by Michele Hart
“Good morning,” Elissa replied through her uncontrollable smile bursting onto the scene at the sound of his voice. He probably picked up on that. “You have a showcase home.”
“I’m glad you like it. Feel free to take the tour.”
“Oh, no. I’ll not do that without the tour guide. The cases have arrived. Should I put any bottles in the refrigerator?”
“Yes. There should be two cases of red and a case of white. Take out three bottles of the white wine and put them into the refrigerator, then unpack a few of the red and set them in the wine rack on the counter. They’re for us. The rest we’re taking to the Bay Cook-off.”
“Oh, boy. Lucky us. I’ll get that done ... then I suppose I should get on my way.”
“I’m taking you out to dinner, remember?” Greg reminded her, his deep voice flowing from her phone into her ear, sending a slow wave of bliss through her.
Elissa pinched her lips together, having not taken the earlier offer all too seriously. She wasn’t taking any of this too seriously. “I forgot to bring a dress.”
“Not a problem. Sissy left half her clothes when she lived with me. They’re in the closet of the spare bedroom after the fireplace. You look about the same size to me.”
Sissy used to live with Greg, obviously the source of the feminine touches in the house. Elissa’s stomach took a dive with the revelation, wondering how close Greg and Sissy were now and if it was over. Not that Elissa was jealous or envious or any other negative feeling. She really liked Sissy, and the past really wasn’t her business. Sissy had been extraordinarily nice to her, but the contemplation of Greg and Sissy’s current and prior relationship made Elissa’s heart sink a bit.
“You mean I’ll be able to dress like myself instead of a fashion failure?”
“Well, you can dress like Sissy. We’re not liable to run into our adversaries at Willows Steak House. You’re welcome to anything in her closet.
“Or nothing. Fine with me.”
Elissa could hear his smile.
“Not everyone in the restaurant will appreciate my nudity.”
“Who cares what they think?”
“I’ll give the dresses a look-see before I’ll go nude. We don’t want the police involved,” she replied, thankful she’d tossed her makeup bag and a few hair clips into her purse.
“I’m already on my way, not five minutes away. Throw on one of Sissy’s dresses, and we’ll hit the high life tonight.”
“That’s a great idea.” Elissa heard the door bell again. “You’ve another visitor.”
“Aren’t I Mister Popular. I’m not expecting anyone else.”
“Hang on, let me check the door.”
Elissa set her phone down on the livingroom table, and it dawned on her. It was Greg standing outside the front door, pulling her leg. Who else would it be?
She heard the door bell again as she took the distance to the door, giddy to lay eyes on him again. She pressed against the door and peeked through the peephole, the view blocked. He’d placed his finger against the view hole.
Entertained by his juvenile antics, she flung the door open to discover a man with a semi-automatic pistol drawn on her. Her smile slid from her face.
Cautious, she backed up into the livingroom as the man stepped in and kicked the door closed behind him. She stepped behind the stack of wine cases for a little cover and aimed her voice at her phone. “A visitor with a gun.”
“Where’s the man of the house today?” the dangerous stranger asked, his eyes sweeping the interior of the livingroom as her eyes swept the weapon. It was a Beretta M9, standard military-issue. And the safety was engaged. She saw a holster clipped to his belt under a lightweight jacket, something no one would wear during a Florida summer. Unless he planned to do a dirty deed.
“He’s in the back yard,” Elissa replied a bit louder than necessary, hoping Greg, still on the other end of their phone call, realized her dilemma
If this guy left the gun’s safety on, didn’t it mean he didn’t intend to kill anyone today?
“Unlikely,” the gunman snorted, a deadly look in his eye to challenge that assumption. “I’ve been watching this house since Greg left and you arrived afternoon.”
Deflated, she scanned her peripheral vision for something that could spend a few seconds as a weapon, but nothing was in immediate reach. She knew too well she didn’t have much of a chance reaching a weapon on the ugly end of that gun, anyway.
