Tallie opened her mouth and dragged air into her contracted lungs, wondering how badly her body was mangled. The ground beneath her moved, then moaned, and her muscles contracted in alarm. She flailed her arms, and when she met flesh, she realized that the ground moving beneath her was a person…or an angel. She rolled to her side and met cold, hard concrete, but she took that as a good sign because she was relatively sure the roads of heaven were not paved in concrete.
There was another alternative, however, considering the unkind thoughts she’d been having toward her mother.
A man’s voice floated around her and she concentrated on the rhythm, the rise and fall of his urgent tone, until she zeroed in on what he was saying. “Tallie! Tallie, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Tallie. Open your eyes.”
How could she ignore that nice voice? She opened her eyes and blinked his face into view by the illumination of the streetlight. Familiar…yet elusive.
Mr. Familiar smiled, and her memory clicked—Keith Wages. His lips moved, but she didn’t hear what he said. Her mind raced, clogged. “What…what are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass,” he said wryly. “That car nearly ran you down. Are you okay?”
“I…think so.”
“I’m going to check you for broken bones, okay?”
She nodded and lay still while he gingerly felt her arms and legs. Then he unzipped her jacket and ran his big hands over her collarbones, breastbone, and ribs. A clinical search, but her neglected erogenous zones didn’t know the difference and leaped to attention. A crowd had gathered, and it occurred to her that this was as close to public sex as she might ever experience.
“Do you feel any pain in your back or neck?” he asked.
“No. I…just got the wind knocked out of me.”
He looked relieved. “Can you sit up?”
She did, with his help, then stood and walked in a small circle. Everything seemed to be in working order, which brought her back to her original question. She looked him up and down—he wore an NYPD insulated jacket over jeans and boots. “What are you doing here?”
He lifted his hands. “I came by your place to say I was sorry about lunch. I saw you come out of your building, but by the time I parked, you were way ahead of me.” He nodded toward his boots. “And these didn’t help.”
She frowned. “That was you behind me?”
“Didn’t you hear me yelling?”
Despite the cold, a flush warmed her face. “I thought you were a mugger—that’s why I ran out in front of the car. I wasn’t paying attention.”
He pulled his hand down his mouth, his eyes shadowed. “God, I’m sorry, Tallie. You could have been killed.” Then he gestured toward the intersection. “But you had the right of way, which is probably why the driver didn’t stop to see if you were okay.” He grunted. “I missed the plate number.”
“You yanked me to safety?” she asked, still trying to process what had happened.
One side of his mouth quirked. “All I could grab onto was your jacket hood.”
She reached behind her neck and fingered the loose flap of fabric. Thank heaven her hoodless jacket had been even deeper in the dirty clothes pile. Then Tallie narrowed her eyes. “How did you know where I live?”
A sheepish smile crept up his face. “I am a police officer.”
She crossed her arms. “So I gathered today, after the bullets started flying. Why didn’t you say you were a cop?”
He shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
“It’s not as if we had a long conversation before the takedown.”
“That’s why I came by tonight,” he said. “To see if you wanted to have a long conversation over a bite to eat.” Then he made a rueful noise. “But I think we’d better get you back home. Do you feel like walking? I can get my car.”
“No,” she said quickly, irritated by his hovering. “I can walk.” To demonstrate, she wheeled and set off toward her apartment building, although the first few steps were a bit unsteady. He caught up with her and seemed poised to catch her if she swooned. Tallie inched away, working up a slow fume over the fact that he needn’t feel like her personal rescuer since he’d caused the incident himself. In truth, he had saved her from him.
“Nothing hurts?” he asked, his breath frosty white in the air.
“Only my shoulder,” she said wryly. “From being shoved to the floor today at the coffeehouse.”
“Sorry about that. I didn’t realize how small you were under all those clothes.” He winked. “You’re not going to sue me, are you?”
She wasn’t sure which comment offended her most. Tallie frowned harder. “What happened today, exactly?”
“I noticed the guy come in after you, and…I don’t know—there was something about his body language that seemed off. He hung back and he seemed twitchy. I saw him pull a gun and when it swung in our direction, I reacted.” He touched her arm. “Did I hurt you?”
She rolled her tender shoulder, then shook her head, feeling contrite. “I’m grateful to you…for saving my life.” She swallowed. “Twice. In one day.”
He scoffed. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
Coincidence, or fate? “By the way…I picked up your hat.”
He grinned. “You did? Thanks. That’s my favorite hat.”
She dismissed his gratitude with a wave, lest he think she had put a lot of thought into the act. “Was the guy trying to rob the coffeehouse?”
“So it seems,” he said. “Did you recognize him?”
Tallie turned her head to stare at him in the near-darkness. “No—why would you think that?”
“His address is in this zip code. I thought you might have seen him around.”
“Not that I remember. What’s his name?”
“Rick Shavel, lots of priors.”
She shook her head. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
They walked for a few minutes in silence, then he gestured to the shabby buildings they were passing. “So this is your neighborhood?”
She gave a little laugh. “It looks better in the daylight, although not much. But my apartment is decent-sized for the money. Where do you live?”
“Brooklyn.”
