“I thought you said you couldn’t leave, in case Ben came while you were gone?”
He snapped his fingers. “You’re right. Thanks for reminding me.”
Anna wanted to kick herself. How stupid could she be, for heaven’s sake?
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you a breather from my presence while I go get something to eat, if you’ll make me a promise.”
He was going to leave? He was really going to leave, if even for only a few minutes? “What promise is that?”
“You have to promise that if Ben comes while I’m gone, you give me thirty minutes to get back before you tell him I’m in town.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Look at you,” he said with disgust. “Don’t ever play poker, Anna. Everything you’re thinking shows in your eyes.”
Anna tossed her head and looked away, hating the fire that stung her cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about you agreeing to give me thirty minutes when you have no intention of actually doing it. Anna, I’m not the only one Ben owes money to.”
Anna quailed. Ben, what have you done?
“Look. I’m gonna carry my things in and put them in Ben’s closet, so if he comes in while I’m gone he won’t see them right off.”
Anna watched him do as he said, all the while wondering what she would do if Ben did come while Gavin was gone. Not telling him Gavin was here would be the same as lying. She would be springing a trap on her own brother.
Gavin came, keys in hand, and stood in front of her. “Thirty minutes, Anna, that’s all I’m asking. Just thirty minutes.”
“I’ll...I’ll try. That’s the best I can offer you. But if he asks me right-out, I won’t lie to him.”
Gavin nodded once. “Fair enough. You want me to bring you back something?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Thank you.”
When he left, Anna made sure to lock the door behind him. Then, because she hoped Ben’s key ring didn’t contain keys to all her locks, she locked all the doors including the big garage door, and their dead bolts, except for the garage door to the kitchen, which didn’t have one. She even locked the front storm door and hooked the security chain on the front door. It was worth a try, although she didn’t hold out much hope that it would keep Gavin Marshall out.
What she would say to Ben if he came, she still didn’t know.
She didn’t have to worry about it. Twenty-five minutes later Gavin was back. Locking all the doors did not keep him out. He opened the garage door and parked Ben’s motorcycle there, then jiggled the doorknob to the kitchen. A moment later she heard a key slide into the lock, and in he came.
“Nice try,” he said. “Don’t look so disappointed. I told you I had Ben’s keys.”
With nothing to say to him, Anna turned on her heel and went to her room, where she closed the door.
There was no lock on her bedroom door. That had never troubled her before. Now it did. Not that she thought Gavin would come into her room, but if she couldn’t get him out of her house, she wanted to be able to lock him out of her room.
Gavin felt like a Class-A jerk. Obviously he hadn’t thought this harebrained scheme through very well, nor had he considered the ramifications. It had never been his intent to scare Ben’s sister. He wouldn’t mind scaring a little sense into Ben, but Anna...
On the other hand, the way Gavin heard it, it was Anna, by always bailing Ben out of trouble, who had taught her brother that he didn’t need to bother with taking responsibility for his own actions. Anna took that responsibility for him. If she’d practiced a little tough love and left Ben to extract himself from a mess or two, maybe the kid would have learned by now that life was a little bit more than one big party thrown for his enjoyment.
“Listen to me,” Gavin muttered to himself as he flopped onto Anna’s couch. Was he any better? In certain circles, Gavin himself was known as quite the partier. But he’d grown up. He’d learned the hard way, watching his cousin barrel down the road to ruin. Gavin would like to spare Ben a possible painful lesson if he could.
But for now he’d better be finding a way to make peace with Anna Lee Collins and convince her that he meant only good for Ben in the long run.
With her arms wrapped around her waist, Anna paced beside her bed, wondering what to do about Gavin Marshall, about Ben.
She couldn’t do anything about Gavin’s car, but maybe if she offered to pay him the money Ben owed him...
A deep, wrenching pain tore through her at the thought of giving up her dream of college to get Ben out of trouble—again.
“Ben, why? Why do you do things like this?” Why do I keep paying for your mistakes?
She paused at the foot of her bed and waited for the pain to ease. Prayed for a numbness to settle over her so she wouldn’t think about college or Ben or the stranger in her living room.
What was she supposed to do now that she had finished her chores? She heard the television through the wall. Was she supposed to spend the rest of the day watching baseball with a stranger?
Groceries. How could she have forgotten?
Gavin Marshall, that’s how.
Never mind Gavin Marshall. Saturday wasn’t only for cleaning and laundry, it was also grocery day.
With something definite to do, Anna felt better. She squared her shoulders and turned toward her closet. She couldn’t go to the store dressed in her housecleaning clothes.
When she left her room fifteen minutes later her hair was neatly combed and she’d donned a pale blue cotton pantsuit, clean tennis shoes and white socks. Her purse hung from the crook in her arm—she’d double-checked to make sure she had her checkbook—and her keys were in her hand.
She came up short at the sight of her intruder sitting on her couch with his elbows braced on spread knees. For a few blessed moments as she had changed clothes she’d forgotten his presence.
