The Cottage on the Corner

by Shirlee McCoy

  “I . . .” She sighed. “Won’t sleep a wink if we don’t, so I guess I’m going to agree.”

  “That makes things a lot easier. Lead the way, Charlotte.”

  “The house isn’t all that big. Just the rooms down here and the attic bedroom upstairs. It was converted after the house was built, I think. There’s a second bathroom up there, too.”

  “Do you use the attic as your bedroom?”

  “No!”

  “That’s a pretty strong reaction, Charlotte,” he commented as he followed her into the living room.

  “I’ve never been that keen on attics,” she responded.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Too many horror movies, I guess.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but he had a feeling there was a story there just begging to be told.

  “You watch horror movies?”

  She hesitated, and then shook her head. “No. I hate watching hapless victims walk into danger. Plus the music is always as scary as the dark creepy basement or box-cluttered attic. How about you? Are you a horror movie fan?”

  She was changing the subject. That was fine. He’d figure out why she was afraid of her attic eventually, because he found himself wanting to know that and a lot more about Charlotte. “I’m more a romantic comedy kind of guy.”

  “No way!” She eyed him suspiciously.

  “It’s true. I’m a big fan of anything that will make my dates happy and weepy all at the same time.”

  “Now that I believe!” she said.

  He didn’t bother asking what she meant. He knew his reputation.

  They checked the living room and dining room windows, the wind buffeting the single-pane glass. Everything was locked up tight in the main living areas. The bedrooms were smaller than bedrooms in modern houses. One was empty but for a large dresser that looked like it had been there for as long as the house had been around.

  Charlotte hurried to the lone window and checked the lock.

  “This one is locked too,” she said as she sidled past him and walked back out into the hall. She seemed to be getting more nervous by the minute, her shoulders tense, her movements quick and stiff. “I feel really silly about this, Max. Why don’t you go ahead home? I’m sure that Ida wants to get back to bed.”

  “What’s to feel silly about?”

  “Us. Going through my house checking all the locks even though two police officers just told me that no one was in the house when I got home.”

  “We could check under the beds, too, if you want,” he suggested.

  Charlotte wanted to. She really did. She wanted to check under the beds, in the closets, under the couch, and in the cupboards, because no matter what Elizabeth and Simon thought, she couldn’t imagine Zim leaving the back door open.

  “That would be even sillier,” she said, doing her best not to notice the breadth of Max’s shoulders as he pushed open the door to her room. She really didn’t want him in there. It was too . . . old-fashioned. Too much of what she didn’t want to be anymore—sweet and unassuming, traditional and boring.

  She’d tried to give that up after she left Montana. She’d made sure to decorate the kitchen with modern appliances and state-of-the-art equipment. She’d used most of her savings to create what she imagined most chefs would love. She did love it, but when she was honest with herself, she’d admit that she’d have been just as happy with cherrywood cabinets and a 1950s stove.

  She’d pulled up 1970s carpet in the living room and left the old wooden floors because they were more her style than the modern sofa she’d bought. The fact was no matter how much she tried to be different, she really was an old-fashioned kind of girl.

  “Nice room,” he murmured as she walked past.

  She didn’t dare look at his face. If he was mocking her, she didn’t want to know it. “Thanks.”

  “You have good taste in furniture.” He ran a hand over the antique headboard she’d bought after Brett died. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d have appreciated, but she’d loved the carved Victorian piece. “This is Victorian, right?”

  “Yes.” She checked the window. Locked tight. Just as she’d known it would be.

  “And how about this?” He lifted an old Foley from the shelf above the bed. It was part of her secret passion. No knickknacks. No expensive jewelry. No shoe closet full of shoes or clothes. She collected old kitchen equipment.

  “It’s a Foley.”

  “Okay,” he said, setting it back on the shelf. “That helped me not at all.”

  “A Foley is a masher. You can put cooked apples or potatoes in it.” She lifted it, loving the feel of the old metal and the wooden edge of the handle. “It attaches to a bowl, and you just spin this handle and the food comes out the holes. It makes great applesauce.”

  “You’ve used it?”

  “Just once. I wanted to see how it worked.”

  “I bet you were imagining the first owner, right? Hanging out in her hot kitchen, excited to use her brand-new, state-of-the-art potato masher.”

  He was right.

  That’s exactly what she’d done.

  “There’s just one more lower-level window. It’s in the bathroom,” she said, because they were stepping into personal territory, and that was a place she tried hard not to go.

  “Charlotte.” Max stepped between her and the door, his expression soft and easy, his eyes deep midnight blue. He shouldn’t have been a nice guy. Not with his looks and his reputation, but she was starting to think he was one, and that could prove a very dangerous thing.

  “It’s late, Max. You need to get back to Zuzu.” She tried to get him moving, but he didn’t seem eager to step out of the way.

  “What are you running from, Charlotte?” he asked.

  “I’m not running.”

  “Could have fooled me.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, traced a line from there to her temple and the scar she’d had for so many years, she’d almost forgotten how she’d gotten it.

