by Nancy Warren
“I fell flat on my face,” he reminded her.
“A man is no less a hero for being a wounded knight,” she said softly, and then flipped off the light. He heard her tread going softly up the stairs.
A wounded knight. That woman was definitely a few ants short of a picnic. He found himself smiling in the dark. Even though he didn’t think the rock-throwing punk was coming back, he kept watch until it was light.
Chapter 17
Stephanie let out a squawk of alarm and dropped her bag on the floor, which caused the man asleep in Chloe’s living room to jerk awake and then swear violently, clutching his knee.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She recognized him now that she’d got a good look at him. He was the man from next door. The one who owned this house. Still, it seemed kind of strange for him to be sleeping in it. “Does Chloe know you’re here?”
He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Ten of nine.” She was early, but then she was usually early getting to Chloe’s since, unlike her previous jobs, this was the most fun thing in her life. Or maybe that said more about how pathetic her life was than how great her new job was.
“Guess I fell asleep. And yes, Chloe knows I’m here. She tucked me in herself.”
Chloe was obviously a very sexual woman and the neighbor was seriously hot, so what they were doing on separate floors was outside Stephanie’s comprehension.
They looked at each other for a few seconds. “I’m Matt,” he finally said. “I live next door.”
“I’m Stephanie. I work for Chloe.”
“Right.” He yawned. “Do your duties by any chance include making coffee?”
She smiled at him. “I’ll be glad to make you a pot.”
“Thanks.” He dug out a cell phone. While she put on coffee, she heard Matt say, “Hey, Rafe. Need a favor.” An entire tablespoon of Chloe’s very expensive French coffee plopped onto the counter. Was it possible he was talking to her Rafe? Not that the man was her Rafe. Bastard.
“Need you to pick me up at Chloe’s and give me a ride to my doctor. It’s my knee… Yeah. Long story. Tell you later. Thanks, man. I owe you.”
She heard footsteps on the stairs, so she poured a third mug of coffee and added a dash of skim and half a teaspoon of sugar. Chloe entered the living room in what Steph thought of as her “at home” business attire. Flowing white sailor style pants and a navy and white striped T-shirt. Her sandals were red and sported tiny crystal anchors.
Steph caught the look that passed between Chloe and Matt when they first saw each other and wished someone had warned her to look away. Her eyeballs felt scorched from the heat that zapped between them, as though she’d stared right at the sun.
“Good morning, Matthew. How did you sleep?”
He cracked a grin that made him look younger. His unshaven face and crumpled shirt, even the purple woolen throw puddled in his lap, didn’t take away from the sheer masculinity of the guy. “Like a baby.”
“Morning, Stephanie.” And then, catching sight of the coffee Steph was bringing in, she said, “Oh, how lovely.”
She handed Chloe her coffee first, then went to put Matt’s beside him within easy reach. She gasped. “Why is there a gun on the table?”
“Ah, yes. We had a spot of trouble last night.” Chloe glanced at Stephanie, standing there. “Let’s all sit down—then Matthew doesn’t have to crane his neck to talk to us.”
Stephanie had no idea why they were having social time, but she did as she was told and sat. She sipped the coffee, which was excellent, and watched Chloe drape herself on the furniture. She’d never seen anyone who could turn such a simple act into a tiny drama.
“I rather think your ex paid me a visit last night.”
Steph glanced at Matt, obviously wounded, and the gun on the table. “Did you shoot him?” she asked, half hopeful.
“No.”
“Pity,” said Chloe. When Matt glared at her, she waved a white hand and said, “Oh, not fatally. But a bullet somewhere soft and painful in his nasty little body would not make me unhappy.”
Matthew rubbed his unshaven face. Gulped coffee. “Can someone explain what’s—” He was interrupted by the doorbell.
“Would you be a darling?” Chloe asked Steph.
She supposed as receptionist it was her job to answer the door, but if the guy ringing the bell was who she thought he was, she really didn’t want to. However, she got up and went into the foyer. She flicked her fingers through her hair and then opened the door.
Rafe looked at her the way a man sometimes looks at a woman he’s recently seen naked and wants to see that way again soon. So why was he staying away from her, then? Among all the things in her life that didn’t make a lot of sense, Rafe was very near the top of the list.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi. Matthew’s in the living room.”
He nodded, and walked past her. He didn’t even brush her, but she felt his sexuality waft around her, powerful and intoxicating.
He nodded to Chloe and then sauntered over to where Matt reclined with his foot up. “Messed it up again, huh?”
“Yeah.”
He gripped Matt’s shoulder and that was it. The extent of their exchange. She’d walked in behind him and she and Chloe exchanged a glance. They’d have been commiserating, asking for details, going over the whole dramatic story, then offering casseroles and making tea. These two macho guys managed a complete exchange in half a dozen words. Amazing.
“Would you like some coffee, Rafe?” Chloe asked him.
He glanced briefly at Stephanie. “Yeah, sure.”
