Oh, to hell with Neville and her banking. Everything would just have to wait until Monday. Weary and discouraged, Delia crawled back in the Volvo, said a prayer, and cranked the engine. It gagged and sputtered, but she made it out of the parking lot. In fact, she made it all the way across town, all the way out I-40, and almost--almost--all the way down Westwind. And then, only a quarter-mile shy of the Hidden Lakes entrance, it began wheezing again. Delia let off the gas, wondering if she could coast to the security gate.
Nope. The Volvo went into death throes and spasmed its way only as far as a long, tree-lined driveway on her right, then promptly died. Delia was still trying desperately to start the car when a black Silverado pickup came flying down the drive backward. It was definitely one of life's Oh, shit moments. Frantic, she turned the key again as the Silverado's backup lights got bigger and bigger and bigger. Jesus Christ, isn't he even going to look?
Then, at the very last instant, the truck's brakes locked up, and the black beast skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and dead leaves. Embarrassed, Delia got out of the station wagon just as a big, broad-shouldered man in a pair of baggy Adidas shorts climbed out of the Silverado. He stood in the dust cloud, his hands lifted expressively in one of those What the fuck? gestures. Delia's embarrassment quickly shifted to total humiliation when the dust cleared.
Nick Woodruff?
Feeling a little sick, she shifted her gaze past the Silverado. Yep, there it was, her big ugly house, just visible through Woodruff's tree-filled yard. Funny how she'd never bothered to look before. And man, oh, man, was she ever going to pay for that bitchy parting shot two days ago. His expression made that abundantly clear.
Woodruff stood in front of the Volvo now, hands on his hips. "Well, Dr. Delia," he snapped, "we meet again."
Delia bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said. "It just sort of died here."
Nick made a sweeping gesture at the road. "Well, kick it out of gear and drift it out of my driveway, honey," he growled. "Because I'm late for pickup basketball, and believe me, I need the exercise bad."
Delia opened her mouth to tell the big ox to go screw himself, but nothing came out. Instead, she felt herself start to crumple inside. What else could possibly go wrong with her day?
Nick Woodruff wanted to bite back his spiteful words almost as soon as they left his mouth. Almost, because it took him a couple of seconds to realize that those really were tears pooling in Delia Sydney's silvery blue eyes. Suddenly Nick was halfway glad his mama was dead. Because if she'd been living, she'd have laid a hickory switch to his butt, and no maybe about it. However rich and snooty Delia Sydney might be, she was a lady in distress. And she was also wearing very wicked shoes.
"Hey, look, Doc, I'm sorry," he said, slipping his fingers into the crack beneath the Volvo's hood. "I've had a couple of real bad days at work, and my fuse is short. I'm not usually such a jerk."
"Well, jeez, I'm sorry I broke down!" Her face pale, Delia Sydney circled around the car. "Wh-what are you doing?"
Nick found the latch, popped it, and shoved the hood up. "Let me have a look," he said. "I reckon I can miss a ball game."
"Oh, heaven forbid!" she said stiffly. "Just give me a push, and I'll call the auto club from my cell phone."
In response he shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Hey, Doc, it's okay," he said quietly. "I'm a shade-tree mechanic. So what's up with it? Need a tune-up?"
At that, her anger seemed to melt, and she poked absently at a little rock with the sharply pointed toe of her black high heel. "Well, what I need is a new car," she said, sighing. "But that's not going to happen until I can get the house sold. So, yes, I need a tune-up. Probably a complete overhaul. I never know whether to believe what the mechanics tell me."
Nick let his eyes run over the filthy engine. "You really selling out?"
Delia exhaled. "I've been meaning to, yes," she admitted. "But the last few months have been hell. I teach and travel a lot. So it seemed easier to just write the mortgage check and hang in, but the truth is, I hate that house. And I can't afford it, either."
Nick tried not to look skeptical. "You're Neville Sydney's wife, right?"
"Ex-wife," she answered, a little too quickly.
Nick narrowed his eyes and stared into the afternoon sun. He was trying not to feel sorry for Delia Sydney. But he did, and he couldn't help it. Her guard was down, and despite her snug black suit and perfectly coiffed hair, she was starting to look young and vulnerable. Worse, he was starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that she was neither rich nor uppity. In fact, she seemed real nice. And awfully pretty. Then there were those shoes, shoes that made a man think of kinky, erotically painful things.