She’d need to take the pistol away from him.
“What do you want? What are you here for?” she asked loudly, careful not to give away just how much trouble he was in. She let him step closer.
Elissa took in the sight of her assailant and his major details, her witness training reliable. The man possessed nut-brown hair cut short, light-colored eyes. He was dressed in average faded jeans, a plain white t-shirt, light gray jacket, and Nike cross-trainers.
As he stepped through the hallway, she noticed his head reached the bottom of the iron candle sconce hanging on the wall. He was a big boy at about six feet tall, but she’d brought down bigger brutes in martial arts classes. He held the gun in his right hand rather uncomfortably and didn’t seem at all happy with her presence.
She watched his suspicious green eyes roam the cocoa-and-white living room appreciatively. “Greg’s got some pad here.”
His vision fixed on the cases of wine stacked beside the airport-lights sound system and flat-screen TV embedded into the wall. One would’ve thought the electronics would draw a thief’s eye.
This one pointed the gun at the cases of wine, then back to her. “That’s what I’m looking for.”
“You’re holding me at gunpoint for wine? Some alcohol problem you have.”
The man cast her an angry snarl. “Shut up. Don’t be a problem, and you won’t get hurt.”
“I can do that,” she replied, keeping her hands in his sight as not to illicit a bullet. No reason to earn a gunshot wound. She was about to take his gun away, anyway.
Over the man’s shoulder, Elissa spotted the front door easing open, and she saw Greg stick his head in. He eyed the man, then slid back noiselessly behind the door. His sudden appearance changed everything.
Now Elissa wasn’t sure how to keep everyone from injury.
The stranger ordered her, “You’re going to pick up those cases and put them in the trunk of my car.”
Elissa shook her head, gambling, now hoping to exclude his gun from the action entirely, avoiding any physical struggle altogether. He’d need to put down the gun to pick up the wine. “I can’t lift them. I tried earlier.”
Her assailant gave her a nasty grimace. “What do you mean you can’t lift them? They can’t be over thirty pounds.”
She shrugged her shoulders, taking in his posture, sizing up his every move, an eye out for some advantage she could exploit or an unexpected aggressive motion. “I have a bad back. I’m bound to drop a case and shatter the bottles.”
Clearly frustrated, the man tucked the gun into his holster on his belt, exactly what she needed him to do. Then he grabbed hold of her upper arm and hauled her over to the window where he ripped the pull cord from the glass door’s mini-blinds. In his rough handling, she spotted Greg skulking through the front door to duck behind the island of the kitchen.
The wine thief shoved her to the floor at the metal-and-glass coffee table, and he wrapped the cord around her wrists without a fight from her. She focused on keeping her assailant’s attention on her so he wouldn’t pick up the small sounds of Greg passing over the tiled kitchen floor.
“You know, you can get help for the alcohol problem,” she said, watching over the gunman’s shoulder as Greg surfaced on the other side of the island and slipped into a door beyond.
“I know a few places you could get help. You just really have to commit to it—”
“Shut up.”
“Got ya, shutting up.”
Having tied her rather insecurely to the table, the armed
man then grabbed hold of two of the stacked cases, one atop the other, and he hauled the cases outside. Wordless, she watched Greg slip from the bedroom, a Glock-22 semi-auto in his hand, and he sneaked back into the kitchen to press himself against the refrigerator, shielded by an entranceway wall.
Elissa took a deep breath and thought up a quick prayer. Why would someone, an armed someone, show up at a home to steal three cases of wine, passing up the nicest home theater system she’d ever seen?
When the man stepped back into the house for the third case, he passed the wall Greg hid behind. In one smooth motion, Greg stepped into the hall and pressed the muzzle to the back of the man’s head.
“Don’t move,” Greg told him, stopping the man cold, and the look of surprise on the gunman’s face was profound. “And I won’t shoot you. Move a muscle, and your brains are going to be my new decorating scheme.”
