If A Man Answers

by Merline Lovelace

  Although most of the Sato executives spoke and read English, Molly was on hand to interpret, if necessary. She would also escort Mr. Sato and his staff to the various sites they wanted to scout in the area. Unfortunately, the visiting CEO had somehow formed the mistaken impression that her duties extended to more than escorting and interpreting. On the first morning of his visit, Mr. Sato had offered Molly a staggering sum in exchange for her exclusive companionship at night. She’d politely refused. Since then, she’d discovered that he had difficulty understanding “no” in either Japanese or English.

  Twice during the Addagio’s long presentation, she removed his pudgy fingers from her thigh. The second time, she pinned a bright smile on her face and let him know in a private aside that she’d send him home to his wife in two separate suitcases if he touched her again.

  After grinding out a polite farewell, Molly finally left Mr. Sato and his group to a night of gambling and whatever debauchery they cared to seek out. She also left a sublimely happy vice president of sales hugging a signed contract to his Versace-clad chest. Worn out by her long day and even longer night, she drove to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority just off Paradise Road. Her boss had asked for a full report. As expected, Davinia Jacobbson whooped with joy at the news that Sato had signed with the Addagio.

  “That means some ten thousand Sato employees will descend on the city, along with their families and assorted friends. Good goin’, kiddo.”

  Her infectious delight pulled a grin from Molly. A former college student turned showgirl turned entertainment attorney, Davinia still flashed long legs and a ten-megawatt smile. Now director of convention management, she had recently shucked her third husband and was actively auditioning candidate number four.

  “This calls for a celebration,” she exclaimed. “The Center’s got some tickets for the big fight at the arena tonight.” She waggled eyebrows a shade or two darker than her gloriously platinum hair. “Want to go watch while two hunks of superb maleness pound each other into a bloody pulp?”

  “No thanks,” Molly replied, laughing. “I’m too pooped for pulp.”

  Davinia shook her head in despair. “Good golly, Miss Molly, we have to find something or someone who can keep you awake after the sun goes down. Vegas doesn’t fizz to life until midnight.”

  “Vegas might fizz to life, but I fizzle out. Besides, I had a long night last night.”

  “Oh?” Davinia’s face brightened with interest. “Don’t tell me you actually lived it up for once.”

  “I wouldn’t call spending half of the night listening to some honky-tonk cowboy with seriously overdeveloped adenoids named Boots Randall and the other half with the police living it up.”

  “If you mean Buck Randall,” Davinia drawled, “he and his adenoids are headlining at Caesars next week. But what’s this about the cops?”

  “Well, you know the running war I’ve been having with my neighbor....”

  “The phantom of the night?” She bristled on her employee’s behalf. “Has that jerk been hassling you again?”

  “Well....”

  “I wish you’d let me turn ex-number-two loose on him. John’s a total pig most of the time, I’ll admit, but he aced property law and civil torts when we were in law school together. He’ll tie your creep of a neighbor into so many legal knots, the man won’t know his backyard from his backside.”

  Molly smiled at the tempting offer, but declined. “There’s no need to loose number two just yet. The Major didn’t exactly hassle me, except with his taste in music. And I did a bit of hassling in return.”

  Briefly, she recounted the previous night’s events. Davinia’s eyes rounded as Molly described her disturbing phone call, the police response, and her neighbor’s half-naked and wholly irate appearance on her doorstep shortly afterward.

  “The police officer who came out to the house promised to get a record of my outgoing calls from the phone company,” Molly finished. “He said he’d let me know if he found anything.”

  “You’d better check your voice mail,” Davinia advised, frowning. “Your calls have been piling up all day.”

  With her boss trailing behind her, Molly headed for her office.

  The sleek glass cubicle contained less than half the square footage of her Boston office, but Molly didn’t mind. She wasn’t hung up on the trappings of power or the latest in modular office equipment. The wideranging scope of her new job and the excitement of living in Las Vegas more than made up for the smaller digs.

