Naughty Neighbor

  “Get a life.”

  Streeter’s grin flashed white in the darkness. “Why aren’t you sleeping with him?”

  “He doesn’t appeal to me. We’re just friends.”

  “So, who are you sleeping with?”

  “I’m not sleeping with—” She clamped her mouth shut and shoved her key into the lock. “It’s none of your business. Get out of my way. You’re leaning on my door.”

  Forty-five minutes later she was freshly showered and dressed in a cream-colored silk suit. She slipped her feet into a pair of matching heels, shrugged into her ankle-length black dress coat, and groaned when she caught a glimpse of the clock in the kitchen. She was late for the senator’s cocktail party. It couldn’t be helped. She’d had to make calls to the coast, and then she’d had to wait for the calls to be returned. She let herself out, locked the door, and almost tripped over Pete Streeter. He was back to sitting on the porch in the dark. She squinted down at him. “I almost stepped on you. What are you doing out here?”

  “Sitting.”

  “You’re very weird.”

  “You’re not the first person who’s said that.”

  A car turned onto the street. Its headlights flashed against parked cars as it moved forward. Pete stood and backed into the deep shadows. He pulled Louisa with him.

  “Let go of me!” Louisa said. “I’ll scream. I’ll turn you into a soprano. I know how to do it. I took a self-defense course.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not interested in your body. I just want you out of the light.” That wasn’t entirely true, he thought, but this wasn’t the time to go into detail.

  The car cruised by, and Pete relaxed his hold on her. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and grumbled when he didn’t find one. He searched for gum and struck out on that too.

  “What are you looking for?” She was almost afraid to ask.

  “Gum. I’m trying to quit smoking.”

  Another car rolled by, and Louisa watched Streeter shrink back against the building. “Okay, what’s going on with these cars?” she asked. “Every time a car goes by you duck out of sight.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She looked at her watch. “Can you do it in thirty seconds?”

  “No.”

  “Make an effort.”

  “Some yokel’s threatened to vandalize my car.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Yeah, and they’ve made two pass-bys, but they can’t baby-sit my car round the clock. So I thought I’d hang out here for a while.”

  A dark, late-model sedan turned the corner and proceeded down the street. The car slowed and then stopped in front of Louisa’s house. Louisa felt Streeter’s arms wrap around her and pull her flat against him.

  “Move back against the wall with me,” he whispered.

  The sedan door opened and there was the sound of feet shuffling on pavement. A man approached a car at curbside, raised a sledgehammer to shoulder level, and swung. There was the sound of glass being shattered. He moved quickly, smashing the windshield and the side mirror.

  “Hey!” Pete yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  A second man stepped from the sedan and leveled a gun at Streeter.

  “Uh-oh,” Streeter said. He threw his apartment door open and yanked Louisa inside.

  Several shots were fired, and Louisa hung on to Pete Streeter as if he were life itself. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her breath refused to leave her lungs. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  Pete was having a similar reaction. He wasn’t sure if it was the result of the gunshots or the fact that Louisa Brannigan had practically laminated herself to him. She had a death grip on his jacket lapels, and her leg was securely wedged between his. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

  He thought about the proximity of his bedroom and wondered how long her terror would last. Long enough to maneuver her upstairs? Probably not. Besides, she was mentally unstable, he told himself. And she wasn’t his type. And she hated him.

  One by one, he pried her fingers off the shearling. “You’re okay,” he said. “You’re not hurt.”

  “He shot at us!”

  “Warning shots. He wasn’t serious. He just didn’t want us getting in the way while he trashed the car.”

  He led her to the front porch, and they stood at the top of the stairs and looked at the damage. The windshield, back window, and driver’s side window had been smashed.

  “That’s odd,” Pete said. “I drive a black Porsche, and the car that’s been vandalized looks like a little black Ford.”

  Louisa couldn’t believe her eyes. “I drive a little black Ford. I had to park in your parking space last night because you were parked in mine. They wrecked my car.”

