Secret Agent Groom (The Bridal Circle #2) Page 3

She closed her eyes briefly. She should take it from him. She should tell him to throw it away. She should remember how she’d been afraid to sit near him on the school bus, for fear he would have bugs to show her or would hang half out the window to pick an apple from a tree they were passing. But all she could think of was that she couldn’t carry everything.

  She opened her eyes, smiled at Alex and stepped off the cliff. “This little girl earned her tuna. Can you bnng it over to my place?”

  “Sure.”

  So she led him over to her house—barefoot, in her pajamas and with the certainty in her stomach that she was an idiot. He seemed nice and polite and trustworthy, but he was still Alex Waterstone. She was still afraid of him. Things happened around him. Why couldn’t that nice shoe salesman that just moved in two blocks down have come to help her? She pulled open her back screen door and went into the kitchen. Alex followed her.

  “You can leave the other stuff on the kitchen table,” she said and took another deep breath. “Want to bring the plate of tuna down here?”

  He put the plate and flashlight down. “Down where?” he asked.

  This was probably a gigantic mistake. He obviously didn’t want to be here and she should be getting her silly heart in line. She could hardly do that with him by her side. Still, she turned toward the hall. “Come on down to the strays’ room.”

  “The strays’ room?”

  She’d turned and was heading down the back hallway. He was right behind her, making her wish she’d stopped to put a coat on. Except that would have looked really dumb. He was coming to see the kitten, not her.

  “I do rescue work for Pet Refuge,” she told him over her shoulder. “I foster some of their cats until they get a home of their own. When they first come, they go into quarantine here in the strays’ room.”

  “Oh.”

  She went into the small bedroom, flicking on the light. A large empty dog crate was in the corner, a blanket draped over the top and three sides. She opened the crate’s door, leaned inside and put the terrycloth bag in the back, leaving it open slightly. Then she slipped her hand out of the crate and secured its door.

  “What’s with the cage?” Alex asked, his voice suddenly suspicious and annoyed.

  Heather sighed. She’d been through this before. “The kitten’s feral,” she said. “She needs to be forcesocialized.”

  “Force-socialized?” He’d gone from sounding annoyed to sounding outraged. “What are you going to do? Refuse to feed her unless she’s friendly?”

  “No,” Heather said as she took the plate of tuna from him. “But I do have to touch her and hold her every few hours, whether she wants me to or not.”

  “That’ll just scare her more.”

  “At first, yes.” Heather agreed, quickly opening the crate door and slipping the plate of food into the cage. The kitten poked its nose out from under the towel, sniffing the air. Once they left, she’d be out for her reward.

  “But it’s for her own good,” Heather continued. “She’ll never find a home if she’s afraid of people.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” His anger had disappeared. “Guess it would be hard to find a home for a cat who hissed and scratched whoever came near.”

  His tone had almost started to disarm her, but his words brought her back to earth with a jolt. His scratch!

  “We need to wash that scratch of yours,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking of.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “It needs to be cleaned,” she insisted and went past him back into the hall. “Come on. I have some disinfectant wash.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said and glanced at his hand. “I can’t even see where it was.”

  “It’ll be a big deal if your hand gets infected and falls off,” she said.

  “It’s not going to fall off.”

  They were in the kitchen by that time, and the spacious room felt small suddenly. Small and awfully well lit. A calico cat was on the table, busily licking out the empty tuna can, and Heather jumped at the distraction.

  “Victoria,” Heather scolded and put the cat onto the floor. “Would you behave, please?”

  Victoria just sat under the table, looking offended, but not providing Heather with any more distraction. She hurried over to her first-aid supplies, and pulled a bottle from the cabinet.

  “Here, wash your hands with this.”

  He took the bottle from her and turned to the sink.

  She relaxed slightly and watched his hands as he washed. She’d never noticed what nice hands he had. Large, but strong. Protective. Like they’d—

  She frowned as a puckered whitish scar on the back of his right hand came into view. “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  Alex looked at it, then over at her and shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Must have gotten it as a kid, fooling around.”

  How could you not remember getting a scar like that? And he never got hurt as a kid, that was what was so scary. You just knew with his next stunt something terrible would happen, but it never did. She spotted another scar, this one a long red streak on his upper arm.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  But he just laughed and shook his hands dry over the sink before picking up the towel she’d left for him. “I’m afraid I don’t remember that one, either. Maybe from that time I fell off the Cauldwells’ garage,” he said.

  He was lying. He hadn’t fallen off. But maybe he’d gotten the scars in some embarrassing way. Or maybe he just thought it was none of her business.

  Or maybe she was right. Things did happen around him. Scary things.

  He put the towel down. “Well, I guess I’ll be getting on home.”

  “Thank you for your help. You’ve really been nice about all this.”

  “How should I have been?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You seemed stuffier since you came back to town. Somehow I even thought you talked stuffier.”

  “Talked stuffier?” His voice sounded odd. Sort of strangled. “Perhaps catching feral felines is a less formal endeavor.”

  He seemed to change, seemed to become someone else right before her eyes and it sent a chill all the way down her spine and into her toes. What was going on?

