A Perfect Stranger

Something shoe-like nudged his shin. “Please pass the pepper,” said Joe. He took the container and set it next to the salt with a determined clunk. “Ignore the third degree, Ms. Gordon. It’s a bad habit.”

“I’m a writer,” said Nick.

“He’s a pest,” said Joe.

Syd smiled uncertainly and forked up a bit of limp lettuce. When she shot a stealthy glance in Nick’s direction from beneath her red-gold lashes, another story angle teased and tickled through him, and he realized the reason for this inconvenient fascination.

She was a muse.

His muse, anyway. For the next several days.

SYDNEY LEANED against her hotel room chair after dinner and wrapped her fingers around the phone cord with a smile.

“Miss me?” asked Henry.

“Yes.” It was so reassuring to hear Henry’s steady voice, and to tell him what he wanted to hear, and to really mean it. If only life could always be this uncomplicated. “Yes, I do. In fact, I was thinking exactly how much I miss you, right before dinner.”

“How’s the food over there? As bad as they say?”

Her smile dissolved. “It’s not that bad.”

Henry didn’t appreciate foreign cuisines—not that this evening’s roast beef, potatoes and peas qualified as exotic. Still, he always managed to don a patient smile and gamely taste all her spicy, impulsive culinary experiments. The fact that he was such a good sport about it made it easier, somehow, for her to sacrifice the exciting foods she loved and prepare the basics he preferred.

She glanced at her watch and stood. “I’d better go. I haven’t finished dressing yet, and Gracie’s waiting for me in the lounge.”

“All right.” He paused. “I love you, you know.”

“I know.” She just hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet. Marriage was such a monumentally frightening commitment that even her normal impulsive responses—weaklings that they were—had flown the coop.

But this wasn’t the moment to reflect on the situation. And far too many moments had passed as she’d sucked in a breath and prepared to make the expected and logical response. “I love you, too.”

“Sydney?”

She winced. Her hesitation hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Got to run, Henry. Bye.”

She slipped the receiver back into its spot and reached over her shoulder to nab the elusive zipper pull in the back of her dress. No luck. The navy knit sheath was a favorite, but the fastener had been designed for a yoga fanatic. She twisted toward the mirror to improve her aim and relaxed her shoulder joint to gain a fraction of an inch. This time, she caught the zipper—and immediately snagged it in her hair.

“No. This is not happening.” She angled her head to check the damage in the mirror and winced at the tug on her nape. The dress gapped above her shoulder blades, and a hunk of her hair kinked up in a rollercoaster loop.

One of her students quietly rapped at the door—maybe one of the girls, who could fix the problem. Sydney scrunched her neck, tugged at the front of her dress and pulled the doorknob. “Boy, am I glad—”

Nick Martelli lounged in her hotel room doorway. His gaze swept from her blushing face to her bare toes. “The feeling’s mutual,” he said.

“I wasn’t expecting…I mean, you’re not…” Cool air danced over a bit of bra strap exposed in the tangled mess in back, and goose bumps—and other bumps—popped out in inconvenient places.

Why did this man always have to catch her at a disadvantage? So far he’d seen her deranged, clumsy, obsessive and uptight—and now this. And to make matters worse, he seemed to find it all very amusing.

“That’s okay, teach,” he said with one of his wry grins. “No explanations necessary. That’s my assignment. I came to deliver another apology, and a peace offering.”

“Another apology?” She hadn’t collected the first one. Somehow he’d managed to wiggle his way over and under anything incriminating, in spite of all the traps she’d set for him during dinner. “Now what did you do?”

“Nothing naughty since dessert, I swear.”

She clung to the door, wondering how to get rid of him. She had no intention of engaging in a conversation with Nick Martelli, not when she looked like a cross-dressing Quasimodo. And not in her hotel room, not after she’d forbidden her students to entertain members of the opposite sex in theirs.

He held up two soft drink cans. “May I come in?”

“Gracie isn’t here, and—”

“Good. I only brought two.” He brushed past her in one lithe move and crossed the room to set the cans on a table. She couldn’t help admiring his long-legged saunter or the way his shoulders filled out his leather bomber jacket. And she couldn’t ignore the disconcerting tightness in her stomach, or the heat that seeped through her. That’s all I need, she thought. A physical attraction to the playboy of Student Tours International. The man is pure trouble.