  “Bummer.”

  “That’s the best you can come up with? Bummer? First you steal my paper. Now you get my windows pulverized. And all you can say is bummer?”

  “I didn’t steal your paper. I borrowed it. And I didn’t get your windows pulverized. It was fate.”

  “It wasn’t fate, you imbecile! You constantly park in my parking space! Haven’t you noticed there are numbers painted at curbside? Your car belongs in the space marked ten-thirty-eight B. My car belongs in the space marked ten-thirty-eight A. It’s easy to remember. It coincides with our mailing address.”

  Dear Lord, she thought, the only homo erectus dumber than this guy was the one who’d attacked her car.

  “Boy, you get uptight about the damnedest things,” Pete said. “You need to relax a little.”

  “I used to be relaxed. I used to be well adjusted. I used to sleep nights. Then you moved in. You were gone for months. Why did you have to come back? You probably find it hard to believe, but there wasn’t a single shoot-out in this neighborhood while you were away.”

  “Boring, huh?”

  The man was dealing drugs, she decided. Fabulous hair, Hollywood-type, drove an expensive car. Next thing the house would probably be machine-gunned by some rival drug lord. Tomorrow she’d look for a new place to live.

  “I don’t want to know any more about this,” Louisa said. “I didn’t see it. I’m going to pretend it never happened. I didn’t like the car, anyway. It’s the wrong color black.”

  She was babbling, Pete thought. She was on the edge. Probably because of her lousy sex life. Abstinence did terrible things to a person’s disposition. He knew firsthand because lately his sex life wasn’t all that great, either.

  “I guess we should call the police,” he said.

  She looked at her watch. She didn’t have time for the police. “I’ll call the police tomorrow.”

  “Bad move,” Streeter said. “If you call the police now, they might be able to catch the guys.”

  “Listen,” Louisa said, “I’m supposed to be at a cocktail party at my boss’s house right now, and if I don’t show up, I’m going to be in deep doodoo. You call the police. You probably have lots of experience with the police, anyway.”

  “Hold it,” Pete said. “How are you going to get to this party?”

  “I’ll call a cab.”

  Pete stood there for a moment, grappling with an odd mixture of lust and guilt. He supposed he was, to some extent, responsible for the damage to her car. He shoved his hand into his pocket and came up with a key.

  “That’s not necessary. You can drive my Porsche.”

  Louisa felt her mouth drop open. His car? The car someone wanted to disintegrate? Was he kidding? “Nice of you to offer, but I couldn’t possibly…”

  She was probably reluctant to take him up on his offer because he had such a great car, he decided. She was afraid she’d get it scratched or something. He thought that was sweet. He took her by the elbow and pulled her down the stairs.

  “Don’t worry about scratching it. It already has a scratch. It’s on the right front fender just above the headlight.”

  She dug her heels in. “I’m not driving your car.??
?

  He gave her a shove. “What’s your name?”

  “Louisa Brannigan.”

  He opened the driver’s side door to the Porsche and settled her in.

  “Okay, Lou, have a good time and try to keep your speed down. It shimmies a little at one-twenty.”

  “Louisa! My name is Louisa!”

  “Whatever.”

  Chapter 2

  Louisa sampled a crab puff and smiled pleasantly at Sam Gundy. The man made shoes—lots of them. And he was telling Louisa exactly how it was done.

  Louisa felt her eyes begin to cross and snapped herself to attention. She took a quick peek around the room. Everything seemed to be running smoothly.

  Nolan was courting big business tonight, looking to replenish almost empty campaign coffers. He’d chosen his guests carefully. They were all good party members, all very wealthy, all very boring. Nolan knew better than to be upstaged when he wanted money. He always made sure he was the best dressed, best looking, most politically powerful person in the room when he made his pitch for support. And he always invited a few members of the press to his parties. It helped him achieve “star quality,” he said. Nolan was big on “star quality.”