  “Yes, that must be it,” she said slowly, her stomach tightening into a little ball of nerves. “Thanks again for your help.”

  “My pleasure entirely.” He nodded and pulled his keys from his pants pocket as he turned to the door.

  Heather watched him leave, listened as the sound of the screen door closing echoed in the dark stillness. She heard his footsteps on the sidewalk, then the sound of his door. Then the night was hers again.

  “Well, Victoria, I think we can breathe now,” she said. “We got safely through our encounter with Professor Alex Waterstone.”

  But Victoria had been joined by Heather’s other cat, Henry, and they were both playing with something on the floor. Heather hurried over, hoping it wasn’t a bug.

  It wasn’t. It was a piece of paper with an address on it. Alex must have dropped it.

  Chapter Two

  Alex let himself into his house, reset the security system, grabbed a soda then sat down in his dark living room and stared out at the quiet little street that ran in front of his house. The old-fashioned streetlights barely competed with the moonlight, and the soft sounds of summer tiptoed in through his open windows.

  A typical summer’s night in Chesterton. One that normally would have soothed him, quieted whatever nerves had been jangled that day, but it wasn’t working tonight.

  He found himself tense and on edge. And not on his good adrenaline high anymore, either. His feelings were now of the irritable variety. He was dissatisfied about some nameless thing but felt helpless to do anything about it and he didn’t like that. Not one damn little bit.

  He took a quick pull on his soda can and tried to bring himself around.

  Hell, that situation with Heather w
as actually funny. And the way he’d finessed things with his gun was good. He’d been lucky that it had been dark. Otherwise, even a civilian like Heather would have spotted the weapon he’d been pointing at her.

  Anyway. All’s well that ends well. Although...

  A picture of petite Heather, barefoot, and in her pajamas filled his mind, pushing out the moonlight-dappled scene outside. There was something about her smile that tugged at him, something about the wistfulness that filled her eyes. He almost felt guilty for having misled her—which was crazy. She was the one who’d come into his yard and had set off the security alarm. Although that wasn’t her fault, either.

  He should have been laughing about tonight’s incident but he found himself growing moodier.

  Heather had always been so sensitive. If you looked at her the wrong way, she’d be off crying. Not that she’d done any of that tonight. No, she was competent and determined. She was going to rescue that kitten and she knew exactly how to go about it.

  Suddenly he noticed where his mind was going and he frowned. Whoa. What was the matter with him? Still in his thirties and he was growing all nostalgic like an old man sitting on his front porch, beer in hand, watching the fireflies dance in the night.

  Suddenly flashing red-and-blue lights outside called for his attention and Alex gratefully gave it. It looked like a police car, running with lights but no sirens. Was there a burglary in progress? He got up and walked to his window, where his mouth dropped open. It was pulling up in front of his house.

  Oh, hell. It had to be the agency. They’d been monitoring his security system and had called the local gendarmes. Damn.

  Alex turned some lights on, put down his soda can, and went to the door to greet the officer coming up his walk, sidearm drawn.

  “Evening, Toto.” Alex stepped out onto his front porch. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Hi, Alex,” the policeman said with a smile. “How are you?”

  “Splendid. Could not possibly be better.” Alex paused, then pretended confusion. “What occasion sends you to my home?”

  Toto shrugged. “Got a call that something was wrong here.”

  “At my home?” Alex frowned. “What is thought to be amiss?”

  Toto shook his head. “Don’t rightly know. I was just supposed to check things out.”

  Alex quickly stepped aside. “Well, by all means. Please do. I would not feel safe until you ascertain things are secure.”

  The policeman sighed, then went inside the house. Alex just waited on the porch, leaning against the porch railing, watching the lights in Heather’s house next door. He saw a calico cat in the window of a darkened room and was sure the cat was sneering at him. Gloating that Alex was alone and the cat wasn’t. Alex turned away sharply. As if he cared. He liked being alone. Preferred it.

  He thought instead about the look on Toto’s face as he’d gone into the house. Tom Tollinger was a few years younger than him, but they had known each other since grade school. While most people seemed to accept the new Alex, Toto never quite seemed to.

  Toto came out of the house and Alex faced him once more, putting on a mask of worry and concern.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Toto shrugged. “Nothing seems out of place. Must have been a mistake. I didn’t see any signs of a prowler.”

  “A prowler?” Alex shuddered, then laughed softly as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Oh, dear. Perhaps that was Heather. She was in the backyard about twenty minutes ago, catching a kitten.”

  Toto relaxed. “Yeah, that must have been it. A neighbor must have seen her and called it in on a cell phone. One of the drawbacks of a town this size. There’s always someone watching you.”

  “Ah, but the caller meant well,” Alex said. “Thanks goodness it was a false alarm.”

  “Yeah.”

  Toto shook Alex’s hand as he thanked the policeman for his concern. Then he stood on the porch, watching until the squad car pulled away. Once it’d disappeared around the corner, Alex hurried inside to the phone and called his supervisor.

  Casio answered on the first ring. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Just a little accident,” Alex replied.

  “How little?”

  He thought of Heather’s petite frame and frowned. “Very little. A neighbor was in my yard looking for a cat.”