He looked up at her and smiled. “Going somewhere?” He glanced down at the keys in her hand, then back up at her face. “Don’t leave on my account.”
Anna’s mouth tightened of its own accord. “If you must know, I’m going grocery shopping.”
“Good. I’ll go with you.”
“No, thank you. But there is something you can do for me.”
“Name it.”
She smiled. “Be gone when I get back.”
“Ah, come on.” He rose and propped his hands at his waist. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Won’t, you mean.”
“All right, won’t. Look, Anna, why don’t we call a truce here? I don’t want anything from you. I don’t mean you any harm at all. If my mother wasn’t enough to convince you I’m really a nice guy, I’ll give you a list of references as long as your arm. All I want is to be here when Ben shows up.”
Anna stared at him a long moment. “What if,” she said slowly, “I promise to call you as soon as Ben gets here?”
He was shaking his head before she’d finished. “No dice, darlin’.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay. Ms. Collins. But you know as well as I do that your brother will come breezing in here with some cock-and-bull story to make you feel sorry for him, and the next thing you know you’ll be offering to pay off his debt for him.”
Anna did her best to stifle a shudder. “And if I did offer?”
“No way, lady. You’re not the one who owes me money. I don’t want you paying me. I don’t want you loaning Ben the money to pay me. That little weasel got himself into this mess without your help. It’s past time he grew up, don’t you think?”
“I will not discuss my brother’s character—”
“Or lack of it.”
“—With you. I certainly have no objection to Ben handling his own problems. But I do have an objection to your being in my house. You’ve no right to be here.”
“That’s true. I don’t. And I’ll apologize again for barging in on you, as well
as for any inconvenience my presence might cause. But I’m not leaving. Somebody’s got to teach that brother of yours a lesson before he lands himself in big-time trouble. It’s pretty obvious that someone’s not going to be you, or you’d have done it long before now and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Anna reared back. “You’re blaming me for your presence in my home?”
Gavin steeled himself. He had to be tough, mean even. He had to make her believe. “Maybe. I guess I’m suggesting that if you had stopped bailing him out of trouble years ago, he might have learned to stand on his own two feet by now.”
Heat flushed across Anna’s face. Oh! The man made her so angry. Anna wasn’t used to anger.
Especially self-directed said a little voice in the back of her mind. The little voice that told her there was much more truth in Gavin Marshall’s last comment than she cared to hear.
“I believe,” she told him, “this conversation has come to an end. Don’t be here when I get back.” She marched past him toward the kitchen, then remembered her car wasn’t in its usual spot in the garage. Flushing with renewed, alien anger, she spun on her heel and stomped out the front door.
Gavin bit the inside of his jaw and watched her blush. All right, if he couldn’t talk sense into her, he’d have to try getting past her guard some other way. Remembering the lack of anything much to eat in her kitchen, he decided on his next step.
When Anna backed out of her driveway and pulled up at the corner stop sign two houses away, a black Harley rumbled up behind her with its distinctive, deep-throated growl.
Anna’s heart gave a little leap. It was him! Was he really leaving? Weakness flooded her. It was relief. Surely it was relief.
But some tiny little part of her brain whispered, Disappointment .
That was ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly be disappointed because the stranger in her house was leaving, just the way she told him to.
So what if finding a stranger on her couch was the most excitement she’d ever known? It wasn’t exciting, it was terrifying. So maybe he was a handsome man with a pleasing smile and attractive eyes. Danger radiated from Gavin Marshall in waves. Her body picked up the signals and shortened her breath, made her heart pound, weakened her knees.
Danger.
And now he was leaving. Her world would tilt back to its normal angle and life would get back to its usual sameness.
Dullness, you mean.
Anna pushed the thought away.
Admit it. Finding a good-looking stranger on your couch is the most excitement you’ve ever had.
She pushed that thought away, too. She couldn’t deny the truth of it, but it didn’t matter. It was best that he left. Best for Ben, best for her.
Traffic cleared on the cross street. With a final farewell glance in her rearview mirror, Anna pulled away from the stop sign and took her usual route down Northwest Sixty-third to the grocery store.
Chapter Three
A glance in her rearview mirror a moment later had Anna sucking in her breath.
Gavin Marshall was still behind her.
There was something mysterious about the way those mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes from view. Something wild about him, about the way he gripped the handlebars or whatever they were called, the way he straddled the motorcycle, pulling those worn jeans tight over his thighs, the way the wind whipped his hair back from his face.
The latter image burned into her mind when she pulled her gaze from the mirror and once again watched where she was going. It occurred to her that he’d left Ben’s helmet behind. Then it occurred to her that he surely hadn’t had time to pack all his belongings before he’d left the house.
There was a conclusion she should draw, she knew, but as it wasn’t the one she wanted, she denied what she knew to be true and hoped for the best as she turned in at the parking lot of the grocery store.
He turned in right behind her.
Finally her brain admitted the truth. Gavin Marshall, the man who had invaded her home, the man who wanted to get his hands on her brother, was not leaving town. He was following her. It was enough to make her want to swear.
