Caroline got the lock to release, slid the doors open, and ran out into the pouring rain. Her slippers slowed her, so she kicked them off and raced around to the front of the house, down the drive, and into the street. She didn’t stop running until her brother’s car skidded to a stop in front of her, its headlights burning her eyes. And even then, she had to shield them with one arm to make out the shapes emerging from the vehicle. Peter from the driver’s door, and from the passenger side…someone else. Someone tall, and very male.
The two men came around the car, which put them between her and the headlights, and a second later, the stranger was peeling his hooded sweatshirt off, bending slightly forward to do so. As he tugged it over his head, the shirt he wore underneath went up with it, giving her a glimpse of abs so spectacular that she noticed them, despite the situation.
He straightened and pulled his shirt down. Then, without warning, he put the sweatshirt over her head.
“The intruder still inside, Caro?” Peter asked.
“How would I know? I’m out here.” She didn’t look at him as she answered, though. Her eyes were fixed on the stranger, as she let him work the sweatshirt’s sleeves over her arms, as if she were helpless and in need of dressing. He held her gaze with so much force she couldn’t seem to look away. And she felt something primal stirring deep in her gut, which was ridiculous. He was clearly too young. Way too young.
He tugged the bottom of the sweatshirt down over her hips, his knuckles brushing her thighs on the way, and hell yes, she was wearing a flannel bathrobe, but she felt it anyway. Hot.
And then she cursed the fates for letting her wear flannel tonight instead of some sheer, damsel-in-distress peignoir number.
He tugged the hood up over her wet hair, still holding her eyes with his. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, feeling foolish now in the cold reality of the icy rain. “I don’t even know why I panicked like that. She looked more like a half-drowned cat than an intruder.”
“Hell, the way you sounded on the phone…”
“How do you know how I sounded on the phone?”
“The cordless was out of reach, so Pete just hit the speaker button to answer.”
“Don’t tell me. You were watching a game, and he didn’t want to move too far from the TV screen. So who was playing?”
“You sounded scared,” he said, ignoring her attempt to change the subject.
“I was. But I’m not anymore.” She couldn’t look away. She’d tried and failed, had no idea where her brother was right now, though she assumed he was checking the house. But there was something about this man. Something about the way his eyes held hers. Something compelling and vaguely…familiar. “Who are you?”
He finally broke eye contact, looking toward the house, then shifted his gaze away from the place again, his manner odd. As if he didn’t like looking at it. “Friend of your brother’s.”
“You’re too young to be a friend of Pete’s.”
He frowned. “Not true. ‘Cause that’s what I am.”
“Bull. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five. You?”
“Older than that.”
He smiled a little, one side of his mouth pulling up, as if he didn’t want to let it grow into a full-blown one, or as if he were trying to hide it and failing. “By how much?”
“Excuse me?” Pete said. “You two gonna stand in the middle of the road all night? Not smart in the rain, in the dark.”
The stranger was holding her eyes captive again. “You find anything, Pete?”
“No.”
Caroline studied the stranger standing there in the middle of the street, in the pouring rain, in the wet glow of headlights, and she thought the entire discussion they’d been having was kind of stupid and pointless. And then she wondered why she’d been enjoying it so much, batting words back and forth with him like tennis balls. She dragged her eyes from his long enough to let them slide down his body. He wore jeans, slightly worn and slightly baggy, a pair of Nike Air something-or-others, a baseball shirt, and a matching cap—Yankees, no less—and both currently getting wet.
Then she heard sirens.
“Do you have a name,” she asked, “or should I call you Fop?”
He frowned at her.
“For Friend of Peter,” she clarified.
“Ji—James,” he said. “James Lipton.”
She blinked, because the name was familiar. “Lipton, Lipton.” She knew him. She was sure she did. There was something about his eyes, the crinkles at the corners when he smiled. Not laugh lines; he was way too young for laugh lines. But still—they had a hint of mischief to them, those eyes. You could almost think he was interested—which was, of course, ridiculous. Or should be. But damn, he sure was acting that way. And the wetter that baseball shirt got, the more it clung, and the more she liked looking at him.
“You think you can get the hell outta the road before the cops get here?” Peter asked. “Come on, already. I’m gonna move the car. Get her off the road, Jimmy, and make sure her wet weirdo doesn’t get anywhere near her.”
Jimmy, she thought, turning it over in her mind, because that—not James—really rang a bell. He was putting his hands on her shoulders now, as if to turn her slightly, guide her out of the road, while Peter headed to the driver’s door, got in, and backed up the car. Jimmy’s hands on her shoulders were slightly more possessive than they needed to be to steer a frightened female politely out of harm’s way. They squeezed a little tighter than they had to, stayed a little longer, and he stood a little closer, too. And he wasn’t moving, or pushing her to move, or walking her off the road. He was just standing there, in the pouring rain, staring down into her eyes—no, at her lips now—as his hands sort of kneaded her shoulders and gave her chills. She felt herself closing the distance between her body and his, her body sort of swaying toward his in response to some unseen force, like gravity. You know, if it were the kind found on Jupiter, where the pull was so forceful that Paris Hilton would weigh in at about a metric ton.
