna cheat, what’s the point? You haven’t really beat old Sol, then, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”

Busted.
He thought fast. “My eyesight’s okay up close. I need the glasses for distance.”

“But whenever I came into your office back in Bel Air, and you were working on the computer, you had on your glasses.”

That was part of the look your grandmother wanted me to have.
“They have a special, nearly invisible tint that helps with the screen.” He wondered if she’d swallow that whopper.

“I see.”

He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. “At least that’s what the optometrist told me. I’m not sure it makes much difference, so sometimes I forget to put them on.” Maybe that would cover his lapses.

“So you’re playing cards?”

“For a while.”

“Can I play? I’m not even slightly sleepy, and I’m going stir-crazy in my room.”

“Um, sure.” He hopped off the bed, headed for the receiver. “Let me get the door.”

“I can do it.”

He had about three seconds to flip the switch on the recorder and throw a shirt over it. He turned toward the doorway right as she came through it wearing red plaid pajamas and a pair of thermal socks.

As a sexual turn-on, her outfit should have been a miserable flop. The flannel was completely opaque and clownishly baggy. But it looked soft, the sort of jammies that women wore over bare skin. No underwear. That was enough to jump-start Mitch’s battery.

“Should we just play on the bed?” she asked.

His brain stalled. Oh, yeah, they could certainly play on the bed. Forget the cards.

“Unless you think the floor makes more sense. The bed might be a little bouncy.”

Bounce could be good. Getting a little rebound action going could put some real punch in the action.

“Mitchell?” She waved a hand in front of his face. “You’re spacing out on me. Maybe you’re too tired to play cards, after all. Listen, if you want to go to bed, that’s fine.”

Oh, he did, but not alone. “I’m not tired. I was listening to the wind. It hasn’t let up out there. We may be snowbound for a while.”

“God, I hope not. That would be so frustrating.”

No kidding. Especially considering that he couldn’t let himself get involved with the woman standing there in her fiendishly sensuous flannel. “Let’s play on the bed,” he said, and managed to say it in a normal voice, as if he’d never thought those words meant anything other than a simple card game.

“Good choice.” She climbed up and sat cross-legged near the end of the bed. “It’ll be warmer than the floor.” She waited for him to sit down at the pillow end. “Now what shall we play?”

Oh, man, this was going to be hell. “Poker?” The suggestion came out as a croak. Immediately he thought about strip poker.

“I’m not very good.”

Even better. He could literally beat the pants off her.

“But I think it’s a fun game. We played at the sorority.”

“Okay, then poker it is.”

“Don’t we need something to count as chips?”

It was an indication of how rattled he was that he hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll bet Betsy has kitchen matches.” A little trip downstairs might give him a chance to get his libido under control. He slid off the bed. “Let’s go see.”

“Good idea.” She followed him to the door. “Wait. Get your glasses. We left it pretty dark, and I don’t want you falling down the stairs because you misjudged a step.”

“Right.” He had to pick up his orange parka to locate his glasses, but he managed to keep the recorder out of sight in the process.

They left his room and started down the darkened stairs, Ally going first.

“I haven’t heard Betsy come back, have you?” she asked.

“No.” But he’d been so busy listening in on Ally that he might have missed the sound of the front door.

“I don’t think she’s back. I wonder if that means she’s staying at Clyde’s for the night.”

“Could be. Let’s not think about that.”

Ally laughed. “I can’t help it.”

“Personally, I’m blocking those images.” Besides that, reminding himself that Betsy might not come home also reminded him that it could be just the two of them here tonight. Well, two people, but Mitch’s penis seemed to have a mind of its own, so he’d almost count it as a third party to the gathering.

“I feel like a kid sneaking downstairs to raid the refrigerator,” Ally said.

Mitch felt like a man ready to seduce a woman in a darkened kitchen. So he fumbled for the light switch and they both stood there blinking in the glare from overhead.

“Refrigerators are best raided in the dark,” Ally said.

“I know, but we’re not raiding the refrigerator.”

“Maybe we should. I’ve always wanted to.”

“So you’ve never done it?” Now that he thought about it, he had a tough time imagining how that would work in the Garrett mansion.

“I didn’t dare. We had security cameras, you know.”

He did know. He’d recommended an update. “Somebody would have busted you?”

“Not in the sense that I would have been punished, but I never could have completed a successful raid. And I would have been gently reminded to buzz the maid’s quarters so that someone could fix me whatever snack I wanted. Then I would be asked not to wander around the place in the middle of the night because it got the security staff’s undies in a twist.”

“That all makes sense.”

“But it tends to take the spontaneity out of life.”

“Yeah, I suppose it does.” He tried to sympathize, and wondered if he’d trade all his refrigerator raids for the chance to do whatever he wanted with his life and not have to worry about making a living at it… ever. Probably.

“I know that look,” Ally said.