  Almost.

  But it was hard to forget something that haunted her dreams.

  “You took a pretty hard hit,” Max murmured, following the scar with his finger. It felt so good to be touched, and it had been so long since anyone had bothered, that she let herself stay right where she was, his fingers moving along her scalp, his free hand cupping her upper arm. “What happened?”

  “I fractured my skull. I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks.” Because it hadn’t just been her skull that had been fractured. She’d also cracked a vertebra in her back and fractured her arm.

  “Car accident?”

  “I fell down the stairs.” At least that’s what the ER doctor had been told. It’s what the police had been told. It’s what Charlotte’s mother had told herself so many times that she’d started believing it.

  That was the thing about lies. If you told them enough, they became their own version of the truth.

  “Must have been some steep stairs.”

  “Attic stairs in an old Chicago apartment. They were very steep with a wooden floor at the bottom.”

  “That explains it, then.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Your unreasonable fear of attics.”

  “I am not unreasonably afraid. Even if I was, it wouldn’t have anything to do with my fall,” she protested, but he was right. She’d always been afraid of the attic in that old house. After she’d been shoved down the stairs, the fear had blown itself completely out of proportion.

  Not every attic had a monster living in it.

  “Good, because we need to check that bathroom window and then check the attic before I leave.” He sauntered into the bathroom, checked the lock on the window, and made his way to the end of the hall. The attic door was there. She kept it locked. For obvious reasons. If her bastard of a father could come back to haunt her, he’d do it from the cavernous room at the top of those attic stairs.

  Max turned the old-fashioned glass knob. “Where’s the key?”

>   “In my room.”

  “Want to get it?”

  Not really. But she’d look like a fool if she told him that, so she grabbed the skeleton key from the jewelry box on her dresser and handed it to him. She wasn’t even sure the key would work. It had been in the door when she’d moved in. She’d taken it out, put it in her jewelry box, and she’d left it there for the past two years. She only knew that there was a bedroom and bathroom upstairs because a Realtor had tried to convince her to sell the property. She would have made a tidy sum off the sale, but she’d liked the peaceful town, loved looking out her windows and seeing distant mountains and deep green pine forests. She also loved not having a mortgage.

  The skeleton key slid into the lock easily.

  Max turned it and the door swung open on creaky, squeaky hinges.

  “You need to oil the hinges,” Max commented as he flipped a switch and turned on the light. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Coming up?”

  “Sure,” she responded, because walking up into the attic with Max was the reasonable thing to do, the mature thing.

  But God! She didn’t want to do it.

  The stairs creaked under her feet. Of course. That’s the way it always happened in horror movies. Doors squeaked. Stairs creaked. Dark shadows hid danger. In her nightmare, she was always right at the top of the stairs when the monster lunged.

  Not the best time to be thinking about that.

  Max reached the top of the stairs and disappeared into the room beyond, his footsteps padding on hardwood floor. She could just let him search the room, but that would be the coward’s way of doing things.

  She might have spent a lot of years being a fool, but she’d never been a coward. She walked up the last few stairs, her heart galloping like a racehorse.

  “Someone spent a lot of money on renovating this,” Max called from the doorway of what must have been the bathroom.

  Really?

  She hadn’t noticed. She’d been too busy trying to keep herself from running right back down the stairs.

  “Hey”—he crossed the room, put a hand on her shoulder—“don’t look so scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” she managed to say. “I’m terrified.”

  “Too bad. This is a beautiful room. If you got over your unreasonable fear—”

  “I already told you, I do not have an unreasonable fear of attics! My fear is completely rational and normal,” she snapped, anger chasing away a little of the fear. It must have cleared her vision, too, because she could suddenly see just how beautiful the room was. Muted yellow paint and white wainscoting on the walls, a four-poster bed and antique dresser with a warped mirror, bookcases covered with old books. Dormer windows looked out onto Main Street and two more windows looked into the backyard.

  “Sure, it is.”

  “It is, and even if it wasn’t reasonable, being afraid of attics doesn’t mean I have a phobia.”

  “But isn’t that’s what a phobia is? An unreasonable fear?” His hand slid from her shoulder to her hand, his fingers curling around hers.

  “I do not have a phobia of attics,” she protested again, but he was probably right. She probably did.

  Which was really a shame, because the room was dusty but gorgeous. She could see the previous owner in every detail of it. The silver brush and mirror sitting on the dresser, the pictures of angels hanging from the walls. The renters must have left the attic alone and untouched. A miracle, really. Although anyone in his right mind could see that the room was a special place.

  Too bad it was an attic.

  “Sure you do, but you know what they say.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Whoever says things.” He tugged her deeper into the room, his fingers woven through hers. “The best way to get over a phobia is to face it head-on. Replace all those old fears with pleasant experiences.”

  “I hate to break the news to you, Max, but standing in an old attic is never going to be a pleasant experience.” Ever. Not in a million years. But she had to admit, the space felt more like a room than an attic, the narrow planks of the wooden floor scratched and dull but lovely. Someone had hung a huge crystal chandelier from the cathedral ceiling. It would have been gaudy in another room, but it fit there, the old crystal sparkling like snow on a winter morning.

