Unplugged (27 page)

His eyes skimmed me, top to toe. “What are you doing here?”

I realized rather belatedly that I was slurped up against his house like forgotten linguini.

He tilted his head at me. “Are you okay?”

I exhaled rapidly.

“Yes. I just . . . Sure. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? I just . . .” I lifted my hand and was somewhat surprised to find it wrapped around a relatively expensive bottle of Bordeaux. “I f-felt badly about Friday night.” My voice actually stuttered.
Buck up, McMullen. Buck up,
I thought.
You’ve been through worse.
“I was . . .”
Not in the neighborhood. Don’t say you were in the neighborhood.
“In the neighborhood.” Damn! “And I thought I’d stop by . . . to apologize.”

He approached. I skittered sideways. He gave me a funny look, shoved his key into the lock, and pushed the door open.

“Do you want to come in?”

I eyed the interior like one might a grizzly’s cave, then pitched my gaze back to him.

“Sure,” I said, and remained exactly where I was. When in doubt, freeze like a blinded bunny.
Good thinking, McMullen.

He laughed. “Go ahead, then.”

“Oh, yeah.” I didn’t move. “Thanks.” Still nothing.

He raised his brows. I produced a chuckle, peeled myself from his plaster, and slunk inside.

The hairs on the back of my neck were standing upright, but there were no dead corpses in the immediate vicinity. Then again, I hadn’t seen his kitchen yet. Martha Stewart says the kitchen’s where you really get to know people. I wonder if she was talking about felons. Come to think of it, she might know a good deal about felons these days. Nothing like the inside of a prison to open your horizons. I may yet be in luck.

“So where were you?” he asked.

I snapped my gaze to his. “What?”

“Where in the neighborhood were you?”

Jesus. “Ummm, church.”

He smiled and checked out my blouse. “In that?”

I glanced down. There’s a reason they called it a push-up bra. My breasts were squeezed together like porn stars in the money shot.

“I went to confession,” I said. “For my wardrobe.”

He laughed. Dimples popped out in his cheeks. It struck me that a guy with dimples like that couldn’t possibly be guilty of anything more serious than fornication, but since my life was on the line, I decided to withhold judgment until I’d seen the kitchen.

“Can you give me a minute to clean up?” he asked.

Blood-spattered walls zapped into my mind. “Clean up what?”

He stared at me. If I remember correctly, he wasn’t the first person to look at me as if I’d lost my marbles.

“I’ve been running,” he said. “I need a shower.”

“Oh.” I laughed. I sounded like an intoxicated clown. “Sure. No problem. I’ll just . . . I’ll wait in the . . .” I pointed my wine bottle toward the adjacent room. There was a leather couch, a matching recliner, and enough reading material to suggest he was starting a lending library. “In there.”

“Okay.” Was he looking at me like he was about to decapitate me or like I was nuts? Maybe both. “Sorry about the mess. Make yourself at home. I’ll only be a minute.”

“Take your time,” I said, and tried to look casual as I wandered shakily into his living quarters.

I sat down on his couch. Maybe I was trying to make him think I was harmless. Maybe I felt faint. I glanced at his reading material as I heard the shower start up. From where I sat I could see about a dozen books on financing, two on technology, and one that dealt with the training of puppies. I glanced around. No puppy. Maybe he planned to get a puppy. How bad could a guy be if he had dimples and planned to get a puppy?

I dropped my head into my hands. I was obviously insane, I deduced, but from the corner of my eye I noticed the hallway and an open door that looked as though it might lead into an office.

My Human Sexuality professor had once said I had a keen sense of curiosity. My brothers said I was nosy as hell.

I was never sure if either of those summations was true, since I was pretty sure my professor wanted to get me into bed, and my brothers were morons. But either way, I slipped out of my sandals and headed toward the office as soon as I heard Ross step into the shower.

It would have helped a lot if I’d had any idea what I was doing, but my absolute cluelessness was one of those unfortunate realities of life. As it was, I snuck into his office and glanced around. I had hooked my purse firmly over my shoulder. It wasn’t exactly a hip holster, but the mace was there. Like a six-shooter.

