Here Comes Trouble

“Remind me to do a narrative passage on Al Fitzweather and the Dewdrop Inn, just to keep you safe from that place, too,” she said.

“If there’s a law against bad pet names, there should also be one against unattractive people getting naked in public,” he said, inwardly cringing at the mental picture of the inn owner, and then of the old lady in his cockpit a few weeks ago.

“I think there already is.”

“In Trouble? One can never be sure…”

“Good point.”

Thinking about her comments regarding her cell phone, he added, “You know, even with your speed dial, I don’t think any of the three officers on the Trouble P.D. could get here fast enough to save you if I turned into Jason or Pinhead.”

“You have a thing about horror movies?”

“You obviously do, too, since you know exactly who I’m talking about, including Norman Bates.”

They were passing beneath an enormous elm and a bit of sunlight peeked between its leaves to bathe her hair in a warm, soft glow. He wondered if the color was natural and thought it might be—a cascading jumble of golds, blondes and light browns, it probably couldn’t have come from a bottle.

His body chose that moment to remind him of that lack of breakfast again, because Max felt something roll over, deep inside. Definitely food related. Not female related. Uh-uh.

“I think I’ve seen every horror movie ever made, even though we weren’t allowed to watch them in our house growing up,” she explained. “My friends would have terror marathons whenever I slept over. I was a bad influence.”

Oh, right. This soft, curvy-looking woman was probably about as bad as Mr. Peanut.

“A couple of times I’d go to the movies to see something PG rated but sneak into Child’s Play or another bloody flick.”

She had a naughty side. He wouldn’t have predicted that—though he should have, given the sarcastic, earthy wit that she exhibited at unexpected moments. “How very shocking,” he said, sarcasm heavy in his tone.

“Anyway, I learned enough to know that the girl who fights back is the only one who makes it out of the dark and scary house alive, so when I moved to the city I took a self-defense course from an ex-cop. I could hurt you…just so you know.”

That he wouldn’t have predicted. “You telling me another Butch story?”

Shaking her head, she lifted a golden brow, as if daring him to find out. That gleam in her blue eyes told him he’d better not. So maybe the pretty blonde wasn’t naive at all—just confident of her ability to defend herself.

Not that she needed to. Max had never so much as yelled at a woman, much less lifted a hand to one. Seductive whispers or sweet, playful words were so much more effective than shouted ones, in his experience.

Except with his ex-wife. And with her, his lawyer had done all the yelling.

Max had stuck to drinking.

He’d spent a good year completely intoxicated following their shocking breakup. Which was why he currently had a twelve-step card tucked safely in his wallet. And why he hadn’t had anything more alcoholic than a Butter Rum Lifesaver near his lips in three years.

“He said I was the best student he ever had,” she said. “And I liked it so much, I went on to become an instructor at a local community center.”

Hmm…a self-defense instructor at a community center? Didn’t sound like the monied type—the type who’d be able to take this albatross called Trouble off his grandfather’s back and let Max and his brothers return to their regularly scheduled lives. Then again, maybe she was an eccentric, altruistic rich person.

Max certainly was acquainted with a few of those. Some of whom were related to him. Like the one who’d bought this monstrosity of a town to try to breathe financial life into its carcass before rigor mortis set in.

“You know,” he murmured as they crested the hill, reaching the edge of the tangled, overgrown yard surrounding his grandfather’s new house, “it wasn’t the girl who fought back who survived a night with Freddy, Jason or Norman.” Hiding a smile, he continued. “It was always the good girl. The virgin.”

He gave her a look of complete innocence, remembering at the last moment that he was not allowed to tread deep into dangerous, sexual waters with any woman just now. Frankly, he thought he’d been doing pretty well at keeping things light, friendly and above the waist with all this talk of blood, murder and psycho killers. But that last comment had shot his good intentions straight to hell.

He somehow didn’t think she’d mind. He had the feeling that despite her angelic looks, this woman was not the sweet type. Which was good. Max didn’t much care for sweet girls. Not when bad ones were so much more…entertaining.

“Well,” she replied, “I guess it’s a good thing you’re not a Jason or a Freddy, then, or my guts might be hanging from a tree back in the woods right about now. Because my virginity was history long before Jason killed his hundredth victim.”

