by Melinda Metz
Whatever. He wanted to check on Gib in any case. Today, he was getting the man out of his bungalow, even if it took a crowbar. As he walked, he scanned his surroundings, trying to take in every detail. He’d checked in with security, and there’d been no reports of anything unusual spotted around his mother’s place or anywhere else in The Gardens.
When he got to Gib’s, he knocked, then called out, “I know you’re home, Gibson!” before Gib could yell his usual greeting.
“I’m home. What about it?” the man asked when he swung open the door to let Nate in.
“Our friend MacGyver has gone missing again. Thought he might have stopped by.”
Gib shook his head. “Haven’t seen him since he went up the chimney.” He shut the door behind them.
“Did I wake you up?” Nate asked. Gib was dressed in pajama pants and an old Angels jersey, his feet bare, his hair mussed.
Gib snapped his jaws open and closed a few times. “My teeth are in. That means no. You want coffee?”
“Sure,” Nate answered, and followed Gib into the kitchen. “You better get dressed. Art class in less than half an hour.” Gib was a regular at the class and had real talent. He’d given Nate a painting of the peperomia plant for Christmas, and Nate had it up in his office.
“Not on my calendar.” Gib popped a K-Cup in his Keurig, stuck a coffee mug in place, and pushed the button.
“Your calendar pretty full for the day, is it?” Nate asked. “Ten thirty, putter. Eleven, clip toenails. Twelve thirty, open up a can of beans for lunch. One—”
“You can stop, funny guy,” Gib said. “Just so you know, I may be old, but I don’t need a keeper.”
Nate needed a new approach. “Actually, I was hoping you were going to the class, because I wouldn’t mind having another pair of eyes right now. Can you keep something to yourself?”
Gib didn’t bother answering. He just handed Nate his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Nate sat across from him and quickly filled him in on the ventilation system sabotage. “If you could just spend some time in the community center and let me know if you see anything that looks off, I’d appreciate it.”
For a moment, Gib didn’t answer. He just narrowed his eyes and studied Nate, probably trying to decide if he was being played. He was, but he wasn’t. Gib was sharp. Who knew what he might come up with? “All right.” He glanced at the black cat clock with the swinging tail. “I can still make the class. I’ll get dressed. You finish that coffee.”
Nate felt a burst of satisfaction. It hadn’t even taken a crowbar. What should he take on next? He needed to find someone to check the air. He still needed to find a place that could fumigate books. And furniture. And rugs. Maybe he should get the locks to his mom’s place changed. Nate took a swig of the coffee. As he started to set the mug back down, something caught his attention. What was that? Something gray and hairy lay on the counter by the sink. It looked like some kind of mutant caterpillar. Nate walked over to investigate. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alive. He gave it a poke with one finger. It felt a little sticky.
“Ready,” Gib said, returning to the kitchen. “What you got there?”
“I don’t know,” Nate admitted. “I just noticed it.”
Gib frowned. “Nothing I’ve ever seen.” He took the furry thing and rolled it between his fingers, then tossed it back on the counter. “If we’re going, let’s get a move on.”
They headed out of the bungalow and walked over to the community center in silence, both in vigilance mode. When they started into the Manzanita Room, where art class was held, Gib froze. Nate immediately got what the problem was. Archie was seated in the chair used for models, and several ladies, including Peggy, were clustered around him.
“Gib, want to hear my latest?” Richard called from behind one of the easels.
Gib shot a look over at Peggy—and Archie—then straightened his shoulders. “Sure thing.” He sauntered with extreme casualness over to the easel next to Richard’s.
“I want to hear it, too.” Nate followed Gib, figuring he owed the guy a little moral support, since he’d talked him into coming to the class.
“There once was a man called Archie/When he spoke he was full of malarkey/He loved his granddaughter/Maybe more than he oughter/And I wouldn’t want to meet him at a party.” He frowned. “Just a rough draft.”
“Sam!” Peggy called as the volunteer art teacher came in. “We want to do live drawing today, and we found the perfect model.” She gave Archie’s shoulder a squeeze.