Domestic. Tallie was grateful for the darkness that hid her inadvertent wince. “In an apartment?”
“No, I have a house.”
Deeper wince. The suburbs. Yards, kids, dogs. “That’s nice,” she lied.
“I like it,” he said easily.
But she could feel herself retreat from the man’s easy voice, his easy good looks, his easy knack for being in the right place at the right time. It would be too easy to fall for a guy like Keith Wages and get sucked into a life that she knew she would eventually hate. She might be putting the cart before the horse—after all, he had shown no romantic interest in her as of yet—but why drive down a dead-end road? Why put on her blinker? Why even slow down?
“Hey, have a little mercy,” he said with a laugh as he walked faster to keep up with her. “These boots aren’t broken in.”
“I’m cold,” she said, which was not a lie. “Besides, that’s my place up ahead.”
“I’ll walk you up,” he offered.
“You don’t have to,” she said, walking faster.
“I’ll get my hat and be on my way,” he said pleasantly, and she couldn’t think of an argument against that before they reached her building. He held open the door, and she decided to risk the rickety elevator to spare him the stairs. On the ride up, she alternately worried about the disarray of her apartment and told herself she didn’t want to make a good impression on this man. When they stepped off the elevator, the mysterious stench hit them full force.
“Sorry,” she said, covering her nose with her sleeve. “Someone has a dead rat.”
Keith cringed. “That must be one big rat. Has anyone reported it?”
Tallie nodded as she unlocked the dead bolts on her door. “The super was here Monday night looking
for the source, but I don’t think he found anything.”
When she swung open the door, she experienced a momentary spasm of embarrassment—the apartment, when seen through fresh eyes, was even worse than she realized. “Sorry for the mess,” she said. “I’m doing some spring cleaning and everything is…out.”
He nodded and glanced around, seemingly amused. He stepped into the tiny living room and leaned over to get his hat from the coffee table. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said, tingling with awareness of how dreadful she must look in her disheveled running clothes, soiled shoes, no makeup, and a knit cap. She stood with her arms crossed, caught between rudeness and her lack of desire to entertain Keith Wages in her messy living room. “I would offer you something to drink,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen area, “but I haven’t been to the grocery…lately.”
“Thanks anyway,” he said with a laugh that made his dark eyes dance, and she felt like an idiot all over again. He was waiting for an invitation to sit, but she was loath to offer one, in a sudden panic about how quickly word would get back to her mother that she was the world’s worst housekeeper. “I was going to wash your hat,” she mumbled in a desperate attempt to redeem herself.
Keith laughed again. “That’s okay.” He folded the hat in his hands and nodded toward the stack of manuscripts on the coffee table. “I see you bring your work home.”
She nodded warily, feeling a tug toward him. “I have so much reading to do, I can’t possibly get it done during the day.” Tallie hesitated, then unzipped her jacket. Her running clothes were like a second skin, but the man had already copped a feel, so what did it matter?
“I’ll bet you hear from all kinds of crazies, don’t you?”
She smiled. “You sound like my mother. Honestly, most submissions are just plain bad. I’m reading one now from a former IRS tax accountant who swears he killed a man and got away with it.”
Keith’s eyebrows went up. “Did you report it to the police?”
Tallie blinked. “Well…no.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s probably making it up.”
Keith pursed his mouth, then nodded agreeably and wandered over to her bookcase—a paint-chipped, rickety affair that listed to one side so badly, it appeared to defy gravity. “You read Gaylord Cooper?” he asked.
Astonished, she walked closer. “Actually, I’m his editor.”
His eyes widened. “No kidding?”
A blush warmed her cheeks, and she felt compelled to add, “I will be from now on. Are you familiar with his work?”
He nodded and pulled out one of Cooper’s volumes. “I’ve read them all, although I think Troubled Water is his best work.”
Tallie was impressed. “Troubled Water is a good one, but Blood Trouble was my favorite.”
Another nod. “Does he have anything new coming out soon?”
She smiled, ridiculously pleased that he was interested in a topic on which she was knowledgeable. “As a matter of fact, he’s delivering a new manuscript tomorrow.”
“Really? What’s it about?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t read it. Gaylord is…protective of his work until he turns it in.”
He returned the novel to the bookshelf. “I’ve heard that he’s a bit of a nut job.”
She gave a little shrug. “The man has some hang-ups, but I suppose most creative geniuses do.”
Keith patted the bookshelf, and it trembled violently. He leaned down and peered into the corners, where bowed nails spanned the separated joints. “I can try to repair this for you.”
Tallie flinched. The man was five minutes into her private space and he was trying to fix things? “No, thanks,” she said, a bit more sternly than she intended, although she didn’t regret her tone. Who did he think he was?
He turned his head and caught her pointed gaze, then straightened. “Right. Well, I guess I’d better be going.” He walked toward the door. “I just want to apologize again, Tallie, for the way things turned out today.” He made a rueful face. “And I didn’t mean to frighten you this evening, either.”
“It’s okay,” she said, suddenly eager for him to leave. She strode to the door and opened it, conjuring up a congenial smile.
At the door, he turned, fingering his hat. “How about that long conversation over dinner sometime?”