Bennet had a rolltop desk. The grooved oak cover was down. Who keeps the cover down? I opened it carefully. It creaked. I held my breath. The water was still running, and the bathroom door was firmly closed. I eased the rolltop up the rest of the way and scanned the contents. There were a lot of them, crammed into the dozen or so little cubicles that lined the back and lying scattered across the surface, but at first glance there were no notes that said “I killed Solberg” or “Your usual luck with men is holding, McMullen. I’m a scumbag.” There wasn’t even a smoking gun. I rifled through the papers. Nothing.

I tried the top right-hand drawer next. It was marginally neater, but no more helpful. The next two down were filled with catalogs for toy aircraft and video games.

When I opened the upper left drawer I caught my breath. There was a checkbook in a navy blue plastic casing.

I jerked my gaze to the door. The shower droned on. I fumbled the checkbook open and ran my gaze down to the balance.

There wasn’t five hundred thousand there. In fact, there was barely five hundred. I scowled. Bennet was an executive for a highly successful company. He didn’t seem to live extravagantly, except for the C note left at the Safari, of course, and he didn’t seem jumpy enough for a heroin addiction, so why didn’t he have more available funds? I shoved the checkbook back into the drawer and tried the next one, then the next, then the bottom. It was locked.

My breath did a little hitch in my throat.

Why would a man who lived alone lock his drawer? And more to the point, where would he keep the key? I scanned every visible surface in the room. Nothing. Well, lots of stuff, but . . . nothing. I began searching the cubbies, each one, starting at the top and working horizontally, then down. I found the key in a box of blank checks with ocean scenes on them.

I shot my eyes toward the bathroom. The shower was still buzzing away. I snatched up the key and shoved it into the hole in the bottom drawer. It stuck.

The shower hissed to a halt. I jerked my head up. The door was still closed. I jiggled the key, but nothing happened.

I heard Ross step out of the shower. A few seconds. I had just a few seconds while he dried himself off. I tried the key again, but in that instant he stepped into the hall—wet, and naked as a newlywed.

19

Maybe there is a fine line between love and hate, but it makes a hell of a difference what side of the line you’re on.

—Pete McMullen,
after his third divorce

I
JERKED TO MY
feet. My eyes threatened to pop out of my head. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a naked guy before, but they weren’t usually so . . . three dimensional.

“What the hell?” he said.

I yanked my gaze to his. Our eyes met through the doorway. His looked dark and not so Caribbean blue as dangerous beneath the dripping fringes of his saturated hair.

“I . . . I . . .” I fumbled for my purse, disjointedly remembering my mace.

His eyes narrowed and dipped toward his desk. “I know what you’re doing.” He took a step toward me. I stumbled backward. He grabbed my wrist. My hand froze on my mace.

“You’re snooping,” he said, and pulled me into the hallway.

My heart was banging like a jackhammer in my chest.

“So now you know my secret.”

I swallowed, wondering if it was too late to scream. Too early to pass out.

“I’m a slob,” he admitted, and dropping my arm, shut the door firmly behind me.

He grinned. I blinked, realizing with belated brilliance that he had snagged a towel from somewhere and held it loosely in front of his . . . stuff.

“And I’m not very modest.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Thought you’d still be in the living room,” he said, and backed into what I assumed was his bedroom.

I stood there blinking like a befuddled cheerleader. I heard him shuffle around inside.

Questions bombarded me like rotten eggs. Was he as innocent as his dimples suggested? Did he always walk around naked? Why would he ever bother to wear clothes?

And what was in the bottom drawer?

Besides the key. Holy fuck! I’d left the key in the drawer.

I glanced frantically toward his bedroom, then eased the office door open and ducked back inside to yank the key from the lock. But something came over me. Let’s just call it curiosity. I turned the key with shaking fingers. The lock clicked open. I looked toward the doorway. Still empty.

The drawer opened silently under my hand. And there, at the top of a heap of papers, was another checkbook. I stared at it, dumb as a paperweight.

In the adjacent room, I heard Bennet patter across the floor.

I snatched the checkbook up without giving myself time to consider the consequences. Something rattled next door.