Gib got very interested in rearranging his charcoals. “All right,” Sam answered. “Not what I had planned, but I’m flexible. Remember, start by planning your composition, then draw the whole figure in fast.”
“Sam, don’t you think it would be interesting for us to draw a couple?” Janet asked. She pulled a chair over next to Archie’s. “I think trying to capture our expressions as we gaze at each other would be an interesting artistic challenge.” She took his chin in her hand and turned his face toward hers. “Oooh. You did some manscaping on your brows. I love a man who takes care of himself.”
“Now you’re on the trolley!” Archie exclaimed. Nate wondered if Archie’d grown up in California. He didn’t recognize half the expressions Archie came up with. Maybe they were regional.
“Oh, but, Janet, if you pose, that would mean you wouldn’t be able to draw,” Regina protested. “And you always do such beautiful work.”
Janet’s work was . . .interesting. Nate didn’t think anyone other than Regina, who had ulterior motives, would call it beautiful.
“Let me pose with Archie instead,” Regina continued. “I draw so badly anyway. I don’t mind skipping for today.” She tried to ease Janet off the chair.
Janet didn’t budge. “Nonsense, just last week Sam said he loved all the detail you included in your sketch.”
“How about if Archie and I pose?” Peggy suggested. “It could be an American Gothic for the new century. Instead of a pitchfork, Archie could hold a cell phone.”
“I don’t have one of those dang phones. Don’t trust them.” He smiled at Peggy, Janet, and Regina in turn. “But I’d be happy to pose with any or all of you dolls.”
Gib snatched up a charcoal and began to sketch furiously. Sam came over to watch. “Such passion,” he commented.
Nate took a look and had to bite back a laugh. Archie’s thinning hair had been reduced to a few scraggly strands, while the hair in his ears and nostrils was flourishing.
* * *
Mac followed the scent of the Sardine Man. Gib was his name. And Nate was the other one Mac was keeping an eye on. He’d learned that from their blah-blah. Gib wasn’t home, but it was easy to track him. He was close by. Mac found him in a room with a bunch of other humans, including Nate.
Gib smelled the way Jamie did when Mac explored what had been hidden in the trash can. Mac wondered if Gib had found the pressie he’d left for him last night while he was sleeping. He didn’t smell like he’d been having any fun. Neither did Nate. They would both require more work. Mac rubbed his cheek against first Nate’s pant leg, then Gib’s, to make sure everyone knew they were under his protection.
“What a gorgeous kitty!” a female exclaimed. She hurried over and knelt down in front of Mac. Gib’s scent immediately changed. Now he smelled the way Jamie did when David came home. The female gently stroked Mac’s head. But at the same time, the tang of loneliness Gib always had grew stronger.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Gib blah-blahed. “His name’s MacGyver.”
“I better call his sitter,” Nate said. “Maybe MacGyver’s the one who should pose with Archie,” he added, to neutralize the tension that had started building between the ladies.
“Excellent idea!” Sam agreed. “We’ve never had an animal as a live drawing subject.”
The female picked Mac up and deposited him in the lap of a man sitting at the front of the room. Mac breathed in, assessing. The man smelled happy enough, but Mac co
uld tell the man didn’t like him. And that was just wrong.
Game on. Mac curled up on the man’s lap and began sliding his claws in and out of the man’s thin pants.
“I don’t know about this,” Archie said. He pinched a piece of Mac’s fur off his vest and let it drop to the floor.
“An adorable cat and adorable man. What could be better?” the female said.
“I’m never a wurp. You want it, you’ve got it,” Archie answered.
The man’s legs were hard under Mac’s belly. He let his claws dig a little deeper, just enough to leave thin scratches in the skin. The man gave a little yelp. MacGyver began to purr.
CHAPTER 6
Calm, cool, collected, Briony told herself when she located The Gardens’ community center. I will be calm, cool, and collected. Then I will put MacGyver into the cat carrier and leave in a calm, cool, and collected way.
