Grandma sighed with exasperation; Grandpa waved. “Okeydokey!” he said cheerfully. “We'll check on you later.”
“T hank s,” Robin murmured and stepped away from the tank as Grandpa checked his side-view mirror before carefully nudging into gear. He turned his attention to navigating the rather wide drive as Grandma hung out the window. “Take an aspirin!” she shouted. “It will help you—”
Who knows what else she might have said-—Grandpa suddenly swerved, knocking Grandma back inside the tank.
When Robin was sure they were gone, she headed for the back of the house. Her car was still impounded (another helpful clerk had informed her that for a mere $150, she could get her car on Monday), and she had no keys. But she had, at one point, possessed the presence of mind to hide a key for an event such as this, only she figured it would be an event involving fabulous shoes, a man, and a smashing good evening. Now all she had to do was remember under which brick she had hid the damn thing.
As she was attempting to dislodge a brick, she heard a motorcycle roar into her drive and looked up.
Her heart climbed right into her throat; she was momentarily paralyzed by her astonishment. But once she got over her distraction of A, the thick, dark brown hair he revealed as he removed his do-rag; B, the tight fit of his jeans; and C, the vague feeling that she knew him, she suddenly gave a small shriek of surprised indignation that this… this sexual pervert predator had followed her all the way from the jail to her house!
The man stuffed his do-rag into his back pocket, reached into a leather saddlebag, and turned his head. His eyes locked with hers—“Oh Gawwwd,” he groaned, looking heavenward.
It was the degenerate jailbird all right, and if this just wasn't the topping on her cake, Robin didn't know what
was. Oh noooo, he wasn't trying to get a date or anything, the lying creep. “Un-be-leeev-able!” she exclaimed furiously.
“Looks like we find ourselves nose to nose again, Sunshine,” he said as Robin found the lose brick and yanked it clean of its slot, then grabbed the key. “You remember me, right? The guy you harrassed this morning?”
“Ha!” she shouted, clutching the key. “You were har-rassing me!”
“Funny, I remember that you were the one who copped a totally negative attitude.”
“Look, I don't know what ridiculous, drug-induced little world you are living in, but I am not interested,” she exclaimed as she fumbled with the key and the lock while the degenerate opened a saddlebag and rummaged inside. “Let me spell it out for you—ain't gonna happen! So get on your little dirtbike and run along before I call the cops!”
His face clouded; he frowned at her like she was the one doing the annoying here. “You know what?” he demanded as Robin managed to unlock the door, push it open, jump through, and pivot to block his entrance. “You are so full of yourself it's a wonder you don't pop! Trust me, I don't like this anymore than you do—”
“Don't like—Man, you have your nerve! You are following me!”
“Following? Oh Jesus—” he moaned, rolled his eyes, and started walking toward her. “You are delusional! Believe me, darlin', you are the very last person I would follow!”
Robin was about to respond with equal vigor, but the sack of Krispy Kremes under his arm momentarily distracted her. Krispy Kremes? She blinked, disbelieving. So he thought he'd just casually follow her to her house and do whatever perverts did? With doughnuts? “What the hell? So you, the pervert, were in jail for God knows what, and you saw me there, and you decided to follow me—”
“Have you escaped from your nurse?”
“What?” she gasped, outraged. “Don't look now, Pervert, but you are the jailbird—”
“A, I'm not a jailbird. B, That would be you—”
“Are you trying to deny that you were not just in a room with every other lowlife in Houston being released from county jail?” she demanded, infuriated.
“Well now, you might by a lowlife, but not everyone in that room was a criminal. I was there to bail out a friend who happened to have had a little too much to drink last night. His name is Zaney—perhaps you met him during your stay in cell block C?”
Robin opened her mouth, but then closed her mouth, confused by the sack of doughnuts, which she eyed suspiciously. “Wait a minute. Then what…” Something suddenly clicked, and Robin felt her self-assurance begin to crumble like sand. “Oh no,” she murmured to herself.
“You really need to get over yourself, you know that?” he added.
“Oh my God. OH. MY. GOD. You can't be!” she cried.
“Believe me, I wish I weren't. Look, I gotta get to work. Know what work is, or do you spend most of your time in the pokey?” he grumbled as he pushed past her, into the house.
