The Marine and Me

by Cathie Linz

“Are you here for the program?” The question came from a guy wearing a silk robe over a pair of dark pants. “I’m playing the role of Lord Grimley and this outfit is supposed to be my smoking jacket. I don’t know who thought of this idea of library staff playing the parts of the characters and having the patrons try and figure out who the murderer is in this drawing-room drama,” he grumbled as he tugged on the sleeve of his robe. “The program’s this way, just follow me.”

  The meeting room was already crowded, so Steve took a seat in the back row and studied the flyer that he’d been handed on his way in. Sure enough, Chloe’s name was on it. Chloe Johnson playing the part of Miss Abbington, loyal secretary to Lord Grimley.

  Steve didn’t really pay attention to the various clues that were given as the drama began. Instead he remained focused on Chloe. Her shoulders were hunched forward as if she were trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. She reminded him of a nervous rabbit as she jabbed her glasses back in place when they slipped down the bridge of her nose.

  So what was it about her that intrigued him?

  That was the mystery that engrossed him as he sat there watching her.

  He knew the exact moment she saw him, because she faltered a moment while delivering the line, “But Lord Grimley was the last one to see George alive.”

  Steve was surprised at the glare she shot him a moment later. There had certainly been nothing mousy about that. It had carried the punch of a grenade launcher.

  So what was going on here? Because something sure was.

  Chloe couldn’t believe Steve had the nerve to spy on her while she was doing the library program. She’d told him he could leave, that he should leave. So why hadn’t he? He wasn’t the kind of man who normally spent an evening at the local library, she was sure of that.

  Steve was a man of action. A Marine accustomed to the adrenaline rush of battle. A man who loved speed. She’d driven with him, she knew. The guy rode a Harley, for heaven’s sake.

  He stood out like a wolf in a bevy of docile hens. Most of the rest of the audience was collecting Social Security, not combat pay.

  A frown from Martin Pritchett, the branch manager playing the role of Lord Grimley, let her know that she’d just missed a cue.

  Chloe quickly recovered and the rest of the drama went by without a hitch. The audience was asked to write down the name of who they suspected to be the murderer on a slip of paper, which was put into a box decorated with question-mark wrapping paper.

  Chloe had organized a drawing for several door prizes, including books by bestselling mystery authors.

  Martin had the honor of finally revealing the murderer. “The guilty party tonight was actually none other than…” He paused for dramatic effect. Martin enjoyed being the center of attention. “The loyal secretary Miss Abbington. Shame on you, Miss Abbington.” He shook a finger at her as she hung her head in remorse.

  The audience seemed to enjoy the event, applauding enthusiastically at its conclusion. Or maybe they were just happy about the hot tea and goodies that Martin had invited them to consume. Chloe noticed that Wanda’s kolachkis disappeared quickly.

  Steve noticed the same thing. “Busha’s offering seems to be quite a hit.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Watching you.”

  She didn’t like that answer, not one bit. And the intensity of her reaction surprised her. After all, she’d spent years learning to suppress her emotions, to stay calm, to remain invisible and not make waves. So why was it that one sexy Marine seemed to have the power to change all that?

  He was invading her turf—the library. One of the few places where she felt at home, where she felt in her element. Surrounded by books and information, all cataloged and shelved in an orderly manner.

  “I also thought I could give you a ride back home after this,” Steve added as he reached past her for a cookie.

  Chloe badly wanted to refuse. But the person with whom she’d thought she could hitch a ride had actually carpooled with someone else this evening, someone who lived in the opposite direction from Chloe’s house.

  Beggars can’t be choosers. How often had Janis told her that? Too often.

  Steve polished off his cookie and reached for another. “My grandmother entrusted you to my care tonight. She’d shoot me if I didn’t bring you back and make sure you got home safely.”

  So Steve was only doing this to please his grandmother? Somehow that didn’t make her feel much better.

  Chloe was glad when a patron interrupted them with a question about the name of a mystery author she couldn’t remember. Helping unite people with books was what Chloe did best.

  When the patron walked out with the book she’d wanted, Chloe was sidetracked by Lynn Scott, the children’s librarian. “Who’s the hottie you were talking to earlier?”

  “He’s my neighbor’s grandson.”

  “You have all the luck. My neighbor’s grandson is a holy terror, aged three.”

  “My car broke down so he gave me a lift tonight.”

  “Seeing him gave me quite a lift, too,” Lynn noted with a grin. In her mid-thirties with long dark hair she usually wore in a braid, Lynn was one of those people who brightened the world with their presence. She and Chloe had hit it off from day one.

  “Don’t let your husband hear you saying that.”

  “There’s no harm in just looking,” Lynn noted.

  Chloe tried telling herself that as Steve drove her home a short while later. No harm in just looking. The glow of the streetlights passed over his face, creating sharp angles and increasing his good looks.

  She shifted her attention to his hands on the steering wheel. His fingers were long and lean. As he tapped out the beat of a Rod Stewart song with his index finger, she couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to have him tapping out a sensual beat on her body.

