by Barbara Gee
At least, that’s how I was trying to look at it. That way maybe I wouldn’t be disappointed if the evening didn’t end like last night had.
With Jude kissing me senseless.
The doorbell rang a few minutes later and I hurried to get it, my heart pounding with anticipation. I put my hand on the knob and blew out a short quick breath as I admonished myself to be calm, casual, and in control. Then I opened the door.
How? How did he get more compelling every time I saw him?
“Hey,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice I’d lost most of that whole calm and in control thing as soon as our eyes met. “Um, how was your day?”
“Good. Even better now.” He watched me for a moment, then raised a dark brow. “Can I come in?”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Sorry.” I quickly backed up and motioned him in. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that fit him oh so well. I suddenly had a vision of him walking through the office building project with the owner, hardhat in place, carrying a set of plans as he gestured and pointed out details with those powerful, sculpted arms, answering every question with expertise, full of quiet pride in what he and his crew had accomplished.
The image affected me deeply. Everything about him did. I felt connected to him in a way I’d never imagined.
As he walked past me I felt many emotions, and I couldn’t deny that a sense of terror was one of them. I’d never truly fallen for a guy before. I’d liked a couple, but compared to how Jude made me feel, those feelings had barely surpassed platonic.
What was I going to do if it wasn’t happening for Jude like it was for me? He seemed to be on the same page, but I had no idea whether this was new and different for him, or if he was used to relationships developing quickly.
I was well aware I might be on my way to experiencing a broken heart in all its painful glory. The kind of heartbreak people sang sad songs about. Wrote movies about. Never completely got over.
Jude stopped and turned around, and I realized he’d gone about five steps toward the kitchen and I hadn’t followed.
“You okay?”
I nodded and forced my feet to move. “I’m fine. Just glad to see you.”
He stood still, waiting for me to approach. “How glad?” he asked softly.
I cleared my throat. “Glad enough to cook for you,” I told him, managing a teasing smile. “Even though I had a very busy day.”
He raised his chin. “Which we need to talk about. But not quite yet.”
I stopped in front of him and he raised a hand, running his knuckles slowly down my cheek. “How glad, Ava?” he asked again, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiled. “It would be a relief to know I wasn’t the only one counting the minutes.”
I loved hearing that, but decided to tease him a little. “Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I was counting the minutes. At least, I was up until the moving guys left. Then I started getting all my stuff set up, and the world outside that room ceased to exist.”
He put a hand to his chest as if mortally wounded and I held up a finger.
“But,” I continued, “as soon as my alarm went off, I started counting the minutes again. Immediately.”
“Immediately?” he asked, giving me the smile I loved. “You sure? Because I won’t settle for anything less than immediately.”
“Very sure. And then I started to get kind of nervous.” I hadn’t exactly planned on admitting that, but it was the truth and he might as well know it.
His expression turned curious. “Why would you be nervous?”
I shrugged self-consciously. “You’re kind of…..all that, Jude.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, sounding confused.
I looked down for a moment, then squinted up at him, ready to share. “You’re the kind of man who makes every girl’s heart skip a beat, you know? The kind who has a lot of choices when it comes to who you want to spend time with. If I come up short, you’ll stop coming around. And since I kinda like you, that would make me a little sad.”
He cocked his head. “That’s why you’re nervous? You think I’m the kind of guy who jumps from girl to girl?”
I folded my arms and hunched my shoulders a little. “We haven’t even known each other a week. It wouldn’t take much of a jump.”
“But it would still make you a little sad?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
I nodded. “Maybe more than a little.”
“Because I’m all that?” he teased, his blue eyes glinting.
I gave a huff and started toward the kitchen, elbowing him lightly in the stomach as I passed him. “Enough. Are you hungry?”
“You have no idea,” he said fervently. “I didn’t have time for lunch. Knowing you were cooking for me was all that kept me going.” He inhaled deeply as we walked into the kitchen. “It smells fantastic.”
“I hope you won’t be disappointed.”
“Considering how good it smells, I think the only way I’ll be disappointed is if there’s not enough of it.”
I took cheese and sour cream from the fridge and pointed to the big spoon lying on a dish by the Crock-Pot. “Stir those two things into the pot. They’re already measured out. I’ll get the rice and salad dished up, then we can eat.”
“Music to my ears.” He took the lid off the crock. “What’s in this? It looks incredible.”
I told him the ingredients, emphasizing how easy it was so he didn’t think I was Julia Child or something. I was a pretty good cook, but I didn’t want to set his expectations too high.
We sat down at the table and I looked at him a little shyly. “I always pray before I eat. We can just do it silently, though.”
“I’ll say a prayer,” he said, completely unfazed. He reached across the table for my hand, and it seemed like such a natural thing I was positive he’d grown up in a family who joined hands and prayed before their meals. He said a simple but lovely prayer, thanking God for the beautiful weather, our productive day, and for me and my willingness to prepare the meal and share it with him.
