Jennifer Crusie Bundle (7 page)

“Thank you,” Zack said.

A patrol car pulled up in front.

“Maybe he's the police.” Mrs. Dover climbed down her back porch steps while she kept an eye cocked on Zack. “Maybe. But I bet he's on the Most Wanted list. Ha! We'll know soon.” She nodded and hobbled down her driveway to the street to meet the uniforms.

“Great,” Zack said. “This makes the second time today somebody's called the cops on me.”

“Well, as I was saying, I think your image needs work. I realize you're probably undercover—”

“No, I'm not.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Forget it.” Zack started for the street. Then he screamed in pain.

A large dirty yellow cat had leaped on his leg, burying her claws deeply into his calf through his jeans. Zack kicked out, and the cat dropped away while Mrs. Dover screeched at him from the street.

“Meet Phoebe,” Lucy said.

“Damn!” Zack nursed his shin. “What's wrong with that animal?”

“I think she's psychotic. I hate her because she uses my car for a litter box so I have to keep the windows rolled up all the time, even in the summer. And because all three of my dogs are terrified of her.”

“Her, who?” Zack glared at Mrs. Dover's back as she gestured wildly to the police in the street. “The woman or the cat?”

“Both,” Lucy said. “Do you want some iodine?”

“No,” Zack said, as a young patrolman approached him. “I want to shoot that damn cat.”

“Sir?” the patrolman began. “This lady has a complaint.”

Zack looked at him closely. “How old are you? Twelve?”

The young patrolman stiffened. “Sir…”

Zack got out his badge again. “I'm sorry. I'm having a bad day. I'm investigating an attempt on this woman's life.” He nodded toward Lucy.

“You are not,” Lucy said. “They shot at you, not me.”

“Shut up.” Zack looked at the patrolman. “Do you ever get tired of defending the public?”

“All the time,” the patrolman said. “I'll just have to call this in, sir…” he began, looking at Zack's ID, and then he, too, screamed.

“Shoot the cat,” Zack said. “It's assaulted two officers and resisted arrest. Do it.”

Mrs. Dover hissed at him, scooped up Phoebe, and disappeared into her house.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” the patrolman asked, nursing his shin.

“No. Tragically, no. Go ahead and call that in.” Zack looked up at Lucy as the patrolman made his way back to the car. “What does it mean when everyone you see is younger than you are?”

“It means you're getting old. There's a new teacher at my school. She asked me yesterday what it was like in the old days when I first started teaching.”

“Did you deck her?”

“No.” Lucy stuck out her chin. “But I may when I go back in to school tomorrow. I've gotten a lot meaner today.”

Zack laughed. She looked so funny, neat and round with all that crazy dead black hair haloing her face, calmly announcing that she was a lot meaner today. What a sweetheart.

Dumb as a rock, but sweet.

“You're not going back to school tomorrow,” he told her. “You're moving in with your sister until I figure out what's going on.”

Lucy frowned. “How long will that take? Especially if you're going to figure it out by instinct. I don't have that much sick leave. I don't think anybody does.”

She wasn't that sweet. Zack glared at her, and she blinked.

“Sorry,” Lucy said. “I don't know what's gotten into me today.”

“Forget sick leave,” Zack said. “How much dead leave do you have? I'm not kidding here. You could be in danger.”

“I think—”

“Don't. Trust me on this one. I know what I'm doing. Somebody's been trying to pick your locks.”

“What?”

Zack pointed his finger to the back door behind her. “There are scratches on your back-door lock, and there's a piece of metal broken off inside this basement-door lock. Somebody's been trying to get in here.”

Lucy swallowed. “Bradley?”

“Well, that would be my best guess. He may just be trying to get his golf clubs back. But then again…” He shrugged. “Somebody shot at you on the street today.”

“At you,” Lucy said, but her voice held a lot less conviction.

“Just stay with your sister for a while. She's got room, right?”

“Oh, she's got room. But I'm not going. She can't take the dogs, and I'm not leaving them.” Lucy stuck her chin in the air. “Besides, I don't believe this.”

Zack lost his temper and stomped up the back porch steps. He grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face the door as he pointed at the lock. “See those scratches?” His face was so close to hers they were almost nose-to-nose. “Those were made by a pointed metal tool. Somebody was trying to break in.”

Lucy blinked at his closeness. “Well, they didn't get in, did they? So I must be pretty safe.”

“Only because they're trying to be subtle for some reason. Sooner or later, they're just going to smash a window and climb in. Lord knows why they haven't already. I advise you to move to your sister's.”

“No,” Lucy said.

Zack let go of her arm and closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then he looked down at her with all the patience he could muster.

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and trusting.

Oh, hell. If somebody did hit her, it'd be his fault for not taking care of her.

He forced himself to speak calmly. “Look, just do me one favor. Stay inside tonight. I'll call you when I find out more tomorrow, okay? And I'll have the patrol car keep an eye on you. Just until we can get a handle on your Bradley and see what he's up to.”

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, and he overrode her again. “Just for tonight and tomorrow. That's not much to ask. Please.”

“I'd have to leave, anyway,” Lucy said. “I'm a teacher. Even if I wasn't going in to school tomorrow, I'd have to take in lesson plans.”

Zack looked again into Lucy's huge brown eyes and thought again about how much she needed a keeper.

Not him, of course.

