“Listens to? Don’t you mean plays?”
Anna shrugged. “Plays, listens to, it still all comes out of the radio.”
Gavin’s eyes widened. “Maybe I really do have the wrong house. You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never heard Ben play the piano.”
“Of course I have. He’s very talented, especially with gospel and modern classics.”
Gavin slowly placed his fork on the edge of his plate and used his paper napkin to wipe a dab of sauce from his lip, all the while staring hard at Anna. “You’re kidding, right?”
Anna frowned. “About what?”
“I’m beginning to think I know more about your brother than you do.”
Anna ground her molars together. “I doubt that.”
“Then how can you mention his gospel and modern classics and not mention his rock?”
She sighed. “I’d hoped he had quit fooling around with that by now.”
“Fooling around?” he cried, incredulous.
“You mean, he still plays it?”
“Plays it? Ben Collins is the hottest piano player to hit the L.A. music scene in years. With a little more polish, and some work on his singing, he could give Elton John and Billy Joel a run for their money someday.”
Anna felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Ben...is a professional...musician?”
“That’s an even lower life form than a songwriter, isn’t it? You make it sound as if I just announced he’s a professional nose-picker.”
Which was just about the truth, as far as Anna was concerned. So few people ever earned a decent living as musicians, and those who did, well, Anna shuddered thinking of the life-style of a professional musician, particularly in the field of rock and roll. Alcohol, drugs, groupies. Wild parties, destructive behavior. The thought of Ben living that way made her want to weep.
“I had hoped,” she admitted, “that he would find more stable work.”
“What do you mean by ‘stable’?”
Anna gave him a wry smile. “Something with regular pay, company benefits, insurance, a retirement plan. I’ve never heard of a rock musician with a retirement plan.” In truth, she’d never really heard of a rock musician who lived long enough to need one.
“Is that the kind of job you have? A stable one with all the benefits?”
Her smile lost its wryness. “There’s not much that’s more stable than bookkeeping.”
“Ah, a bean counter.”
Anna hated that term. “The last time I counted beans, I counted four of them as the doctor removed them from Ben’s nose. That was a long time ago.”
Gavin grinned again. “I can imagine. What was he, twenty-one at the time?”
“The doctor?”
“Ben.”
“When he stuck beans up his nose? Of course not. He was four.”
“It was a joke, Anna.”
“Oh.” Flustered, and still troubled over learning about Ben’s piano playing, Anna realized her appetite had fled. She carried her dishes to the sink, rinsed them, then placed them in the dishwasher.
Now what was she supposed to do? It was too early to go to bed, yet she had no desire to sit around making small talk with her uninvited guest for the rest of the night. She could pay a few bills. They weren’t really due yet, but at least she could do it at her desk in the den. That would get her out of the living room while Gavin watched that blasted baseball game. Yet she wasn’t entirely certain that she wanted to leave him on his own.
Baseball, motorcycles, old cars and rock and roll. Did the man do nothing serious? Nothing real or meaningful?
It seemed not. It seemed that everything he did was just for fun. No real job, no regular car, no real responsibilities.
Those were assumptions on her part, she admitted. She didn’t really know the man. But so far, everything he’d said about himself led her to believe that he was one of those people who flitted through life with no cares, never contributing anything meaningful to society, never having to work hard at anything. Just out for a good time.
No wonder he knew her brother.
Ouch. What a disloyal thought.
Disloyal, but painfully true. Ben was the same way. Just out for a good time, regardless of the consequences. And there were always consequences. Anna was usually the one left to deal with them.
Realizing that she’d been wiping the same spot on the kitchen counter over and over with the dishrag, Anna rinsed the rag again, squeezed out the excess water, and hung it from the hook inside the cabinet door beneath the sink.
If she wasn’t going to leave him to his own devices, what was she supposed to do? Sit and make small talk with a rock-and-roll songwriter? She knew nothing about small talk, even less about rock and roll. Should she snuggle up beside this stranger who’d invaded her home and watch a baseball game? She knew slightly more about baseball than rock and roll, but it certainly wasn’t on her list of things she enjoyed watching.
And why, she wondered, was she even considering any of these ideas? This was her home. If she didn’t want the television tuned to a baseball game, all she had to do was change the channel.
Feeling as if she’d just made a life-altering decision, Anna turned and marched to the television. After turning it off, she pulled the morning paper from the magazine rack beside the couch and settled down next to the lamp to read. In addition to providing her with something to read, the paper also served to block her view of Gavin where she’d left him at the table, and his view of her.
Being unable to see him did not help chase him from her mind. She knew every time he took a bite of food by the clink of his fork against the plate, every time he sipped his iced tea by the quiet thump of his glass against the table. She knew when he finished eating by the scrape of chair legs across the floor, his footsteps into the kitchen, water running in the sink. More clanks and clinks.
She knew his mother must have had some impression on him during his growing up years, for Anna distinctly heard him place his plate, silverware and glass in the dishwasher.
