by Cathie Linz
All the while, she was only too well aware of his intense gaze homing in on her. He really did have the most incredible eyes. And he looked like such an outsider, standing apart from the action, watching but not involved in it.
“Would you like to come in and have some coffee or something?” she invited, unable to leave him just standing there. “We’ve got plenty of food.”
Michael fully intended to say no. Hanging out with a bunch of adolescents wasn’t his idea of a good time. But for some reason, he couldn’t seem to voice the refusal. He really wasn’t himself today.
Exasperated by his silence, Brett said, “It’s really not that tough a question to answer. Look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but it might be easier for people to get to know you if you.”
“If I what?” he demanded irritably. “Don’t stop there.”
“If you lightened up a little, maybe.”
His fiery look would have sent a weaker soul scurrying for cover, but not Brett.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be Suzy Sunshine,” he retorted.
She flushed. Is that how he thought of her? She knew he wasn’t alone in that opinion. If only they all knew how far from the truth that was. There was a cold darkness in her soul that no amount of cheerfulness could melt.
But the bottom line was that she’d never been able to say no to those in need, because she knew how it felt to need someone, or something, so badly and not be able to have it—not ever.
“That was a stupid crack I made,” Michael said, lifting his hand to cup her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
Her heart stopped. His touch was so gentle.
“Yo, Brett, where do you want this box?” thirteen-yearold Juan asked her.
Brett stepped away from Michael—silently noting that each time she did so, it got harder and harder. Stepping inside the basement apartment, Michael poured himself a mug of coffee from a coffeepot that looked like it had been around during World War II. Sipping his coffee, he observed the suspicious looks the kids gave him. Each glance held a warning. Their protectiveness was impressive.
When Brett was outside, he took the opportunity to get a little more information about his new employee. “Your name is Juan?” he asked the kid in the baseball cap.
“That’s right. You wanna make something of it?”
“Why this routine? What makes you think Brett needs protecting?”
Eyeing him, Juan waited before replying. “Because she’s the Mother Teresa type,” he finally said. “Too good. She’s been hurt already.”
“By whom?” Michael demanded.
Juan shrugged. “She don’t say and I don’t ask. All I know is that since she started volunteering at the center, things have been different. She understands.”
“What center might that be?”
“St. Gerald’s Youth Center. Two blocks from here. Which means we’re close enough to check up on you.”
“Do I look impressed?” Michael countered.
“You look mean, but Brett told us that you’re not really.”
“What did she say I was, really?”
“Lonely.”
The observation stung. Slamming the coffee mug back on the rickety table, he glared at Juan before making his departure. He didn’t need this aggravation. Michael enjoyed his own company. He certainly didn’t need a snottynosed kid telling him what was wrong with his life.
As soon as Michael got back to his apartment, he turned on his computer and did some checking into Brett’s background. He learned that she was thirty and had no middle name. No criminal records. The pickup out front was hers and was apparently paid for. She only had one credit card and that had a modest fifteen-hundred-dollar limit. She was still paying off a large medical bill at a Northside hospital for a stay involving a surgical procedure almost two years ago.
Her job history was sporadic. She’d tried her hand at just about everything, from flipping “sliders” at a popular burger joint, to a stint as a waitress in a Rush Street watering hole, to working in a hardware store. She was only twenty credit-hours short of earning her degree in psychology, from Loyola no less. But she’d been a parttime student there longer than some people were president. She wasn’t attending classes now, but was registered for the next semester starting in mid-January.
There was no indication of her having any living relatives and she’d never been married. He wondered why not. With a loving heart like hers, she’d make some man a wonderful wife. She was great with kids, too. And smart. Caring. Sassy. No pushover. And she had the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen.
Yes, he’d done right to hire her. It had been a wise and logical decision. That was his story and he was sticking to it.
“Are you crazy?” Michael shouted at Brett not even a week later.
“I was just…”
“I can see what you were doing. Trying to get your neck broken! That’s much too heavy for you to carry.”
“I wasn’t carrying it. I was using leverage…”
“Don’t do it again,” he interrupted her to order, moving the huge potted plant in the hallway for her. The thing weighed a ton. “Why are you moving this, anyway?”
“Because I needed to drain the radiator behind it.” Seeing his frown of confusion, she elaborated. “The tenants have all complained about the rattling radiators waking them up at night. The entire system needed to be bled, to get the air out of it. That’s what’s causing all the noise. This radiator is the last one to be done. I have to.”
He was distracted from the rest of her explanation by the way her eyes lit up as she talked. Had he ever met a woman with such an expressive face? He didn’t think so. And all this enthusiasm was about draining radiators, no less.
Today she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt. The color matched her blue eyes. A pair of black leggings encased her legs, the material lovingly following every curve.
“So how are you settling in?” he asked even though he already knew the answer. The tenants had been singing her praises and he hadn’t had any more tap dancing on his ceiling or middle-of-the-night irate phone calls. Which left him free to concentrate on his work, which should have taken up every second of his time as it had for the past five years of his life. Instead he’d actually caught himself daydreaming about Brett—the way she smiled, the way she’d looked with the sun haloing her short dark hair, the sound of her laughter, the way she lit up a room with her presence.