The man’s hands went up and away from the pistol at his waist, but the look of shock didn’t leave his expression. He’d probably planned on an empty house when he’d set out to pull off this heist.
Greg directed the stranger further into the room, never taking his eyes off the man.
“Use your thumb and your index finger to take the holster off the belt and set it on the floor. Don’t make a fast move. If you use a single finger other than your index and thumb, I shoot you in some unneeded appendage.”
Both Elissa and Greg watched as the man eased the holster, pinching it just as Greg had instructed, and he bent slowly, setting it on the buffed wood floor. Then Greg directed the man away from the pistol and onto the floor, spread-eagle.
Greg stepped backward, his eyes trained on the man through the gun’s sights, and he reached for the kitchen phone and dialed 911, and then pressed a button on the phone for the speaker.
“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
Greg turned downward to the speaker’s mic. “I have a disarmed burglar in my house, face-down on the floor with my gun on him at the moment.”
“Hold on,” the emergency operator told them. “Police are dispatched to your location.”
The sight of his gun fixed, Greg reached into a kitchen drawer to retrieve a set of scissors, paced over to Elissa, and cut one of the cords holding her.
“Are you okay?” Greg asked her.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Elissa replied, untangling her hands. “Loved your timing.”
“You look familiar,” Greg told his uninvited guest as he stood before him, his eyes squinting and his voice sounding ominous. “Where do I know you from?”
“You don’t know me,” the man smarted off, but the look in Greg’s eyes portrayed doubt.
“I’ve got a decent memory for faces. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen your face before.”
“You don’t know me.”
Greg shook his head. "Why are you here for the wine?”
They heard the wail of sirens entering the neighborhood.
The man darted his eyes over to Elissa. “I’ve got quite an alcohol problem.”
The sirens became louder.
“Maybe I’m just here to look at your girlfriend.”
Greg smiled. “She is a looker, but let’s stay on-subject. What's with the wine?”
“I’m a connoisseur.”
“You’ll love the county jail’s wine list. Who sent you here to pick up the wine?”
His question went unanswered.
The sirens, now shrieking, cut dead. Four police officers wielding guns burst into the room to find Greg carrying all the power.
“You the home owner?” the lead officer with sergeant stripes on his sleeve asked.
Accepting the police firepower to take over the event, Greg set his weapon down on the counter behind him. “Yeah, I’m the home owner. I just found this guy tying up my girlfriend and hauling away my property.”
Elissa smiled at his calling her his girlfriend.
Then he informed the police, "Tying up my girlfriend's my job."
The punch to his shoulder was well-earned.
Greg turned to her and wrapped his arms around her, and she melted in his embrace. She never felt so much relief that no one was hurt, nor had she felt such a warm body beneath a business shirt.
“You did a really good job of keeping your head together,” he commented after questioning, as the police cuffed the wine burglar and escorted him out to an awaiting cruiser. Of course, Greg didn’t know that she’d spent half her life learning to keep a cool head under pressure.
After hauling the cases of wine back into the house, Greg and Elissa leaned against the Cougar the man had driven there. They watched the guy sitting in the back seat of the cruiser, a smug smile in place.
Greg tossed a finger toward the car beneath them. “I overheard one of the cops say the car has no license plate, and the VIN plate has been removed. It didn’t identify its owner at all.”
“It’s a crime car.”
“A crime car?”
She nodded. “A paperless and numberless car re-crafted for crime, no identifiers, broken locks. A sign of an experienced criminal.”
He squinted to her as though doing so put more pressure on her. “Ya think?”
“You bet,” she said, looking the car over. Strange, their burglar hadn’t worn gloves to conceal his prints. He didn’t foresee getting caught. He just didn’t seem like a professional, probably wasn’t.
Greg finally closed the door on the impound truck towing the car away. They were alone again, which seemed too good to be true.
He led Elissa back into the livingroom and onto the mocha latte couch cushions, gathering her close to him. “How do you know about that kind of stuff? Have you led a life of crime I should know about?”