When he said amen I felt a little choked up, and I quickly told him to help himself to the food. He dug in, and apparently he wasn’t disappointed in the least. He had three helpings of chicken and rice and two of salad. I offered him ice cream again for dessert, but he declined, saying he couldn’t fit anything else in.
We’d just started clearing off the table when a scratching noise came from the back door. I whirled around and stared at it.
“Don’t tell me,” Jude said, sounding exasperated. He walked right up to the door and swung it open, revealing a familiar black wiener dog gazing up at him with forlorn, adoring eyes.
“Lulu!” I said, delighted to see her. I walked over to her and crouched down. “Awww, she misses you, Jude. Look at those eyes! She got tired of waiting for you to come home and came to find you.”
“I don’t know how she knew I was here,” he said, bending down to scoop her up. She tried to lick his face but he jerked back in time. “What’s the deal, Lu? Chase not giving you enough attention over there?”
“Let her stay,” I said. “I bought a box of doggie treats the other day, just in case she snuck through the fence again. They’re peanut butter flavored.”
“If she likes them, she’s gonna be sneaking over a lot more often,” Jude warned.
“I don’t mind.” I went to a cupboard and took out the box of treats. Jude set Lulu back down on the floor and she trotted over when I shook the box, giving me a hopeful look.
“Here you go, little gal,” I said, holding a treat out to her.
She gave it a sniff, then delicately took it from my fingers. After walking two steps away she abandoned her manners, crunched loudly, swallowed it in one huge gulp, and returned to beg for more.
“I’d say they’re a hit,” Jude observed as he loaded plates and silverware into the dishwasher. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ll text Hannah and let her know she’s over here,” I said
, giving the dog one more treat.
Lulu wolfed it down, waited to see if she was going to get another one, then left us to finish the dishes while she sniffed and snorted her way around the kitchen.
“Time to show me that camera video,” Jude said as I folded the dishcloth and hung it on the side of the sink. “We need to figure out what they were after, if not your work.”
“Well, the video isn’t going to tell us that, I’m afraid. There’s nothing interesting on it.”
“Let’s look,” Jude insisted.
I took him and Lulu upstairs, watching his face as he walked into my office. There were still some boxes sitting around, but most of my equipment was in place. There were three large monitors on my worktable, various smaller gadgets scattered around, an impressive array of blinking lights on my modems and switches, and the ever-present quiet hum of the servers.
He stood just inside the doorway and looked around, his expression not giving anything away. I filled the silence by explaining that there wouldn’t normally be so many cables lying across the floor, but I hadn’t gotten around to putting the cable channel across the ceiling. That would get everything up off the floor, making for a much neater, safer workspace.
“I don’t have to work late tomorrow. I can come over and put that up for you if you want,” he said, his eyes still moving over the room, taking everything in.
Wow, a chance to see Jude again and have him do a job I wasn’t looking forward to? I wasn’t going to turn that down. I leaned down to pet a snuffling Lulu.
“That’d be great, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t. And your door should be delivered on Wednesday. Is Saturday soon enough to get it installed? Chase said he can help me then, if that works for you.”
I straightened back up and gave him an apologetic look. “I feel like I’m monopolizing your time. You’re going above and beyond the requirement for being a good neighbor.”
“I’m happy to do it,” he said as he walked into the room. He turned and gave me a quick smile. “And I hope I’m a little more than a neighbor by now.”
His remark brought back vivid memories of last night in my kitchen, and I quickly bent down to move a cable that didn’t need it, hiding my face.
“Saturday’s fine. But whether it’s as neighbor, friend, or both, I am going to pay you. For the door and the labor. That’s not negotiable.”
“Did I tell you Chase and I only charge five bucks an hour?”
“Each? Or is that a package deal?” I quipped.
“Each. But we can set up a payment plan,” he teased. “Now how about showing me the video?”
I took a seat in front of the middle monitor, found the file and clicked it.
“Here, you sit,” I said, standing and swiveling the chair toward him.
Jude sat, his eyes steady on the screen. I started to move away but he wrapped an arm around my waist and held me there beside him. When the camera view switched from the back of my head to my face and then zoomed in, I felt his arm tense.
“I don’t like it,” he said after a minute, his voice low. “It feels personal. I was afraid of that.”
“But all I ever do in that room is work. If it was personal, why not mount the cameras in my bedroom?”
“I don’t know. Do you always work alone?”
“Yeah, my day-to-day work is all alone. Ian does come over sometimes to get some help on bids. Government contracts are really competitive, and I’m a better writer than he is, so he puts together the numbers, and I write the sales pitches.”
“You’re sure he doesn’t know your security codes? Could he have seen you punch them in when he came over?”
“No. I was always at home waiting for him, so I never had to enter the codes in front of him.”
“You never went out for a lunch break and then back to the house?”
“Not since the whole dating fiasco. And like I said, I changed the codes every week. There’s no way Ian could know them.”
Jude clicked the mouse to pause the video and turned the chair to face me, which meant his arm dropped away from my waist. I wished it hadn’t.
