The Perfect Neighbor (12 page)

“Oh, my. Oh, well.” Jody patted a hand on her heart. “I think I’ll just take Charlie and go put him down for his nap.” She eased him out of Preston’s arms and hurried out.

“McQuinn.” Cybil smiled, tapped her pencil. “I have a feeling that event would be worth the full Sunday spread.”

“Is that a threat or a joke?”

When she only laughed, he spun her stool around, then knocked the air out of her lungs with a fierce and demanding kiss. “Tell your friend to go away, and we’ll find out.”

“No, I’m keeping her. She’s all that stopped me from biting your throat when you came in.”

“Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

“Not really. It’s kind of a side effect.” Her pulse had gone from slow shuffle to manic tap dance. “You’ve got to go. I’ve finally found a distraction I can’t work through. And you’re it.”

Seeing no reason he should go crazy alone, he leaned down one last time and took her mouth. “When you speak of this”—he caught her bottom lip between his teeth, drawing it erotically through them—“and I expect you will, be accurate.”

He walked to the doorway, turning back in time to see her shudder. “No-scale?” he said, realizing he suddenly found it not just amusing but gratifying.

When she managed to do nothing more than make one helpless gesture with her hands, he laughed. And was still grinning when he jogged down her steps and out the door.

“Safe?” Jody whispered, poking her head into the doorway.

“Oh, God, God, Jody, what am I going to do here?” Shaken, Cybil stabbed the second pencil behind her ear, knocked the first out of place, and didn’t even bother to curse. “I thought I had it all figured out. I mean what’s wrong with easing yourself into what promises to be a blistering, roof-raising affair with an incredibly intense, gorgeous, interesting man?”

“Let me think.” Holding up a finger, Jody strolled in and picked up the coffee Preston had never touched. “Okay, I’ve got it. Nothing. The answer to that question is nothing.”

“And if you’re a little bit in love with him, that only sweetens the deal, right?”

“Absolutely. Otherwise it’s fun but sort of like eating too much chocolate at one sitting. You enjoy it when it’s going on, then you feel a little queasy and ashamed.”

“But what if you went all the way in. What do you do when you’ve gone over the brink?”

Jody set down the coffee. “You went over the brink?”

“Just now.”

“Oh, honey.” All sympathy, Jody wrapped her arms around Cybil and rocked. “It’s all right. It had to happen sooner or later.”

“I know, but I always thought it would be later.”

“We all do.”

“He won’t want me to be in love with him. It’ll just annoy him.” Turning her face to Jody’s shoulder, she let out a shaky breath. “I’m not too happy about it myself, but I’ll get used to it.”

“Sure you will. Poor Frank.” With a sigh, Jody patted Cybil’s shoulder, then stepped back. “He never really had a shot, did he?”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, well.” Jody dismissed her favorite cousin with an absent flick of the wrist. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I guess running and hiding’s out.”

“That’s for wimps.”

“Yeah. Wimps. How about pretending it’ll go away?”

“That’s for morons.”

Cybil drew a bracing breath. “How about shopping?”

“Now you’re talking.” On a quick salute, Jody headed for the door. “I’ll see if Mrs. Wolinsky will watch Charlie, then we’ll handle this problem like real women.”

* * *

She bought a new dress. A slinky length of black sin that made Jody roll her eyes and declare, “The man’s a goner,” when Cybil tried it on.

She bought new shoes. Mile-high heels as thin as honed scalpels.

She bought new lingerie. The kind women wear when they expect it to be seen by a man who’ll then be compelled to rip it off.

And she imagined Preston’s wide hands and long fingers peeling the silky-as-cobwebs hose down her legs.

Then there were flowers to choose, candles, wine.

Marketing for a meal she would design to tease the senses and whet the palate for a more primitive kind of appetite.

By the time she got home she was loaded down, and she was calm.

There was a scene to be set, and doing so gave her focus. Because she wanted to take the rest of the day to prepare, because she needed it to be perfect, she wrote a note to Preston and stuck it to her door.

Then she locked herself in, drew a deep breath and took everything up to the bedroom.

