Janet Evanovich - Naughty Neighbor

“Yeah. That’s Spike.”

Spike opened one eye and looked at Louisa. The eye was yellow and unblinking. It stared at Louisa for thirty seconds and closed, leaving Louisa with the impression she’d been less than interesting.

Pete set the cardboard box next to the sleeping cat. “Ten years ago Spike sort of adopted me, and we’ve been together ever since.” He scratched the cat’s head, but the cat didn’t move. “He’s very demonstrative,” Pete said.

“I can see that.”

Pete took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, filled a crystal wineglass half full, and handed the glass to Louisa. “Were you able to get much on Maislin?”

She sipped her wine. “The usual whitewashed press release.”

Pete slid three steaks under the broiler and threw two potatoes into the microwave. He accepted a blue folder from Louisa, flipped it open, and began reading.

“I can’t see anything in here to help us,” he finally said.

He scooped Spike off the table and replaced him with a tossed salad he took from the refrigerator. Spike dangled bonelessly from the crook of Pete’s arm. He slowly opened his eyes, yawned, and yowled. Pete speared one of the steaks from the broiler, flopped it onto a plate, and set cat and steak on the floor.

Louisa couldn’t keep the astonishment from her voice. “You’re giving him an entire steak?”

“Hey, this guy’s a stud. He has to keep his strength up.”

“Is that good for him? I mean, shouldn’t he be eating cat food? You know, a balanced cat diet?”

Pete put a potato and a steak on a plate for Louisa. “We don’t eat steak every night. Sometimes we eat fish. Sometimes we order out for pizza. His favorite is hamburger with a lot of fried onions. We eat that a lot.”

Tell me about it, Louisa thought. Everything in her apartment smelled like Pete’s fried onions. The odor had permeated her wallpaper. His apartment, she noticed, had no such problem. His apartment smelled fresh and clean, slightly of coffee. She glanced at the vent over the stove. It was busy sucking away the broiler smoke, no doubt sending it directly down to her kitchen.

He put a container of sour cream on the table and topped her wine. “How about Maislin’s staff? Do we have any information on them?”

Louisa pulled another folder from the cardboard box. She gave the folder to Pete and attacked her steak.

Pete read while he ate, but he didn’t find anything useful.

“That was great,” Louisa said. She looked at her wineglass and wondered how it had gotten empty.

Pete took a quart of chocolate ice cream from the freezer and set it in the middle of the table. He gave Louisa a sterling silver iced-tea spoon and kept one for himself.

“Let’s go over this again,” he said, digging into the ice cream. “Why is everyone so touchy about this pig?”

Louisa took a spoonful of ice cream and let it melt on her tongue. It was smooth and rich. It was the brand she couldn’t afford, the one that clogged arteries with butterfat. Already, she could feel her thighs expanding. She took another spoonful, closed her eyes, and murmured approval. “This is wonnnnderful ice cream,” she said, her eyes slightly glazed.

Pete stared at her. She was practically orgasmic. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Couldn’t be better. I lovvvvve ice cream.” She had a large mound of ice cream on her spoon. She aimed it at her mouth, but it fell onto the table. “Oops,” she said. “I think it’s the wine. It sneaked up on me.”

Pete smiled. She was snockered. “You’re not much of a drinker, are you?”

“Am I acting silly?”

“Not yet.”

“I tend to get uninhibited when I drink,” she said.

“Oh boy.”

“And then I get tired. Wine always makes me tired.”

“How long would you say we’ve got between uninhibited and tired?”

“Not long. Minutes, actually.”

“Is there anything you’d especially like to do while you’re in the uninhibited stage?”

“Eat more ice cream.”

He spooned ice cream into her. “Anything else?”

“We could talk. There are some things I should say to you.”

“You really know how to bust loose when you’re uninhibited, don’t you?”

She smiled at him. “I have my moments.”

“Is this one of them?”

Louisa waved her iced-tea spoon. “I was a late bloomer.”

He crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. He had a feeling this was going to be interesting.

“In fact, I didn’t bloom at all until I was in college. And even then…” She sighed and dabbled in the ice cream carton. “I had this silly idea that I should be in love before I…you know.”

“It’s not a silly idea.”