  He had the radio playing so they didn’t have to talk much. She was glad. Her thoughts were much too messed up for her to make polite conversation.

  She wondered what he was thinking. Was he eager to get rid of her? Was he wishing he were someplace else? With someone else?

  Why should she care? If she were smart, and she was, she shouldn’t have any interest in Steve’s thoughts. Or his body. Or his lean hands.

  She’d never been the sappy sort to get all hot and bothered over a man. Not until she’d met Brad. And that experience should certainly have cured her of any desire to repeat past mistakes.

  But there was no ignoring her reaction when Steve had touched her hand earlier.

  Chalk it up to hormones, or sexual chemistry, or nerves. Whatever she called it, she was not about to act on it.

  Chances were that after tonight, Steve would go out of his way to avoid her. Her plan was working. She should be pleased, not all restless and edgy.

  He pulled into the driveway and turned off the car before turning to face her. “So do you want to tell me what you’re up to?”

  His question caught her completely off guard. “Wha-at are you talking about?”

  “I just have this feeling that you’re up to something.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Maybe I am. Maybe not.”

  “Thanks for the ride. Good night.” A second later, she’d hopped out of the car and raced into her house.

  Steve watched her go, noting her haste. Not the actions of someone with nothing to hide. So what was the little librarian next door really up to?

  He found out several hours later while making a midnight raid on the fridge and the leftover roast beef Busha had stored there. As he entered the dark kitchen, he noticed that the kitchen blinds were rolled up. Which allowed him free visual access to Chloe’s kitchen window, only a few feet away, also with the blinds rolled up. Unlike him, she’d turned on the lights as she looked in her fridge, on the other side of her kitchen.

  “Well, I’ll be….” Steve swore under his breath.

  The dowdy librarian had been transformed int
o a sexy woman, wearing a Bears’ jersey that went mid-thigh, allowing him a generous view of a pair of gorgeous legs.

  He’d been had!

  Chapter Two

  Steve blinked and looked again. Maybe he’d just imagined Chloe.…

  Nope, there she was. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders instead of tightly pinned up. The silky strands fell around her shoulders in sexy disarray.

  And there was no mistaking her long shapely legs. Steve had excellent night vision and he could see just fine how great her body really was. This was no frumpy librarian!

  She’d deliberately made him think she was a stereotypical dowdy bookworm. Why? What kind of con was she pulling here?

  His internal lie-detector system went on high alert. Steve hated being deceived. Especially by a female. Chalk it up to his bad experience with Gina. The memory of how she’d hoodwinked him still made his gut clench.

  Steve couldn’t believe he’d been had by another female. He’d sworn not to be taken in again, yet here he was, in the dark about the girl next door. The supposedly sweet neighbor who had given him a hard time tonight with her superior intellectual attitude.

  If she’d been trying to get his attention, she had it.

  But that was just it. She hadn’t tried to get his attention. It was almost as if she’d gone out of her way to make him overlook her.

  The same question arose again. Why?

  Steve was tempted to go over there and demand answers, but it was after midnight. Not exactly the time to go knocking on someone’s door.

  That was okay. Steve could wait. He’d done plenty of that in combat. Sometimes a mission required patient surveillance in order to get good intel.

  Yes, sometimes waiting worked out just fine. It made the ultimate confrontation all the more satisfying.

  Switching on the coffeemaker Saturday morning, Chloe’s gaze lifted to the vintage hand-painted wooden sign she’d put over the sink. Home * Sweet * Home.

  Chloe loved her brick bungalow. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank the Realtor gods for her good fortune in finding it. The instant she’d spotted the For Sale sign planted in the scrubby lawn, she’d immediately called the number listed. Once inside, she’d been won over by the generous rooms and abundance of natural light. She’d envisioned the possibilities instead of being turned off by the negatives, like the dated kitchen in garish green and maroon.

  Nothing, not the chipped molding, scarred hardwood floors or the other blemishes around the house had deterred her. Those were cosmetic things that could be corrected by someone with the ability to look beyond the dull surface to the sound heart beneath it all.

  In the thirties, these homes were the dream houses of working-class Polish, Bohemian, German, Irish and Italian families. Now this one was Chloe’s dream house.

  Some might find the architecture unappealing. She’d heard plenty of people say that the bungalows in this neighborhood all looked the same.

  Chloe found comfort in the dependability of that sameness. Because you knew what you were getting.

  But what you did with it, ah…that’s where the creativity came in.

  Chloe had done plenty with her bungalow. Not as much as she’d like, but she’d made some inroads on her to-do list in the three years since she’d bought it. And she’d done her research with the help of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative. Thousands and thousands of the one and one-half story residences had been built in a semicircle around the city, sometimes called the “Bungalow Belt.”

  Compact in size, well-crafted, efficiently laid out, the house had only needed a bit of rehabbing. Okay, maybe more than a bit. She’d replaced the cracked linoleum floor in the kitchen with black-and-white tile before moving on to the rest of the house, going from the back of the house toward the front, through the dining room and then the living room.