With her hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel, she pulled into a parking space. By the time she got out of the car and locked it, he was standing at the door to the store, waiting for her. She took one step toward the store and a hot gust of wind slapped her from behind and stood her hair straight up on end.
Mortified, Anna reached to smooth it down. A moment later she scolded herself. She wasn’t one to worry about a little thing like windblown hair. Why should she care what she looked like to this man?
She didn’t. And that was that.
Shoulders squared, purse hanging from the crook of her arm, she marched straight up to him. “Why have you followed me?” she demanded.
He placed a hand on his chest and gave her a mock look of innocence. “You don’t think I expect you to buy my groceries for me, do you? What kind of man do you take me for? No.” He held up a hand and grinned. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m sure I wouldn’t like your answer.”
Anna blinked. “If you think buying my groceries is going to—”
“I didn’t say I was buying your groceries. I came to buy my own.”
“Why do you need groceries if you expect Ben to show up any minute?”
“Because if he doesn’t show up by suppertime, I’ll get hungry?”
She pursed her lips.
“Okay, how’s this? I’m buying Ben’s groceries, and until he shows up I’m helping myself.” He stepped aside, bent slightly at the waist, and extended an arm toward the automatic door. “After you, ma’am.”
In her job as a bookkeeper, and at home living alone, Anna didn’t have much call to get angry. She wasn’t used to feeling the sting of it rise from inside. Yet how many times this day had she felt like kicking something? Or, more accurately, someone?
She clamped her teeth over the petty words that wanted to spew from her lips and entered the store. She would simply ignore him. She couldn’t think of anything else to do.
But the man named Gavin Marshall proved impossible to ignore. When she got a shopping cart and started toward the household goods aisle, saving, as she always did, the dairy and produce aisles for last because it took her a half hour to get warm after traversing those cold sections, Gavin Marshall got his own shopping cart and followed her.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped at the book and magazine racks. Quickly she turned her cart down the detergent aisle and hefted a large bottle into her cart, then moved on. She was in the Sundries aisle, looking at razors, when he strolled by and stopped at the selection of men’s shaving creams.
Anna would have ignored him. She meant to. But she couldn’t help but stare at the lone item in his shopping cart. As far as she knew, she’d never met a grown man who read comic books.
“If you’re nice,” he said as he plucked a can of shaving cream off the shelf and used it to point at the comic book, “I’ll let you read it after me.”
Anna turned abruptly away and grabbed the first package of razors she reached, then pushed her cart down the aisle.
On Cereals, she bought Shredded Wheat. He bought Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes.
On Canned Goods, she bought tomato paste. He bought chili and peaches.
She skipped Soft Drinks, but when next she saw him he’d added three liters of Coke to his basket.
Apparently he knew her brother’s tastes quite well.
When he reached for a six-pack of Coors on a large end display, she cleared her throat loudly. “Ben doesn’t drink in my house.”
“These,” he said with a smug smile, “are for me.”
“You,” she answered with a smile even more smug, “don’t drink in my house, either.”
He frowned. “I don’t?”
She frowned more fiercely. “You don’t.”
With the expression of a young boy bidding a final farewell to his b
est friend, Gavin put the six-pack back.
On the Bakery aisle, she bought whole-wheat bread and plain bagels. He bought white bread and a large package of cinnamon rolls.
She bypassed the frozen food section. He loaded up with frozen dinners, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and fish sticks.
At the Meat counter she picked out boneless, skinned chicken breasts, a lean chuck roast and three pounds of extra-lean ground beef she would have to separate into one-pound packages when she got home.
Gavin passed her and stopped at the lunch meat case, where he selected bologna and hot dogs, then turned back toward her. “I don’t suppose you have any mustard—Never mind. I’ll get some.”
She made it to the Dairy case and bought four cartons of fat-free yogurt in various flavors, a half-gallon of skimmed milk, “heart-smart” margarine and a pint of low-fat cottage cheese. She didn’t see Gavin again until the checkout stands, where he stood in line behind a woman with two small children and enough food in her cart to prepare for a lengthy siege. He’d added two dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and three bags of chocolate chip cookies to his cart.
Anna ignored him and pushed her cart in behind a woman buying a potted plant and a package of ground beef, thinking, rather smugly, she admitted, that she would be checked out and on her way home before he ever got his cart emptied onto the conveyor belt.
Things didn’t happen quite that way. Upon close inspection the philodendron the woman ahead of her had chosen sported a healthy population of aphids. It just wouldn’t do. Rather than give up her place in line to go pick out a new plant, the customer insisted that the clerk send someone to select a replacement for her. Her hip ached and she didn’t want to walk back to the plant display area again.
A sack boy chose a new plant, same type, same size. But the foil paper around the pot was the wrong color.
Anna took long, deep breaths as the drama played out slowly in front of her and the margarine in her basket approached room temperature. At the next register, the woman with the two children paid her total and led the way out the door while a sack girl followed with a cart filled with the woman’s bagged purchases.
Until You Page 4