  Skirting the walnut console, she punched the play button on her phone. Sure enough, one of the recorded messages was from Dennis Rodriguez. The phone company computers had experienced some kind of glitch, he reported. He hadn’t been able to get the information he’d requested. He’d call back when he did.

  Molly wavered between disappointment and relief. Part of her had hoped that the police could trace the call and verify what she’d heard last night Another part was willing to be convinced that she’d imagined the whole thing.

  “I’m going home,” she announced, pushing her chair back. “After what I went through last night and with Mr. Sato today, all I want is a cool glass of wine, a hot bath and a night of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.”

  She managed only one out of the three.

  As she drove home, the beauty of the desert landscape went a long way to soothing her frazzled nerves. With the approach of dusk, the hundreddegree-plus heat of the day had softened to a balmy eighty-five or so. The warm air rippled like silk against her skin. Even the dust thrown onto the road by the bulldozers digging trenches for the massive concrete culverts caused only a momentary annoyance as she sped by. She soon left the dust behind and took the winding road that led to the houses tucked in the rolling foothills.

  When she swung the wheel to turn into her driveway, the city shimmered in the rearview mirror. Molly drank in the spectacular sight while the garage door rumbled up. Even at its gaudiest, Vegas had its own unique beauty.

  Feeling relaxed for the first time all day, she sent the door rumbling down again and went inside. Her home welcomed her with a graciousness that still gave her a thrill after six months. Even the empty spaces seemed elegantly spare, not stark and uninviting.

  Tossing her purse on the kitchen counter, she revised her planned agenda. She’d indulge in a long, hot shower first. Then pour herself a relaxing glass of wine. Then, if her neighbor stuck to his promise to keep Boots/Buck to a low wail, she’d sink into blissful oblivion.

  She went upstairs, shedding her dress, shoes and underwear in careless abandon as she crossed her bedroom. She wasn’t a messy person by nature, but there was something to be said for the freedom of picking up when and where the mood struck her. A quick twist of the faucet soon steamed the shower. With a sigh of contentment, Molly stepped inside.

  When she finally flipped off the pulsing jets, she felt as limp as overcooked linguini. Pulling on a pair of purple satin boxer shorts and her favorite midriffbaring University of Syracuse T-shirt, she towel dried her hair. Under the glare of the bathroom lights, she slathered several generous dollops of freshbrewed facial across her nose and upper cheeks.

  The beer-bran mush tightened her pores with a satisfying tingle. As she knew from long experience, the home-brewed facial would also keep her splatter of freckles from multiplying like busy little rabbits while she slept. The downside, of course, was that the concoction dried to a tight mask and flaked all over her pillow during the night. That was a minor inconvenience, in Molly’s considered opinion. Her grandmother still turned heads at seventy-eight, and a complexion like Rose Duncan’s was worth a few flakes on the pillow.

  Brady hadn’t agreed, of course, but that was only one of Molly’s personal quirks her former fiancé had begun to criticize. When he’d started in on her friends, her taste in clothes, and even her decision to splurge on the little white Trans Am instead of the yuppie four-wheel-drive Explorer he thought they should have, Molly had finally rebelled. The e
nsuing argument had not been pretty, but the angry, hurtful confrontation had led to her new life and her new house.

  Wondering why in the world she’d put up with her overly controlling ex-fiancé as long as she had, Molly headed downstairs for her long-anticipated glass of wine. She’d just poured her favorite California blush into a stemmed glass and lifted it for a taste when she heard a thump in the living room.

  Startled, she jerked around. In the process, she splashed most of the wine down her front. The soft cotton soaked up the chilled liquid like a sponge. Molly in turn soaked up the sound of quiet footsteps in the hallway leading to the kitchen.

  She froze, eyes wide and staring at the dimly lit hall. When she spotted what looked like a shadow moving toward the kitchen, Molly did what any reasonably intelligent, semi-intrepid woman would do.