The checkbook jumped out of my hand, hit the arm of the leather chair, and bounced under the desk.

Shit! I jammed the drawer closed, yanked out the key, and shoved it under a pile of papers.

A floorboard creaked in the bedroom.

I torpedoed out of the office like a launched rocket.

Ross stepped into the hall half a breath later, at which time I was gazing intently at a picture on his wall. To this day I can’t remember what it was. Could have been a photo of Brad Pitt naked for all I know . . . but probably not.

When I got the nerve to glance toward Bennet, he was buttoning a lime green shirt over khaki pants. A sprinkling of soft, caramel-colored hair trailed down his midsection and beneath his low-slung pants. His feet were bare. I swallowed.

“Hi,” he said, and leaning forward, kissed my cheek, as if we’d just met on a sunny day in Griffith Park—not at all like he planned to decapitate me and bury my body in . . . Griffith Park. “It’s good to see you again.”

Guilt hit me like a wrecking ball. He was a nice guy and I was treating him like a convict. A nice lean convict with a great smile and really big . . . Well, suffice it to say, maybe a little bit of lust hit me along with the guilt.

“Hi,” I managed.

He smiled. “You look great, by the way.”

“You . . .” I pulled my gaze resolutely back up to his face. “You have, ummm . . . really misbuttoned your shirt.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said, and began anew. For several seconds I had a view of a narrow line of his torso.

I managed to remain vertical. It might have been because of the guilt. I’m fairly familiar with the emotion, infused into my mother’s womb during pregnancy.

“I’m glad to see you’re still alive,” he said.

I blinked.

“After meeting Rivera, I wasn’t sure about your chances.”

I tried a chuckle. Somebody shoot me.

“I felt bad leaving you with him.”

He fell silent. Apparently, it was my turn to say something. “He’s, ummm . . .” I kept my hands steady and my gaze off his chest and the other stuff. “He’s not as bad as he seems.”

“Really?”

“No,” I said. I felt numb and a little nauseous. “I’m lying.”

He laughed and headed for the kitchen.

I turned frantically toward the office, but I couldn’t see the checkbook.

“You want to crack that open?”

I jerked toward the kitchen. He leaned around the corner. The man had a smile like a damned lighthouse. “The wine,” he said. “Want to open it, or are you just teasing me?”

I swallowed. “Umm . . . no. Yes. Sure . . .” I stuttered toward the kitchen. “Let’s open it.”

He pulled a corkscrew out of a top drawer, refrained from stabbing me with it, and turned to rummage in his refrigerator.

I watched him bend, watched the line of his back, the curve of his buttocks, the bulge of his thigh.

“Can you open that or do you want me to—” he began, and turned, cheese dip in hand.

I was bent slightly at the waist, already popping the cork.

He stared at me. The seconds dragged by.

“Wow,” he said.

I was just about to blush modestly when I realized it was my abilities with a wine bottle and not my cleavage that had impressed him. I cleared my throat. “Years of practice,” I said.

“Yeah?” He reached for a couple of plates from the cupboard. “You a wino or a bartender?”

“A cocktail waitress.”

“Really?” He’d found some crackers. Townhouse. Classy. “Where was that?”

“Schaumburg, Illinois,” I said.

“A long commute.”

I wanted to laugh, but it didn’t seem possible, so I just cranked up a smile. “I lived there,” I said, “for the first twenty-odd . . .” I paused. “Lifetimes.”

He took down two wineglasses and motioned toward a chair.

I eyed it like it was a gator trap, but he was watching me. What could I do but slide onto it? I perched on the edge like an albatross ready to take flight.

He took the wine and poured us equal measures. “You weren’t crazy about Schaumburg?”

“No one’s that crazy,” I said. “But I kind of like L.A. The food’s good, and I don’t have to spend so much money on parkas.”

He smiled and turned toward the counter. I noticed the knives stuck into their wooden block, dark wood handles at an oblique angle.

He selected a couple. I held my breath. Turning, he set them on the plates, one on mine, one on his. If he was a murderer, he seemed to be the kind who was willing to give his victims a fighting chance. You’ve got to appreciate that.