“I’ve hot-wired no more than twenty cars. Make that thirty cars. No, no more than forty.”
“Oh, good,” Greg replied, faking exasperation. “I wouldn’t want you very experienced at it.”
A big smile ratted her out for caring what he thought. “I watch too many crime documentaries, a TruTV junkie. I’m hopeless about that.”
“Gives me great ideas for crime tape.”
He gave her another head-to-toe lookover, then reached out to stroke her hair, not to fix some hair mishap like a runaway lock but more like the feeding of a whim. It weakened her. “Our wine thief wasn’t too rough on you, was he?”
Elissa shook her head, enjoying his touch. She thought of laughing, that he considered her soft and vulnerable. “Nothing a little Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can’t handle. He didn’t even tie me all that tight. I don’t think he planned to harm me.”
Greg ran a finger over his lip in contemplation but didn’t share his thought. Instead, he rose and went to the computer, sat at the desk, and typed in a few letters. “Strange. It’s such a safe neighborhood.”
Then he picked up the phone and dialed. After overhearing a little of the conversation, Elissa realized he spoke to a security company, and set up an evaluation and installation of an alarm system the very next day.
He returned to her and sat beside her on the couch, pulling her against his chest. It was so nice just to lean into him.
“Hungry?” he asked. “We’ve already missed the reservations I made for Willows. What do you say we order some Chinese food, and then go for a swim?”
“That plan pleases me enormously. I’d feel much better out of the public eye,” Elissa replied, but left out the part where she’d just love to be alone with him. He’d probably figure that out by himself.
He stepped back to the desk, pulled out a menu, and passed it to her. “Order us some dinner. I’ll have beef and broccoli with fried rice. I’m getting into some more comfortable clothes. I’ll be back to work on a bottle of wine.”
She watched him disappear into the room behind the kitchen, the same room where he’d found his gun.
After her phone call for food, Greg emerged from the back bedroom shirtless and dressed in black swim trunks with a gold sports stripe crossing over the legs. Hi
s toasty Latin-tanned chest was sprayed lightly with black hair she wouldn’t mind slipping her fingers through. He’d been lifting weights, given away by the beautiful definition built into his torso.
Muscles, muscles, muscles. Tan thighs passing by the fireplace before her were sculpted and sprinkled in a black spray that matched the hair on his head, looked rock-hard.
Oh, she moaned to herself, feeling her heartbeat pick up pace again, and warmth spread over her. She’d die young if Greg paraded around almost naked a lot. Her mouth went dry.
Chapter 7
Her gaze followed Greg across the livingroom as he entered the hallway on the west end of the house, and she reminded herself to breathe. No man should be so darkly handsome with sizzly brown eyes so capable of hypnosis. It just wasn’t fair.
He came from that door and tossed a wad of cloth to her. She caught it and shook it loose to reveal a fluorescent green, one-piece bathing suit. Hopefully, the bathing suit’s loud color would keep him from noticing how pale and unused to sunlight she was. She looked forward to a relaxing soak in the pool, though.
“One of Sissy’s suits,” he explained. “I really should call her and hint to her to pick up her things.”
“Roommate, huh?” Then she regretted the question. It was none of her business.
“Sissy actually found this house while I was in college, decorated it before I came home. I can thank her for a job well done.”
Elissa stilled at the revelation. Greg’s and Sissy’s relationship sounded long-term and significant. They’d said they’d grown up together in the neighborhood. Had they been first loves for each other?
Elissa gave herself a mental kick for thinking too much.
“It’s a gorgeous house. Gotta compliment Sissy on her taste. Why isn’t she still living here? Didn’t get along?” Elissa asked shyly, then felt bad for asking.
“Oh, Sis and I get along great. She stayed for a while after my return, but she moved on to the next phase of her life, found her own place closer to the restaurant.”
He sauntered into the kitchen in his sexy, dilatory way. “Would you like a glass of Chianti?”
“Could only help.”