Tallie studied Keith’s open, masculine face and acknowledged a strong physical attraction to the man. Those broad shoulders were tempting as hell. But he was just the kind of guy her mother would want her to date—clean cut, gainfully employed, capable…macho. His association with her family would make things even more sticky when the relationship bombed because he didn’t understand Tallie’s long hours at work or her tolerance for dust bunnies…okay—dust dragons. She could see it now, her mother and Keith pooling forces to transform her into a minivan mom.
“Tallie?”
She blinked, then wet her lips. “The thing is, Keith…I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
His eyes clouded momentarily, but then he straightened. “Sure, I understand. It was nice meeting you. Take care.”
Tallie nodded and closed the door behind him, squashing the flicker of regret in her heart, telling herself that nipping the attraction in the bud was the mature thing to do. Men like Keith Wages exuded some kind of pheromone that drove a woman to do crazy things, like…clean their nest.
She frowned at the mess around her and lifted her chin belligerently. She’d have time to straighten up Friday morning before the cleaners came. Another day or so of dirty dishes wasn’t going to kill anyone.
Chapter 11
“Good evening, Ms. Redmon,” the doorman said to Felicia as she entered her building.
“Good evening, Del,” she said, smiling at the portly man who had been the daily mainstay of her life for the past fifteen years.
“It’s cold out there,” he said cheerfully.
“Good for the skin,” she said just as cheerfully, but her smile disappeared as soon as the elevator door closed and she was alone. She stabbed the button for the twelfth floor and leaned against the wall, feeling thoroughly miserable. She’d replayed the image of Jerry and Suze together in her head until she’d worked up a serious migraine. She still didn’t know what she was going to do—confront Jerry? Suze? Tell Phil?
She was so glad she hadn’t caved to Jerry’s dinner invitation. She needed time to think.
With her chest and head aching, she unlocked her door and hung her keys on a hook, then swung to face her immaculate living room. Furnished with retro reproductions, from a boxy gray couch to a russet area rug and an orange leather ottoman, the room never failed to comfort her with its clean lines and suggestion of a simpler era. So unlike the fussiness she’d grown up with. Her mother, Julia Redmon-Clark-Gregg, had spent her exorbitant salary on French baroque décor. Heavy, ornate furniture, dark, depressing colors, velvet and brocade upholstery, fringe and swag embellishments, candles ad nauseum.
When Felicia had moved here from her mother’s, she’d lived with a bed and one chair for nearly a year, reveling in the expansive room to breathe. Slowly she had filled it with simple pieces, but there was still more space that was empty than occupied…and she liked it that way.
She walked to her coat closet to deposit her outer wear, and her gaze went to the black-and-gray tweed scarf that Jerry had left at her place last year when their affair had been flaming hot. With a sigh, she reached out to touch the scarf, remembering how the soft wool would feel against her cheek when Jerry would walk through the door and pull her into his embrace. He would rock her back and forth and murmur against her hair that she was amazing and that he was a lucky, lucky man. They would undress on the way to the bed…if they made it that far.
Her eyes filled with sudden tears, because she had been so utterly fooled by him, by his loving words. Even now, she could close her eyes and conjure up the bliss of lying in his arms, inhaling the scent of his skin
. Her chest swelled. On the heels of reminiscing always came the wave of anger at Jerry for his failing to realize what a good life they might have had together. She still believed that deep down, Jerry did love her but was afraid of the intensity of his feelings.
Felicia removed the oversized scarf from the closet and wrapped it loosely around her neck and shoulders, imagining that the warmth and weight were Jerry’s embrace. She picked up the end of the scarf and breathed in the faint scent of his stock cologne, then walked to the bathroom and opened her medicine cabinet. A tiny white opaque sample bottle of Jerry’s cologne remained where he’d left it on the top shelf. She caught a whiff of the heady musk every morning when she removed her toothbrush.
Curling her fingers around the bottle, she had a flashback of Jerry standing in her bathroom that last morning, boxers riding low on his lean hips, his hair still wet from the shower. He had sprayed the cologne on his neck with two neat pumps, then he’d winked at her where she’d lain on the bed watching him. In hindsight, he must have, at that very moment, been contemplating how he could end their relationship, and she’d been wondrously oblivious.
Felicia fingered the small bottle, noticing the glass had yellowed slightly. On impulse, she uncapped the top and sprayed two quick pumps onto the scarf around her neck. Actually, it was more like one and a half pumps, since the second time she depressed the button, the liquid spit and fizzled, diluted with air. With a bittersweet pang, she recapped the bottle and dropped it into the garbage can. The masculine scent permeated her nostrils as she caressed the scarf. She breathed deeply, like an addict, to pull the last vestiges of him into her lungs, then bit into her lip to stem the wretched tears that threatened to surface. Jerry…why?
The phone rang, startling in its shrillness, violating the quiet. She swallowed the lump at the back of her throat and cleared her voice of emotion before answering the unit on her nightstand.
“Hello?”
“Hello, dear. It’s Mother.”
Her heart squeezed with sudden pleasure. “How are you, Mother?”
Whole Lotta Trouble Page 8