To Trust a Stranger

by Karen Robards

  Reaching the porch, he unlocked the door and stood back to let her precede him inside.

  As she stepped over the threshold into the pitch-dark house, a wry smile curved his lips.

  Something Daniel used to delight in saying to him on the few occasions when little brother was invited into his room popped into Mac’s head. It was so appropriate it was downright eerie.

  Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. . . .

  4

  THE TINY WHITE POODLE that greeted their arrival with a series of ecstatic yaps and jumps reassured Julie almost completely. The dog was adorable, right down to her pink, rhinestone-studded collar and the small pink bow tied over each ear.

  No straight man, much less a homicidal sex fiend, had ever possessed a dog like that.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Julie crouched down, offering her fingers for the excited poodle’s approval while Debbie flipped on a lamp. A quick sniff, and then the dog had both front paws on Julie’s bare knee, begging for attention and wagging her tail so hard her whole body shook as she tried to lick Julie’s face. It was a puffball of doggy lovableness that immediately sent Julie’s opinion of Debbie skyrocketing. The clothes might be over the top, the wig might be too kitschy for words, but the poodle was perfect.

  “Is she yours?” Just so there was no mistake.

  “Yep. Meet Josephine.” There was a dryness to Debbie’s voice that caused Julie to glance up at him. He’d lost the wig, she registered with surprise, and his hair stood up all over his head in sweaty-looking dark blond spikes. Which, given his heavy makeup, made him look just as bizarre as before, only in a different way: Debbie as Boy George. The narrow-eyed look he gave his pet distracted her from his appearance. From it, Julie surmised that Josephine must be in the doghouse, figuratively speaking. Well, as Sid was always pointing out to her, that was the trouble with dogs: they barked, they had fleas, and they messed the floor. But, Debbie’s tone notwithstanding, it was clear that he loved the animal: Josephine was exquisitely groomed, right down to her gyrating pom-pom of a tail and little pink-painted toenails, and displayed the kind of innocent exuberance that was only ever seen in a cherished pet.

  “She’s a doll,” Julie said sincerely.

  “Yeah, well. This morning she ate one of my shoes.” Debbie gave the poodle a dark look, and gestured at the living room in which they stood. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  He clumped off toward the back of the house in his enormous high heels, turning lights on as he went. Julie was left to stand up and look around her.

  It was a narrow, one-story, shotgun-style house, like many of the older dwellings in the eclectic mix of single-family homes, apartments, condo complexes, and cheap hotels that had been shoehorned into the area known as North of Broad. The room she was in, the living room, had white plaster walls, bare wooden floors, gold drapes pulled tight across the large single window that looked out onto the street, an enormous gold tweed couch with a rectangular oak coffee table in front of it, and a brown velour recliner. The TV took pride of place against one wall. Magazines and newspapers lay in a haphazard pile beside the recliner. Various nondescript prints of landscapes adorned the walls.

  Debbie was clearly not an inspired decorator. It was kind of disappointing, given his flamboyant taste in clothes.

  Julie sat down on the couch. Josephine jumped up beside her, her small head edging beneath Julie’s arm. Patting the wiry tuft on top of Josephine’s head, Julie realized that the dog smelled faintly of some floral perfume. How cute, she thought, charmed, and with relief dismissed the last vestiges of a lurking suspicion that she might have fallen into the hands of a rapist-murderer. Well, almost the last vestiges. He could still be a really kinky rapist-murderer, but the poodle made her far more inclined than before to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  With her mind all but relieved of that particular worry, Julie immediately focused on another and looked around for a clock. As the saying went, time was of the essence.

  Sid was usually home no later than three-fifteen. She had stayed awake enough nights listening for him to know. Which meant, if her spy project was to go undetected, she had to be home by three, complete with Jaguar.

  What were the chances?