Sassy comeback. Damn, he really liked that. On top of everything else he already liked about this stranger, who’d popped into his mind several times the night before when he’d been trying to sleep. “Considering he probably hit a hundred by the second movie, I somehow doubt that. You would’ve been in preschool.”

“Thousandth victim, then. At least five movies ago.”

“Okay.” Since they were now discussing her virginity—Lord have mercy on his wicked soul for those mental images—he figured introductions might be good. “What’s your name, anyway? We never did the how-do-you-do stuff. Some self-defense expert you are.”

“It’s Sabrina. Sabrina Cavanaugh.”

He stuck his hand out. “Mine’s Michael. Michael Myers.”

She rolled her eyes, instantly recognizing the name of the psycho from the Halloween movies. Smiling, Max opened his mouth to offer his real name, but before he could, Sabrina—pretty Sabrina—cut him off with a surprised gasp.

“Oh, my God.”

Wonderful. The woman had obviously seen Hell House. Sighing, Max steeled himself for her obvious dismay when she realized just how bad it was. She’d run as fast as she could when she saw the kind of accommodations the owner of this crazy little town would get to live in.

And there was more. He simply couldn’t wait until she met Mortimer.

CHAPTER FOUR

ASIDE FROM GETTING lots of attention and feeling the baby moving around inside her, being pregnant sucked the big one. Not that Alicia Cavanaugh knew much about sucking, big ones or little ones…her single sexual relationship had been short-lived and pretty straightforward. Vanilla. None of the icky stuff.

Just a three-week game of wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and here’s an up-yours to your sister, too. That pretty much described her one and only grown-up romance with Peter “the Prick” Prescott, who’d screwed her over but good, all to screw over her big sister, Sabrina.

Frankly, Peter the Prickface was the reason Allie was feeling especially yucky today. Well, Peter and the extra twenty pounds sitting squarely on her bladder. And the…other stuff.

It was beyond awful. Twenty years old and she had stretch marks and hemorrhoids. Unbe-freaking-lievable.

All of which Peter had provided. God, she wanted to kill him, especially after last night.

“It’s okay, Lumpy, he was just being a jerk. He didn’t mean it.” She didn’t know who she was trying harder to convince—the lump wriggling around on her kidneys, or herself.

He couldn’t have meant it. Could not seriously be considering fighting her for custody of this baby once he or she was born.

“Never in a million years,” she muttered as she scoured Sabrina’s refrigerator, dying for something chocolate. It was nearly noon and any reasonable person would assume that a pregnant woman would want chocolate for lunch on occasion. But was there any to be found? Nooooo.

No chocolate. Not even any chocolate sauce lurking behind the nauseating fresh fruits and vegetables and high-protein shakes.

“My kingdom for a Yoo-hoo,” she whispered, staring at all the healthy junk her sister had stocked up on before leaving town yesterday. “Bailing out, more like it,” she added as she slammed the door shut, feeling tears well up in her eyes.

She knew it was stupid to feel this way. Sabrina hadn’t bailed, she had a book expo to go to, a business trip. Her sister hadn’t wanted to leave Allie alone this close to her due date. But she’d had no choice. Now that she was supporting not only herself but her freeloading, knocked-up sibling, Sabrina had to work extra hard.

She probably hated Allie.

A fat salty tear fell out of her eye, slid down her face and landed on her big belly. Quickly wiping it off, she blinked a few times, not wanting the baby to know she was crying. Again. Poor little thing might get a complex before he was ever born, thinking his mommy was a basket case who didn’t love him.

“I do,” she whispered. “And Aunt Sabrina loves you, too. She loves both of us.”

In her heart, she knew her sister didn’t resent her, but her whacked-out hormones had been calling the shots for a good seven months now. So Allie couldn’t stop the tears.

She cried over being a burden to Sabrina.

Over being a single parent.

Over the scene with Peter the Prick-face.

Over the birthday coming up next month that would include no card from her younger sister or brother, no small bottle of cologne from her mother. No sermon disguised as a birthday greeting from her grandfather. No word from home at all.