The tears started to build behind Robin's eyes as she gaped at Jacob Manning's back, the man she had hired to renovate her house.
The amount of time Jake Manning spent renovating the houses of strangers exposed him to some of the more colorful characters Houston had to offer, but at that moment, he had to believe Robin Lear had cornered the market on lunatics. How a woman could take an accidental jostling and accelerate that all the way up to PERVERT was beyond him. And to discover that she was the barracuda who had hired him to practically take down her house and put it up again was just not what he needed to hear right at the moment. The day had started badly enough what with having to bail Zaney out of jail. Now this. Jesus H. Christ.
“What are the odds?” the barracuda blurted behind him. “I can't believe this!”
Well, believe it, baby, Jake thought as he walked in and slapped the doughnuts down on the dining room table. He damn sure didn't like it anymore than she did. He grabbed his tool belt, was putting it on as he turned and brushed past her again on his way to the kitchen.
“This is just too much,” she continued, following him into the kitchen. “I am being punished for something.” She stalked to a cabinet, yanked it open, and studied the insides for a moment. “Well, whatever. I can't deal with this right now. You can't work here today.”
“Whoa—are you talking to me?” he asked, incredulous.
She turned abruptly to look at him. “You're just going to have to go.”
“Ooh no.” She might be a lunatic, but she had signed a damn contract. “No way,” he said, shaking his head. “You were the one who insisted on a start date of this week. I juggled three jobs to accommodate you, and I'm already behind. I can't afford to lose a whole day.”
“But I need to sleep!”
“Well, sleep away, sleep until the next century for all I care. I won't bother you.” He meant that sincerely. In fact, he'd lock her in the bedroom to make them both feel better.
She shifted her gaze to the cabinet again. “Am I in hell? Is that it? Is this hell?” she asked the cabinet, her voice noticeably smaller.
Jake was about to suggest that perhaps he was the one in hell, but was startled by the realization that her chin was suddenly trembling. Trembling like she was about to cry. Before he could react, before he could bolt for the door and run screaming into the street, she turned big, wet blue eyes to him, blinking rapidly as she tried to keep tears from spilling. “I don't have any coffee!”
That was definitely not what he expected her to say. Jake blinked, confused. “What?”
“I don't have any COFFEE!” she shouted at him and began to cry. Cry. As in a river. Torrents of tears were suddenly washing down her face, and she collapsed, cross-legged, like a rag doll onto the kitchen floor and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. The woman he had pegged as
potentially the biggest ballbuster this side of New York was suddenly blubbering all over the place.
“Yo, hey,” he said, laughing nervously to hide his sudden and intense discomfort. Women and tears—Christ, nothing could undo him faster than that, and he felt it coming at him like a bullet train. “Hey… hey there… uh… hey.” He waved his hand at her, only she didn't see it, as her face was buried in her hands.
“Is it too much to ask?” she sobbed. “A lousy cup of coffee? This has been the worst day of my life! No wait, the worst night! No, oh no, why stop there? The worst weeeeek! My life sucks)”
Good God. “Might not be so bad if you'd just ratchet that throne of yours down a notch or two,” he offered helpfully.
She groaned and muttered, “Sorry,” begrudgingly into her hands, and damn it if she didn't almost sound sorry. But she kept crying.
“You know, I could go get you some coffee,” Jake offered reluctantly, mentally kicking himself the moment the words were out of his mouth.
The sobbing suddenly stopped on a strangled snort. She sniffed loudly, lifted her head, and rubbed her hand vigorously under her nose. “You would?” she asked with a soft hiccup. “You would do that for me after I was so… so…”
“So rude and obnoxious?”
“Yeah. That.”
He sighed wearily. Truthfully, he'd be doing Greater Houston a favor if he brought her something to help wash down her meds, because he was certain there was a boatload of them somewhere with her name written all over them. “Yeah. Yeah, I'll go.”
She considered him with big blue eyes. “But there's nothing on this street.”
“No problem.” Well, not huge, anyway. “I'll find something. Won't take a minute.” Assuming there was a convenience store nearby. Which there wasn't. Damn.
But then Robin Lear surprised him by smiling. Not just any smile, but one of those moon smiles, big and bright. Up
until that moment, he would have sworn she was incapable. “That would be sooo nice, you don't even know!”
