Janet Evanovich - Naughty Neighbor

Louisa winced. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t mean to inspire pity. A lot of the discomfort is my own doing. I could refrain from trying to ram my ideas down the throats of others. It’d go a long way to make me more popular.”

“Not your style,” Louisa said. “You’re a crusader.”

He’d never thought about it exactly in those terms, but he supposed she was right. He wasn’t sure it was flattering. “Are crusaders annoying?”

“Yes. That’s part of their charm.”

He parked the car and they got out.

“Do you think I’m different today?” Louisa asked him.

He trailed after her, assessing the hint of her backside under the black wool coat. He looked at her hair, her shoes, her purse. She seemed the same. “Is this a trick question?”

“I feel different,” she said.

He curled his fingers into her lapels and pulled her very close. “I wouldn’t know about that. I haven’t felt you yet.”

Her jaw went slack. The man had a one-track mind. She gave him a look normally reserved for the perverts who hung out on Fourteenth Street. “Not that kind of feel.”

He unlocked his door and ushered her into his lobby. “I know what you mean. You’re referring to the fact that you’re taking charge of your life. You’re being a little rebellious and very brave.”

“Yes!”

“It isn’t so much that you’re different. You’re still the same person. It’s just that you’re more of some things and less of others. You’re making choices about your personality.”

He turned her in the direction of his stairs and gave her a little push.

“When I was a kid I let my emotions rule me. Whatever I felt was out there for all to see-anger, frustration, childish exuberance. I was self-indulgent, did everything to excess, and was intolerant of anyone who did less. I stole more cars, went out with more girls, drank myself into oblivion at every opportunity, and was the worst student, worst soldier, worst reporter ever. I was also the best student, best soldier, and best damn reporter ever. I was fearless from bloated ego and lack of caring.

“It took a bullet in the leg and the death of a good friend to slow me down. I made some decisions while I was lying in the hospital. I decided there was some value to restraint, self-discipline, moral responsibility. It seems to me you’re coming at it from the other end. Basically we’re people with passionate personalities, but you were taught control as a child. You got lots of strokes for playing by the rules, so you rolled along as the good girl, always eager to please your parents, your teachers, your bosses.”

She stopped at the top of the stairs. “Are you trying to tell me I’m not a good girl?”

He eased her coat off her shoulders and hung it on the coatrack. “Like Mae West once said, ‘when you’re good, you’re very good, but when you’re bad, you’re better.’”

“I think Mae West was referring to her sexual talents.”

Pete grinned, moving in on her like a jungle cat going after something unsuspecting and tasty. “That too.”

She took a step backward, but his hands had already freed her blouse from her skirt. “Hey!”

“We don’t need you to be wired anymore. No sense wasting the battery.”

He’d worn his share of listening devices and knew the best way to remove them was in one fell swope. He grabbed an end of the surgical tape and yanked.

“Yeow!”

“Sorry about that.” His fingers skimmed over the stinging flesh, soothing and arousing. “Feel better?”

She could only blink at him.

He unhooked her bra and caught the transmitter as it fell out. With his other hand he cupped a breast, thinking clandestine operations were a lot more fun with Louisa as a partner.

She was paralyzed. A wild animal caught in the beam of a searchlight, held captive by his fingers.

Louisa could barely breathe for the sensations pulsing through her body. He knew all her secret pleasures. He knew how and where to touch and kiss. And he knew the words she liked to hear…words of endearment, words of passion.

He rummaged through the freezer and pulled out a bag of homemade raviolis he’d gotten from the Italian deli on Connecticut. He set a pot of water to boil and scrounged a box of crushed, sun-dried tomatoes from the over-the-counter cupboard.

“You’re really very domestic,” Louisa said. She was at the table, wearing his big terry robe, feeling very lazy. She was resigned to the fact that she had no willpower when it came to the sexual attraction between them and had reached the conclusion that it wouldn’t hurt to enjoy it.

He looked around the apartment and laughed out loud. She was right. He’d become domestic. If someone had said that to him ten years earlier, he’d have broken his nose.

“I used to live like Kurt.”

“What happened?”

“You know how some people find religion late in life? I found middle class.” He threw a frozen ravioli in Spike’s direction, and the cat attacked it.