Most of all she cried over the major screwup she’d made of her life.

Peter made it…

“No,” she said, her voice firm, her tears drying as quickly as they’d burst forth.

Peter had used her and hurt her, but he hadn’t forced her to open her legs and say aah. Or to trust him with the birth control issue. That was all on Allie’s shoulders. And, oh, they felt mighty small these days.

“I need to tell Sabrina that we ran into him,” she whispered. She was still cursing her decision to take the bus out to an upscale mall last night to window-shop for cute baby clothes she could never afford. Department store jammies were out of the question. Her baby was starting out life as a true American, clothed by Wal-Mart from head to toe.

“Should’ve just gone to the secondhand shop,” she muttered, knowing she never would have run into him if she had. Him…the snob who’d never be caught dead in a non-designer suit. The man she’d hoped to never see again. Her ex. Her sister’s ex. The six-foot-tall pile of shit in Versace known as Peter Prescott.

Sabrina’s gonna kill me.

Disgusted by the very thought of Peter ever entering their lives again, Sabrina had warned her to stay close to home. But figuring Peter was long gone, Allie hadn’t seen the harm in going out for a little while. The apartment was too quiet without Sabrina in it, talking about how adorable the baby would be and what a great job Allie would do as a mother.

She’d thought her sister was being overprotective about Peter. Because once he’d quit his job at the publishing house where he’d worked with Sabrina—quit because of some big hush-hush scandal her sister wouldn’t tell her about—Peter had supposedly left town. Sabrina figured he’d gone to New York. Allie had hoped he’d gone to a back alley in Tijuana and been jumped by some horny drug traffickers who’d kidnapped him and put him to work in a slave labor camp picking corn and cleaning toilets with his tongue.

Or something like that.

But, no, apparently not. Because he was here, in Philadelphia. So either he’d never really left, or he’d come back with his tail between his legs.

Whatever the case, the cat was out of the bag—or more appropriately, the pregnant belly was out of the maternity smock.

Remembering the initial shock on his face when he’d seen her—all of her—she couldn’t prevent a small stab of righteous pleasure. But because her own heart had tumbled at the sight of him, she hadn’t been able to enjoy his obvious dismay.

Allie wished it hadn’t hurt to see his handsome face and experience that familiar rush of want she’d felt from the minute she’d met him on campus at Tyler College. Back when she’d had no idea the man had, until recently, been her sister’s colleague—and boyfriend—and was carrying a grudge wider than an elephant’s butt.

What an absolute idiot she’d been to fall for his line. Easy pickings. And, oh, had he picked her over. Flirted with her, teased her, made her feel like a beautiful woman instead of an awkward, small-town girl.

Made her fall in love.

Then he’d dropped her flat. Not even sticking around to see just how much of an impression he’d left behind. A seven- or eight-pound one, she suspected.

Not even twenty-one and she had already disgraced her family, lost her scholarship to her Christian college and been forced to quit her job, move out of the dorm and crash with her big sister. No money. No insurance. No future.

All of that was worse than stretch marks. Or even hemorrhoids.

“Here lies Alicia Cavanaugh,” she whispered. “Her grave marked with nothing but a great big L. For Loser.”

Tears welled up again but this time they wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t have been able to stop them if she tried, not even for chocolate. Not for Hershey’s. Or Dove. Or Godiva. Or even those crunchy See’s toffee candies.

“Mmm…toffee,” she whispered through a hiccupping little sob.

Not having the toffee candies made her cry harder. Not even thoughts of how much she was going to love her baby boy or girl and how good a mother she was going to make helped.

Because Peter was threatening to take that away from her, too. Once he’d recovered from his shock last night, he informed her that there was no way he was paying child support. And that she might end up paying it to him because he could decide to sue for custody, and since she was an immature college dropout barely out of her teens, he would probably get it.

What if he was right?

He didn’t want to raise this baby, she knew it. He was being hateful. That expression of amusement in his eyes, as he’d informed her he had to think about it first and would be in touch, said it all.

He didn’t want to be a father. He just wanted to be cruel, which seemed to be what he did best.

“I have to tell Sabrina. She’ll know what to do.”