  She hadn’t done it alone. Lynn’s husband was a handyman and he’d done a great job working on Chloe’s house. She’d done a lot of the work herself as well, like stripping the avocado-green paint from the Arts and Crafts-style glass-fronted cabinets in the living room and restoring the natural wood.

  Ditto for the built-in china cabinet in the dining room. The floral-patterned Staffordshire set she’d picked up at a garage sale for ten dollars looked perfectly at home on the cabinet shelves. She paused to straighten the large serving dish next to a delicate teacup and saucer.

  Chloe loved order. No doubt that was a result of the emotionally chaotic circumstances of her childhood. Janis had made it clear to the eight-year-old Chloe that she wasn’t to mess up anything—Janis’s schedule, her austere condo, her plans.

  That wasn’t the kind of order that Chloe wanted. She liked the kind that was warm and welcoming, but had a place for everything. Because that kept things from getting out of control. And Chloe had learned early on not to rock the boat, to fly under the radar and not to get wild or out of control.

  Thinking about wild naturally led her thoughts to Steve and her reaction to his simplest touch last night. Racing hearts were not in her plans. She’d taken a chance with Brad and look how that had ended up. Not good.

  No, it didn’t pay to depend on others for your happiness. A house was a much more reliable thing.

  Her thoughts returned to her bungalow. The living room and dining room were completed but now she had to focus on the kitchen. She’d downloaded information from the Internet about proper restoration, replacing fixtures that didn’t match the period or design of the house was a no-no. Someone at work had told her that one of the home-improvement stores had a big sale coming up, so Chloe was eager to check the sale flyers in her Saturday newspaper.

  Chloe was thinking about kitchen faucets when she opened her front door to grab her newspaper, as she did every Saturday morning. In some places the newspaper was dropped at the sidewalk near the street, but here it was still delivered to the front porch.

  Since she was only wearing her Chicago Bears nightshirt, she let the door provide cover for her while she leaned down to reach…nothing.

  She reached farther…and touched warm flesh.

  “Ahhh!” Startled, Chloe fell backward, ending up in a heap on her foyer floor.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Steve inquired from above her.

  She frantically tugged on the hem of her nightshirt, trying to cover what she could. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing down there?”

  “Looking for dust bunnies,” she retorted tartly before scrambling to her feet.

  “Dust bunnies, huh?” He grinned at her. “Find any?”

  She reached behind her for the afghan Wanda had crocheted for her last Christmas, yanking it from the reading chair and wrapping it around herself. “I did not invite you in,” she pointed out.

  “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I was until you grabbed my hand on the front porch.”

  Steve shrugged, drawing her attention to the broad shoulders beneath his dark pullover. “I thought you were reaching for me.”

  “I was reaching for my newspaper. I didn’t know you were out there. What were you doing out there?”

  “Like I said, I came to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About this disguise of yours.”

  She blinked at him and lifted her chin before tugging the afghan a little tighter around her shoulders, like Queen Victoria gathering her royal robes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. I want to know why you were dressed the way you were last night.”

  “And what way might that be?”

  “You know very well what way. Like a frumpy librarian.”

  “Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

  Steve hadn’t expected her to turn the tables on him and put him on the spot. “It doesn’t matter what I was expecting.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re the one who was being deceitful.”

  “In
what way?”

  “By making me think you were…”

  “Yes,” she prompted him. “Go on.”

  He sensed dangerous foot-in-mouth quicksand ahead. “That you were something you’re not.”

  “I can assure you, I am a librarian. You saw me at work last night.”

  “I also saw you raiding your fridge at midnight. And I’m seeing you right now.”

  “So?”

  “So you don’t look the same way you did when you came knocking on my grandmother’s door last night. And I want to know why. Why the deception?”

  “It wasn’t a deception. I was merely wearing my costume for the library program last night. The whodunit mystery program, remember? You were there.”

  “Yes, I was there.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I don’t like being made a fool of.” His voice reflected his irritation.

  “If you feel that you acted foolishly, then you accomplished that all by yourself. You didn’t need any help from me.”

  “What were you hoping to accomplish by dressing that way?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Chalk it up to my natural curiosity. You’re obviously an attractive woman. I can’t help wondering why you tried to disguise that fact last night.”

  He thought she was attractive? Her ego soared before she shot it down with the reminder that this was a man accustomed to saying whatever a woman wanted to hear. She was smart enough not to fall for that. Right? She was also smart enough to get more clothes on ASAP. It was difficult to maintain one’s dignity wrapped in an afghan. “I am not having this conversation half-dressed.”

  “You look fine to me.”

  She glared at him. “And you’re the type of man to judge a woman by her appearance as to whether or not she’s worthy of your attention, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  “You proved it by the way you reacted when I walked into Wanda’s kitchen yesterday evening. You dismissed me.”

  “I had no idea they taught you to read minds in library school.”

  “It was obvious.” She lifted her hand to her glasses, adjusting the frames before fixing him with a direct stare that dared him to fib.