Jake took an unconscious step backward, uncertain if her fragile hold on this sudden happiness would take. “Yeah, well… okay, then. I'll be back in a few.”
She startled him by suddenly coming to her feet and moving toward him. “I lost my wallet. I don't have any cash—”
“Hey, it's on me,” he said, quickening his step so that he might reach the door before she reached him, flinging his tool belt onto the counter without breaking stride.
“Oh, t hank you,” she said sweetly. “You're a lifesaver.”
God, he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He stepped through the door and walked briskly down the path to his bike.
“Oh, Mr. Manning?”
Jake risked a look over his shoulder.
She was standing in the doorway, her head poked out around the jamb to look at him. “Colombian, not French, okay?”
“Ah… sure.”
“And I prefer double mocha.”
Was that a 7-Eleven brand? Seeing as how his drink of choice was Mountain Dew, he rarely paid attention to the coffee bar in those stores, but he nodded all the same.
Robin Lear took a step outside.
Jake frantically shoved his hand into his pocket and tried to grab his keys at the same time he straddled his bike.
“Decaffeinated Colombian cafe latte double mocha steamed and skinny with nutmeg. Not chocolate. Okay?”
Was this chick for real? He forced a smile. “Just one question—want me to handpick the beans, or can we just leave that to Juan Valdez and the donkey?”
Hell, it looked as if she was actually considering his question! Jake quickly revved his bike loud and long and took off so he couldn't hear even a single word from that woman's lips.
Double mocha was not a 7-Eleven coffee. When he paid for his soda, the clerk looked at him like he was an idiot and pointed him toward Java the Hut, just “a couple of blocks.”
Only a couple of blocks turned out to be several. By the time Jake found Java the Hut, he had forgotten the coffee instructions. “Colombian double chocolate,” he said.
“Dude!” the guy at the register exclaimed as he scratched around the earring in his nose. “Colombian double chocolate au lait?”
That stumped him. “Whatever you got. Oh, with nutmeg,” he said, proud he had remembered that, anyway. When he emerged at least a quarter of an hour later (the double chocolates had to wait behind everyone else, apparently) with his extra-wide whatever wrapped securely in a heat-containing cardboard sleeve, he was acutely conscious of how much additional time he had lost in the course of being a good guy. He arrived in something of a huff at the house on North Boulevard a full forty minutes after he had walked out the door, no t hank s to Miss Double Trouble Mocha, and paused now to listen for any signs of out-and-out insanity. Hearing none, he rapped lightly on the door.
No answer.
Jake knocked again for good measure, and when she didn't answer, opened the door and cautiously peeked inside. It appeared empty.
Very carefully, he stepped inside, looked around. Maybe she'd left. Well, hell, she might have at least left a note since he had gone to so much trouble to get her a hot chocolate thing. With a sigh of exasperation, he walked through the kitchen to the dining table and set the coffee down.
That was when he noticed his doughnuts were missing. Not missing, as in disappeared, but missing as in eaten. There was nothing left of the five plain glazed doughnuts he had brought for his mid-morning snack except an empty sack and a few glazed crumbs.
He was still trying to absorb how a woman as svelte as Robin Lear could consume so many doughnuts—without even asking, for Pete's sake—when he heard a noise that
sounded remarkably like a snore. Jake looked down the hall, toward the bedroom, the only other furnished room in the house.
There it was again.
He walked quietly down the corridor, cautiously approaching the open bedroom door, and as he neared it, he could hear the sound of someone in the throes of a very deep sleep. He paused at one side of the open door, his back to the wall (just in case), then leaned over slowly and peeked inside.
Robin Lear was lying, facedown, atop the brocade coverlet on her bed, her arms flung wide. Her feet hung off the end and her hair was a mess of wet curls. But even more startling, she wore—and Jake had to look carefully to make sure he wasn't seeing things—red pajamas covered in dozens of Curious George heads. Yep, that was Curious George, all right. But just his head(s).
Robin didn't hear him, and in fact, he rather doubted she would have heard a nuclear blast in the adjoining bathroom. The barracuda was dead to the world, and he couldn't help worry for a moment that she might suffocate, facedown as she was, but then she moved and turned her head to rest on one cheek instead of her face. It struck him then that in sleep, with her mouth shut, the ballbuster was actually a very pretty woman.