“He’s still at the top of my suspect list, because in his mind, he has a reason to hold a grudge, and out of everyone, he’s the one who had the most access to your house.”
I’d already given this a lot of thought. I understood why Jude would suspect Ian, but I still couldn’t see it.
“I agree with the part about him holding a grudge,” I said. “He does still gets weird on me sometimes. But I honestly don’t think there’s any way he could’ve gotten into my house. And Ian putting cameras in my office makes no sense.”
“That’s the problem,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “None of this makes sense.”
He turned back to the screen and started the video back up again.
“You can fast forward a little bit,” I told him when I got tired of looking at myself. “About a half a minute from the end it switches to the third camera view for a little bit.”
He sped through a section, then put it back to normal speed. He watched the third camera view, then the last part, where I stood up and stretched, with the camera zooming in on my face.
“That’s pretty much it,” I said, reaching across him for the mouse.
“Wait,” he said, catching my hand in his and holding it. “Wait a second, Ava.”
He rewound the video and watched me get up again. I shifted, embarrassed. “That’s the end of the tape, Jude. There’s nothing else after this.”
“Ah,” he murmured softly, gazing at the screen intently. “You might be right after all. I don’t think it’s Ian.”
“Huh?” I asked, wondering why the sudden change of mind.
He reversed the video yet again and pointed at the screen. “When you get up to stretch, the camera zooms in on your face.”
“Yeah, so?”
He shot me a smile. “You have an amazing face, Ava. Really amazing. I could happily stare at it for hours. Days, even. But that stretch—”
Jude’s smile turned a little sheepish and I put my hands on my hips, totally confused. “What, Jude?”
“The way you were stretching there, with your shoulders thrown back—” He shook his head and squinted up at me. “Don’t take this wrong, but it emphasized more than your face. And I don’t think there’s a man alive who would’ve zoomed in past that view instead of watching. Especially a man who already has a thing for you.”
It took me a moment to understand, and when I did I felt heat crawling up over my neck and face.
“Oh.” That’s all I could think to say.
Jude gave me a somewhat apologetic smile and stood, sliding his hands into his back pockets. “Do you have any female adversaries?” he asked.
To cover my embarrassment, I scowled up at him. “I’m a little old to get caught up in a ‘mean girls’ group, Jude.”
“I’m serious, Ava. I think there’s a good chance your stalker is a female.”
“And I think there’s a good chance you’re grasping at straws.”
“Humor me,” he said, giving me a mock-stern look. “Can you think of anyone?”
I cocked my head. “A girl who wants to stare at me while I’m sitting at a computer? No. I can’t think of anyone.”
“Someone who would have a motive to study you,” he corrected. “Who wants to find out what makes you tick.” His eyes narrowed suddenly, zeroing in on mine. “The girlfriend. Ian’s girlfriend. You said she was already in the picture while Ian was pursuing you, right?”
“Abigail? Yeah. She joined the team a month or so before that. Maybe two months.”
“And even then, it was clear she was into Ian?”
“To me it was. She lived in Pennsylvania when she was hired, but moved to DC right after that. She was always finding a reason to be wherever Ian was.”
“So, you saw her—Abigail—interacting with Ian? That’s how you knew she liked him?”
“But he was into you when she got there.”
I saw where Jude was going now. I paced over to the window to get away from his knowing gaze. “I suppose. Like I said, I didn’t agree to go out with him until later, but he was trying to talk me into it then. I remember I felt uncomfortable about it when Abigail was around because I could tell it bothered her. And then when we started dating—if you can even call it that—she gave us both the cold shoulder.”
“Did she ever come to your house?”
“She came with Ian a few times after they got together. Not recently, though.”
“Can you think of any possible way she could’ve gotten in and installed the cameras? Would she even know how?”
“Sure, she’d know how. It’s not hard. But I can’t think of any way she could get into my house. I’ve already told you there’s no way anyone could get my codes. Unless—” I broke off as something occurred to me.
“What?” Jude asked. “What are you thinking?”
“Unless she did like you said the other day—talked my mom into letting her in when I was gone.” I turned to face him as I remembered something else. “You know, Mom actually met her once when she came into a café where the three of us were having lunch. It was soon after Abigail moved to the area. Ian brought her along when he was dropping off some equipment for me, and I took them to lunch. I introduced them to Mom when she came in.”
Jude studied me thoughtfully. “Would she have known your mom took care of your plants when you went out of town?”
“Ian knew.”
“Okay, so what’s your relationship with Abigail like now that she has Ian? Any chance she’s still jealous of you, even though she finally got her man?”
“She shouldn’t be,” I declared. “I’ve done my best to make it clear I don’t like Ian that way.”
“But you said he still acts weird with you sometimes. Is it possible he’s still pining for you and Abigail knows it?”
I opened my mouth to assure him that wasn’t the case, but I couldn’t say the words. Because me not wanting to believe something didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Deep down I knew the friction that surfaced periodically between Ian and me had a lot to do with unresolved feelings on his part. I’d always thought it was mostly a pride thing, but it could be more.