She opened the door as far as she could and then pressed her back against it, her arms crossed like a shield as he approached.

“Glasses?” he asked.

“Thank you for the gesture, and for the soda, but I really don’t have time for this right now. I need to finish getting ready, so if you’ll excuse me, I—”

“Looks like I got here just in time.” He gently tugged her away from the door, and then he nimbly, neatly untangled her hair and closed her zipper. “That mess looked a little hard to reach,” he said as he turned her to face him.

She gazed into eyes as dark as night and framed by smile-crimped lines at the corners, one of them daubed a sickly green beneath a thick, straight brow. He was standing too close, and his hands were too warm on her arms, and his leather and soap scent was too tantalizing for her peace of mind.

The door slipped shut behind them.

“You look completely ready to me,” he murmured. “In fact, I can’t imagine what you could possibly improve on.”

He ran long, lean fingers through her curls, casually combing one forward over her shoulder. Her pulse hammered, too hard, too fast. She needed to get things back under control.

Control. She took a deep breath—and realized how quickly she’d fallen under the spell of his practiced moves and smooth lines. “Thanks for the help,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You certainly seem to know your way around women’s zippers.”

His hands dropped to his sides. “Sisters.”

“Pardon me?”

“Sisters. Just Joe and me holding out against hordes of ’em.”

He wandered about her room, snagging a crumpled towel from the floor and folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “I got lots of practice. Buttons, laces, skate keys—I’m a pro.” He sorted through the clutter on the dresser, picked up her cologne and sniffed.

“Oh,” she said. His casual tour of her personal items was playing havoc with her nervous system, just as his dinner interrogation—and the keen focus of those dark eyes—had played havoc with her appetite. All those questions had seemed intensely personal, not mildly conversational.

She cleared her throat. “Didn’t I hear you mention an apology?”

“Yes, you did.” He set the bottle down, and his cocky grin snapped back into place. “I should have checked with you first before skipping the museum. I’m sorry for that, and for getting back so late.”

“Thank you for…” She frowned. “For understanding.”

“Does that mean I’m forgiven?” He slipped his hands into his pockets and scuffed a shoe against the carpet, with no attempt to disguise the fact that he knew he was overplaying the boyish chagrin bit.

She sighed. “Yes, you’re forgiven.”

“Good.” He stepped closer. “Then you’ll consider having dinner with me again tomorrow night?”

She stepped back. “We’re on a tour. We’ll have dinner together every night.”

“What I had in mind was something a little more intimate. Just the two of us.” He closed the gap between them and toyed with her hair again. “Joe said he’d baby-sit your kids for you.”

“Shouldn’t you have checked with me first?” She batted his hand aside, setting her temper loose to bubble to the surface. Right now, anger seemed a good way to keep him at a safe distance.

He threw up his hands. “What do I have to do to stay out of trouble with you?”

“What makes you think I want you to do anything at all?”

“Look, Sydney,” he said as he paced the room, “we’re going to be living in each other’s pockets for another week and a half. Sharing the same dining rooms and hotels, the same buses, boats and tours. It would certainly make things more relaxed—more enjoyable—to know that I was on good terms with all the adults in this group.”

“All the adults? Are you planning a series of intimate dinners for two?” She marched to the dresser and grabbed a comb to tug through her hair. “Oh, except for Joe, of course. He’ll be doing all the babysitting.”

She watched in the mirror as Nick rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor. Slowly his eyes lifted. She could observe their progress, feel their touch, as they traveled over the curves outlined by the drape of her dress.

His gaze met hers in the glass. “You know,” he murmured, “it’s awfully hard to argue with a woman who looks the way you do right now.”

Her stomach did a quick jackknife on its way to her knees. She dropped the comb, wincing as it clattered across the dresser’s surface. In her hurry to grab it, she knocked over the little bottle of scent and scattered her faux sapphire earrings.

Smooth move, Gordon.

In the mirror, she watched that familiar, wry amusement flicker in Nick’s eyes before they darkened and smoldered. Dang, he could do a great smolder. Things were definitely heating up in here. She held her breath, afraid of fanning a stray flame.