  Nolan was a man on the way up. And Louisa knew if she did her job well, she’d go up with him.

  “You ever been inside a shoe factory?” Sam asked Louisa.

  “No sir, I haven’t.”

  “It’s pretty exciting.”

  “I bet.”

  Female laughter rose above the murmurings of polite society. Nothing alarming, but loud enough to catch Louisa’s attention. Nolan had a small staff, and they all wore several hats. Among other things, it was Louisa’s job to make sure social occasions ran smoothly. She adjusted the volume on heated arguments, poured coffee into drunks, and made sure under-the-table fondlings were kept discreet.

  “I’d be happy to show you around my shoe factory if you ever get up to my neck of the woods,” Sam Gundy said.

  Another ripple went through the room. Something was causing a stir. Louisa’s party radar clicked into hyperdrive. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said to Gundy. “I think I’d better check…”

  She turned and bumped into Pete Streeter. He was wearing jeans with a hole in the knee, beat-up white tennis shoes, a black T-shirt, and a custom-tailored navy faille tux jacket. Nolan Bishop was no slouch when it came to looks, Louisa thought, but Pete Streeter made Nolan look like Buster Brown.

  Pete draped his left arm over Louisa’s shoulders and leaned into her. “How’s it going, babe?”

  Louisa swallowed audibly and put her hand to her forehead to make sure her hair roots weren’t smoldering. She was blushing, hot and furious. It was a first. Too young for the change of life, she thought. What was left? Extreme embarrassment and a sexual attraction that bordered on the ridiculous. “What are you doing here?” she asked Streeter.

  “Thought I’d come check up on you.” Streeter turned his attention to Sam Gundy. “She’s been under a lot of stress lately,” he explained. He shook his finger at Gundy. “And you should be ashamed of yourself, luring a sweet young thing like this up to see your dirty old shoe factory. I guess I know what you have in mind.”

  Gundy sucked in his breath. “I was going to show her shoes!”

  “Yeah,” Pete said, “that’s what they all say.” He clamped a hand at the nape of Louisa’s neck to prevent her from wriggling away from him. “You look all flushed,” he said to her. “I bet you haven’t had dinner yet.”

  “Crab puff,” she managed. “I had a crab puff.”

  “You see,” he said to Gundy. “She really needs someone to take care of her. It’s a good thing I showed up.”

  A woman walked up to them. “Aren’t you Pete Streeter?” she asked. “I saw your picture on the cover of GQ.”

  “A lot of people make that mistake,” Pete said. “I’m not that person at all. We just have the same tailor. And it’s the hair. Really,” he told her. “I’m not him.” He gave Louisa a friendly pat on her bottom. “Don’t go away. I’ll get you some food.”

  Louisa looked for a sharp knife, but there weren’t any within reach. Just as well. It’d be a shame to ruin the tux jacket. It was a masterpiece. So was Pete Streeter, she admitted, but that wasn’t going to stop her from mutilating him once they were alone.

  Pete wandered over to the buffet table, took a plate, and wondered what the devil he was doing at this party. He’d told himself he was worried about the Porsche, but he knew that was baloney. The horrible truth, he decided, was that he’d had an intense, irrational craving to see more of Louisa Brannigan.

  It was a frightening revelation. Even more frightening was the fact that he didn’t have a clue why he was so attracted to her. He couldn’t find anything redeeming about the woman, although she didn’t look bad in the silky suit. He loaded a plate with slivers of fresh fruit and a mound of tiny sandwiches. He snaked his way back through the crowd and handed the plate to Louisa. “Eat up.”

  “I don’t—”

  He popped a sandwich into her mouth. “Chew.”

  “Mmmmmph.”

  One of the media people sidled up to Pete and introduced himself. “I heard you were in town,” he said. “I heard you were doing something big, something controversial.”

  “We’ll see,” Pete told him. “It’s still in the research stage.”

