Mr. Right, Next Door!

by Barbara Wallace

  “Breckinridge is the guy who kept calling the other night, right?”

  “The one and the same. He’s pretty sure the firm and the universe revolve around him. And, he expects perfection.”

  “I bet you give him perfection, too.”

  His tone didn’t sound complimentary. Fallout from his confession no doubt. “I try.” She didn’t tell him about her fear of him waiting for her to make a mistake.

  They’d reached their front door. Sophie fished out her keys, surprised to discover she was actually disappointed to be home. “I have to admit,” she said, turning it in the lock, “as kidnappings go, this wasn’t half bad.”

  “Careful, people might think Stockholm syndrome is setting in,” Grant teased.

  Falling for her kidnapper? Sophie smiled but didn’t laugh. This was the Grant she’d come to expect, flirty and full of innuendo. Nonetheless, the joke hit a little too close to home. Her insides jumped at the thought. “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Tsk-tsk, such protest.” Several strands of hair had worked their way loose from her ponytail. He smoothed them back from her cheek. Suddenly it was Sophie holding a breath. She held it while the fingertips traced her hairline, past her temple, over the shell of her ear and along her jaw. When he skimmed the curve of her neck, she had to choke back a sigh.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked in that rough honey voice of his.

  Sophie blinked. “Um, groceries.” Took a moment, but she finally wracked her brain and remembered. “Sunday is grocery day. Why?”

  “I thought I’d come by and fix those hinges.”

  “Hinges?” He was tracing the collar of her tank top now making it hard to concentrate. What was he up to? She’d told him not to kiss her again.

  “Among other things. If you’d like, I could show you the secret passage.”

  Oh, but the suggestion sounded so wicked. “I’d like that.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He leaned in just as his fingers reached her bare shoulder. “Good night, Sophie.”

  He was going to kiss her again. She held her breath again and waited....

  The other shoe never dropped.

  Instead, with one last brush of his fingers across her cheek, Grant headed upstairs, leaving Sophie breathless, quivering and contemplating calling him back. Only the fact she lacked a working voice stopped her.

  Dear Lord, she was in trouble.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NEXT morning found Sophie rescrubbing her kitchen with nervous energy. She’d already tackled the bathroom, not to mention reviewed the emails and reports she’d worked on until the middle of the night. Anything to keep her mind off yesterday’s roller coaster ride with Grant.

  Thing was, she didn’t know what caused her insides to jumble more. That morning’s kiss, the lack of a second kiss, or the emotional upheaval left by Grant’s confession. It didn’t matter. All three left her on edge.

  The knock on the door made her stomach jump. “Coming!”

  Quickly, she checked her appearance. She was wearing what she called her Saturday cleaning outfit: camisole, knee-length sweats and no makeup. Saturday’s outfit on Sunday. Exactly what you’d expect a woman who wasn’t in control to wear. At least her hair was combed. She readjusted the clip at the base of her neck, hoping she caught all the front strands and reached for the door.

  It figured. With his hair mussed and morning stubble, Grant yet again looked as though he rolled off the pages of Morning Sexy magazine. In fact, the only flaw in his appearance was the circles under his eyes and even they looked good on him.

  “Morning,” Grant said. “I don’t suppose you have coffee ready.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” she greeted. “Late night?”

  “Had trouble sleeping.”

  Join the club, she thought, closing the door behind him. Was he kicking himself for yesterday, too? She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or disappointed at the idea.

  He was already in the kitchen when she pushed open the door. “Smells clean,” he remarked to her. “Someone’s been busy.”

  “I was up early with nothing to do.” Thanks to you. “I figured I might as well start fall cleaning a few months early.”

  “I’m surprised you aren’t nose deep in paperwork.”

  “That’s because I finished my paperwork last night. Didn’t really have a choice. Seems someone kept me tied up most of the day.”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, about that.” Here we go, thought Sophie. He’d come to his senses. “I shouldn’t have dropped all my Nate baggage on you like that. The point of the day was for you to relax and let go. Not listen to the long sad tale of my mistakes.”

  That’s what he was apologizing for? Not kissing her, but for sharing a painful memory? True, hearing it altered something inside her; her chest felt incredibly full every time she thought of him trusting her with his tale. But he shouldn’t apologize. Ever.

  She took the coffee cup he’d helped himself to with a smile. “You told a long, sad tale? I hadn’t noticed.”

  The tease was enough for him to get the message, and he smiled back. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” She continued to play clueless.

  “Just thanks.” He touched her shoulder ever so lightly, and Sophie felt the roller coaster cranking anew.

  To cover, she reached for the coffeemaker. “Bold, right?”

  “Bold and black. By the way, I brought my tape measure.” With the apology out of the way, his voice sounded lighter. More like the Grant she’d grown used to. “If you’d like, I can measure for a window.”