He shifted his stance. “Time to start from scratch.”

“Okay.” She turned and exhaled, smoothing her hands over her dress. Saved from spontaneous combustion—for the time being. “Good idea.”

He stalked to the door. “As I recall, I entered, peace offering in hand—the finest light beverage I could find in the neighborhood.” He strolled to the table, improvising the little scene. “I even helped you with your zipper—more of that chivalry stuff.”

He paused for her reaction. When she rolled her eyes, he shot her a lopsided grin.

“I made a heartfelt apology, which you accepted,” he reminded her. “Encouraged by my apparent success at smoothing things between us, I asked you out to dinner.”

He slumped, the image of dejection, onto the foot of Gracie’s bed. “I can’t tell if I’m making any progress here, but at least you’re listening.” He glanced up. “You are listening, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She stifled a smile. “Go on.”

“I must really be slipping.” He shook his head. “Usually when I ask a woman out to dinner and add a little flattery, she at least considers, instead of looking for ulterior motives.” He shot her a dangerous look. “The ulterior motives part is supposed to come after dinner.”

“Nick, I already—”

“Let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I’ve tried flattery. I’ve tried the Boy Scout good deed approach. I’ve used up about a month’s worth of charm. I’m running out of ideas here, Sydney.” He focused on the floor. “Maybe a play for pity will work. I’ll throw myself at Gracie’s feet and beg her to intercede on my behalf.”

“You’d probably have a better chance with her, anyway. For some God-knows-why reason, she likes you.”

Nick’s head snapped up, his smile dazzling. “You two have been talking about me, huh?”

Sydney laughed, charmed in spite of her resolve against it, and pointed to the door. “Out.”

He rose and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re not still mad at me?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“Let’s stick with friendly acquaintances for now,” she said, opening the door for him.

He strolled through it and turned to face her. “Dinner?”

“Not that friendly.” She shut him out, leaned back against the door and stared at the two sodas sitting side by side on the table across the room. There was no mistaking the mush-like quality in the sag of her spine.

CHAPTER FIVE

HARLEY MAXWELL arrived home from her day job dealing blackjack along Lake Tahoe’s north shore to find trouble in her usual parking spot and more of it across the street, sprawled on Norma and Syd’s front porch. Much more of it. Six feet, three inches of it, to be exact. Trouble in a three-piece navy-blue suit, striped navy-blue tie and serious navy-blue eyes.

She yanked the steering wheel of her tin-can car hard left and tickled the clutch through the familiar cough-and-shudder routine. Her car tried to roll over and play dead, but she stomped on the brakes before it could shimmy off the steep edge of the road. Big mistake. The little engine that usually could up and died.

She climbed out and slammed the compact’s door, hard, so it would stick. Had to stay on top of things, show that car who was boss. It might not last long enough to get her to Vegas, once she’d saved enough to make her move, but she was counting on it to get her to her second job that night. Tomorrow she’d have a heart-to-heart with the carburetor. Maybe threaten it with a tune-up from Dusty, the oversize mechanic with the sledgehammer hands and the scary-looking tools. It wasn’t much of a threat, really. Dusty was a pushover for down-on-their-luck autos and Harley’s apple tarts.

She took a deep breath and prepared to deal with the man lounging near the stairway leading to Syd’s attic apartment: Henry Barlow, the oversize attorney with the manicured nails and the nifty leather briefcase. It wasn’t going to be easy; Henry wasn’t a pushover for anything she could think of. It would take a hell of a lot more than an apple tart to ease her way around him.

She stilled a moment and waited for her heart to do that odd flippy thing it did whenever she saw him. She had no idea why the sight of the terminally repressed businessman with an undertaker’s fashion sense and a constipated outlook on life could make her heart stutter. Maybe her heart needed a tune-up, too.

Henry sure looked like he could use one. Someone had mussed his hair and loosened his tie. Not too much, or she might not have recognized him, though the sedate silver sedan parked in front of her house was a pretty big clue. The mussing couldn’t be Henry’s doing. He never mussed—er, messed up. Especially not his appearance. Razor-sharp, that was his personal style. Every tie knotted, every crease pressed, every hair perfectly—and predictably—in place.