  There was no clock anywhere that she could see. Too nervous to sit any longer, Julie stood and moved toward the kitchen, which was next to the living room. Josephine followed, trotting daintily at her heels, her nails clicking on the floor. The narrow, L-shaped kitchen was as aesthetically uninspired as the living room. The end of the L, obviously intended as an eating area, had been converted into a small home office. There was a metal desk with a computer on it, a chair, a pair of file cabinets—and a clock on the wall.

  1:58. She had just over an hour to retrieve her car and get home before her absence was discovered.

  Nibbling anxiously at a fingernail, she stepped back into the hall and glanced toward the back room, the bedroom, where her host had disappeared. At that moment Debbie himself stepped into view, emerging into the bedroom from an adjoining room, a bathroom presumably, because he was holding a towel to his head with both hands, rubbing briskly.

  He was wearing jeans, but his chest was bare.

  It was a very masculine-looking chest: wide beneath broad shoulders, tanned, muscular, adorned with a thick wedge of dark brown hair. His biceps were tanned too, and thick with muscle, and his forearms were sinewy and appropriately hairy. The jeans were old, hanging low on his hipbones to reveal a washboard stomach and part of an innie naval before hugging long, powerful-looking legs.

  Anyone who looked less like a Debbie would have been difficult to imagine. Julie blinked at him in surprise.

  He must have felt her gaze on him, because at that moment he lowered the towel and their eyes met. The makeup was gone. His hair no longer stood up from his scalp in sweaty spikes. Looking as if it had been just washed and towel-dried, it was sandy blond now and slightly tousled. His face was lean, hard-jawed, handsome. Without the distorting effect of the eye shadow, his eyes, which were a light, almost translucent blue beneath thick brown brows, were to die for. His nose was straight, his mouth long and firm and well cut, his chin square.

  In short, in his masculine incarnation, Debbie was gorgeous.

  Julie stared at him for a moment while all kinds of inappropriate thoughts chased themselves around her brain.

  “You are gay, right?” The question just popped out, and she could have bitten off her tongue the moment it did. His gaze held hers for a long, uncomfortable moment as his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed.

  “Does it matter?” The look he gave her was cool, shuttered, a little wary. Had she committed some unforgivable faux pas by asking? Probably. Her knowledge of drag-queen etiquette was admittedly a bit rusty.

  “No. No, of course it doesn’t,” she assured him hurriedly. “I think that all people should have the right to be exactly who they are. Free to be you and me, and all that.”

  She truly didn’t care if he was gay, except that, from a purely female point of view, it seemed such a waste. In fact, though, now that she thought about it, it was probably better that he was. Otherwise he was too mouthwatering for her peace of mind, especially given her hanging-by-a-thread marriage and her sexually deprived state. Anyway, she felt more at ease with him if she thought of him as a girlfriend. She could admire his physical attributes without the smallest risk of succumbing to them, which was kind of nice.

  Her girlfriend the hunk. The thought made her smile.

  “Whatever.” He gave her a narrow-eyed glance as if to assess her sincerity, then stepped out of her line of vision, moving on into the bedroom. Moments later he reappeared, pulling a faded, faintly ragged-looking black T-shirt over his head.

  Coors, it said on the front.

  What your well-dressed drag queen wore on his downtime this season? Her brow wrinkled. She wouldn’t have guessed it, but then, what did she know?

  As she was lately learning, no
t much about not much.

  “I really need to get home,” she said, her surprise at the new Debbie ebbing in the face of the urgency of the situation. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

  His expression relaxed.

  “Not long. Mother will call when he has something. You want me to go ahead and take you home, and then call you about your car?”

  “No. No.” Julie chewed her lower lip, thinking aloud. “Sid will notice the Jaguar is gone as soon as he pulls in. I’ve got to have the car. And I’ve got to be home by three.”

  “You’re scared of this guy, aren’t you?” There was a faintly harsh note to his voice. Julie looked at him in surprise.

  “Sid? No!” She recovered, and shook her head vigorously. Too vigorously? she asked herself, then answered: Yeah. The lady doth protest too much.