“What look?” He quickly erased all envious thoughts.

“I’ve seen it a million times on the faces of my friends. You’re thinking that I have nothing to complain about, and you’d be right.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “But you can’t blame a girl for wanting to stage a refrigerator raid when she has the chance.”

Her wistful expression got him right where he lived. “Let me find the matches first. Then we’ll douse the lights and raid the refrigerator.”

Her smile widened. “Mitchell, you’re not half as stuffy as I thought you were.”

That meant his disguise was slipping. And now that he’d agreed to this midnight snack, he could see the card game evolving into a full-blown party. If she spent too much time in his room, she might find his recorder. She might even, given enough time, find his gun.

But she’d just handed him the perfect excuse to move the festivities to her room. “I’m at least as stuffy as you think I am,” he said. “We’re eating this late-night snack in your room because I can’t stand crumbs in my bed.”

* * *

Well, so he was persnickety about crumbs in his bed. Ally didn’t think that was so unusual. She didn’t know how she felt about that subject, having never slept in a crumb-filled bed. Eating in bed had been reserved for times when she was sick, and then the linens had been changed immediately after she finished.

At least Mitchell had enough experience to know he didn’t like crumbs in his bed. She wondered if he’d discovered that on his own or when he was sharing a bed with a woman. Until very recently she hadn’t imagined Mitchell with a love life.

Now she could sort of see it. He obviously had the capacity to be spontaneous, possibly even wild. A totally controlled person wouldn’t break down a door.

His appearance had been greatly improved by those gray sweatpants and sweatshirt, too. When she’d first seen him sitting on his bed playing cards, with no glasses and his hair sort of messed up and that cute cleft in his chin, he’d looked almost studly. Thinking of Mitchell as studly made her laugh, but he had looked that way.

Yes, he was still the guy who’d bought himself an orange parka and a matching knit cap with a yellow pompom on top, but he wasn’t wearing either of those things right now as he rummaged through Betsy’s kitchen drawers looking for a box of matches.

“Got ‘em!” He held aloft the box of kitchen matches.

“So lights out?”

“Lights out.”

She hit the switch, and the kitchen went black. The light from the Tiffany lamp in the lobby was too faint to reach the kitchen and the storm had blocked the window with snow and ice. “Tactical error,” she said. “I should have opened the refrigerator door first.” She groped her way toward what she thought was the refrigerator.

“Here, let me get it.” He reached out and got a really tight hold on her breast. With a gasp he backed up and bumped noisily into something, probably the kitchen table.

Once she got over the shock, Ally started to laugh.

But Mitchell wasn’t laughing. “Ally, I’m sorry. I sure didn’t mean to—”

“Cop a feel?” She swallowed another fit of laughter and cleared her throat. “I’m sure you didn’t, Mitchell. You’re not the type. Besides, in the dark, boobs and refrigerator door handles look pretty much the same. At least you recognized the difference when you felt it.”

He groaned.

“Oh, Mitchell, forget it. Let’s get this raid started.” She pulled open the refrigerator. “I know there’s blackberry pie. Ah, here it is.” She pulled the pie tin from a shelf. “And here are some kind of cold cuts. Don’t know what, though.”

Mitchell had recovered himself, apparently, because he came to stand behind her. “If you can’t identify it, don’t take it.”

“Relax. The moose meat turned out to be okay. Here, take the blackberry pie.” She handed it to him.

“I vote we don’t take the meat. It could belong to something that was scraped off the road.”

“We’re taking it.” Ally pulled out the package of sliced meat. “You can’t have a decent refrigerator raid without making sandwiches. We need bread.”

“Bread sounds safe. I think there was a breadbox on the counter.”

“Do you have enough light to find it, or are you likely to grab my ass while you’re searching?”

“Ally, I really didn’t mean to grab you. It was a total accident.”

“I know.” She grinned at him. “I just couldn’t resist.” He was really quite adorable in his obvious discomfort. Another kind of guy might have grabbed her boob by accident and then held on, thrilled by the unintentional contact and willing to use it as an excuse to start something. Not Mitchell. He was mortified.

Locating a wedge of cheese and a jar of mustard, she pulled both out and held them with one arm while she snagged a couple of beer bottles from the refrigerator door. “Did you find the bread?”

“Yep. And a knife to slice it.”

“Then I think we’re set. We can—” She stopped speaking when she heard the front door open. The wind blasted in with a roar, and then the door closed with a loud slam.

“Betsy’s home,” Mitchell said under his breath.

“I refuse to be caught red-handed on my very first raid,” Ally muttered. She closed the refrigerator door gently so that they were once more in the dark.

Mitchell leaned toward her. “We’ll stay right here until she goes into her parlor,” he whispered.

Betsy’s voice drifted from the entryway into the kitchen. “Clyde, you animal, you. Hold your horses.”