  “Are you sure about that?” he murmured, his free hand sliding around her waist, his fingers finding their way under her T-shirt and settling right at the base of her spine.

  She should have backed away. Really. She should have, but he smelled like thick forest and late-summer sunshine, and she couldn’t make herself move.

  “Sure about what?” she managed to ask, her voice breathy and light.

  Walk away! her brain whispered.

  But Max leaned down, his face so close, she could see silver flecks in his dark blue eyes. “Sure that we can’t replace those old memories with some new much more pleasant ones?”

  She was going to tell him that she was sure, but his lips skimmed hers, tentative, light. Questioning and questing, looking for something she wasn’t sure she should want to give.

  “What do you say, Charlotte?” he murmured, his lips grazing her jaw. “Want to make some pleasant memories?”

  No. God, no!

  Because once those memories were made, she’d never be able to unmake them.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  He nodded, but his gaze dropped to her lips. It lingered there, and she could swear that she still felt the light tentative touch of his lips brushing against hers.

  “The room is clear. Looks like you’re good to go, so I’d better head out,” Max finally said. Then he walked down the stairs and out the front door without another word.

  It was for the best.

  There was nothing either of them could say about that moment of weakness, that sweet tentative touch of lips.

  Except . . . let’s do that again.

  That would probably get them both into more trouble than either wanted to be in. Better to say good night and forget the whole thing, because Max was a player, and Charlotte didn’t need someone like that in her life ever again.

  Chapter Nine

  Max called the number on the business card three times before eight A.M. Morgan didn’t answer. He hadn’t really expected her to. She’d always been the kind to do things in her own time and in her own way. The only obligation she’d ever seemed to feel was toward her skin and her hair. When they’d lived together, she’d had a tight schedule for that kind of stuff. Everything else happened when it happened.

  He hadn’t cared. He had his own issues, and he wasn’t big on criticizing others for theirs. If Morgan hadn’t had the opposite philosophy, they might still be together. She’d been a nitpicker, a micromanager. A cheat. He’d seen that one coming a mile away, but he hadn’t cared all that much about that, either.

  Which had been as much of the problem as everything else.

  He should have cared, right?

  He picked up the phone, dialed one more time. Voicemail picked up immediately. He left a fourth message. “Morgan, I’m assuming you’re not dead, so how about you check in and see how your kid is doing? If I don’t hear from you by this evening, I’m going to put you into the system as a missing person and issue an APB on your car.”

  He would, too. He didn’t have time for Morgan’s crap. He had a job, a life, things he wanted to do besides care for a little girl.

  Although, he had to admit, Zuzu was a cute kid. The kind of kid Max had probably been. Full of energy and mischief.

  Speaking of which . . .

  He glanced into the living room. Zuzu was parked in front of the TV, watching a cartoon about guinea pigs. Or maybe they were rats. Either way, he wasn’t sure it was the best show for a little kid.

  “What are you watching, Zuzu?” he asked, tucking the business card into his wallet.

  “TV.”

  “Smarta—” Nope. Not the right thing to say to a three-
year-old. “What is it about?”

  “Monkeys.”

  The things didn’t look like monkeys to him, but he wasn’t going to argue with a little kid. “Cool. Are you hungry?”

  “I want cookies,” she said, scrambling up from the floor and running over.

  “Not for breakfast.”

  “I want pizza.”

  “You can’t have that, either,” he responded, scooping her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “Please?” she begged.

  He laughed, surprised and just a little pleased by her mischief. She was a cute kid, a sweet kid, and if she was his kid, he’d do everything in his power to make sure that she had the kind of childhood that he’d missed out on.

  He grabbed crackers and the last piece of cheese from the fridge. He had to find the grocery list he’d made the previous night, because he was going to have to stop at the store.

  “I’m going to make you a cracker sandwich, and then I have to go to work. You’re going to be good for Ms. Ida today, right?”

  She put her hands on his cheeks, looked him straight in the eyes, and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “I think so. If Ms. Ida says she can’t watch you anymore, we’re going to be sunk. You know what that means?”

  She shook her head solemnly.

  “It means big trouble.” He set her down and dragged a bowl from the cupboard. He had one fry pan, two or three plates, and a few cups. Every one of them in the tiny dishwasher. Still dirty. He needed dish detergent.

  “I’m not gettin’ trouble.” Zuzu’s fists rested on her hips and she stuck out her lower lip.

  “Not if you’re good for Ms. Ida, you aren’t.” He layered cheese on four crackers, covered each with another saltine. “There you are, kid.”

  He lifted her into a chair, and let her go to town. Ida would be there any minute, and he needed to clean the living room before she arrived. There were dolls on the floor, piles of clothes on the sofa. Everything he’d brought home from the office was spread over every surface in the room. Ida would have heart failure if she saw it.

  He scooped up an armload of clothes, headed for the guest room, and heard someone knock on the door.