She ambled across the narrow, rutted mountain road. “Hey, Hank, what’s up?”

“How many times do I have to tell you my name’s not Hank?” He struggled upright. “It’s Henry.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She dropped her canvas tote on the step below his feet. “Several hundred more, at least. It’s not that I forget your name, you know. It’s just that ‘Henry’ doesn’t go down as smooth as ‘Hank.’”

“That’s ridiculous.” He belched, and a whiff of whiskey-soaked misery floated her way. “Henry is meluf…meliful…it’s poetic. Hank is a truck driver in North Dakota.”

Hank Barlow drunk? In the middle of the afternoon? What was the world coming to? “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Checking to see if Norma needs any…” He waved a long-fingered hand in the air. “Anything. While Sydney’s gone.”

Anyone who knew Norma, Syd’s retired landlady who lived in the ground level of the Victorian-era house, knew she could take care of herself. Hank’s reason for being here was as flimsy as his hold on his dignity.

He dribbled an expensive single malt into the faceted crystal glass in his hand and took a loud, slurping sip.

“For cryin’ out loud.” Harley shook her head. “Ditch the Waterford and put the booze in the bag. You’re embarrassing me here.”

He stared at the glass. “I rang Norma’s doorbell to ask about Sydney’s plants, but she didn’t answer.”

“Today’s Wednesday. Norma’s bridge group meets on Wednesdays.” She settled beside him on the sun-warmed porch. “Why don’t you come over to my place? I can fix you some coffee while you wait for her. We can have a nice talk. About what’s bothering you, for instance.”

A jay swooped past with an annoyed squawk to fill the empty spot where Hank’s response belonged.

“Syd playing hard to get again?” asked Harley.

“It’s only a temporary setback. I’ll talk to her and straighten this out when she gets back.” He stared into his glass. “I have to marry her. It’s an investment in the future.”

Harley frowned. “That’s one way of putting it, I guess.”

“There are a number of important factors to consider. And I’ve considered them all, very carefully. It’s the logical thing to do.”

Harley noticed he hadn’t mentioned love. But she’d try to be supportive. He was a nice guy, even if he was a little stiff. “Being logical is important in a relationship, I suppose.”

“It’s good to have someone understand. You’re a nice woman, Harley.” He tossed back the last drops of whiskey in his glass and set it on the step. “Except when you call me Hank.”

“And you’re a nice man, Hank.” She patted him on the knee. There were some nice, lean muscles under those sharply pleated slacks. Who’d have guessed?

There was a nice, steady heart beating beneath that neatly pressed jacket, too. Hank Barlow was one of the nicest men she’d ever met. That wasn’t saying much, because most of the men she’d met were jerks. Even so, Hank wasn’t the kind of guy who deserved to get dumped just when he was closing the deal on getting Syd to the altar.

But Syd was a nice woman, too, and she didn’t deserve to be shackled to a guy she didn’t really love.

Why couldn’t life just work out sometimes? And why did Harley have to get stuck in the middle of this mess?

“Come on, big guy.” She reached out a hand, waited for Hank to take it, and then struggled to get him to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Hank belched again and mumbled an apology. “I don’t usually do things like this.”

“I kind of figured.”

“I’m usually more shir—more circumzz—”

“Circumspect?” Harley shook her head. It was a pretty sad state of affairs when a man’s drinking vocabulary sounded like something from a public affairs network.

“Circumspect,” he said. “It means—”

“I know what it means, Hank.”

He wobbled a bit and glanced down at her. “You don’t look like the kind of woman who would know what that means.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What kind of woman do I look like?”

“I can’t say.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t want to insult you.”

“Any more than you already have, you mean.”

“I do?” He swayed a bit, and she shoved him upright. “I did?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

She took him by the arm and led him down the porch steps. “I like you fine.”

“Meredith likes me,” he mumbled to himself, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Sydney’s mother. That’s the kind of woman who finds me attractive. Middle-aged battle-axes.”

He stumbled over some loose gravel, and Harley slipped an arm around his waist. He leaned against her, big and solid and warm. “I’ve been hitting on the wrong demographic,” he said. “Young women in singles bars or on the slopes. From now on, I’m looking for my dates at bingo parlors.”

