Jennifer Greene - Secretive Stranger

She led him back to the living room, shunted papers and magazines aside to give him a seat. The cat followed them in, perched on the high edge of the sofa, clearly determined to chaperone the pair.

Although, how the word chaperone popped into Cord’s mind, he had no idea.

“You work at home?” he asked her.

“I’ve worked in Italy, Peacock, Georgia, the Isle of Man, Luray, Virginia…and I’d probably work in a ditch, if that’s where Open World sent me-that’s the name of the company I work for. Right now, I’m doing a long-term translating project, and I should be in Foggy Bottom for over a year. Although I hope they find more projects here after that, because I’d like to settle down. The traveling’s fun, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, but I’m just really sick of renting. I’d like to have a home base.”

She’d spilled more information than he’d asked-times ten. A chatterbox would hardly seem a common character trait in a woman who had a ton to hide. Cord found himself intrigued. Not that he was about to tell her about his State Department or service background, but he was definitely startled to hear more about her background. Who’d guess they had any similarities? “So, what’s the long-term translating project you’re working on?”

“It’s really pretty fascinating. I’m interviewing women who survived WWII. European women who lived in countries directly affected by Hitler’s domination back then. Eventually, all the stories will come together into an intensive research project. Anyway, ‘my’ ladies are a Russian, a German woman, and my first was a Danish lady. I just finished her story. It was fascinating. She was only nine when the U.S. joined the war. She remembers her dad, a sailor, fishing our American pilots out of the sea, night after night. Everyone hid the American soldiers-in fruit cellars, under beds, wherever they could. She remembers…” Sophie suddenly laughed. “I know, I know, I can go on all night. I can’t help it. I love my job. But you don’t want to hear all this.”

Confounding him completely was that he did. Want to hear more. Maybe her ditsiness was contagious. “It sounds interesting,” he said stiffly, “but actually, right now-”

She finished his sentence for him. “You have much more serious things on your mind.” She’d just perched on a chair arm and now bounced up again. “I almost forgot. I’ve got piles of your brother’s mail for you. I don’t know what the authorities did with Jon’s mail when they were investigating. But once they stopped coming…well, the box got overstuffed almost right away, and I had the key to Jon’s box, so I just started bringing it in. I’d done it for him before. I knew someone would come sooner or later about the apartment, all his things.” She hesitated. “You’re going to need some help.”

“You sound sure of that.”

Whatever she answered, Cord missed. He wasn’t used to feeling thrown off balance, but she was sure as hell doing it to him. Nothing about her was what he’d been led to expect-particularly once he saw her moving around with her jacket off.

She was still wearing clothes that would work on a nun’s runway. Baggy blue sweater, hanging way past her hips. Skinny jeans. Sloppy socks. Her blond hair was clipped out of the way, wisping all over the place. But…when she walked, when she moved, he could see there were no extra pounds under the sweater.

She had a slim waist. Serious breasts-not huge, not blatant, but she couldn’t totally conceal a downright arresting figure, even under those clothes. The legs weren’t long-she was shorter than a shrimp-but the proportions were right. And maybe she wasn’t into face paint and all, but her skin was irresistibly soft, her mouth as kissable as any he’d ever seen, her eyes expressive and gorgeous-at least until she smashed a pair of black-rimmed glasses on her nose.

She wasn’t Jon’s type of woman, for damn sure. There was no shine, no dazzle, no trimmings on the surface. She clearly wasn’t remotely embarrassed about her cluttered place, nor was she running around to fix her hair or smack on lipstick.

She just seemed…real.

Cord wished he could shake off the foggy confusion in his head. He hadn’t thought of Zoe in over a year, but now he did-because she was such an elegant example of his poor judgment of women. He’d thought she was the real thing once upon a time, too.

He knew better than to trust anyone too fast-much less to trust his own instincts.

“Cord?” Sophie had clearly been trying to snare his attention for a good minute or two.

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about my brother.”

“Of course you were.” Her eyes softened in sympathy. “I’ll quit babbling, just give you the box of mail. And you can tell me what you decide about Caviar, whenever you get around to it. Right now I assume you’re going across the hall to Jon’s-”

“Yes.”

“So bang on the door if you need anything.”

Sophie started humming the minute she closed the door. That had gone well, she thought.

For a few moments there, Cord had made her feel uneasy. He just seemed to, well, look at her. Really look. As if he were interested. As if he saw something beyond the black-framed glasses and sisterly smiles and ordinary person.

She retrieved her coffee and plunked herself down at the kitchen table, determined to get an hour or two of translating work done. Naturally, Caviar immediately leaped onto the tabletop and sank, purring, on top of the files she was trying to read. She stroked him absently, musing that probably her restlessness around Cord had an entirely different reason.

Cord was a hunk. Naturally, he’d made her blood spin a little. He had that all-guy walk, the biceps, the crooked smile. He was way beyond adorable. He was sharp, smart, dangerous-looking.

As worrisome as that observation should have been, she yawned as she batted Caviar’s paw from the computer screen. Her avatar shot up with the familiar adage: “There’s no such thing as being too safe.”

Her sisters claimed it was her mantra, which was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men. One of the reasons the traveling in her job had started to nag was that she really wanted a chance to find a guy, settle down, have some kids. But she wanted a man like…well, like her dad. Too many men out there today were all about themselves, treating sex with the casualness of an after-dinner brandy.

She grabbed a pen, scooched Caviar another inch off the papers and heard the phone ring. She picked it up.

No one there, just a hangup.

She settled back down for a solid twenty minutes, when the landline rang again. Again she picked it up.

Again, there was no one on the other side.

Abruptly she stood up, rubbed her hands down her thighs. Not that she spooked easily…but she spooked easily. She had from the time of her parents’ death, but her next-door neighbor’s death had certainly brought her nerves out of storage. No matter how certain the police were that Jon’s death was an accident, Sophie still felt something more had happened.

As if to punctuate her edginess, she jumped when she heard the sudden rap on her front door.

Cord stood on the other side. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…” Caviar shot between her legs, through his and into the open door of Jon’s apartment. Cord stared after the loose feline, then back at her, frowning at her expression. “What’s wrong? I mean, besides the cat.”

“Nothing.”

“You’re white as a sheet.”

“Too much rain. Not enough sun.” It was a dumb thing to say, but abruptly she realized her heart had picked up a new, exuberant pounding-not from fear this time. It was from being inches too close to Cord. That problem, thankfully, was readily fixable. “I’ll chase after Caviar. The thing is, he’s used to being able to shoot back and forth between the two apartments-Oh.” Midflight, she stopped abruptly. “I forgot to ask why you knocked on the door. What do you need?”