Kristan Higgins - Too Good to Be True

“Hi,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. The motion made his arms curve most beautifully.

“How’s your eye?” I asked, trying not to stare at his broad, muscular chest.

“How does it look?” he grumbled.

Okay, so he wasn’t over that. “So, listen, we got off to a bad start,” I said with what I hoped was a rueful smile. From inside my house, Angus heard my voice and began barking with joy. Yarp! Yarp! Yarp! Yarpyarpyarpyarpyarp! “Can we start over? I’m Grace Emerson. I live next door.” I swallowed and stuck out my hand.

My neighbor looked at me for a moment, then came toward me and took my hand. Oh, God. Electricity shot up my arm like I’d grabbed a downed wire. His hand was most definitely a working-man’s hand. Callused, hard, warm…

“Callahan O’Shea,” he said.

Ohh. Oh, wow. What a name. Regions of my anatomy, long neglected, made themselves known to me with a warm, rolling squeeze.

Yarpyarpyarpyarpyarp! I realized I was staring at Callahan O’Shea (sigh!) and still holding on to his hand. And he was smiling, just a little bit, softening the bad-boy look quite nicely.

“So,” I said, my voice weak, letting go of his hand reluctantly. “Where’d you move from?”

“Virginia.” He was staring at me. It was hard to think.

“Virginia. Huh. Where in Virginia?” I said. Yarpyarpyarp yarpyarp! Angus was nearly hysterical now. Quiet, baby, I thought. Mommy’s lusting.

“Petersburg,” he said. Not the most vociferous guy, but that was okay. Muscles like that… those eyes… well, the unbruised, unbloodshot eye… if the other one was like that, I was in for a treat.

“Petersburg,” I repeated faintly, still staring. “I’ve been there. Quite a few Civil War battles down there. Assault on Petersburg, Old Men and Young Boys. Yup.”

He didn’t respond. Yarp! Yarp! Yarp! “So what were you doing in Petersburg?” I asked.

He folded his arms. “Three to five.”

Yarpyarpyarpyarp! “Excuse me?” I asked.

“I was serving a three-to five-year sentence at Petersburg Federal Prison,” he said.

It took a few beats of my heart for that to register. Ka-bump…ka-bump…ka … God’s nightgown!

“Prison?” I squeaked. “And um… wow! Prison! Imagine that!”

He said nothing.

“So… when… when did you get out?”

“Friday.”

Friday. Friday. He just got out of the clink! He was a criminal! And just what crime did he commit, huh? Maybe I hadn’t been so far off with the pit-digging after all! And I had clubbed him! Holy Mother of God! I clubbed an ex-con and sent him to jail! Sent him to… oh, God… sent him to jail the night after he got out. Surely this would not endear me to Callahan O’Shea, Ex-Con. What if he wanted revenge?

My breath was coming in shallow gasps. Yes, I was definitely hyperventilating a bit. Yarpyarpyarpyarpyarpyarp! Finally, the flight part of the fight or flight instinct kicked in.

“Wow! Listen to my dog! I better go. Bye! Have a good day! I have to… I should call my boyfriend. He’s waiting for me to call. We always call at noon to check in. I should go. Bye.”

I managed not to run into my house. I did, however, lock the door behind me. And dead bolt it. And check the back door. And lock that. As well as the windows. Angus raced around the house in his traditional victory laps, but I was too stunned to pay him the attention he was accustomed to.

Three to five years! In prison! I was living next to an ex-con! I almost invited him over for dinner!

I grabbed the phone and stabbed in Margaret’s cell phone number. She was a lawyer. She’d tell me what to do.

“Margs, I’m living next to an ex-con! What should I do?”

“I’m on my way into court, Grace. An ex-con? What was he in for?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I need you.”

“Well, what do you know?” she asked.

“He was in Petersburg. Virginia. Three years? Five? Three to five? What would that be for? Nothing bad, right? Nothing scary?”

“Could be anything.” Margaret’s voice was blithe. “People serve less time for rape and assault.”

“Oh, good God!”

“Settle down, settle down. Petersburg, huh? That’s a minimum security place, I’m pretty sure. Listen, Grace, I can’t help you now. Call me later. Google him. Gotta go.”

“Right. Google. Good idea,” I said, but she’d already hung up. I jabbed on my computer, sweating. A glance out the dining-room windows revealed that Callahan O’Shea had gone back to work. The rotting steps of his front porch had been removed, the shingles mostly gone. I pictured him stabbing trash along a state highway, wearing an orange jumpsuit. Oh, shit.

“Come on,” I muttered, waiting for my computer to come to life. When the Google screen came on, finally, I typed in Callahan O’Shea and waited. Bingo.

Callahan O’Shea, lead fiddler for the Irish folk group We Miss You, Bobby Sands, sustained minor injuries when the band was pelted with trash Saturday at Sullivan’s Pub in Limerick.

Okay. Not my guy, probably. I scrolled down. Unfortunately, that band had quite a bit of press, recently…they were enraging crowds by playing “Rule Britannia” and the clientele wasn’t taking it well.

It was then that my Internet connection, never the most reliable of creatures, decided to quit. Crap.

With another wary glance next door, I let Angus into the fenced-in backyard, then went back into my kitchen to scare up some lunch. Now that my initial shock was wearing off, I felt a little less panicky. Calling on my vast legal knowledge, obtained from many happy hours with Law & Order, two blood relatives who were lawyers and one ex-fiancé of the same profession, I seemed to believe that three to five in a minimum security prison wouldn’t be for scary, violent, muscular men. And if he had done something scary… well. I’d move.

I swallowed some lunch, called Angus back in, reminded him that he was the very finest dog in the universe and not to so much as look at the big ex-con next door, and grabbed my car keys.

Callahan O’Shea was hammering something on the front porch as I approached my car. He didn’t look scary. He looked gorgeous. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, but still. Minimum security, that was reassuring. And hey. This was my house, my neighborhood. I would not be cowed. Straightening my shoulders, I decided to take a stand. “So what were you in for, Mr. O’Shea?” I called.

He straightened up, glanced at me, then jumped off the porch, scaring me a little with the quick grace of his move. Very…predatory. Walking up to the split rail fence that divided our properties, he folded his arms again. Ooh. Stop it, Grace.

“What do you think I was in for?” he asked.

“Murder?” I suggested. May as well start with my worst fear.

“Please. Don’t you watch Law & Order?”

“Assault and battery?”

“No.”

“Identity theft?”

“Getting warmer.”

“I have to get back to work,” I snapped. He raised an eyebrow and remained silent. “You dug a pit in your basement and chained a woman there.”

“Bingo. You got it, lady. Three to five for woman-chaining.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Callahan O’Shea. My sister’s an attorney. I can ask her to dig around and uncover your sordid past—” already did, in fact “—or you can just come out and tell me if I need to buy a Rottweiler.”

“Seemed to me like your little rat-dog did a pretty good job on his own,” he said, running a hand through his sweat-dampened hair, making it stand on end.