This wasn’t something she could share over a cell phone, however. She needed to see her big sister face-to-face. Which might prove tricky, since Sabrina hadn’t told her where she was going.

Fortunately, however, Allie knew a secret about Jane, Sabrina’s secretary at Liberty Books—a secret Peter Pecker had revealed during their last phone call so many months ago. He’d told her about his affair with Jane, hoping she’d tell Sabrina…and hurt her some more. Allie had kept it to herself. Until now.

Allie wasn’t fond of blackmail, but she’d learned a lot of hard lessons at the school of Peter. Jane would know where Sabrina was, and Allie had ammunition against Jane.

Now, it appeared, was a very good time to use it.

“WHAT ON EARTH is that?”

Hearing the shock in Sabrina’s voice as they reached the top of the hill beside his grandfather’s new home, Max steeled himself to explain. His own first closeup view of the house had been much the same.

The three-story mausoleum had been built about a hundred years ago and it wore every one of those years on its face. With missing tile shingles on the roof, shutters that couldn’t be closed dangling outside most of the windows, peeling layers of varying colors of paint, and a sagging porch that had begun to separate from the front door—requiring a little hop to go inside—the place was silently begging for a wrecking ball.

Max was loudly begging for one.

Especially to maim, kill and annihilate the clocks. The former occupant had apparently owned a clock factory and had liked to sample the wares. Blue ones, red ones, open-billed ones…cuckoos with glittering emerald eyes and shiny black ones, with carefully detailed feathers or fake-looking plastic talons. With open wings or military epaulets or garland wreaths dangling from their beaks.

Two dozen of them, at least, though it seemed more like a thousand. The noise was enough to make a man lose his mind.

And the clocks weren’t the beginning and the end of the insanity, oh, no. The inside of the house was, itself, a crazy maze, with oddly shaped rooms, doors that opened to interior brick walls, chimneys rising from no fireplaces. Like it had been built little by little—piece by piece—with no thought given to the finished product.

Grandfather loved it—right down to the last cuckoo and threadbare rug. No big surprise.

Max supposed that with a few million dollars, the cast and crew of Trading Spaces and that wrecking ball, it could be made into something inhabitable.

“I guess you’re wondering about the house.” But as Max followed Sabrina’s stare, he realized she was not looking at the building. She was looking at the enormous structure beside the building. The one he hadn’t noticed until right now, probably because his brain was used to blocking out the more impossible sights a life with Mortimer Potts often provided.

He closed his eyes briefly, but, unfortunately, the mirage hadn’t disappeared when he reopened them.

Rising from the tangled brush, brambles and honeysuckle vines—which had grown from beyond their original perimeter against the falling-down stone fence to encroach all the way to the side patio—was a monstrosity. A gigantic thing, swaying in the light morning breeze.

Standing twenty feet high and covering most of the side yard, it was an enormous mass of colors all swirled together on a billowy fabric. A tent…but not a garden variety camping-in-the-backyard one. This was like something out of an old Arabian Nights film. Emblazoned with brilliant splashes of red, green and gold, the thing stood like an enormous jewel beneath the bright summer sky.

“Damn.”

Mortimer was in one of his Middle East moods again. His grandfather had spent a number of years in Egypt after the Second World War. He liked to claim he’d been granted an honorary sheikhdom from a Bedouin tribe with which he’d spent one winter, cut off from the rest of the world in a secret, sand-battered camp.

As with many of Mortimer’s stories, Max wasn’t certain if this one was true or not. All Max knew was that whenever Morty had walked like an Egyptian, he and his brothers had been stuck drinking goat’s milk and eating camel tongue.

“Is there a circus in town?”

There was almost always a circus in town when his grandfather was around. And the memory of all those circuses, all those towns—all that adventure—made him smile, despite his fears that the potential investor was about to be scared off. Any sane woman would be.

Especially if Mortimer came out brandishing his sword.

“Not a circus. But there could be animals.”

She merely gaped.

“I don’t think there would be any dangerous ones,” he quickly added. “Though you can never be entirely sure. He did once rescue a tiger headed for the dinner table of some sick, twisted millionaire.”

“He? Are you talking about Mr. Potts?” she asked, her eyes wide, as if she wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg.