What she did not know was a single word of what was printed on the page she was staring at.
His footsteps crossed the kitchen floor, the dining area, then quieted against the carpet as he neared the couch. Then there was a loud whack and a couple of really impressive swearwords.
Anna peered around the edge of her paper to see that he’d run into her coffee table with his shin. His grimace as he bent to rub his shin shouldn’t have pleased her. “Did you hurt the table?”
He grunted and limped the rest of the way to the couch. “I think it’ll survive.”
“I’m glad. I’m awfully fond of it.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said with disgust. “So. I take it you don’t like baseball.”
Anna turned her head toward him without really looking at him and frowned as he sat at the opposite end of the couch. “Not at two hundred decibels in my living room.”
“Two hundred decibels is impossible,” he informed her with a small smile. “We’d be dead and the whole neighborhood would be gone.”
Anna pursed her lips and turned back to her paper.
“It probably wasn’t over sixty,” he added.
“Thank you for correcting me.”
“No problem. Mind if I read the funnies?” He slipped the back section of the newspaper from beside her and turned to the back page where the comic strips ran each day. After about thirty seconds, he let out a laugh. Then another. And another. Every few seconds he laughed.
It was irritating, that deep bass chuckle. Some people were so easily amused.
For the third time Anna started over on the lead front page article about federal funding for the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.
From the other end of the couch came the crinkle of a newspaper being folded.
“So what do you do for fun around here?” Gavin asked.
Giving up on making sense of the funding article, Anna opened the newspaper to an inside page, the b
etter to cut off her view of the man beside her. “If you’re bored, Mr. Marshall, I assure you I won’t be offended if you leave.”
“You know,” he said in a conversational tone, “in some ways your brother knows you pretty well. You did offer to pay me the cash he owes me. But in other ways, I’m about to decide he doesn’t know you at all. How can that be?”
Anna turned another page, the paper rustling loudly. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I guess maybe the two of you aren’t as close as I assumed, which is only natural, I guess, since you’re so much older than Ben.”
Turning another page, Anna crackled the paper as loudly as she could.
“Ben seems to think you’re the kindest, nicest, gentlest soul on the planet. He obviously doesn’t know about this prickly side of you. He thinks you’re an angel. I’d have to say you’re more like a porcupine.”
Anna shut her eyes and slapped the pages of the newspaper together. “I can’t do this.”
“Is my talking disturbing you?”
“Your presence is disturbing me. You’re going to have to leave, Mr. Marshall.”
“My name is Gavin. My friends call me Gav.”
“How nice for you. But you’re still going to have to leave my house.”
“As soon as your brother shows up.”
“No.” She shook her head and turned to look at him for the first time since he sat down. “You can’t stay here. I can’t allow you to stay here.” She shook her head again for emphasis, her stomach tying itself in knots. “You’re going to have to go stay in a motel. Or better yet, go home. If you’ll leave a number, I’ll let you know if Ben shows up.”
He studied her a moment with narrowed eyes. “Now why,” he said slowly, “don’t I believe you?”
“You have to believe me.” She struggled to keep the emotion from her voice. “You can’t stay here.”
He shook his head and smiled slightly, his blue eyes turning hard. “I meant, I don’t believe you’d call me when Ben shows up. You’re too used to protecting him.”
There wasn’t much she could say about that. He was right. It had been a desperate argument, and a lie. It shamed her, for she wasn’t a liar. But her fear shamed her, too, for she had never been a coward. “How do I know you won’t murder me in my sleep tonight?” she blurted. And that shamed her, too, for she wasn’t a blurter.
The man on the other end of her couch had the audacity to look offended. “Murder you? Is that what you think I’m here for?”
“I’d be a fool not to consider it.”
“Good God, woman, no wonder you’re so prickly, if you think I’m a murderer.”
“I’m a woman.”
“I noticed.”
“Not a very large one.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He gave her the once-over with those blue eyes of his. “I’d say you’re just about right. Although you’re not my type.”
“As if I wanted to be.” She stared at him a moment. “Just out of curiosity, what is your type? An empty-headed groupie who worships the ground you walk on?”
His smile came slowly and grew large. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Anna’s mouth tightened. She should have kept her curiosity to herself. With resolve, she returned to her previous line of thought. “Do you know how many women are murdered in their homes in this country each year?”
“Actually, no.”
“Neither do I, precisely, but it’s thousands. Thousands. Murdered in their own homes. By men. Men they know, or strangers. I’d say you fall a little into each of those categories. Doesn’t letting you stay in my house double my chances of getting myself killed?”
“Aren’t you being just a little bit paranoid?”
“I’m supposed to take a chance with my life? On the word of a stranger? I’m sorry, but taking chances is something I don’t do.”
“Well, now.” He slid one arm along the back of the couch and watched her with narrowed eyes. “That’s funny, since I consider you one of the biggest chance-takers I’ve ever heard of.”