“It’s not as bad as all that, is it?”

“Just about.” He stopped and lifted his hands to her shoulders. “Do you find me attractive?”

Oh, God, yes. She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think I should answer that question.”

“See? That proves my point.” He closed his eyes, wobbled a bit and leaned his forehead against hers. “You’re not an elderly battle-ax.”

Her heart was flipping and flopping so fast she thought she’d pass out, right there on the street. “No, I’m not,” she whispered.

“You smell good.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t.”

“It’s the whiskey.”

She closed her eyes. “I know.”

“Harley?”

“Hmm?”

“This is probably the whiskey, too,” he said, and then his mouth pressed against hers.

She froze for a moment, while his lips skimmed a teasing line along hers and his hands drifted down to settle at her waist. She tried—she really tried—to remember that Hank was feeling a little unsteady, that technically he was still Syd’s boyfriend and that they were standing in the middle of the street where the neighbors could watch the show. But then his tongue swept inside her mouth, and he pulled her tight against him, and a moan rumbled up from his chest, and she was lost in the delicious, delightful surprise of his kiss.

The surprise had nothing to do with the fact that she’d never imagined this kiss could happen. A girl was entitled to her fantasies, after all. No, the surprise was that there was nothing repressed, or sedate, or stiff, or predictable, or nice about this kiss. This kiss was the opposite of nice. It was a take-no-prisoners assault, a seductive and sensual plummet into something dark and deep.

Her heart flipped and flopped one last time, and then it fell into Hank’s oversize hands with a thud.

NICK’S FINGERS danced over his laptop’s keyboard the morning after the play as he roughed out a scene for his mystery novel. The clack of the keys was faint competition for the whoosh and whir of the traffic noise rising like vapor from the rain-moistened pavement below. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled the aroma of early-morning London wafting through his open hotel window. Cooking oil and diesel fuel blended in a cheap scent: Big City.

He clicked the save command and slumped in the chair to read through his draft. Jack Brogan, the star of most of his stories, was moving up in the world, and London would make a classy background for his latest exploits. This could be the start of an entire European series, a project that would require plenty of research. Writing books set in exotic locales could be an exhausting business, but if someone had to do it, it might as well be Nick Martelli.

His thoughts drifted again to the uptight teacher from California. A major mystery there, and his own sleuthing hadn’t yet revealed what it was about her—other than her looks and her attitude—that was striking sparks.

Story sparks, among other kinds. He was starting to believe his own theory about her being some kind of muse. And thinking about her the way he usually did—with his cranial blood supply taking a trip south—wasn’t the proper way to think about a muse.

Not that he was aware of proper behavior when it came to muses. But he’d bet seducing them wasn’t on the program.

Behind him, Joe groaned again, struggling toward complete consciousness. Nick stalked across the room and yanked the pillow out from under his brother’s head. “Rise and shine, Mr. Martelli. Breakfast in thirty minutes.”

Joe rolled with a yawn and swiped a hand over his morning stubble. “Maybe I’ll grow a beard this week.”

Joe’s wife would kill him if he came home scraggly, and she’d probably have Nick tortured as an accomplice. Connie Martelli was one scary lady.

He chucked the pillow at Joe’s head. “Over our dead bodies, and I mean that literally. Shave. Shower. Dress.”

Joe closed his eyes and groaned. “God, what a nag.”

“Just making sure you don’t get homesick,” Nick drawled. “And pick up your stuff before we leave. You’ll lose something if you don’t keep things picked up.”

“Yes, hon.”

Joe staggered into the bathroom, and a moment later Nick heard one of the sounds of his youth: his brother whistling tunelessly over the tap water.

He reached across the table to snag the tour itinerary. Today’s highlights: Stonehenge and Salisbury, followed by another free afternoon. Nick wondered what Joe had planned for his students after lunch. Most likely a pit stop to keep them going until tea time, with a few educational tidbits tucked haphazardly between the snacks.

Joe walked back into the room, rubbing a towel over his thinning hair. “How’s the research going? Is Jack Brogan going to tie up the loose ends in London, or is he going to chase the bad guys all over Europe?”