She didn’t know why she was so worried about making a better impression on Nate. She’d only be around for a few more weeks, and she’d probably never have to see him again. Unless Mac kept finding a way over here.
Briony remembered what Ruby had told her about MacGyver being a matchmaker. If that was what he was up to—which he couldn’t be, because, come on, he was a cat—she’d already ruined his plans. No matter how perfectly she was dressed or how perfectly she behaved today, she was sure whenever Nate saw her he’d always think crazy-faced, crazy-haired crazy woman. Not that it mattered.
The pleasant scent of citrus and something she couldn’t identify, possibly bergamot, greeted her when she opened the door. The large room felt more like the lobby of an elegant old hotel with its Persian carpets and comfy overstuffed sofas. Well, a mix of that and a greenhouse. There were plants everywhere. She paused to admire what she thought was a boxwood that had been trimmed into a spiral on her way to the Manzanita Room, where Nate had told her he—and MacGyver—would be.
She spotted Nate the moment she stepped inside. Her eyes just went zoop right over to him. Those pheromones were already slamming into her. It was so damn wrong for him to be so attractive without even trying. And a second later, she was overcome with guilt by how damn wrong it was of her to be thinking about how damn attractive a guy was when she’d been about to get married a few damn days ago.
Nate was standing by an easel where the older man whose bungalow she’d barged into the other night was working. Good. She could show him her calm, cool, collected self, too. His opinion was just as important as Nate’s. Not that Nate’s really mattered, she reminded herself.
She glanced around the room and quickly found Mac. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the naughty thing. He was the center of attention, being sketched while sitting on the lap of a spiffy gentleman wearing a bow tie.
Mr. MacGyver wasn’t going to get away from her this time. Firmly grasping the cat carrier she’d found in Jamie’s closet, she started across the room. She paused next to Nate. “Thank you for calling me again,” she said, calm, cool, and collected.
“Any chance you’d be willing to let MacGyver hang for about another half an hour? I didn’t know he was going to be one of the models,” Nate said.
“That would be fine,” she answered, because that was the calm, cool, collected response.
“Great. We could go have coffee in the kitchen.” Nate turned to the older man at the easel. “Gib, can you make sure our buddy doesn’t get out of the room?”
Gib glanced away from his drawing. He’d captured Mac perfectly. The stripes of his fluffy fur, the M marking on his forehead, the intelligence in his gold eyes. The spiffy gentleman looked more like a troll in a bow tie. “You clean up pretty nice,” he told Briony. “Since there are no chimneys in here, I think I can keep your cat corralled.”
“I appreciate that.” There. She’d calmed, cooled, and collected all over the place, and not just in front of Nate, in front of both witnesses to her madness. “I love what I’ve seen of the place,” she commented as Nate escorted her to the kitchen. “It has such a wonderful feeling. You’re the manager, is that right?”
“He owns the place,” a woman with purple ombre hair answered. She and a younger woman, probably early twenties, stood at the kitchen island with an array of vegetables in front of them.
“Well, my family does,” Nate said, running his hand through his longish dark brown hair. “My mom, and sister, and me.”
“But they don’t have anything to do with it,” Ombre told Briony. “Nate runs everything. I mean everything.”
“Everything,” the younger woman agreed.
“Let me introduce my cheering section,” Nate said. “This is LeeAnne.” He gestured toward Ombre. “She’s our chef. And this”—he nodded to the younger woman—“is Hope. She’s—”
LeeAnne jumped in before he could finish. “The person who right now is going to get me through the gruesome task of pantry inventory.”
“Didn’t you do that the other—” Nate began.
LeeAnne pointed at him. “When you hired me, you promised me no micromanaging. Now I say it’s inventory time, so inventory time it is.” She pulled Hope out of the room.
“Have a seat.” Nate waved toward a round table.
“Big,” Briony commented. The table could probably seat fifteen.
“Staff is welcome to come in for any meal,” Nate explained. He filled two cups from a big urn on the counter. “How do you take it?”