  “Not usually,” she amended with a grimace. “It’s just—Sid’s not going to like it if he gets home and finds me gone.”

  And that was the understatement of the year.

  “Miz Carlson, you out running around on your husband?” The question was gentle. The glance that slid over her was speculative, and at the same time more masculine than she would have expected, given that it came from Debbie. Of course, the last time he had given her one of those looks, he’d been checking out her shoes. Still, it made Julie remember all over again what she was wearing—or, rather, what she was not wearing, like panties or a bra. Or any semblance of normal clothes. She was suddenly acutely conscious that her nipples were plainly visible through the slithery camisole and that her long tanned legs were bare to the very tops of her thighs.

  Now that Debbie had morphed into a hot-looking guy it didn’t seem right somehow to be wearing part of her collection of man-bait in his presence. But of course, she reminded herself, he was Debbie, and they were fast becoming girlfriends, sort of, and anyway the outfit covered her better than a bathing suit, even a one-piece. She certainly had never expected it to be seen by anyone, because she’d never meant to put so much as a toe outside her car. So if he was giving her that look because he thought she was some kind of an exhibitionist, he could just quit. Anyway, speaking of sartorial deficiencies, until just a few minutes ago he had looked like Steroid Barbie, all tarted up and headed downtown.

  So there.

  “Wearing this?” She glanced down at herself derisively. “I don’t think so.”

  “You look pretty good to me.”

  Her eyes flew to his, and for a moment their gazes held. That masculine look was back in his eyes—wasn’t it? Or was it her imagination? Before she could quite sort the matter out, his expression changed, and he shook his head at her. “What you look like, girlfriend, is a woman who just rolled out of somebody’s bed.”

  Her spine stiffened and her chin came up. “I did. Mine. I rolled out of bed, shoved my feet into my shoes, and jumped into my car. Where I stayed until it got stolen.”

  “If you say so.” He sounded politely skeptical.

  “I do.”

  “Fine by me.” He shrugged. “Want something to drink? I got water, orange juice, beer. . . .”

  He moved toward the kitchen, which brought him close—too close. Having him invade her personal space was unsettling—he was a surprisingly big man, and he looked so very male—so Julie felt compelled to move too, backward out of his path, and nearly tripped over Josephine in the process. Josephine yelped and shot toward the living room and safety, Julie stumbled, and Debbie grabbed her arm to steady her. Julie was just recovering her balance when Debbie let go suddenly and looked down at his hand.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Julie’s brow knit. There were, indeed, smears of blood on his palm. Twisting her arm around and craning her neck, she looked down and discovered a nasty skinned place about the size of a half dollar on her elbow. Blood oozed to the surface even as she watched. Until that moment she hadn’t even been aware of the injury. Now that she was, she could feel it burning.

  “Let me see.” His hand encircled her wrist, and he shifted her arm so that he could look at her elbow.

  “It’s no big deal. Just a little scrape.”

  “Tough guy, huh?” He glanced up, met her gaze, and grinned. At close quarters, Julie reflected, those blue eyes could be quite dazzling. “Well, you’re going to have to humor me. I get all light-headed at the sight of blood, see, so we’re going to have to fix it. Come on.”

  She had to smile at the sheer absurdity of it. “Wuss.”

  But she didn’t resist as, his hand still gripping her wrist, he pulled her after him toward the bathroom. Passing through, Julie caught just a glimpse of an untidy bedroom—chest against one wall, unmade queen-sized bed, Debbie’s discarded clothing flung over a bentwood rocker in the corner so that one stretched-out black panty-hose leg trailed from the pile toward the barge-sized pumps on the floor—before she found herself in a small, green-tiled bathroom that had obviously not been updated in decades. The toilet and tub/shower combination were, like the sink, white and strictly utilitarian. The room smelled of soap. Droplets of water still clung to the clear plastic shower curtain. A jar of cold cream with the lid off was on the counter; a big scoop was missing from its shiny white contents. Obviously Debbie had just used the cold cream as a makeup remover.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  He turned on the sink taps, pumped liquid soap onto his fingers from a dispenser beside the sink, then rubbed it, none too gently in her opinion, into the open wound on her elbow.