  She turned tail and ran.

  The wine glass crashed to the floor. The door leading to the back deck banged behind her. Molly tore across the wooden deck and into her yard. Instinctively, she headed for the closest signs of human habitation—the light spilling from her neighbor’s back windows.

  The oleander hedge proved only a minor obstacle. She crashed through it, not even wincing when the thin, leafy branches whipped at her bare legs and slashed her arms. She was so intent on who was behind her that she didn’t see the still figure ahead of her. A moment later, she plowed right into him.

  “What the...!”

  Sam stumbled back, grabbing at the body plastered against his. Small, high breasts flattened against his chest. A hip bone crunched into his. Instant, electric awareness jolted through him, firing nerves from his knees to his neck.

  Even before she’d cannonballed into him, he’d recognized his neighbor. Now, he recognized the fact that she packed more curves on her slender frame than the baggy, gray tunic she’d worn last night had suggested.

  Hard on the heels of that stomach-clenching discovery came the realization that she’d added wine to her regular beer consumption. From the light, fruity fumes rising in waves to assault his senses, she’d already downed several glasses too many.

  Only after he’d untangled his arms and legs from hers and stepped back a pace did Sam realize that she hadn’t downed all her wine. If the wet splotch that had transferred from her chest to his shirt was any indication, she was wearing a good portion of the bottle...and little else, he noted with a sudden tightening of his throat.

  “Someone’s in my house!”

  The panic in her voice snapped Sam’s attention from her bare belly button. “What?”

  “Someone’s in my house,” she repeated, digging her fingers into his arms. “I heard him moving.”

  The possibility flashed into Sam’s mind that his tipsy neighbor got her kicks by reporting imaginary assaults and attacks. As quickly as the thought came, he dismissed it. He could see she wasn’t drunk, despite the wine she was wearing, and he’d been around enough to recognize real fear when he saw it.

  He’d flown F-15s in Desert Storm. Later, he’d commanded a detachment of test pilots. The men and women he served with knew how to mask their inner doubts and fears, but Sam had enough experience under his belt to recognize the tight lines at the corners of the eyes. The quick glance at the distant sky when no one was looking. The grin and the cocky thumbs-up that was as much a prayer as a promise. The swagger that disguised all doubts, all private fears.

  Molly Duncan didn’t try to disguise anything. Her frightened green eyes grabbed at his gut. Her full mouth trembled. Her fingers dug into Sam’s forearms like talons. Something or someone had shaken her right down to her pink-painted toenails.

  Through the silvery hedge, Sam gave her stucco house a quick, searching once-over. He didn’t see anything or anyone moving in the brightly lit kitchen. Darkness shadowed the rest of the house.

  “There’s someone there,” she insisted, twisting around to follow his narrowed gaze. “Or there was.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. I was in the kitchen and I heard a thump and I ran.”

  “A thump? What kind of a thump?”

  A flicker of impatience pushed some of the fright from her eyes. “How do I know what kind? A thump is a thump.”

  She was recovering, Sam thought. Fast.

  “Then I heard a squeak,” she added in a rush. “Like sneakers walking on the tile.”

  “Go inside and call 911.”

  He disengaged her clawlike grip and started for the hedge. With a small shriek, she grabbed his arm again.

  “You can’t go over there. Not alone. Wait for the police!”

  “I’m just going to watch the exits, in case whoever or whatever you heard decides to depart the premises before the police arrive. Go on, make the call.”

  “But....”

  “Lock the patio door behind you.”

  Sam went in low and slow and very, very quiet. He’d grown up hunting with his father and brothers on their northern Arizona spread. Air Force jungle and desert survival schools had refined those silent, predatory skills to the point that Sam had no doubt of his ability to observe without being observed.

  It didn’t take him long to made a quick circuit of Molly’s house. The back door still yawned open from her hasty exit. The garage and front doors remained shut. Sam didn’t see any signs of forced entry, but he did find a first-floor window that gave when he tested it. Frowning, he returned to the front of the house just as a squad car pulled up in his driveway.

