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Electronic Release: February 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

Lexie loves her apartment. Bright, spacious, and newly remodeled, it is perfect and only a short subway ride from the city. She loves and her job. Lexie even loves her six elderly neighbors who’ve taken it upon themselves to watch over her. If they watch a little too closely, she can’t find fault. After all, they only have her welfare at heart. They’re so cute.

Jim Marino is Lexie’s new neighbor. Jim is a lawyer who works for the District Attorney’s office. Oddly enough, Jim doesn’t think her neighbors are all that cute. In fact he thinks them particularly annoying, especially when he and Lexie have finally gotten down to serious business on his couch, only to find themselves interrupted by firemen knocking down Lexie’s apartment door.

A delightful romance is in the offering, but a greedy landlord’s shenanigans just might bring it all to a murderous end.

Chapter One

Alexia Turso eased her apartment door open and looked into the hallway. It looked clear, but that meant nothing. She hadn’t a doubt Mrs. Morgan stood silently behind her door watching from her peephole. The lady or one of her cohorts saw everything that happened on her floor, saw everything in the building, in fact. What they didn’t see, they made up.

Just for once, Lexie thought she’d rather not be the star of tomorrow’s gossip. Granted, these old folks had little to do with their time, except for gardening and knitting mittens and booties for those in the . Still, she was getting tired of being accused of everything from being a high-priced call girl to a common criminal. All right, the thought of being a call girl actually sounded kind of exciting—except that Mrs. Dietz didn’t always have her senses about her and as often as not confused Lexie with one of her own nieces—but did she look like a criminal? Really? Normally she wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought, but the gossip mongers had gone too far when one of them had actually called the police.

Luckily she’d been able to explain the bank bag she’d brought home from work did not contain monies from last week’s hold up―different branch of the bank, in any case. Since she was opening the next morning, it was filled with heavy rolls of coins for the café’s cash register.

If her rooms hadn’t recently been renovated into a big, sunny apartment, she might consider moving. Only she wouldn’t. Her place was perfect, and the rent, considering it was just a short subway ride from downtown , was almost reasonable. And to top that, Jim Marino had moved in next door a month ago.

Jim just happened to be freaking gorgeous, which was another excellent reason to stay. Her mouth had actually fallen open the first time he’d smiled and walked past her. The night he’d moved in, while a half dozen young men had grunted beneath the weight of furniture and huge boxes, she’d left a tray of spaghetti and meatballs, paper plates and forks, on his kitchen counter. His friends had explained Jim had gone off to buy beer and would be back in a few minutes. She hadn’t stayed but left a note to welcome him to the building. Since then, he’d made two efforts to see her, and both times, she’d been on her way out—once with a date, another with her parents, who had come to stay for the weekend.

Twice, they’d met in the hall while leaving for work. During those few minutes, they hadn’t much time but for a quick hello and a remark on the heat wave currently holding in its suffocating grasp. Still, she knew he was twenty-eight, unmarried, graduated from , passed the bar a few years back, currently worked for the DA and had no one special in his life. Lexie hadn’t a doubt the man knew equally as much about her. Mrs. Morgan was always trying to set her up. Apparently, like Lexie’s mother, the woman’s one goal in life was to make sure Lexie got married. Lexie thought she’d left that kind of intrusive behavior behind when she’d moved out of her parents’ home. Obviously, all the move had managed to do was give her five more mothers and a grouchy uncle.

Normally, Mrs. Morgan and her band of nosey friends wouldn’t have mattered, except for the fact the entire building anxiously awaited her return from every date, hoping to see an engagement ring on her finger. Lately, Lexie had taken to calling out, “Not yet!” just before entering her apartment, lest her phone ring for the next hour or so with questions from the mundane to the ridiculous as each one waited for her to blurt out the real news.

Of course, the lady and her cohorts were sly about their invasion of her privacy. They never came right out and asked about the men she dated. Still, before each first date was a memory, the women somehow knew more about the man than Lexie did.

Mrs. Gilbert had once worked for a private investigator, and Lexie thought it highly likely she still had the means to investigate.

Despite their interference, or perhaps because of it, every one of them held a special place in her heart. They really cared for her and showed it in a dozen ways. They treated her as lovingly as they might a grandchild. They offered her money, which she regularly refused, knowing they could barely make ends meet as it was. They baked, each of them complaining she was too skinny. Mostly, they kept watch. She felt as safe as she had while living at home.

They all knew she worked four days a week at La Traviata and, on most Saturdays, as a private chef for Stanley Shummer, a Donald Trump type of entrepreneur. On Sundays, she sometimes visited her family. On her days off, she most often experimented with new recipes. Having studied under a number of ’s top chefs, her goal was to one day open an exclusive restaurant that offered the very best in Italian cuisine.