Jesus. Nick rolled his shoulders, trying to relax. Trying to stop looking at her shoes. But his shame was deepening over his mean-spirited words. It sure wasn't Delia Sydney's fault that his day had been total shit. The least he could do was help her out of a jam.
"So," he finally said. "Let's see if we can coax this rattletrap 'round back of my house, Dr. Delia. I just started a two-week vacation, so I can tune up your car."
Delia was dumbstruck. "But you...you don't know me. Your family--you must have plans?"
Woodruff's eyes raked over her. "No, I don't know you," he admitted in a voice that was just a note lower, but a good deal warmer. "And I don't have any family. Not here, anyway. And my vacation, well, let's just say it was unexpected."
Delia didn't know what to think. The cost of an engine overhaul would probably be three times what the car was worth--if it was even needed. But this man, this very large, very virile-looking stranger, was offering to work on it as a favor? She looked at him suspiciously. "Now, why would you want to spend part of your vacation working on my car, Mr. Woodruff?"
Finally he laughed, a rich, sexy laugh that came from somewhere deep in his chest. "Because idle hands do the devil's work, Dr. Delia," he said, holding his palms out as if for inspection. "That's what my Granny Woodruff says."
The devil's work. The words were vaguely fascinating, the hands more so. Woodruff's palms were broad, the fingers long and blunt. One thumb had a bruised nail, and on his left index finger, a scar ran from the first knuckle into the callused heel, the suture marks painfully visible. They were a worker's hands. A warrior's hands.
Jesus, she was getting fanciful. Still, there was no denying Woodruff was a fine example of manhood, if you preferred your men...well, a bit primitive. Delia swallowed hard, tore her gaze from his hands, and focused--rather imprudently--in the general direction of his hot tub. What do you suppose a man like that looked like with his clothes off?
"So, Dr. Delia, what do you say?" asked Woodruff, his voice suggestively low. "Wanna let me poke around under your hood?"
Delia felt herself turn pink right down to her toes.
Woodruff made a little choking sound in the back of his throat. "Jeez, Doc, you're blushing," he muttered. "Give me a break."
"I'm not blushing," Delia lied. "I'm--it's--hot out here. And frankly, Mr. Woodruff, I've had kind of a crappy week. Look at my pine trees. They're shaved down to bloody nubs. On top of that, my boss is a jerk and my car won't run. I barely avoided a bad remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My ex-husband's new wife almost ran me down in her brand-new Jaguar. And--oh, let's not forget this--half the perverts on the East Coast called me up to chat this afternoon."
Woodruff flashed a sudden, sexy grin. "Oh, yeah, that Doris Jean from St. Augustine was one scary chick," he remarked, shaking his head. "Where do people get that kind of bondage gear, anyway? Sadomasochists-R-Us?"
Delia's blush deepened and she swiftly dropped her gaze. "You...you're...a fan?"
Nick Woodruff was casually tossing his car keys now. "Oh, yeah, Dr. Delia," he answered smoothly. "A big one. A real big one."
It was only then that Delia realized just where her gaze had landed. She was staring straight at Nick Woodruff's crotch.
Chapter Two
Deli
a rolled out of bed Saturday morning at seven sharp and shrugged into her favorite sweatshirt. Downstairs, she punched the silver button on Neville's four-hundred-dollar German coffeemaker and listened to it chew up a precise measure of mocha-Kona blend. The machine dumped the grounds into its filter, the water began to hiss, and Delia headed down the hill for her newspaper. As she popped back over the rise of her driveway, she could see her station wagon, its big rear end poking out of Nick Woodruff's shed, the hood already up. Looked like Woodruff was an early riser.
After pouring her first cup of coffee, Delia hitched a stool up to the kitchen island and flipped open the Herald-Sun. Bush's numbers were down, the market was up, there'd been another shooting on Alston Avenue, and Senator Elizabeth Dole had a new hairdo. Well, thank God, Liddy, Delia almost said aloud. The eighties are finally over.