They both paused, each surprised he’d said such a thing.

“Do you make love to women you don’t love?” she asked.

“Only if it’s an emergency.”

She made an effort to focus her eyes on him. “That’s not a serious answer.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. He turned it palm up and kissed the soft center. “I don’t think either of us would like the serious answer.”

Heat radiated outward at the touch of his lips on her flesh. “Have you ever been in love?”

It was a complicated question. Certainly, there’d been women about whom he’d felt deeply. And there were a few voluptuous females early on who turned him inside out and left him flopping around like a beached flounder, struggling to survive. But he couldn’t honestly say he’d ever been in love. Lately, he’d begun to wonder if he was capable of loving someone.

“No,” he told her. “I’ve never been in love.”

“Me, either,” she said, yawning. “I thought I was once, but it was just wishful thinking.” She rested her head on the table and fell asleep.

Pete stared at her. He’d never seen anyone nod off on a glass and a half of wine before. He scooped her up and carried her to the couch. She was dressed in a soft pink suit and heels. He didn’t know what to do with her. He had a strong temptation to loosen her clothes in the interest of comfort, but he resisted. She’d probably get the wrong idea and think he’d done it just to fondle her. She’d probably be right.

He covered her with a quilt and went about the job of cleaning the kitchen. When he was done, he sat across from her on the coffee table and watched her sleep. She looked like a little girl, he thought. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth soft and pouty, black lashes curved against her fine translucent skin. Her hair curled around her face in casual disarray. His throat felt tight and his heart ached with an emotion he couldn’t identify. The ache in his groin was less confusing. He knew what was causing that. And he knew it was a lost cause.

Louisa awakened to the aroma of bacon frying and the unpleasant sensation of having a crushing weight on her chest. The weight turned out to be Spike. He opened his yellow cat eyes and stared at her for several seconds before his lids dropped closed. Louisa shifted under him, and he growled low in his throat. Two masculine hands reached over Louisa’s head and lifted the cat off her.

“Morning,” Pete said.

Louisa tilted her head back to see him. “What happened?”

“You had a glass and a half of wine and fell asleep.”

She took a fast survey of her condition. She was on his couch, fully clothed, under a quilt. “Have I slept here all night?”

“Yup.”

She sighed. “I’m not very good at drinking.”

She tugged at her skirt and swung her feet onto the floor, still swaddled in the quilt. “I make up for my alcohol intolerance with my temper. I inherited the belligerent gene.”

He handed her a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a plate heaped with bacon and scrambled eggs.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

He slouched in a chair across from her. He wasn’t feeling especially maternal. He was feeling sexually frustrated and emotionally unstable. He’d spent the better part of the night staring at his bedroom ceiling, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life, wondering what it was about Louisa Brannigan that had him suddenly feeling dissatisfied and lonely.

He could easily have awakened her and shuffled her off to her own apartment, but the simple truth was, he liked having her in his living room. Spike was a good friend, but he was small. He didn’t fill the apartment the way Louisa did. Pete liked the way Louisa sighed and rustled when she slept. It was a comforting sound…like a crackling fire on a cold day, or rain against a windowpane.

She drank the juice and munched on a strip of bacon. “It feels strange not to have to rush off to work.”

“What’ll you do today?”

“Get my car fixed. Then I suppose I should start thinking about getting another job.”

“I have a deal for you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s a good deal.”

“I bet.”

“I want to stick with this pig thing, but I’m running low on time. I have rewrites to do on a screenplay that’s going into production next week.”

She took a bite of egg. “And?”

“And I’ll give you a month’s free rent, if you’ll hold off taking another job for a few days. I have my own file on Maislin. I’d like you to go through it and see if you can find a connection between him and Nolan Bishop. Then I’d like you to go to the Post building on L Street and read back issues on either side of the pig story. See if you can talk to any of the reporters that covered the story.”

The offer appealed to Louisa. The detecting part sounded like fun, and she couldn’t turn her nose up at a month’s free rent. Her savings account was going to be fast depleted without a job.

“Okay, it’s a deal. What am I searching for at the Post?”

“I don’t know. Keep an open mind.”

She finished her breakfast and stood to leave, groaning when she looked down at her rumpled suit. “I’ll take a fast shower and get right to work.”