  “Ow! That stings!” Julie jumped as the soap hit her raw flesh, and would have jerked her arm free, but he held on. He was behind her in the confined space, his body keeping her in place as he maneuvered her elbow under the gushing water.

  “Thought you were a tough guy.” He met her gaze through the mirror. A teasing smile just turned up the corners of his mouth as the water did its work and vanquished the soap. Unfortunately, having the soap flushed away by a stream so strong it could have come out of a fire hose didn’t feel much better than having the injury assaulted with soap. She wrinkled her nose at him through the mirror. His expression changed. The smile vanished, and his eyes were suddenly unreadable.

  “How old are you, anyway?” The question was abrupt.

  “Twenty-nine. What about you?” She pushed back against him in a vain attempt to win free of his ministrations, then suddenly stopped. His body felt hard and masculine, and having it pressed so close to hers sent currents of electricity shooting along her nerve endings. Whatever he was or wasn’t, he felt like a guy. Her instantaneous physical reaction to that fact both unnerved her and reminded her far too forcefully of the sorry state of her love life.

  It was, she reflected wryly, a sad day when she found herself getting turned on by someone named Debbie.

  “Thirty-two. There, I’m done.”

  He stepped to the side, suddenly no longer touching her anywhere at all, which, she told herself, was a relief. She watched his face through the mirror while he directed his attention to the faucets, turning them off with quick twists of his wrists. If he was aware of the effect he was having on her, he gave no indication of it. Of course, he probably had no idea that he’d given her a thrill. Under the circumstances, she could hardly expect that she would float his boat.

  “How old’s your husband?”

  Instead of making a move on her, which in her confused state she might even have welcomed, he handed her a towel.

  “Forty.” She patted her elbow dry.

  “A little old for you, isn’t he? You must be the second wife.”

  She put down the towel. He passed her a tube of ointment and laid a Band-Aid on the sink in front of her.

  “Yes, I am. So what?” She gave him a quick want-to-make-something-of-it look, then started to apply the ointment because the scrape was really beginning to sting.

  “So what happened to wifey number one? Did he dump her for you?” He tore open the Band-Aid and handed it to her.

  “They w
ere divorced years ago.” She accepted the Band-Aid, positioning it carefully over the scrape.

  “Have you ever met her? Or talked to her, or anything?”

  “No, I haven’t. She’s been completely out of the picture since long before I came into it.” Having finished with the Band-Aid, she lowered her arm and looked up at him with a sudden frown. “What is this, twenty questions?”

  He shrugged. “Just curious about how the other half conducts their love lives.”

  “Oh.” That made sense, in a way. “Thanks for the Band-Aid.”

  “No problem.”

  Julie met his gaze, made a mental note of her own sudden vulnerability to sheer masculine good looks, and turned and headed toward the living room again.

  He followed her. Josephine, who’d been an interested observer all this time, trotted on ahead and beat Julie to the couch. Julie sank down beside the poodle and was rewarded by a cold nose prodding her arm. Gathering Josephine onto her lap, she gave her a hug.

  Debbie stopped a few feet away, folding his arms over his chest and regarding her with a thoughtful expression.

  “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight: You rolled out of bed, stuck your feet in your shoes, jumped in your car, and drove into Charleston. In the middle of the night. Care to explain why?” He took up the conversation—or was it an interrogation?—where they had left off earlier without missing a beat.

  Josephine licked her arm. Julie accepted the only affection on offer and cuddled her close. Just having the dog near was comforting. She had always wanted a pet of her own. Maybe, she thought with a glimmer of gallows humor, she should try to think of what was happening less as a catastrophic marriage breakdown and more as a golden opportunity to trade Sid in for her very own dog.

  At the moment, she was about ready to go with the dog.