Louisa didn’t want to burst his bubble, but he wasn’t exactly middle-class. She was on intimate terms with middle-class and knew for a fact that owning a luxury sports car and a three-thousand-dollar tux was not typical middle-class.

She supposed he meant he’d found middle-class values, but she wasn’t so sure of that, either. The men in her parents’ neighborhood didn’t feed their cat stick for dinner, and didn’t hang out with wiretappers. She amended that last part to illegal wiretappers. After all, it was Washington.

He dropped a handful of ice cubes into a goblet, poured cola over it, and gave the drink to Louisa. He was still feeling the aftershocks of their lovemaking-violent ripples of affection that grabbed him in the gut and sent panicky messages of love and commitment to his brain. He wasn’t ready to deal with messages of commitment, so he got himself a cold beer and took a long pull on the bottle.

“Tell me more about being different.”

She tried for casual reserve but had no luck. The excitement bubbled out at the first opportunity to discuss her new plans. “I want to return to school. I want to be a lawyer.”

It caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected a career change, but now that he thought about it, it made sense. He’d gone through a similar metamorphosis. He ran it through his mind one more time and nodded. “You’d make a terrific lawyer.”

“You really think so?”

“Yup. I think you should go for it.”

She’d badly wanted someone to say it, to encourage her. She flashed him a brilliant smile and felt her eyes mist over for a split second. She lowered her lashes and sipped her drink, embarrassed that she’d almost burst into tears at the thought of becoming a lawyer. It was amazing how such a powerful dream could be buried so deep that it had been all but forgotten.

He saw the joy and the emotion and had a hard time not crying along with her. He gave himself a fast lecture on macho behavior, took a hard breath, and steadied his voice.

“Okay, so it’s settled,” he said. “You’re going to be a lawyer. What else is different?”

“I’m more assertive.” She shook her finger at him. “Don’t try to push me around. I won’t stand for it.”

He pretended to be offended.

Louisa ignored him. “I want to be treated like an equal in this pig project.”

“You want to be an equal to Kurt? Honey, even I don’t want to be an equal to Kurt.”

“You know what I mean.”

He knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t want him being overprotective of her. It was an unreasonable demand. He could more easily stop breathing than stop wanting to keep her safe.

“I understand your point of view,” he said. “From now on you’re one of the boys.” It was an outright lie, and he didn’t feel the least bit guilty about making it. There was more to love than truth, he told himself. There was survival.

Louisa didn’t like working for Stu Maislin. The atmosphere in his suite of offices was oppressive, his administrative assistant looked like a bookie, and she suspected her phone was bugged by both Kurt and Maislin. It was like living in a goldfish bowl filled with piranha.

She was on her third day on the job, and she was still wearing a wire at Pete’s insistence. He was outside, somewhere, listening to her every word. To say she had no secrets was an understatement.

“I wonder if I unplugged the iron?” she said into her chest. “Hope it doesn’t burn the house down. And did you remember to close the front door after you went back in for my briefcase? I bet the house isn’t locked up.”

She smiled, knowing she drove Pete crazy with these mutterings. It was the only fun part of her workday.

“Only kidding,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I unplugged the iron. I don’t think it would burst into flames, anyway, because I had it on a low setting because I was ironing my red silk teddy. You remember that teddy? The one I wore the night before last? The one with the wide, easy-lovin’ legs? I wore that teddy to the office today because I thought I might take an extra long lunch hour and”-she crinkled a paper, simulating static-“and when I was done with you, you’d be sitting funny for the rest of the afternoon.”

She allowed herself another smile and turned to the stack of mail on her desk, thinking he now had something to occupy his mind while she did some work. She was halfway through the mail when a check slipped through her fingers. It had been delivered earlier by a bonded messenger. Not an unusual occurrence. She’d signed for it and placed it in the priority bin. It was to Maislin, personally. And it was against a claim on his homeowner’s insurance, to the tune of slightly less than half a million. She did a silent whistle. It was a lot of money, and it piqued her curiosity.

She copied the claim number, the amount, the name of the adjuster and his phone number, and went down the hall to the public phone. She dialed the adjuster and introduced herself. She was new, she explained. She needed to be brought up to speed on Mr. Maislin’s claim.