He wasn’t. Though he’d like to, if it meant he actually got to touch one of those long, beautiful legs.

“Es salaam aleikom!”

He tore his attention off Sabrina Cavanaugh’s slender thighs and braced himself for introductions. This could be tricky.

“What did he say?”

“That’s hello. I think. Though he could be offering you some camel tongue,” Max muttered. Then he fell silent, watching Sabrina absorb Mortimer Potts.

A mane of thick white hair blew around his grandfather’s shoulders, which were still strong and straight despite his age. His face was smooth, nearly unwrinkled, but dark and leathery after years in the blazing sun of Africa or South America. Even from several feet away, his blue eyes shone brilliantly—alight with intelligence and a genuine love of life—as he approached. His steps were firm, his legs never hinting that they’d been walking the earth for eight decades. Or that they suffered terribly with arthritis.

Clothed in a traditional long, white tunic with a red sleeveless coat draped over it, and a colorful cloth resting lightly on top of his hair, he looked just like the Bedouin sheikh he imagined himself to be. The garb flowed around his tall, lanky form, each gust of wind molding it against his skinny legs.

Max sent up a quick prayer that Mortimer was wearing something underneath this time.

Sabrina stared, saying nothing, not even when his grandfather reached her side. She looked stunned—as robbed of speech as if her prissy poodle Giorgio had started singing “Like A Virgin.”

He understood the reaction. His grandfather was a little…startling, at first. But he was not truly crazy—just a bit eccentric.

And he was definitely not laughable.

In fact, if she laughed at him, he’d let her find her own damn way back to town and she could take her money with her.

Max, Morgan and Mike could laugh with the old man as much as they wanted. But heaven help anyone who laughed at him.

If, however, she saw the man Max and his brothers saw—as she’d seen the beauty in the carousel—he might fall in love and propose. Not marriage—God, no. But…something.

Probably something indecent.

“You’ve arrived just in time. I’ll have my manservant fetch my pipe. Come smoke with me.”

Max frowned. “You know you can’t do that anymore.”

“What do the doctors know?”

“I’m not talking about your health, I’m talking about the stuff you put in that pipe. It’s illegal in most countries, especially this one.”

Mortimer rolled his eyes.

“And,” Max added, “you don’t have a manservant anymore. Roderick spent one night with those clocks and hightailed it back to New York, remember?”

His grandfather waved an airy hand, completely unconcerned by such banal things as his health, flighty butlers with superiority complexes, or his stature as a law-abiding citizen. That last part was questionable, anyway.

“Did you put that thing up yourself?” Max asked, unable to figure out how Grandfather could have gotten this whole Middle Eastern scenario set up in the few hours since he’d left. Grandfather wasn’t, after all, a seventy-year-old anymore.

Shaking his head, Mortimer explained. “Hired a few of the townies for the morning.”

Oh, joy. Word was likely spreading already. Our new town patriarch is a wingnut. Hide the good china, stash the children and lock up the virgins.

“Now, tell me, who have we here?” Grandfather asked. A smile that could only be described as wolfish appeared on the old man’s face, and a recognizable, flirtatious twinkle appeared in his eyes. Twenty years dropped off his age. Someone who didn’t know him would peg him as a man of sixty. A virile one.

Oh, did Max ever want to be his grandfather when he was that old!

“My name is Sabrina Cavanaugh,” she said, sticking out her hand and smiling at the old man. She appeared friendly, admiring.

Grandfather had a way with women. And judging by the light in his eyes, he’d noticed that this particular woman had a smile that could bring a man to his knees. Even aged arthritic ones.

“I am—”

“Mortimer Potts,” Max interjected, nipping the long sheikh title in the bud.

Grandfather offered him a slight, condescending smirk. “I suppose that will do for now.”

Max watched closely as Mortimer and the newcomer took stock of each other. His grandfather was, as always, regal and proud in his eccentricity. And so far, Sabrina wasn’t running. In fact, she looked intrigued. The same way she’d looked at the carousel.

He knew he was going to like this woman.

“Mr. Potts, I am not a smoker, but I would very much like to see inside that tent. I’ve often wondered what they’re like.”