But instead of carrying on a full-blown conversation with herself, as she'd been known to do, Delia kept reading. At the bottom of the front page a headline screamed the story of a major drug bust in the I-95 corridor just east of Raleigh. Delia skimmed the topic sentences. A Florida man had been killed, another badly wounded. Three million dollars' worth of uncut, New York-bound cocaine had been seized and two SBI officers placed on administrative leave pending a deadly-force review.
And then the name Woodruff leapt off the page, causing Delia to choke on her mocha-Kona blend.
My vacation, he had casually remarked, was unexpected.
Wow. It certainly had been. And Delia thought her Friday had sucked.
Still shaking her head, Delia finished her coffee, poured the rest of the pot into two thermal travel mugs, then dashed upstairs to dress.
NICK WOODRUFF WATCHED his pretty little neighbor flounce out of her kitchen door, and tried to keep his mouth from going dry. Dreams of Dr. Delia--strange dreams--had kept him awake last night. He'd been better off, he realized, when he'd thought she was snooty and rich. This morning she'd exchanged her snug black suit and pointy-toed high heels for some sort of floaty brown skirt that swirled above her ankles in the unseasonable heat. And they were just the kind of ankles you'd expect a rich, sultry-voiced psychologist to have, too. Very, very fine ones.
But on the whole, Dr. Delia Sydney was definitely not what he'd expected. Over the airwaves her voice really was a little sultry, but a whole lot suave, too. And right now Let's Talk About Sex was the hottest new show on talk radio. With her million-word vocabulary, she dispensed advice in blunt, no-nonsense terms which made that bald-headed drill sergeant Dr. Phil look like a big ole wuss. And no matter how kinky the question, Dr. Delia never, ever lost her cool.
But out of her dark suit, Nick's next-door neighbor was just a slip of a girl, with a wild mane of black curls and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. Hell, she didn't look old enough to vote. No, worse--she looked like jailbait. And good Lord above, thought Nick, watching as she crossed from her yard into his, Dr. Delia Sydney was just about the prettiest thing he'd seen since crazy old Bud Basham's cat had a litter of kittens in the driver's seat of his Triumph.
Just then, Tiger Lily herself came slinking through the spindles of the porch railing that edged the open end of his shed, her orange fur glistening in the morning sun. Nick bent down to scratch her rump as she twined around his left ankle. But he kept one eye on Dr. Delia.
"Hi," she said, stepping hesitantly around the railing and into the shed. "I thought you might like a cup of coffee. It's black--is that okay?"
"I love black," he said, looking at her hair and searching for something clever to say. "Thanks."
"Oh," she said, noticing the cat. "There's Tiger Lily!"
"Yeah, I have visitation rights," he said, giving the cat another scratch. "Basham and I fished her out of that culvert across the road. I guess I kinda let him have her."
Sudden knowledge lit Delia's eyes, and Nick noticed yet again how pale and arctic blue they were. "Oh, my God, was that you?" she said, nodding toward the disassembled Triumph. "Is that the car? The one Bud calls the Cat Mobile?"
Nick grinned. "Yeah, but cats are real neat," he said. "There wasn't much to clean up."
Tiger Lily leapt onto the workbench that ran across the back of the shed, curled up on an old newspaper, and began to lick one of her front paws. Nick sipped the coffee again, then plucked a socket wrench from one of the drawers of a tall red tool cabinet. "So," he said, turning around and giving the wrench a neat little spin. "Sleep well? Or did the thought of my performing surgery on your car give you nightmares?"
Delia sat down on a rickety chair by the railing and rolled her eyes. "God, no, going to the garage gives me nightmares. I think my service manager is the Antichrist."
Nick spun the wrench again, and decided to go for it. "Can I ask you something?" he said. "Something personal? I mean, I've looked under your hood and all, so I guess we're already kind of intimate, right?"
She turned faintly pink--for about the fourth time in their very short acquaintance. "Yes, sure," she said. "Ask."
"How old are you, Dr. Delia?"
Delia pursed her lips. "Older than I look."
Nick laid the wrench down and leaned back against the door of the Triumph. "You know, I don't think so."
Delia sighed. "Thirty-one, going on fifty," she said.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," he said, studying her. "How in the hell did you get through school and...and accomplish so much?" Nick made an expansive gesture with one hand.