So, yeah, there she was, swaying forward, closer to this gorgeous, hot, young, and apparently interested—in her, if you can imagine that—probably nearsighted, but whatever, hunk. So she was leaning in, and he was looking at her mouth the way a guy looks at a woman he’s thinking about kissing. And not ordinary kissing, either, but the steamy, open-mouth-insert-tongue kind of kissing—kissing like she hadn’t had in…ever. And that’s when it hit her. When their faces were about two inches apart. So close she could feel his breath on her lips. So close her mouth was starting to open for him. Just at that moment. It hit her, and she blurted it right out while her eyes tried to bug out of her head. “Jimmy Lipton! Little Jimmy Lipton?” As she said it, she jerked backward as if he were about to bite her.
He let his head fall forward, rubbed his nape with one hand. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that.”
“I used to babysit for you!”
“Not for me, for my kid brother, because my parents didn’t trust me to watch him myself. And to be honest, I used to pray my parents would go out more.” He sent her a half-sheepish, half-adoring look.
She slammed her palms on his chest, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough to drive him a few steps backward and make him lose his balance. “You pervert! I was twenty-five years old, and you were—you were, what, fourteen?”
“Twelve.”
She lowered her head, pinched the bridge of her nose. She was going to hell. She knew it. Damn, damn, damn.
The cops had arrived, and somehow, during the ten seconds since that almost-kiss, Jimmy Lipton had maneuvered her off the road and onto the sidewalk, so the cruiser had room to, well, cruise past them and into her driveway. He had his arm around her waist, and he didn’t seem too eager to take it away. She probably should tell him to. She really should.
But she was enjoying it too much and was distracted by the thoughts making themselves heard in her mind. Probably because her libido had been ta
lking over them. Talking, hell. More like screaming. But it quieted down just as he said, “They’re not gonna find anything, you know.”
She was watching her brother talk to one cop, while the other went snooping around the house, toward the back, with a Maglite held in typical cop style: overhand grip and not in the gun hand. But Jimmy’s words drew her eyes right back to his.
“You lived here when you were a kid,” she said. “Babysitting for you—”
“For my brother.”
“—was when I first fell in love with this place. I was so surprised and overjoyed to find it for sale when Shawn and I split up.”
“It was never supposed to be for sale,” he said. “But yeah, it’s had a few owners since then. I always hoped to buy it back myself one of these days, but you beat me to it.”
“Yada, yada,” she said, making a “speed it up” motion with her hands. “You wanna get to the point here? That cryptic, all-knowing comment about the cops not finding anything?”
He shrugged. “That girl you saw?”
She nodded, and a chill rippled right up her spine, from the small of her back to between her shoulder blades, just like an icy finger. She shivered, nodded at him to go on.
He held her eyes, steady, serious, sincere, and he said very softly, “I know her. She used to come around when I lived here, too. She’d stand by my bedroom window, soaking wet, that dark hair dripping, those big black eyes all hollow and haunted, and just stare in at me. Like she wanted something.”
“How can that be, Jimmy? I mean, the same woman, showing up soaking wet in the dead of night—after thirteen years?”
“Not after thirteen years,” he said. “I think she’s been coming around the whole time. Probably that’s why everyone who buys the old place decides to sell it again and move on in pretty short order.”
“But Jimmy—”
“I know. Impossible. And I used to swear there was evidence. Footprints, water on the floor, her wet handprint when she pressed her palm to my bedroom window glass. But there never was. The traces she leaves—the ones you see her leave with your own damn eyes—they vanish almost as fast as she does.”
She blinked up at him and wondered how little Jimmy Lipton got to be six-two, whipcord lean, sexier than sin, and certifiably insane, all in the space of thirteen years.
“Are you trying to tell me she’s some kind of a…ghost, Jimmy?” she whispered.
His eyes stabbed into hers, but before he could answer that question, Peter and the two cops were crowding up to her on either side, talking and asking questions and telling her there wasn’t a trace of anyone around. Not a footprint. Not any water on the floor in the living room, not even in that thick carpet that would have held it for hours. No handprints on the sliding glass doors.
Nothing.
Just as Jimmy Lipton said.
Caroline shivered hard and knew the eagle-eyed kid-turned-hunk saw it.
Chapter 2
J im had really been hoping Caroline wouldn’t remember the past the two of them shared, because when he’d seen her, every fantasy he’d ever had about her had come rushing back—only this time, they were the fantasies of an adult male for an adult female. Not of an adolescent boy for his kid brother’s hotter-than-hell babysitter.
She still had it, though, whatever it was that had made her so attractive to him then. He didn’t know what it was. He did know that it seemed to be fading a bit. Or hidden, maybe, underneath the concerns of the moment. Her divorce, the apparition she’d discovered lurking in her new home, and so on. Seeing him again probably hadn’t helped. She’d been feeling something, he was sure of it. That tug in the groin, that twisting in the belly, that flutter in the chest—that something. He’d been feeling it, and he was sure she’d felt it, too. She’d damn near let him kiss her.
And that would have been brilliant, wouldn’t it? Right in front of her brother? He’d kind of lost track of common sense there for a few moments. Lost track of everything except sheer, long-term, fantasy-induced lust.