“Nicely.”
“What?” he asked absently, distracted by the cutest little dimple he’d just noticed at the corner of her lush mouth.
“I said I’m settling in nicely.” She hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. Michael was staring at her strangely again. His hazel eyes were fascinating enough as it was without adding that seductive look to the mix. Unable to help herself, she lifted her hand to rub her mouth as she asked, “Do I have dirt on my face or what?”
“No.”
“You were looking at me so intently.” He’d been staring directly at that corner of her mouth. She leaned forward to check her reflection in the glass beside the front door.
“You look fine,” he huskily assured her. “Better than fine.”
“Sure I do,” she said dryly. The man was either being kind or he was just plain blind. She knew the baggy sweatshirt had seen better days. So had she. She looked like an elf on a chain-gang crew. She hadn’t brushed her hair since this morning. Forget lipstick. She hadn’t worn any since Wednesday and this was Friday. Yeah, she was a regular Cindy Crawford look-alike.
“Don’t you go trying to lift anything else this heavy,” he scolded her, reaching out to brush her bangs away from her eyes. “Ask for some help next time, okay?”
She nodded dazedly. The merest brush of his hand and her knees went weak. The rattling radiators had nothing on the clatter of her heartbeat. She stood there after he’d walked away, her mind racing as fast as her pulse, filling her thoughts with images of Michael scooping her up in his arms and taki
ng her to bed.
“Girl, you look like you got hit by lightning,” Keisha noted dryly as she walked in the front door to the building.
“Yeah.” Brett dreamily sighed. “I feel that way, too.”
“Oh-oh.”
“Why is it oh-oh?”
“I saw the way you-looked at Michael. He may not have owned this building long, but I told you I work as a security officer at the library’s main branch. Anyway, Michael is well known in security circles. Likes working alone, always solves his cases. Nothin’ slips past him.”
“That’s good, right?”
Keisha shrugged. “Girl, he doesn’t let anyone slow him down. As in females. He changes them often and likes them gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous, huh? Well, that lets me out of the running,” Brett noted ruefully.
“Don’t you be down on yourself. You got plenty going for you. I never seen a girl knows as much about hardware as you do.”
“I may know about hardware, but I don’t have any of my own,” Brett replied, waving her hand toward her small breasts.
“You never heard of those push-up bras they’ve got? My sister works in a lingerie store. Talk about hardware.” Keisha grinned and rolled her eyes. “We’re talking heavy-duty stuff here. We’ll go over there my next day off.”
“I don’t know…”
Keisha waved away Brett’s uncertainty. “I gotta get over there to pick out my Christmas present from Tyrone anyway.”
“You pick out your own present?”
“Only since he bought me a steam iron last year.”
Brett winced in appreciative understanding.
“So this year I pick out my own things. Safer that way. How ‘bout you? Got your shopping done yet? Christmas is only three weeks away.”
“I know. It’ll be here before you know it. I’m just about done with my shopping.” Despite the fact that Brett had no family, she did have a large list of people she remembered at the holidays. Since money was tight, it was always a challenge coming up with gift ideas under five dollars, but she managed. After all, practice makes perfect, and Brett had had plenty of practice at making a dollar stretch.
“You know what you’re gonna ask Santa for?” Keisha inquired.
The mental image of Michael with a bow around his neck flashed into Brett’s mind, followed by a picture of their children gathered around the tree. “Santa can’t give me what I want,” Brett whispered in a slightly melancholy voice, before dismissing the unobtainable image from her thoughts. “Tell me more about that lingerie shop your sister works in…”
While Brett was speaking to Keisha outside, inside his apartment Michael was talking to his dad, or attempting to.
“Fuji has better phones,” his father was saying. “I can hear you now.”
“So what do you know about a Janos family curse?”
“Curse? Have you been betting on the horses again?” his father demanded.
“No. I only bet on the horses once in my life, Dad. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I got a package from Hungary. From someone who claims they are a relative.”
“Must be your Great-Aunt Magda. What did she send you?” his father demanded suspiciously.
“An engraved metal box with a silver key in it. And she sent along a letter.” Michael read it to his father. “Do you know what this is all about?”
“There is a spell,” his father confirmed before static broke into the line.
“Wait, I didn’t hear what else you said,” Michael shouted. “The line is breaking up again. Did you say that there really is a curse?”
“Not a curse. A spell…was meant to be bahtali.”
“I don’t understand. Are you still there?”
The only answer he got was static.
“Can you hear me?” Michael shouted.
“The entire building can hear you,” Brett wryly noted from the doorway to his apartment.
“How did you get in? Never mind. I’m on the phonelong distance.”
“I’ll try to call you when we reach Hawaii,” he heard his dad say over the briefly clear line.
“Dad, wait!” Michael said into the phone. “What about the bahtali?”