  Molly rushed out of Sam’s front door to greet the officer. A backup car arrived in the drive at the same time Sam did. The patrolmen took a disjointed report from Molly and a considerably more coherent one from Sam.

  “I didn’t leave that window unlocked,” she protested. “I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “We’ll check it out, ma’am. You’d better wait in the Major’s house until we go through yours. You, too, sir.”

  A still nervous Molly retreated back inside the house. She stationed herself in the tiled foyer, bending a bit to stare through the narrow windows beside the front door. Sam tried not to stare at her purple satin boxer shorts. He really tried. The effort raised a small sweat on his temples.

  His neighbor wasn’t feeling the same heat, though. She curled one bare foot over the other and wrapped her arms around her waist, as if to ward off a chill. Belatedly, Sam realized that she was under the arctic blasts coming from the air-conditioning vents. He’d gotten in the habit of keeping the house cool during his workouts.

  Tearing his appreciative gaze from those clinging purple shorts, he headed down the hall to turn up the thermostat. A quick detour to the laundry room retrieved a well-washed yellow T-shirt showing one of the 442d Test Squadron’s F-15s in flight over the desert.

  “Here. You’d better put this on before you catch cold.”

  She spun around, startled by his gruff offer. When he saw her face in full light for the first time, Sam was more than a little startled himself. It took him a moment to identify the brown, peeling stripe laid across her nose and cheeks as some kind of a facial mask. He was still staring at the crusted layer when she reached for the T-shirt.

  “Thanks.” Her smile tried for grateful and came up shaky. “This wet top and the idea of someone prowling through my house is enough to raise goose bumps all over my skin.”

  That wet top was enough to raise a few goose bumps on Sam’s skin, too. More than a few.

  “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold and sue me.”

  He’d meant the oblique reference to the scorching letter she’d sent his contractor, threatening legal action if he touched so much as a leaf of her oleanders, as a joke, as nothing more than an attempt to ease the tension that radiated from her in waves. She didn’t take it as one.

  “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she zinged back, tugging the oversized shirt on over her head.

  Sam waited until she’d settled the yellow cotton shirt over her hips. “I was kidding, you know.”

  “I wasn’t,” she r
eplied coolly. “In my letter, I mean.”

  “A few scrawny bushes aren’t worth going to court over. We’ll work something out.”

  Her mouth settled into a pucker. “I spent most of my landscaping budget on those scrawny bushes. They’re not coming down without a fight.”

  How the hell could the woman manage both scared and stubborn at the same time? Not to mention sexy as hell? A tiny tendril of pain started to curl around the base of Sam’s skull.

  “We’ll work something out,” he repeated firmly.

  With a tight little nod, she turned her attention back to the windows. Sam tried to turn his attention from the long stretch of bare thigh below the hem of his yellow T-shirt. Despite his best efforts, his stomach tightened. At the same moment, the pain at the base of his skull sent out fresh shoots.

  Dammit! Ever since he’d butted headfirst through that malfunctioning canopy, he’d lived with this pain. At best, it was a teeth-grinding annoyance. At worst, it felt like the entire Brazilian soccer team was taking free shots at the back of his skull.

  The team had been on break until this moment. He hoped he’d make it through the rest of the night without having to pummel his body and his mind into numbed submission. Now...

  Now his neighbor had barreled into his arms and set off all kinds of alarms in his head. Sam knew he should heed the warning signals. Even without the blossoming pain, his instincts told him to back off. The wisest course of action would be to let this aggravating, enticing female sort out her own problems... which is exactly what he might have done if the police hadn’t come down Molly’s front walk at that moment.

  She threw open his door and hurried outside to meet them. Sam followed, a frown settling between his brows as they gave their report.

  “We searched the house, ma’am. We didn’t find anyone inside.”