  A man with a video camera appeared from nowhere and trained the recorder on Streeter. It drew more people.

  Louisa felt a hand tug at her sleeve. It was Nolan. “Who is this guy?”

  “Pete Streeter.”

  “What’s he doing here? Did you invite him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, get him out of here. Now! Take him somewhere and keep him there. He’s insulted Sam Gundy, wiped out the pâté sandwiches, and he’s monopolizing the press.”

  “Right.”

  “And find out where he got the tux jacket.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Half an hour later, Pete pulled the Porsche into Louisa’s designated parking space and cut the ignition.

  “Maybe this is all just a bad dream,” Louisa said. “Maybe today never happened. I’m going to go to bed now, and maybe things will be better when I wake up.”

  Pete followed her to the door and stood patiently while she opened it. “It’s not so bad, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No one got hurt, and we got to go to a neat party.”

  “You crashed that neat party. And you insulted poor Sam Gundy.”

  “Hey, I even got dressed up. I wore my tux.”

  Louisa let her gaze travel the length of him. “What about the jeans and sneakers?”

  “What about them?”

  Louisa unlocked her door and stepped into the foyer. Pete followed. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

  “I figured you’d want to offer me a drink or something.”

  “Nothing! I’m not going to offer you anything! And I don’t want you in my house.”

  “How about coffee? Do I get a cup of coffee?”

  “How about a knuckle sandwich? How’d you like that?”

  He smiled and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “I suppose this means a good-night kiss is out of the question.”

  “Out!” She pointed stiff-armed to the door. “Out, out, out.”

  Pete came awake with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He lay perfectly still, waiting for the confusion of sleep to leave him, wondering what had nudged him toward consciousness. He felt the cat shift at the foot of the bed, heard it growl low in its throat.

  Pete’s gaze fastened on the DVD display across the room with the LED lights glowing red in the darkness. The lights went black for a moment, then reappeared, and Pete knew someone was silently moving around his bedroom. A body had passed between him and the LED lights.

  Reason told him to stay calm. Instinct told him to panic. Instinct won out. He sprang from the bed in on
e quick movement and hit the floor running, heading for the door. Halfway across the room he collided with the intruder, and they both went down in a heap on the floor.

  Louisa sat at her kitchen table, elbows resting on the table, chin resting on her hands. She glumly looked at the clock on the wall. Three-fifteen. She couldn’t sleep. Once again, it was all his fault. The fiend upstairs was keeping her awake. This time he was stomping around in her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She sighed and slumped a little lower.

  She was in bad shape. Pete Streeter had looked good to her earlier. When he’d made the crack about the good-night kiss, she’d actually given it a second thought. She pushed away from the table and shuffled over to the refrigerator. She opened the door and stared at the bottles and jars for a while before deciding on orange juice.

  Hers was a normal reaction, she told herself. Streeter was gorgeous. Any healthy, sexually deprived woman would find Streeter attractive—unless she lived with him, of course. To live with Streeter was to hate him.

  She drank her orange juice and padded back to the bedroom. She was about to crawl into bed when there was a loud thump overhead. It was followed by more thumping, then a crash that made her ceiling shake. He was at it again. The man had no consideration.

  “Quiet!” she shouted. “Don’t you know what time it is? It’s three-fifteen in the morning!”

  There was another ceiling-shaking crash, more thumping and scuffling sounds. “This is too much,” Louisa muttered. “I absolutely am not going to tolerate this any longer.”

  She cinched her floor-length blue velour robe around herself with a vicious yank on the belt, stuffed her feet into her big furry slippers, and charged out of her bedroom. On the front porch she pounded on Streeter’s door.

  “Open up!” she demanded. She gave the door another shot with her fist, it swung open, and she stepped into the foyer.

  “Streeter, what the hell are you doing up there? I’m trying to get some sleep! I have to be at work early tomorrow!” Her only answer was more thrashing and grunting. The man was exercising!