But then she’d put it all together, realized why she knew him, and, because of that, caught on to his age. It was a goddamned blow to his male ego that she thought he was too young for her. He’d really like the opportunity to prove otherwise. He was as much a man as any forty-year-old—more than most of them, he figured. So what was the issue?
Women. They managed to complicate everything. Sometimes you’d just like to strangle them.
Caroline was heading back to the house, walking barefoot between the cop—who was forty something and not taking his eyes off her—and her brother, who’d become Jim’s new best friend about two months ago, when he’d learned that Caroline, his childhood fantasy, was buying his childhood home.
“God,” he muttered. “It’s like the opening of a letter to Penthouse.”
Caroline turned sharply, as if she’d forgotten he was still plodding along behind them. “What did you say?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Hell, he didn’t know why she got to him the way she did. Her hair was dark and kind of wild. Her eyes were huge and green. Olive green, which didn’t sound as pretty as emerald or jade eyes might sound, but damn, they were hot. The way the green got gradually darker the closer it got to the center, so that by the time you got anywhere near the pupil, the iris was already so black you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. She kept herself fit. Though you’d never know it, because she didn’t dress to show it. Frumpy was the word that came to mind.
She didn’t used to be that way, but life had smacked her down. Hard.
He’d always thought of her as the kind of woman who’d bounce right back again, come up swinging, and never give in. Maybe he’d pegged her wrong. Or maybe she was just taking a breather.
He’d made a point of hanging around ever since she moved in, glimpsing her when he could and hoping for an opportunity to talk, or…whatever. He’d been hoping for whatever. What he hadn’t been hoping for was to meet her like this.
He’d pretty much convinced himself the “wet lady,” as he’d called the bane of his childhood, had been a bad dream, maybe even a slight psychotic break. Okay, so maybe deep down, he’d known better. He knew why she came. And the guilt of past sins was crippling enough without her showing up to remind him. But it had been easy enough to ignore all that—until Caroline had clubbed him right between the eyes with it, that is.
Damn.
“Hey, pal,” Peter called. “You coming, or what?”
Peter, Caroline, and the two cops were going through the front door of his house—er, Caroline’s house. He gave a shrug, glanced both ways for any sign of her, and then headed along the sidewalk a little faster to catch up.
Caroline told her story to the cops, but the entire time, she kept shooting him looks—probing, searching looks. Almost as if she wanted him to confirm or deny or embellish her claims by adding his own. He didn’t. Bad enough they all thought she was nuts, he didn’t need to go earning that same rep for himself. Hell, he’d had his fill of cops suspecting he might be a little bit insane. Maybe criminally so. He didn’t need any more of that bull.
“You working this case, Lipton?” Officer Borelli asked.
“Not officially, Mike. Just a friend of the family.”
The cop nodded. “You come across anything—”
“I’ll let you know and expect you to do the same.”
“You got it.”
By that time, Caroline was looking a little pissed at him. Hell, this was not the reunion he’d imagined. Then again, the reunion he’d imagined involved tangled sheets, minimal clothing, and the sound of her moaning his name repeatedly.
“You know that cop?” Caroline asked, backing him into a quiet corner in the kitchen for which he could have come up with much better uses. “What did he mean about you working the case?”
“I know the cop,” he confirmed quietly. “I’m a PI. I work with them sometimes.”
“Caro?” Pete called.
She ga
ve him a look that told him she had a lot more to say, then turned to go join her brother and the police.
When the police wrapped up, Caroline walked them to the door, even though they clearly thought she’d brought them out there for no reason whatsoever. They’d started out asking questions about the intruder, but toward the end, they’d been asking things like whether she’d been under any unusual stress lately and whether she’d had anything to drink or taken any medication or illegal drugs that day.
Hell.
Peter clapped a hand to Jim’s shoulder the second Caroline and the cops were out of earshot. They were standing in the kitchen, near the sliding doors where the wet lady had first appeared. He’d been so deep in thought he jumped a little.
“Easy, pal. You’re as nervous as my sister is, aren’t you?”
He sent his friend an easy smile. “I was drifting. Sorry.”
“I need you to do something for me, Jim.”
“Sure, name it.”
“Stay with her tonight.”
Jim’s throat went bone dry, and his mind shouted “Hell, yes!” He thought that maybe aloud he should try to sound a little more reserved about the notion. “I…I don’t know, I—”
“Look, you were gonna stay with me while your apartment’s being painted, right? I’d do it myself, but I’ve got the kids, and Mary’s under the weather. I abandon her, she’ll never let me hear the end of it. Come on, I’d do it for you.”
He heard the front door close, then Caroline’s footsteps as she headed back toward the kitchen. “If she’s open to it, yeah. I’ll stay.” Open to it. Right. Best watch the Freudian slips, moron.
“Thanks, pal.”
“You’re welcome.”
Caroline stepped into the kitchen, ready to give Jimmy Lipton the dressing down of his life for sitting silently while the cops decided she was just another hysterical female, when he knew better. She opened her mouth to speak, but her brother spoke first, and his words drove her own indignation right out of her mind.
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