She actually clasped her hands between her knees, a little-girl-lost gesture if ever he'd seen one, and cops knew body language. "I was kind of a child prodigy," she said softly.
"A what?" Shit, he'd been afraid of that.
"You know, one of those smart kids--kids so smart they're weird, right?--so they pushed me out of high school and into college when I was, oh, about fifteen."
"Uh-huh," said Nick. "And you finished college at, what, seventeen? Grad school at nineteen?"
"Something like that."
While he tried to think of something else to say--something besides God, I'd love to see how your knees would look hooked over my shoulders, which was the first thing that came to mind--Nick loosened the distributor cap on the Volvo. Then methodically he began to extract the spark plugs, only four of which were working. Number five looked like a chestnut roasted by an open fire. Jesus H. Christ, Dr. Delia was either the world's worst skinflint, or she was poor as a church mouse, and Nick was now betting on the latter.
"Is it bad?" came a small voice from the chair.
Nick bent over and rested his head on the radiator cap. "Sugar, I don't even have the heart to tell you how bad," he said. "Let me put it off a bit, okay?"
"Sure." Dr. Delia started to fiddle with her hair. "So, how old are you?" she suddenly blurted.
Nick straightened up and tossed the last bad plug in his trash barrel. "Thirty-six going on seventy, it feels like," he said, just as his lower back tried to spasm. "Ouch."
She saw his hand go to the small of his back. "Are you all right?" she asked, jumping out of her chair. She closed the distance between them, looking anxious enough to offer him a back rub.
Please, please, oh, God, please.
"It's nothing," he lied. "Nothing a good soak in the old hot tub won't fix."
And then, to his amazement, Dr. Delia circled behind him, set her hands on his shoulders, and squeezed. "Gosh, you're tense," she said. "You need to relax. And I can tell just by touching you that you need a good massage."
"Mmm." Nick squeezed his eyes shut and wondered if his dreams were about to come true. "You offering, Dr. Delia?"
Delia didn't seem to take the question amiss. Her thumbs, surprisingly strong, were digging deep into the muscles of his shoulders now. "Well, I guess I could," she said uncertainly. "But it would only be Swedish. I'm an amateur. I can't do deep tissue work, and really that's what you need."
"I like it Swedish," he choked, eyes still shut. Hell, I'd like it Lebanese, he thought. Just don't stop.
"Bend o
ver and let me feel," she commanded, tugging his T-shirt out of his jeans.
"Dr. Delia, I've been just dying for you to ask." He planted his hands on the front of the Volvo and leaned forward.
Delia laughed, but she kept feeling her way down his spine, her touch clinical, her tiny thumbs digging into places he didn't know he had. Lower. And lower. And oh, God, it felt good. Almost orgasmi--
"Shit!" Pain shot down his leg, and Nick jerked like a nervous horse. "Oh, Holy Mother, what'd you hit?"
Delia was quiet for a minute, her strokes lightly soothing. "Well, I'm no orthopedist," she said, her voice no less husky, though it was matter-of-fact. "But you've got a little disk degeneration down here, don't you?"
Nick snorted. "Maybe," he admitted. "But I manage."
Her voice was chiding. "What did you do?"
"Hurt it in the Army," he answered. "But let's keep that our little secret, Doc."
Delia was making soft little circles with the heel of her hand now. Around and around, along the ridge of his hip bone. The pain was gone, his skin was warming, and his every nerve ending was coming to life. Some other things were on the verge of coming to life, too.
As if she'd read his mind, Delia suddenly stopped. "I'm sorry," she said, jerking his shirt back down. "I'm afraid I can't handle you."
"Try," he begged, choking out the word.
Dr. Delia seemed to miss his point. She stepped around and shook her head. "I'm just a psychologist," she said. "And a professor at that. We don't have any real skills, you know." She paused and shot him a heart-melting grin. "I'm going to make you an appointment with a neuromuscular therapist I know."
"Well, I'm not sure..."
"Did you like what I was doing to you?" she asked in her sultry voice.
"Hell, yes."
"Then you're going to simply adore Hans." Delia patted him on the shoulder. "Trust me, Mr. Woodruff, he's much better than I am."
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