Still…

“I will take them in. Now, about this sick-leave thing. How long have you been teaching?”

“Twelve years.”

“And how many sick days have you taken?”

“None.”

“That's what I figured. So how many do you have saved up?”

“One hundred and thirty-eight,” Lucy said.

“So if you use a couple, you could still develop a major disease and have everything covered, right?”

“Right,” Lucy said, “but that's not the point. The point is, I'm not sick.”

Why was it he finally found an honest citizen only when it worked against him? “Look. Think of this guy who's trying to kill you as a life-threatening illness. I do.”

“I really think—”

“I told you, don't think. Just do what I tell you. If it will help, I'll shave and put on a suit and come back and tell you to stay inside. I'll do whatever it takes. Because I really do think you're in danger.” He gestured to the basement door. “These are all good locks. Take advantage of them. Stay inside and I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Well…” Her pointed face was so confused under all that dead black hair that suddenly Zack's annoyance faded and he felt protective again. She seemed so helpless, so soft and round and absolutely clueless about reality.

“Please,” he said. “Just for tonight.”

“All right.” Lucy swallowed at his earnestness. “But I still think you're wrong. Anyway, if you give me a couple of minutes, I'll print out the lesson plans. This is very nice of you. Thank you, Detective Warren.”

“Zack.” He grinned at her in relief. “Detective Warren is for people who haven't hit me with a purse.”

Lucy smiled back uncertainly. “Zack.” She hesitated. “I'm Lucy.” Then she turned and went back inside.

Cute. A little snippy but very cute. Even with the hair. Very, very cute. And she thought he was sexy.

Maybe he could convince her that he really had saved her life, and she'd be grateful.

He tried to picture Lucy, naked and grateful, but all he could see was Lucy, blinking at him, surrounded by dogs.

That could be a bad sign. He was losing his ability to fantasize.

Maturity.

Death.

“Sir?”

Zack turned back to the patrolman who had joined him again.

“You're cleared,” the patrolman said. “What's going on here, anyway?”

“I'm not sure,” Zack said. “I need you to question the neighbor.”

“The old lady?”

“Yeah. I don't think she's going to talk to me.”

“I don't think so, either. She wanted me to shoot you. So what do you want me to ask her?”

“She said she'd seen somebody hanging around here, possibly trying to break in. And the locks have been tampered with.” Zack frowned back at the house. “Find out what she saw, and when she saw it, and get it to me as fast as you can, okay?”

“You got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Keep a close eye on this place for the next couple of days. I think she might really have trouble.”

“With neighbors like she's got, that's no big deduction,” the patrolman said.

“You should see her sister,” Zack said.

“I
ALMOST INVITED HIM
back in,” Lucy told the dogs when Zack had driven away with the lesson plans. “That would have been stupid.” She pulled back the lace curtain at the front window and looked out at the empty street. “He was just so different, you know? I just didn't want him to go. So much for my new life. I make these big plans to be independent, and then I cling to the first man I meet an hour after my divorce. Still, you should have been there when he told the other policeman to shoot Phoebe. You would have loved it.”

She dropped the curtain and turned to the living room.

Her room.

Her house.

She remembered the first time she'd seen it. She'd passed it one day when she'd taken a wrong turn near the university. A big old cream brick house on a hill with a porch and a cracked old driveway and big beautiful beveled-glass windows.

And a For Sale sign in front.

And she'd wanted that house with a passion that she'd never in her life felt for a man. A big, safe,
warm
house she could fill with dogs and books and comfortable things. Beautiful things. A house with a big kitchen where she could make cookies and bread and soup. A house with a huge fenced-in backyard where Einstein could run. And maybe another dog. Or two. She didn't want Einstein to be an only child.

A house. A house instead of her cold, tiny little apartment where Einstein took up half the floor space, and the oven didn't work right, and she never felt safe. A house.

Her house.

After that, for three months, even after she started seeing Bradley, she'd drive by the house and long for it hopelessly, the way some women long for movie stars. She knew it would never be hers but it was the dream of her heart. And then one day she'd been with Bradley and they'd driven by, and she'd said, “Slow down so I can see my house,” and he'd asked her what she meant, and she'd told him. And he'd said, “If we were married, we could buy that house. Will you marry me?”

And she'd said, “Yes.”

What she hadn't realized at the time was that she was saying “Yes” to the house, not to Bradley.

“Maybe it wasn't a mistake,” she told the dogs as she moved back into the room. “At least we have the house.”

It sounded cynical. And selfish. Tina would be pleased.

Einstein barked at her.

“I know,” Lucy told him. “I should pull myself together and stop talking to dogs. Well, you're the only ones who listen to me without telling me what to do. Especially Tina, lately…”

Tina. Telling her to get rid of Bradley. Actually, packing up all his stuff in a box might be another small step toward independence. She wouldn't throw it out on the lawn, of course, but she could store it neatly in the basement. That would make the house seem more like it was hers alone.

Alone.

With Zack gone, she suddenly felt alone, as if something warm was missing.

She wasn't sure she wanted to be alone. Especially if Zack was right about the shooting and the scratches…Except of course, he wasn't right because it was ridiculous that anyone would be threatening her, and besides there was probably a perfectly good explanation for those scratches…. And if there wasn't, what was he doing leaving her alone? He should be there, protecting her. Obviously he didn't think she was in danger, or he wouldn't have left her alone.