What was she? A waitress at Denny’s? But she didn’t say anything, merely got another mug out and then went around to refill the others. She didn’t ask Rafe how he liked his coffee. He got it black. He merely nodded thanks when she put it on the table in front of the couch where he was now sitting beside Chloe.
She dragged over a chair from the dining table and sat, wishing Rafe didn’t have to hear this.
Matthew unscrewed the cap off a prescription medicine bottle and shook out two pills, which he swallowed with his coffee. Chloe looked concerned, but didn’t say anything. “Okay,” he said, “tell me what happened last night.”
Chloe glanced at Stephanie and said, “I wonder if we should talk about this later? You should get that leg seen to.”
“I’m not leaving here until you tell me what the hell’s going on. Since Rafe is a police officer, he should hear it too.”
Rafe’s gaze sharpened and he glanced at Matt. “What’s up?”
“I was threatened last night and my home attacked,” Chloe said in a clear, theatrical tone. Stephanie liked her boss a lot, more every day, but she did manage to make even the smallest things sound like national emergencies.
Rafe was definitely a cut-through-the-crap kind of guy. “Who threatened you?” he asked.
“I think it was Stephanie’s ex-fiancé.”
He cut a glance her way, sharp but impassive. “This true?”
“He didn’t tell me his plans. I would have warned Chloe.”
“How do you know it was him?” he asked, looking between the two women.
“Stephanie told me he’d been harassing her, sending her flowers and cards and phoning and emailing her. She thought the tone was getting nastier the longer she refused to see him.”
Stephanie said, “Then last night when I got home there was another card. Basically blaming Chloe for breaking us up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rafe demanded, turning to her, his eyes hot.
She returned his look with one she hoped was cool. “How would I have done that?”
“Damn it, Stephanie…” But he didn’t finish. What could he say? They’d slept together once and he’d made good and sure it didn’t happen again. He hadn’t even given her his phone number.
If Matthew was surprised by the outburst, he didn’t show it. He seemed to be in a fair bit of pain. She felt g
uilty all over the place. She was working for this nice woman and her bad luck was following her here, affecting Chloe and her hot neighbor. It wasn’t right.
“You told him where you work?” Matthew asked.
“He followed me here.” She looked down at the floor. “A couple of times.”
“What kind of car does he drive?” Matthew asked.
“A gray Honda Accord.”
“Know his license plate number, by any chance?”
She rattled it off. Both men looked at her, surprised, but Chloe announced with pride, “Stephanie has a photographic memory.”
“You made the car?” Rafe asked Matt.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same. I didn’t get the whole plate, but two of the numbers are right.”
Chloe smiled at him. “That’s all right, darling. We can’t all have photographic memories.”
Matt rolled his eyes, but the glance he and Chloe exchanged seemed surprisingly intimate for people who didn’t seem to have slept together. As opposed to she and Rafe, who had slept together and didn’t seem able to communicate at all.
There was silence in the room. Everyone seemed to defer to Rafe, as the working cop. Finally he said, “Did something happen to make him snap?”
“Yes. He told me he loved me.”
“What did you say?”
She was staring at her coffee, wishing she were about a million miles away in another solar system. “I told him it was over.” She glanced up. “He’s been bugging me every day. I’d had it. So I lied, and told him I’m seeing someone else.”
Her gaze locked with Rafe’s. Fire and ice warred between them, leaving her hot, cold and confused.
“That must be why he started throwing rocks,” Matt said after another silence.
“Yeah.”
“He certainly snapped,” Chloe said, drawing the attention back to herself, for which Stephanie was grateful. “He called me and said I was nothing but a troublemaker and I’d better close up my business. I told him I’d do nothing of the kind, and then he said I’d be sorry. Naturally, I wasn’t going to get into it with such a pathetic miscreant, so I politely said good-bye and rang off.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Imagine my shock when he attacked this house.”
“You make it sound like he came at you with a rocket launcher,” Matthew said. He shook his head and turned to Rafe. “Stupid fuck threw a rock at her window, not even hard enough to break the glass.”
As if things weren’t bad enough, her ex was now an object of contempt. She couldn’t even pick a guy who was a competent criminal.
“What’s the guy’s address?”
She shrugged. “I can’t remember.”
“You have a photographic memory. Think harder.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
“We don’t have enough to press charges. But he doesn’t know that. I’m going to get my partner and we’re going to go scare the shit out of this guy. I don’t think he’ll bother you again.”
She glanced at Chloe for guidance. The other woman nodded. “I think it’s for the best, Stephanie. He’s caused you trouble for weeks. Let the police handle it.”
Reluctantly she nodded, and reeled off her ex’s address and phone number.
“I sure can pick ’em,” she said, as they watched Rafe ease Matthew into the backseat of Chloe’s car.
Matthew cursed as he maneuvered himself into place.
“You and I both,” Chloe replied.
Chapter 18
To Deborah’s surprise, Rafael Escobar kept his second appointment. Deb found that she was pleased to see him. She could usually tell when somebody wasn’t coming back and she’d have guessed he would be one who would find opening up simply too difficult.