The dial tone was the only reply. Muttering a choice Hungarian curse under his breath, Michael hung up the phone.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Brett said contritely. “But the door to your apartment was ajar. You said you needed to approve any expense over thirty dollars and I forgot to tell you earlier that I think you’re going to have to replace all the bathtub and kitchen faucets in Keisha’s apartment.”
Instead of responding to her comments, Michael said, “What do you know about keys?”
She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Keys. What do you know about them?”
“That they unlock things. Why? Is someone having a problem with their locks?”
“What about a key like this?” Michael opened the Rom box and held out the silver key to her.
Brett suddenly felt as if she were on a merry-go-round going at 78 rpm. She was so dizzy she couldn’t stand straight. Putting out her hand, she reached for something to hold her upright, but found nothing but air—until Michael caught her in his arms.
The power of his embrace was both humbling and exhilarating. The world slipped away as she gazed into his eyes. He looked as dazed as she felt. Then passionate hunger replaced surprise. Seconds later he bent his head, slowly lowering his lips to brush hers.
What began as a soft inquisition was soon transformed into a fervent exploration as Michael claimed her mouth with bewitching kisses, urgently coaxing her lips apart. The beguiling thrust of his tongue made her weak at the knees.
Brett could feel his heart pounding beneath her hand, which she’d rested against his chest. Her fingers clutched his shirt at the wickedly pleasurable things he was doing to her. This was more than a kiss. It was a complete seduction of the senses.
The sound of metal clanging on the wooden floor echoed in her head, sounding as if she were standing inside the ringing Liberty Bell. Startled, she pulled away. “What was that?”
“I have no idea,” he said, his voice raspy.
She had the feeling he was referring to what had just happened between them. He might not have any idea, but she sure did. Brett was panicked that she was falling for him. No wonder Keisha had said oh-oh. It was as plain as the freckles on Brett’s nose that there was no hope for a woman like her with a man like him. So what if he’d kissed her? After all, she’d practically thrown herself at the poor man.
She stood frozen as he calmly picked up the silver key that had fallen on the floor and started talking about it-as if the mind-blowing kiss they’d just shared hadn’t happened.
Taking her cue from him, she bit her bottom lip and forced herself to concentrate on his words, trying to match his look of unconcern.
“This key came in that box I got—the one that arrived the same day you did.”
Great, she thought to herself. Now he made her sound like a package he’d received in the mail.
“It came from a distant relative in Hungary. A Rom relative to be precise.”
“Rom?”
“Gypsy…My parents are both Hungarian, but my dad has Rom blood while my mom is gaje, meaning she isn’t Rom. Anyway, my folks fled the communist regime in Hungary in the early sixties, when I was only a year or two old. My brother and sister were born after we got here.”
Gypsy. Rom. Yes, Brett thought to herself. That explained Michael’s magically brooding eyes. It didn’t explain her magical response to him, however.
“Anyway, the box had this key in it,” Michael continued, “and I thought what with you knowing about locks and things, you might know what this key unlocks. It doesn’t unlock the box, I already tried that. Got any ideas?”
Ideas? She had plenty of them. Steamy, forbidden fantasies about him, a man who preferred gorgeous
women and kissed like a wild-blooded Gypsy king. “Nope. I don’t have a clue. Sorry. Well, I, uh…I’d better get back to that radiator, and then I’ll go pick up those new faucets. If I hurry, I can still buy them and install one tonight.” With each quickly spoken word, she backed another step out of the apartment. “See you.” With a cheerful smile and a nonchalant wave of her hand she was gone.
Not until Brett reached the privacy of her own apartment did she allow the embarrassment she felt to show. She was thirty, much too old to be acting like an adolescent with a crush. There was only one thing to do.
Heading for the kitchen she poured herself a glass of milk and ripped open a bag of cheese puffs. It was her own prescription for stress. After eating half the bag, she managed to regain her perspective. “Okay, here’s the plan,” she told herself, speaking the words aloud for added emphasis. “If Michael can pretend that kiss never happened, so can I. But I’m gonna do it at a distance. That’s the plan.” Holding up her glass of milk, she toasted it. “Here’s to success.”
Michael noticed that Brett made herself scarce for the next day or two, but he put it down to the amount of work she was doing on the building. He hadn’t forgotten their kiss. It had been seared into his brain. But she’d looked so panic-stricken afterward that he didn’t want to scare her off. Besides, technically speaking, he was her boss and he certainly didn’t want her thinking that her job was dependent on her kissing him.
She haunted his thoughts and his dreams. Tonight the dream was getting particularly hot and intimate when a noise jarred him awake. It took him a second or two to groggily identify what had woken him up—just when things were getting good! It sounded remarkably like a baby crying.
Impossible. There were no babies in the building. At first he thought he was imagining things. But he couldn’t get back to sleep for the confounded crying. Muttering under his breath, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, ready to track down the source of the noise and put an end to it.
It didn’t take Michael long to track the crying downstairs to Brett’s place. She must have the TV on or something. Or maybe she was playing one of those movie videos with a baby in the starring role. Whatever the case was, the noise was keeping him awake and she needed to turn the thing down.