  When she realized what he was offering, she felt a ridiculous shiver of pleasure. The roller coaster ratcheted up another hill. “Does that mean I pass muster?”

  His eyes raked her up and down with an approving glint. “You’re getting there.”

  And down went her insides. Tumbling end over end. Forget the roller coaster. She was on one of those free-falling rides where they drop you from the sky.

  * * *

  “Do you miss it?” she asked a little while later. She was perched on her countertop drinking coffee and doing her best to stay out of Grant’s way.

  “Miss what?” Grant asked in a muffled voice. He lay on his back, head in a lower cabinet.

  “Architecture. Being an architect.” It was a nosy, pushy question, but after spending the better part of ten minutes trying not to stare at Grant’s washboard stomach, she figured nosy and pushy weren’t so horrible. “Do you ever regret quitting?”

  She got her answer when his screwdriver froze in the air. “No,” he replied flatly.

  “Not even a little?”

  “Sometimes,” he corrected with a sigh. “When a client shows me a plan that I know I could do better or if a project doesn’t require anything more creative than changing doorknobs and installing light fixtures.”

  “Like my kitchen,” she teased. She thought of the drawings she’d spied on his drafting table. A simple window must not be much of a challenge.

  “Your kitchen’s different—it comes with coffee. Along with other benefits,” he added.

  Sophie was grateful his head was in the cabinet so he couldn’t see her reaction.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he continued. “I can’t go back.”

  Can’t? Sounded awfully final. Grant pushed himself out and sat up. “After Nate’s heart attack, I swore to myself I would never be the kind
of man I’d become again. I intend to keep that promise.”

  Through avoidance? Sure sounded that way. “I can understand wanting to bury the past,” she began. Heck, she believed wholeheartedly in the practice.

  But Grant shook his head. “I’m not burying anything. I’m honoring the past.”

  Really? Didn’t seem that way to her. Sounded more like avoiding, but who was she to judge? She’d been “honoring” for twenty-two years.

  Grant changed the subject. “Your hinge is fixed. Should hold you till you decide how much work you want to do in the kitchen.”

  “I already know how much. I believe you’ve got the drawings.”

  “Those were me fooling around. They aren’t real designs.”

  They looked pretty real to her. “You captured exactly what I was describing. Right down to the color of wood I wanted. Those designs are perfect.”

  “I told you, they aren’t real designs. They aren’t even to scale.”

  “But they could be, right?” she asked him. “I know you said you didn’t want to go back to architecture, but one set of plans wouldn’t be going back, would it?”

  “Was that why you wanted to know if I missed it?”

  “No, I was honestly interested.” Though now that the subject had come up, she wasn’t above taking advantage of the situation. “You’ve already offered to put in the window. Why not take the project all the way? This could be your chance to finally redo Etta’s kitchen. What do you say?”

  Grant rolled his eyes, but not before she caught a flash in their depths. His passion wasn’t completely extinguished. He wouldn’t have started fooling around with those drawings in the first place if it was.

  “We’ll see,” he said finally.

  His favorite phrase again. Still, “we’ll see” was better than no. In fact, she was pretty sure “we’ll see” was closer to yes.

  Scrambling to his feet, Grant joined her at the counter, naturally choosing to stand as close as possible. He had his elbow propped on the countertop edge. Sophie could feel the joint abutting her leg. Heat pulsed right through her clothes to her skin.

  “You want to see the secret passage?” Grant asked.

  Did she! Anything to break the contact. “Sure.” She hopped down and headed toward the pantry. It wasn’t until she reached up to turn on the light that she realized her error. Her “pantry” was little more than a narrow closet with shelves lined with boxes and canned goods. Grant took up most of the space standing by himself. Adding a second person turned the quarters intimate.

  “Here I thought the fridge was well-stocked,” he remarked, making his way around her. “You put most supermarkets to shame.” Every item had been lined up in a row, with the labels pointing outward. That way, she could find what she needed or didn’t need quickly.

  “Doesn’t that joke get old?” she asked him.

  “Hasn’t yet.” He pushed a stack of cans aside. “Look right here,” he said, urging her to move closer. “If you pay close attention, the walls are made of different materials. The side walls are made of horsehair plaster, consistent with materials used in the 1850s. The back wall, however, is drywall, which wasn’t used until the twentieth-century. What’s more…” He rapped first on the side wall, then on the back. The acoustics were different. “Hollow. That’s because there’s stairs back there.”

  “So once upon a time someone would bring the food up from downstairs into my kitchen so it could be served.”

  “And then bring the dirty dishes back down so the lady of the house never had to see them.”

  “I could use a service like that myself,” Sophie mused.

  “My offer still stands.”

  “I meant having someone whisking the dishes away. Your offer had more to do with the bedroom and tucking me in.”