“That’s absurd. You don’t know anything about met.”
“Don’t I? I know you took a hell of a chance when you were eighteen and your parents died and you decided to raise your twelve-year-old brother yourself.”
“That’s a little different from gambling that the intruder in my house means me no harm.”
“I do mean you no harm.” His piercing look was a direct contrast to his words, and the easy tone in which he spoke them did nothing to ease Anna’s worries.
“Oh, well,” she offered sarcastically, “I guess that means I have nothing to worry about.”
His jaw flexed and his lips thinned. “I agree that a woman has to be careful. But you’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little testy. I’ve never been accused or even suspected of being a murderer before. It’s not sitting real well with me.”
“I can’t help that.”
He let out a huff of breath. “No, I suppose you can’t.”
“If you’re as nice a person as you’d like me to think, you’d take yourself to a motel to wait for Ben.”
“I guess I’m not that nice.” His smile was thin and meaningless. “Okay, let me lay it out for you. I like your brother. I think he’s basically a good kid who’s just never been taught responsibility.”
Anna’s stomach twisted a little tighter at the words.
“Maybe that’s your fault for always bailing him out of trouble.”
The words stung like a slap across the cheek. Anna dropped her gaze to hide the pain that must surely show in her eyes.
“Maybe,” Gavin continued, “it’s just his nature. Either way, he’s headed for real trouble if he doesn’t straighten up. I don’t want to see him get into real trouble. I don’t think you do, either.”
“You’re not responsible for my brother.”
Instead of answering, he just looked at her. Finally he said, “No, I’m not. And neither are you. He’s responsible for himself. I’d just like to make sure he learns that lesson before it’s too late.”
“Why do you think teaching him is your place?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s not. But I don’t see anybody else willing to do it. Dammit, Anna, I like Ben. He’s basically a good kid. He just needs to do some growing up.”
“Which has nothing to do with your staying in my house,” she said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.
He huffed out a breath. “You don’t have a thing in the world to fear from me.”
“So you say.”
“For cryin’ out loud, lock your bedroom door if you’re so worried about me.”
“I’ve lived in this house since I was eight years old. Until you showed up, we’ve never had a reason to put locks on our bedroom doors.”
“Get yourself a butcher knife from the kitchen and sleep with it next to you,” he quipped. “I saw a baseball bat in Ben’s closet. Take that to bed with you. Drag one of those dining room chairs in there and prop it under your doorknob so I can’t get in.”
Surprise held Anna quiet a moment. She could do all those things easily. Why hadn’t she thought of them herself? Still, she shouldn’t have to barricade herself in her own bedroom. She opened her mouth to say so, but he beat her to it.
“I’m not leaving. If that bothers you, I apologize. But I came here to teach Ben a lesson, and that’s what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not”
She felt like a fool, but a safe one. Her sharpest butcher knife was tucked beneath her pillow, Ben’s old Louisville Slugger stood beside the bed, and the back of a dining room chair was snugged up beneath the doorknob to prevent anyone from entering. That should do it.
If she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she’d probably kill herself trying to leave her room. But no one was going to come in without waking her in the process, and if they made it in, she would not be helpless.
Sitting on the edge of the bed in her knee-length nightgown, Anna adm
itted to herself that she thought the chances of Gavin Marshall trying to murder or molest her were zero to none. His plans for Ben, and the look in his eyes when he spoke of them, worried her for Ben’s sake, but she felt no personal threat from the man.
But she’d have felt like a complete idiot if she’d blindly trusted a stranger to stay in her house and she’d been wrong about him. If she’d awakened dead in the morning, she would have had no one to blame but herself for being stupid.
So she’d done the smart thing. The safe thing. No matter how stupid it felt.
It never occurred to her as she finally fell asleep around midnight that her safety precautions would be her downfall, but that was because she wasn’t particularly aware of her habit of slipping one arm beneath her pillow while she slept.
Chapter Five
It was the prick of cold steel along her forearm that woke her. Confused, she moved her arm to a more comfortable position, only to feel a sharper sting along the outer edge of her hand. She might have gone back to sleep, but as the pain dawned on her, so did the sudden smear of moisture she felt on her hand.
The knife. She’d cut her hand on the butcher knife. Of all the stupid things.
Realizing that she was probably bleeding all over her sheets, Anna groaned. Bracing her other hand and knee against the mattress, she went to push herself up and off the bed, but instead of soft mattress, her knee came down solidly on something hard. She let out a small cry and jerked back before realizing the something hard was the baseball bat she’d brought to bed. At her movement, it rolled off the mattress and onto the floor, leaving her feeling like a total idiot.
The feeling was magnified when she swung her legs off the bed and stubbed her toe on the bat where it lay on the floor. And even more so a moment later when she limped toward the door, only to ram her shin into the chair that braced her doorknob to keep out the stranger in her brother’s bed. She grunted in pain, then, furious, wrestled the chair out of her way and jerked open the door.
Until You Page 6