She arranged tender lilies and fragrant rosebuds in vases, in bowls, and set them on tables, the dresser, the windowsills. Then she grouped candles, all white, a trio here, a single there, a half-dozen scented tealights on a circle of mirrored glass.

Some she lit so the room would fill with soft light and gentle fragrance while she worked.

She unwrapped two slender-stemmed wineglasses, placed them just so on the low table in front of the curved wicker chaise. Reminded herself to chill the wine.

Facing the bed, she stopped, considered. Would turning down the duvet and sheets be too obvious? Then she laughed at herself. Why stop now?

When it was done, when she could look around the room and see there was nothing that wasn’t as she needed it to be, she went down to make the early preparations for the meal she intended to cook.

She listened, hoping he’d begin to play so that some of him would come inside her rooms with her. But his apartment remained silent.

With careful deliberation she chose music for mood, arranging CDs in her changer.

Satisfied, she went back up, laid her new dress on the bed, shivered in anticipation as she set the black lace bra and the blatantly provocative matching garter belt beside it and imagined what it would feel like to wear them.

Powerful, she decided. Secretive and certain.

She shivered again, thrilling to the clutch of lust deep in her center, then went to draw a hot, frothy bath.

She poured wine, lit more candles to promote the mood, before she slipped into the tub. And closing her eyes, she imagined Preston’s hands, rather than the frothy water, on her.

Nearly an hour later, she was slathering every inch of her body with cream, sliding her fingers along to make certain her skin was silky and scented, when Preston tugged her note off the front door:

McQuinn, I’ve got plans. I’ll see you later. Cybil

* * *

Plans? Plans? She had plans when he’d worked himself into a turmoil over her all day? He read the note again, furious with both of them, as he hadn’t been able to get the image of spending yet another foolish evening with her out of his head.

For God’s sake, he’d gone out and bought her flowers. He hadn’t bought flowers for a woman since …

He crumpled the note in his hand. What else could he expect? Women were, first and foremost, tuned to their own agenda. He’d known it, accepted it, and if he’d let himself forget that single relevant detail with Cybil, he had no one to blame but himself.

She’d see him later?

It appeared she was a game player after all. But he didn’t have to step up to bat.

He turned, marched back into his apartment, where he tossed the lilacs that had inexplicably reminded him of her on the kitchen counter. He flipped her balled note across the room, picked up his sax and stalked out to work off his temper at Delta’s.

* * *

At exactly seven-thirty, Cybil took the stuffed mushrooms she’d slaved over out of the oven. The table was set for two, with more candles, more flowers precisely arranged. There was a wonderfully colorful avocado-and-tomato salad chilling along with the wine.

Once they’d enjoyed their appetizers and first course, she intended to destroy him with her seafood crepes.

If all went according the plan, they’d polish off the meal with icy champagne and fresh raspberries and cream. In bed.

“Okay, Cybil.”

She took off her apron, marched to the mirror to check the fit and line of the dress. She slipped on her heels, added another dash of perfume, then gave her reflection a bracing smile.

“Let’s go get him.”

She sauntered across the hall, pressed his buzzer, then waited with her heart hammering. Shifting from foot to foot, she buzzed again.

“How could you not be home? How
could
you? Didn’t you get the note? You must have. It’s not on the door, is it? Didn’t I specifically say I’d see you later?”

Groaning, she thumped her fist against the door. Then she jerked upright and blinked.

“I said I had plans. Oh, my God, you didn’t get it, did you, you thick-headed jerk?
You’re
the plans. Oh, hell.” She made a dash back through her open door for her key, realized she didn’t have anywhere to put it. With a shrug, she stuck it into her bra rather than waste time running upstairs for a bag.

In thirty seconds flat, she was risking a broken neck by running down the stairs.

* * *

“Woman trouble, sugar lips?”

Preston looked over at Delta as he took a break to wet his throat. “No woman. No trouble.”

“This is Delta.” She tapped a finger to his cheek. “Every night this week you come in here late and you play like a man who’s got a woman on his mind. And this man doesn’t much mind having her there. Now tonight, you come in early and you’re playing like a man who’s got trouble with the woman. Did you have a fight with that pretty little girl?”