What really touched her heart was that every one of her neighbors was positive she would have that restaurant and attain fame and fortune in the process. Secure in that belief, they’d convinced her to sign everything from the corner of a napkin to a coffee cup to a torn sheet of paper, swearing her signature would one day be worth a fortune.

They were so cute.

Still, despite being cute, they could be equally annoying. Lexie had plans tonight. Slightly crazy and definitely bold plans. She didn’t want the entire building to know about them.

The wine felt icy against her skin as she slipped the bottle under her loose, cotton shirt. She took a measuring cup from her cupboard then went to her phone and dialed.

“Oh hi, Mrs. Morgan, I wanted to ask you— Oh dear, something’s boiling over. Can you hold a minute?”

Lexie grinned as she gently laid down the phone and soundlessly eased herself out of her apartment. She knocked softly on her neighbor’s door. Jim answered it wearing tight jeans and a button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled to just below his elbows, while the shirt itself hung open exposing a stomach rippled with muscle and bisected by a narrow line of dark hair that widened to lightly dust a wide chest and hinted at widening again just below the navel. She couldn’t tell if he were putting the shirt on or about to take it off. It didn’t matter.

Lexie’s mouth watered. Her heart gave a hard thud then pounded against the wall of her chest.

He needed a shave.

She swallowed and forced back a low groan, more than a little amazed to feel her nipples actually tingle and her pussy grow heavy with want. Lord, help her, she’d never known this degree of attraction before. All right, there had been that time when she’d accidentally brushed against Brad Pitt in a restaurant in the city, but that probably happened to every woman who came near him.

Jim smiled.

She had no hope of ever breathing normally again as her pussy grew warmer and decidedly wet.

“Hi,” he said, and to her delight, he actually sounded happy to see her.

“Hi,” she returned weakly. She stood there knowing he was waiting for her to say something, but the jolt of lust that slammed with exquisite precision into the pit of her belly left her without a rational thing to say.

“Are you all right?”

“Ah, I don’t know.” She looked from his stomach and chest to the waistband of his jeans and then up to his warm, amused gaze. “You shouldn’t answer the door like that. You made me forget what I was going to say.”

He grinned at her obvious approval.

Finally regaining a portion of her usual common sense, she remembered the cup in her hand and whispered, “I know this sounds crazy, but would you have any sugar I could borrow?”

He grabbed her hand and responded by quickly pulling her into his apartment. He gave the hallway a brief appraisal before he closed the door with a frown. “Why are you whispering?”

“Are you busy?”

“No. Why?” he returned with his own whisper.

“Well, if you’re not busy and I’m not busy, I thought we could not be busy together.”

His grin turned into a warm chuckle as he watched her pull a bottle of wine from under her shirt. “Have you got anything else under there? Glasses maybe or hors d’oeuvres?”

“No hors d’oeuvres, but if you look closely, you might find one or two things under there,” she teased as she continued to whisper and silently cursed as she felt her cheeks grow warm. She’d never been so bold. She sighed, knowing he’d think she was awful.

Apparently, she was wrong. His eyes crinkled at their corners as he grinned. “Why are we whispering?”

“You don’t want Mrs. Morgan to hear us, do you?”

“Do you think she can hear us in here?”

“Probably not, but I’m not taking any chances. I did see a stethoscope on her hall table once, and I happen to know she’s not a doctor.”

He laughed. “Come on in,” he invited as he led the way down a short hall to his kitchen.

The apartment building was old, but each unit had been modernized, the last of it finished six months ago. During the work, their landlord had died and left the building to his nephew. Lexie had known the rents would rise once the remodeling was finished. Of course, hers had, but the old folks living in the building still paid the same, thanks to rent control. The new landlord wasn’t the least bit happy. Because this was a rent control building, the only way her now frustrated landlord could raise the rent was if the original occupants left or died. And judging by her spry neighbors, that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

Lexie noticed Jim’s apartment was the exact mirror of hers. While her kitchen was on the left, his was on the right. Like hers, his kitchen was large, airy and had yards of counter space, a perfect place to work. This one sported light wood cabinets and multi-colored brown and beige granite counters. Everything was sparkling clean.

He placed her measuring cup on the counter. Next to it glasses for the wine, while he opened a drawer and fished around. With a corkscrew in hand, he set to work on the bottle of wine.

“Do you really need sugar?” he asked.

Lexie stood at the counter, the living room to her left. Without thought, her gaze took in a wall lined with books which surrounded a fifty-inch, flat-screen television. A comfy looking, thickly cushioned and obviously well-used leather chair and couch faced the shelves and TV. “No. I just bought a five-pound bag. But if I don’t take some back and Mrs. Morgan sees me—which she definitely will…” Lexie left the sentence unfinished, while adding a shrug. “I like your place.”

“Thanks. I’m not much into decorating, but it works for me. Thank you again for that spaghetti. My friends ate like gluttons. They didn’t leave me a strand.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said as she turned her attention back to the man.

“You make this whole building smell great.”

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