  “A cat? Not her cat?”

  “Her cat. A cat. What’s the difference?”

  “I just want to make sure that we don’t have a problem.”

  “We don’t.” It was Alex’s turn to snap. “It was an accident.”

  “You’re comfortable with this?” Casio asked.

  Oh, man. Talk about paranoia. “It was just a neighbor looking for her cat,” Alex said slowly. “It’s the woman I went to school with. She’s never given anyone trouble in her whole life and couldn’t even if she tried.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m positive. She’s the last thing in the world I have to worry about.”

  “There you go, sweetie,” Heather said to the kitten. “Getting hugged wasn’t so bad, was it? I kind of like it myself.”

  Except there hadn’t been much hugging lately, she thought with a sigh. She used to go out all the time, but after two or three dates, she’d know this guy or that one wasn’t right for her and she’d break it off-Slowly, over the past ten years, she’d pretty much run through the eligible bachelors in town, and there weren’t too many new ones moving in. It got so that hugs were pretty rare, though she never stopped longing for them.

  She got to her feet and shooed her two cats out of the room, along with the gloomies that wanted to fill her heart. Why was she suddenly so mopey tonight? She should be happy. She’d finally caught little... little...Bonnie—yes, that was a good name for her—and that was reason to celebrate. Maybe she’d have a lemonade before she went to bed. Henry stopped at the doorway with a plaintive meow.

  “No, the new kitty can’t come with us,” Heather said. “She has to stay in here a little longer.”

  Henry looked ready to argue, but Heather just closed the door, leaning back against it with a frown. The note Alex had dropped was as bothersome as he was. Maybe it was some kind of paper that absorbed the moisture from the air and grew in size. Or maybe it was extrathick-and-heavy notepaper that weighed her down. Whatever, she was all too aware of it in her pocket.

  “Should I take it over there?” she asked her cats as she wandered down the hall to the kitchen.

  Neither of them expressed an opinion, either no more experienced with men than she was or they figured it was time she stood on her own two feet. She stopped at the screen door and looked over at Alex’s house. A few lights were on so he was still up. But what if he had guests over? Or was in the shower? Or had guests in the shower? Her face blushed a bright hot red at the thought.

  But it would be even worse if he was alone. He’d think she was just using the note as an excuse. He would think she was a poor pitiful old maid desperate to put a man in her life.

  “No, I’ll return it in the morning,” she said and closed the inside door firmly. “I’ll drop it off before I leave for Chicago for Karin’s costume fitting. Or better yet, I’ll put it in an envelope and drop it into his mailbox. Then I won’t have to disturb him at all.”

  It was a good sensible plan, even if it did feel just a little bit old maidish. She flicked the lights off in the kitchen and walked through the semidarkness toward the living room. Of course, she had a right to be old maidish where Alex was concerned. He used to race across the seawall for goodness sake!

  A knocking at the back door stopped her short, stopped her breath, too. Could it be Alex?

  Her face burned suddenly, but it was cool compared to her heart which was racing so fast she surely would faint. Oh my goodness. Alex Waterstone coming over here? What could he want? What if he was as lonely as her and just wanted to spend the evening here?

  This had never happened to her befo
re. Panic gripped her. What was she supposed to do? Offer him a drink maybe.

  Oh, no! She only had stuff like root beer and lemonade. Nothing exotic and sophisticated and intellectual. And her snack foods were animal crackers and ice cream. And what would they talk about?

  Besides which, she was still in her napping kitty pajamas! She ran her hands down her sides. She couldn’t—

  Her hand stopped at the folded paper in her pajama pocket. The paper. That’s all he was doing here. He’d come back for the paper. Her silly worries fell to the ground with a thud. What had she really feared? That he was suddenly overcome with passion for her? Get real, Heather Anne, she scolded herself.

  She went over to the door and pulled it open. It wasn’t Alex, though, it was Toto.

  “Toto.” Heather opened the screen door to let him in. “What are you doing here? Have you heard from Dorothy?” Her friend, who was also Toto’s former girlfriend, had recently moved to Paris.

  Toto just shook his head as he came inside. “No. But Penny and Brad promised to call after they’ve seen her.”

  “Lucky that Brad had that conference to go to in Paris or we wouldn’t know how she was doing.”

  Poor Toto. He seemed lost since Dorothy had moved to Paris last week. Even more so since he’d rushed to the airport to say goodbye to her, only to get a flat tire and miss her flight.

  “Anyway, I was going home after my shift.” Toto stooped down to scratch the cats. “I saw your light on and decided to make sure everything was all right.”

  “I’m so glad you did,” Heather said. “Everything’s fine, but I can always use some company. Want some lemonade?”

  “Sure.” Toto straightened up and went over to the kitchen table. “I had a call to check out Alex’s place this evening. I guess someone saw you in the yard and thought you were a prowler.”

  “Me?” She had started to pour some lemonade, but then stopped to stare at her friend. “My gosh. I’m so sorry. I hope that didn’t cause any trouble.”

  “Nah. Alex didn’t seem put out at all.” Toto sat down. “I was surprised to hear you were over there, though. I always thought you were afraid of him.”