“No. We’ve both got other things to do.”

“Still holding you off, is she?” She laughed, but not without sympathy. “Some woman take more romance than others.”

“It has nothing to do with romance.”

“Maybe that’s your problem.” Delta wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “Do you ever buy her flowers? Tell her she has beautiful eyes.”

“No.” Damn it, he had brought her flowers. She hadn’t bothered to stick around to take them. “It’s sex, not a courtship.”

“Oh, sweetheart. You want one, you better do the other with a woman like that.”

“That’s why I’m better off without a woman like that. I want it simple.” He picked up the sax, lifted a brow. “Now, are you going to let me play, or do you want to give me more advice on my love life?”

With a shake of her head, she stepped back. “When you have a love life,
cher
, I’ll have advice.”

He blew off a riff, listening to the music inside his head. Inside his blood. He let the notes come, but the music didn’t take his mind off her. He could use that, as well, he told himself. Here, where sharing was a pleasure. Not with words, where it was often pain.

The notes slipped out, throbbed in the air, sobbed into a wail.

And she walked in the door.

Her eyes, full of secrets, met his through the haze of smoke, held. And the smile she sent him as she slid into a chair made his palms go damp. She moistened her lips, trailed a finger up from the center of the low bodice of the slinky black dress to the base of her throat. And back again.

He watched, his blood swimming, as she crossed long, long legs with a movement so slow, so studied, it had to be deliberate. Surely the way she ran her hand from calf to knee to thigh was designed to make a man’s gaze follow the movement.

His did, and his pulse leaped like a wolf on the hunt.

She sat through the song, leaning back in the chair, hooking one arm provocatively over the back. When the notes faded, she traced the tip of her tongue lazily over those hot red lips.

Then she rose, her gaze still locked with his as the music pumped. She ran a hand down her hip, turned on those man-killer heels and started back out. She glanced over her shoulder, sent him a sultry invitation with no more than a lift of eyebrow and left the door swinging behind her.

The oath that came out of his mouth when he lowered the sax was absolutely reverent.

“You going after that, brother?”

Preston crouched to push his sax into its case. “Do I look stupid, André?”

“No.” André chuckled and kept on playing. “No, you don’t.”

She was waiting on the sidewalk when he came out, standing in the white wash of a streetlight with one hand resting on a cocked hip, her head angled, her lips curved in the barest hint of a smile. It made him think of a photograph, some arty shot perfectly framed and cropped for a classy magazine.

Sex in black and white.

He started toward her, taking more in the closer he came. The short, whiskey-colored hair sleeked to frame her face. The short black dress sleeked to frame her body.

No jewelry to distract the eye.

Mile-high heels designed to showcase mile-long legs.

The only color was on those huge green eyes under sooty lashes and the siren red of her mouth. A mouth, he noted, that was curved in smug, female satisfaction.

He was three steps away when her scent reached out like a crooked finger and beckoned him the rest of the way.

“Hello, neighbor.” She purred it—one more hot bullet to his loins.

He tilted his head, lifted a brow. “Change of plans … neighbor?”

“I hope not.” She took the last step, moving into him, deliberately sliding her hands up his sides, over his shoulders, around his neck. Her body fit suggestively to his as she purred again.

Then she laughed, shook her head. “You were the plans, you knothead.”

She wondered if it was the announcement or the mild insult that had his eyes narrowing in speculation.

“Is that so?”

“McQuinn.” She tilted her head, brought her mouth a whisper from his. Then, with her eyes on his, slowly licked. “Didn’t I tell you, you’d be the first to know?”

“Yeah.” With his free hand he cupped her neck, keeping that wet red mouth tantalizingly close to his. “How fast can you walk in those heels?”

She laughed again, just a little breathlessly now. “Not very. But we’ve got all night, don’t we?”

“It might just take longer than that.” He stepped back, and after a moment, held out a hand for hers. “Where did you get the lethal weapon? The dress,” he added when she gave him a blank look.

“Oh, this old thing.” This time her laugh was warm and rich. “I bought it today, thinking of you. And when I put it on tonight, I was thinking of what it was going to be like when you took it off me.”