Janet Evanovich - Hero at Large

Edna sucked in her breath. “And all because you stopped to help my niece. Isn’t that noble? Don’t that beat all?”

Chris pressed herself deeper into the sofa cushions and surreptitiously made a motion that said she might gag. “Noble,” she croaked.

Ken stole a smug look in Chris’ direction. He toyed with a vanilla wafer.

“What a pity,” Edna went on. “How will you get by?”

“I have some savings.”

“A man with a savings account. Now that’s character,” she told her niece. “Seems a shame to have to dip into your savings on account of us. I feel just terrible about this.”

A knot was developing in Chris’ stomach. This wasn’t taking the usual course. By this time Aunt Edna should have had him in a sweat, but Ken was looking more pleased by the minute. And he was planning something sneaky-Chris was sure of it.

Ken stretched and relaxed deeper into the couch. “This is a nice room.”

Chris blinked at the sudden change in conversation. There was none of the earlier affectation. He seemed genuinely impressed. I don’t trust him, she thought. He’d been leading up to something. She sat up warily and paid close attention, watching his eyes as they observed the room.

It was an airy room with ivory walls and matching sheers. The plush wall-to-wall carpeting was a warm beige tone. The few pieces of furniture were comfortably overstuffed and covered in earth-tone tans with the exception of a cocoa-and-white houndstooth check wingback chair. The subdued colors provided the perfect background for gregarious Boston ferns, delicate asparagus ferns, potted fig trees, basketed orange trees, hanging ivies, and a colorful collection of African violets in traditional clay pots. The plants seemed to begin in the living room, randomly sprinkled here and there, picking up momentum and becoming more dense as they progressed toward the dining room, where they converged around the patio doors.

Ken’s attention focused on a cluster of photographs hanging on the wall. “Do you mind if I look at the pictures in your dining room?”

Aunt Edna jumped to her feet. “You want to see the pictures?”

Chris groaned. This was not a good sign.

“This here’s a photograph of some sailing ships. Chris got this when we went vacationing in Maine last year. And this here’s a picture of me when I was a little girl. Wasn’t I a pip? Just look at those ribbed stockings. This is an elephant at the zoo, and this is a picture Lucy drew when we came home.”

Ken looked at the crayon drawing of a smiling elephant. It had been framed and matted with the same professional care as all the other pictures. He tilted his head in Chris’ direction. “Your daughter must feel very special to have her drawing on this wall.”

Chris caught her breath at the enigmatic softening in his eyes, the tender huskiness of his voice.

Edna puffed up with pride. “It’s a beauty of an elephant, isn’t it? She can draw anything. She’s got real talent.”

“Like her mom.” Ken smiled at Edna.

“The spitting image.” Edna pointed to a photograph of a little girl hanging upside down from a tree limb. Her orange hair hung in wild curls that hadn’t seen a comb all day. She wore pink shorts, smudged with mud. Her sneakers were battered, her shoelaces untied, and she was laughing and closing her eyes tight in childish abandon.

Ken laughed with the photograph. “Is this Lucy?”

“Yep. But it might as well have been her mother. She looked just like that when she was seven.”

His attention wandered to the bowl of cut flowers in the middle of the dining room table. He ran his finger over the table’s freshly polished surface. “You’ve done a lot to make this a home. I wish I had a home like this.”

Little alarm bells sounded in Chris’ brain. There was a genuine wistfulness to his voice, which she didn’t doubt, but his eyes were filled with mischief and cunning.

“Haven’t you got a home?” Edna exclaimed.

He shook his head. “I’ve been doing a lot of traveling because of my job. I haven’t had much time to gather the things together that make a house a home.”

“Maybe Chris could help you. Where do you live? Do you have a house of your own?”

“There’s this place out in Loudoun County where I stay sometimes.”

“Loudoun County. That’s a ride.”

He nodded. “It would be much more convenient for me if I lived around here.” He delicately draped his good arm around Edna’s shoulders. “I have a confession to make. Ever since I walked into this house, I’ve been toying with an idea. I have two problems-I haven’t got a homey place to live, and I can’t go to work for a while. You and Chris also have two problems-you haven’t got a car, and you haven’t got an abundance of money. I noticed that you have an extra bedroom and bath downstairs-maybe we could work out some kind of deal. The use of my truck, plus”-he waved his hand while he contemplated a sum-“fifty dollars a week. We could be roomies.”

Chris sprang from the couch. “No!”

Edna stood firm with her hands on her hips. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

“We don’t even know this man.”

“I know all I need to know. This house needs a man underfoot.” Edna smacked her lips and narrowed her eyes in determination. “Do you take out garbage?” she asked Ken.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You see?” she informed her niece. “He’ll be perfect.”

“He’ll be a perfect pain in the…”

Edna raised her eyebrows in warning. She didn’t allow any cussing.

“…in the foot. And what about Lucy?”

Now Ken raised his eyebrows. “What about Lucy?”

“It wouldn’t look right.”

“Pshaw,” Edna scoffed. “Women have been taking in boarders for centuries.”

Chris glared at the man standing smugly in front of her. “I would like to speak with you privately, in the kitchen,” she hissed.

“Will you excuse us?” he said pleasantly to Aunt Edna.

Chris growled and stomped off to the kitchen. She closed the louvered kitchen door with a slam and turned to face Ken. “Let’s get something perfectly straight, Ken Callahan. I have no intention of allowing you to live in this house. I think it’s despicable of you to wheedle your way around my Aunt Edna, and I wouldn’t trust you for a second with my daughter.”

An expression of amused disgust played on his face. “That’s a bunch of baloney. Your Aunt Edna is a nice old barracuda who only gets wheedled when she wants to. And it’s not your daughter you’re worried about-it’s you.”

Chris pressed her lips together in annoyance. He was right. She’d had a nice sane life-until this morning-and she didn’t want it disrupted. And Ken could definitely disrupt. He was much too handsome. Much too sexy. And every now and then there was a flash of genuine vulnerability that broke down all her defenses. She had avoided romantic entanglements for the last seven years without feeling any real sense of loss. It was safe. It was comfortable. It was a way of life that would crumble with Ken lurking in her kitchen-wearing those formfitting faded jeans. She decided to take the coward’s way out and ignore his accusations. She rallied to a new attack. “Why are you doing this?”

“I need a place to live.”

“There are dozens of ads in the paper every day looking for roommates.”

“That’s true, but I like it here.” He surveyed the kitchen, his gaze drifting from the blond butcher-block countertops with the brown teddy bear cookie jar and the assortment of clear glass jars filled with spaghetti, sugar, whole oats, macaroni, popcorn, and flour to a Peter Rabbit place setting stacked in the sink. A bulletin board and chalkboard had been hung on one wall-the chalkboard was at the proper height for a seven-year-old. Ken picked up a piece of colored chalk and drew a straight line across the green surface. He studied the line for a moment, seemingly intrigued by the textured mark. Almost reluctantly, he returned the chalk to its wooden carrier and turned to Chris, putting his hand on her shoulder in a possessive caress that lingered briefly then moved to her neck. His finger touched an earlobe and slid along the curve of her jaw. “And I like you. I don’t know why. You’re kind of crusty. And you’re too skinny. But there’s something about you that makes my toes curl.”