  “Now who’s the one turning the conversation into something sexual?”

  The question was whispered in the dimly lit, tight quarters, and it was hard not to melt right into him. A very bad idea, Sophie decided. A better idea would be to stack the cans Grant disrupted. She could feel his eyes on her as she meticulously straightened each row, going so far as to make sure the labels of the soup cans faced outward. “You want a level?” he quipped.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being neat and organized. This way I know exactly what I have and won’t be caught—”

  “Unprepared.” He did his part and straightened a box of pasta. “I bet you were one of those kids who kept all their crayons in nice neat rows and got mad if anyone colored out of the lines.”

  “Let me guess, you weren’t?”

  “Oh, no, I always kept my pens and drawing materials nice and neat. In fact, I won ‘neatest desk’ champion five years running. Would have been six but Jimmy Pierson sabotaged me. My locker on the other hand.” He leaned back against the shelves, disrupting another set of cans in the process.

  “My mother would forget to buy groceries,” Sophie explained, straightening the cans around him. Whether because she felt a kinship with him following his confession or the words simply popped out, Sophie couldn’t say. What she did know was that once out, the confession hung in the narrow space.

  “She forgot to feed you?” Grant asked.

  “Not all the time. Just once in a while.”

  Stiffly, she walked to the sink. His wide-eyed incredulity made her wish she’d never said anything in the first place. Personal issues were best kept quiet and internal.

  * * *

  Grant watched the woman rinsing out their empty coffee cups, shocked at what he heard. No wonder she stocked her pantry like a grocery store. She was afraid of running out of food. The notion confounded him. As busy as his parents were with their careers, he never went without food or warmth or any basics. What else had she gone without? The question broke his heart.

  “Where did you grow up?” he asked her. “Was it around here?” He wanted to know more. Everything.

  “Upstate New York. Nowhere that matters.”

  Again, she’d stiffened. Embarrassed. Don’t be, he wanted to tell her. It doesn’t matter where you came from. Not to me. “Your family still there?”

  She shook her head. “My parents died a few years back and last I knew my brother was living in Ossining.”

  There was only one place in Ossining that Grant knew of and that was the prison. And, the catch in Sophie’s voice when she answered was enough for him to believe that’s where her brother was.

  She’d obviously had to overcome a lot. Realizing so, the strangest sensation took hold of his chest. It felt fuller than full, like someone pumped his heart full of air. The desire to kiss her, to hold her close and pepper her face with kisses overwhelmed him. He had the sudden urge to tell her the past wouldn’t hurt her anymore. That he would make sure her past demons never touched her again.

  Since he couldn’t, he settled for tracing his thumb down her cheek. “Impressive,” he said.

  “Hardly” was her response.

  Oh, but it was. She’d shown him a glimpse of herself he knew she didn’t show others. A side she kept covered with master plans and designer clothes.

  Suddenly it hit him. Who she reminded him of.

  When he was a kid, his sister, Nicole, had a blonde china doll with curly hair and a frilly blue dress. It sat on her bed. Few but his family knew that underneath the frills lay a scrollwork of black lines, courtesy of a Magic Marker and a toddler-size Grant.

  Sophie was a real-life version
of the doll. Beneath the gloss and polish, there existed lines, and she had just shown him a glimpse. Knowing so made his chest grow even fuller. He wasn’t going to let this moment slide. “Are you doing anything today besides grocery shopping?” he asked her.

  “Work, obviously. Why?”

  From the glaze in her eyes, he could tell she was confused. Grant wasn’t sure he had a true grasp on what he was about to suggest himself. He only knew he wanted to offer.

  “I was wondering,” he said, brushing her cheek, “if you’d like to meet Nate.”

  * * *

  They drove to a long-term care facility in Long Island. A beautiful stately location with a big lawn and tall pine trees.

  “Nate lives here?” When Grant first issued his invitation, she assumed they were going to visit him at his apartment. “I thought you said he had a heart attack?”

  “He did. A massive one.”

  “Then why are we…?”

  “By the time they got his heart started again, too much time had gone by.”

  Her stomach got a sick feeling. “He had brain damage.”

  “The correct term is ‘persistent vegetative state.’”

  “I’m so sorry.” She seemed to say that a lot, but what else could she say? She was sorry, for both of them.

  A television was playing in Nate’s room when they arrived. A baseball game. “Nate’s a big Boston fan,” he told her, “but since he can’t get those games, we make him watch the New York teams. Serves him right for being a traitor.”

  Sophie studied the man propped in the bed. He was Grant’s age and had jet-black hair. Once upon a time, he’d been handsome. Maybe not in Grant’s league, but good looking enough to turn heads. The drugs and hospitalization had taken their toll, though, and his face was thin and slack jawed. Blue eyes, which must have been piercing in their day, stared dully into space.