He didn’t look any happier to be here, however, than he had the first time.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
He glanced at her in surprise and said, “Yeah, hi.” And all at once she felt pretentious for her formal greeting. What was she, Emily Post? She was supposed to be fixing his problems, not acting as though she were serving him afternoon tea.
Maybe because he’d rattled her a bit, she decided to do the same to him. “I’d have bet you weren’t coming back,” she said.
He glanced up and then sent her a half grin. “I wouldn’t spend a lot of time in Vegas if I were you.”
“I see you’ve got my book.”
He had it on the table in front of him. “Yeah. I— Do you really believe all this stuff you write?”
“Of course I do, or I wouldn’t have written it. What is it that you find so hard to believe?”
“I don’t know. It feels like you’re giving people rules all the time. Whatever happened to good old chemistry?”
She bridled a little at that. Was he suggesting she didn’t have any chemistry? Of course, with her and Jordan lately the chemistry was more like mixing two nonexplosive substances. Like tap water with tap water.
Maybe she wasn’t the last of the red-hot tango girls, but she and Jordan used to have fun in bed. It suddenly struck her that they hadn’t in a while. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d made love in any but the most perfunctory way.
The silence was lengthening and she realized Rafe had asked a question that she had yet to answer. “Chemistry. Yes. Of course it’s important. But attraction isn’t always enough, is it?”
“No.”
“And, as I hope you have discovered from reading my book, we are often attracted to the very people who are the worst for us.”
“Like me with the wounded doves.”
She wouldn’t agree with him, of course, because therapy was about getting the patient to discover their path for themselves. Instead she leaned forward. “Rafe, I’d like you to try something for me.”
“What?”
“I want you to find a woman you consider attractive and ask her out on a date. But she must be someone completely confident and successful. Break your pattern and see what happens.”
He looked at her steadily for a moment, so she had to force herself not to evade that dark, dark gaze. There was the oddest expression on his face, as though he was about to perform a distasteful duty. Finally he said, “How about you, doc? Will you go out with me?”
She felt shocked. Physically, as though she’d stuck her finger in a live socket. Zapped.
“I—I—well, I’m flattered, of course.” She usually saw the patient-falling-for-therapist attachment coming from miles away. She hadn’t had a clue with Rafe. “But you must know I couldn’t have a personal relationship with a patient. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
He leaned back. He didn’t look crushed or put out, merely curious, she thought. “Okay. Let’s say I stopped being your patient and we bumped into each other somewhere. If I asked you out then, would you go?”
“Why do you think you’re having these feelings?”
“Why are you answering a question with a question?”
She sighed. “No. I would not go out with you.”
“Why? Because there’s no chemistry?”
She thought he was pretty much a full chemistry set all on his own, sitting there across from her. Every explosive, corrosive, big-bang compound on the periodic table in one dog-eared but nevertheless sexy package. Was it her? Was there a chemical anywhere that would turn into fireworks when mixed with plain old tap water?
“I am already in a steady relationship,” she said.
“Okay.” He grinned at her. “At least I tried. Right?”
She couldn’t help herself. He might be scruffy, belligerent, and have some issues with women, but he was a charmer. “Yes, you did. And I am flattered.”
He rose. “Well, thanks anyway.”
“Where are you going?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“But you haven’t even given counseling a try.”
He glanced back at her, enigmatic. The heels on those boots were so worn down that she
was tempted to give him the name of an excellent shoe repair service she used. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You’re a nice lady. This just isn’t right.”
What on earth was the man talking about? “Fine,” she snapped. “Go, then. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”
He left.
She slapped a hand over her mouth, wishing she wasn’t too late to stop that snappish outburst. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. Everything in her carefully planned life felt out of kilter somehow. And Rafe had pushed her a little more off balance with all that talk about chemistry and sizzle. The center of calm she prided herself on, the one that existed on rules and order, felt irritable and rocky. She had a new empathy for her patients—in fact, she felt like she needed some therapy herself.
Deb sat there bemused as he carefully shut her office door behind him. She’d put his departure down to the fact that she’d refused to go out with him, but instinct and training told her that wasn’t what had caused him to leave in mid-session.
What a strange character he was. He was more self-aware than most of her clients and yet unwilling to do the work to fix his problem.
She tapped her pen against her paper. Which suggested he didn’t want to fix his problem. As she knew well, until a person was ready to change, there wasn’t much she could do.
She hoped he’d be back.
When she rose from the seating area, she noticed he’d forgotten his copy of her book. Clearly he was still reading it, as a business card protruded from the pages.
She picked up the book, hoping to catch him before he left the building, and as she did she noticed that the business card looked familiar.
Flipping open the book revealed a card that had filled her with irritation the first time she saw it. Chloe Flynt, The Breakup Artist. She flipped it over and there, in neat female handwriting that definitely did not belong to Rafael Escobar, was the date and time of Rafe’s first appointment with her.
She slammed her book shut, filled with burning rage.
It was so hot, that rage, so corrosive, she felt as though her insides were burning up. He wanted chemistry? She’d show him chemistry.