“Just milk.” He added a spoon to her saucer, set the cup and a small silver pitcher in front of her, and sat down himself. Briony turned the spoon over in her fingers, suddenly at a loss for what to say. Should she apologize again for her behavior the other night? Or was it better not to remind him of it? Should she go back to talking about The Gardens? Would it be intrusive to ask about why he was the only one in the family who was directly involved in running it?
What was wrong with her? Did she always dither like this? Vi might really be right. Maybe Briony really couldn’t make even a simple decision without help. How had she never noticed that about herself?
“I’m sorry I was all bullurgh the other day.” She waved her hands wildly in the air. Oh, nice. Very calm, cool, and collected. And she’d been doing so well. “I’m pet sitting for my cousin. I would have felt terrible if I’d let something happen to MacGyver.”
“MacGyver,” Nate repeated. “Suits him.”
“I never actually watched that show,” Briony said. There. She sounded, if not calm, cool, and collected, at least rational.
“My grandpa and I used to watch reruns with some of the residents,” Nate said. “His father was the one started the place. Bought the property and turned it into a retirement community.” He pulled the potted plant in the center of the table over in front of him and began checking the undersides of the leaves, his fingers sure and nimble.
“The people I saw today seemed like they’d be independent.” Briony took a sip of her coffee, watching him tend to the plant. To her shock, her mind briefly skipped to a vision of those fingers moving over her. She shoved the thought away.
“They are. We have other residents who need more help. Instead of living in the bungalows, they stay in one of three larger houses with round-the-clock nursing,” he explained as he continued inspecting the plant. “If they’re able, they also come over here to the community center for meals and activities.”
“What’s it like being part of a family business? Did you grow up assuming you’d take over at some point?”
He hesitated. Looked like she’d touched something sensitive. Briony decided to fill the silence. “My family doesn’t have anything like your place, but my dad is an accountant, and from when I was a little kid, my parents acted like of course I’d be one, too. They said no matter what, people will always need accountants. I actually got a financial calculator for my seventh birthday.”
“Seriously?” Nate widened his eyes with exaggerated awe, then moved the plant back in place. “That’s what I wanted when I was seven. But I g
ot a Talkboy instead, just like the one from Home Alone.” He deepened his voice and said, “This is the father. I’d like one of those little refrigerators you open with a key.” Briony laughed. “Did you really become an accountant?” he asked.
“I did. I—” She suddenly felt unsure about something she’d always accepted as a given. “There wasn’t something else I had this big desire to do. And I like the, hmmm, the neatness of it. Everything adding up.” That was true. She knew she was good at what she did, and she liked going to work every day, something that wasn’t true for everyone.
Suddenly, wham! It hit her that she didn’t have a job anymore. Caleb had gotten an amazing job offer at a law firm in Portland. They’d decided he should take it. They were going to move after the honeymoon. Caleb had already found a place. The firm was paying all the relocation expenses. When they’d gotten settled, Briony had been planning to look for another accounting job. Like her parents said, people always need accountants.
But she wasn’t going to be moving to Portland now. Could she get her old job back?
“Are you okay?” Nate asked.
Briony nodded. “Just remembered something I need to do when I get back from my, uh, vacation.” Something like get a whole new life.
“How long are you here?”
“About three and a half more weeks. My cousin is on her honeymoon in Morocco.”
“Morocco. Wow.” Nate gave a low whistle.
“I know. I’ve never even thought of going someplace so exotic. So much to figure out and navigate.”
“I’d go in a heartbeat. They have a rose festival in the spring. It would be awesome to see the M’Goun roses in the wild. And to smell them.” Nate sounded like an excited little kid.
“Are you responsible for the jungle in the lobby?”
He smiled, and whomp, another pheromone bomb. It made Briony go to jelly, and not in that walking-down-the-aisle-toward-Caleb way. The man was seriously dangerous. What was wrong with her? She ignored her body’s reaction to Nate and focused on his words. “I set it up. The grounds crew keeps it going. I wish I could, but too much else to do. There’s always something.” His brow creased, worry flashing across his face.