Terry McLaughlin - A Perfect Stranger

A guard officer shouted a fresh set of commands, and the band struck up another rousing number. Horses’ shoes clopped along the pavement in counterpoint to clicking cameras. British sunshine bathed his beaten face and soothed his fading bruises with politely reserved warmth.

What an idiot he’d been to volunteer for that stakeout. Instead of gaining a first-person perspective on surveillance techniques, he’d proved he had no talent for investigation and served himself up as a punching bag for a frustrated philanderer.

He’d thought these weeks in Europe would be a less painful source of story ideas, but once again he’d been driving on the wrong side of the brain. Here he was, helping his brother ride herd on a handful of culture-stunned teens, researching nothing more dangerous than some setting details, and he’d gotten clobbered by a paranoid with a mugger phobia.

Make that a very attractive paranoid mugger-phobic.

The willowy blonde settled a bloodred nail over one of the buttons on her cell phone and pressed it a split second longer than necessary. Jack knew at once she’d sent a message to the network. He watched her tuck a hank of her long, wavy hair behind one delicate ear and drop the phone into her shiny black leather purse, an innocent-looking courier’s bag filled with the codes for—

A soft-shelled shoe nudged Nick’s ribs, and Joe’s voice floated down to him. “Aren’t you worried someone might step on you?”

Nick slitted one eye open and watched his brother stuff the last of a shrimp-and-egg sandwich snagged from a corner grocery into his mouth. Joe’s breeding showed: he was obviously the disheveled descendant of some barbarian horde that had laid waste to the countryside.

Nick settled his head back more comfortably into his hands. “You’re the only ‘someone’ I know who could be that clumsy,” he said.

“Not the only one.”

“Ah, yes.” Nick grinned. “Ms. Sydney Gordon. Shiva, The Destroyer.”

“Poor kid.” Joe wadded the paper wrapper and crammed it into a litter-loaded pants pocket. “That pamphlet display was an accident waiting to happen. Probably wasn’t attached to the wall right or something.”

“Yeah. Got to watch out for that steel-bolts-and-stone combo.” Nick shut his eyes. “And just think of the hundreds of early-morning commuters she saved from getting mangled in a faulty turnstile.”

“Those little tube ticket slots are kind of tricky.”

Nick snorted and crossed one ankle over the other. One more mystery to unravel: Why was that California teacher wound so tight? She spent every waking moment fussing over the tour, the time, the transportation, the weather, her kids and, for all he knew, this week’s market levels of imported Danish herring. It was enough to make a guy wonder if ulcers could be contagious.

On the other hand, something about her was sparking story ideas so fast he could barely jot them down before they shimmied and morphed into others. She was definitely…stimulating.

The band shifted tempo and the guards’ boots stomped to a new processional beat. Joe poked again with his sports shoe. “Don’t you want to watch?”

“I did watch. Can’t see much more than the backs of tourists and the tops of those furry black hats.”

“Did you see Edward anywhere?”

“First plaid umbrella on the right.” Nick’s lips twitched at the thought of their GQ tour director. “Moving out fast, now that he’s off the clock. Probably headed to the tour guide pit stop to get the circulation pumped back into his arm. I don’t see how he can hold that thing up in the air all day.”

“Stiff upper arm, old chap,” said Joe in some kind of accent that might have been John Wayne channeling Henry Higgins.

“That’s lip.”

“Huh?”

“Lip,” said Nick. “Stiff upper lip.”

“Speaking of upper lips…”

Nick groaned. “Not again.”

“Was it a bar brawl?” asked Joe. “You could tell me if you got beat up in a bar brawl, right? Especially the details.”

“It wasn’t a bar brawl.”

“You’d tell me if it was, though, right?”

“Yeah, I’d tell you.”

“So…it wasn’t a bar brawl.”

Nick opened one eye and stared at his brother. “It wasn’t a bar brawl.”

“Okay,” said Joe with a shrug, looking disappointed. “Just asking.”

Another limo eased by, ferrying another overdressed group out of an ornate palace gate. The crowd of tourists began to thin as the festivities dragged past the half hour mark.

“Where are we taking the kids after this?” Joe asked. “We’re on our own for lunch and sightseeing this afternoon.”

“You’re the one with the itinerary and the responsibilities.” Nick sat up and dangled his wrists over his knees. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true,” said Nick. “Your job. Your students. I’m not the one with the teaching credential.”

“But you’re the scheduling whiz.”

“Not anymore.”

No more bidding anxiety, no more site hassles, no more delivery migraines, no more deadline insomnia. No more specialty contracting business, now that he’d shut it down for the yearly hiatus. And no more weekly hassles with his house renovation cable television series, now that he’d passed most of the hosting duties to an assistant and assigned himself a consulting spot. Life was too short to live it in a state of perpetual stress, especially when he had enough money in the bank to take a nice, long break.

He had an eye for the possibilities in a project and a knack for building, the skills to pull a project together and an ease before the camera that played well on the small screen. But he had other talents to develop, other dreams to pursue.

Becoming a bestselling novelist, for instance. He wanted more than anything to see his name on something other than short pieces in pulp magazines.

“I’m retired,” he reminded Joe. “And staying that way.”

“You say that every year.” Joe shifted his backpack over his shoulder and wiped his hands on his pants. “Guess I could go ask Sydney what she’s planning. I think she’s still over there, next to the fat lady’s foot.”

Only Joe could dismiss the statue of Queen Victoria, Empress of All She Surveyed—including the elegant stretch of The Mall—as “the fat lady.”

Nick stood and scanned the tourists clumped around the base of the Victoria Memorial, looking for another statuesque lady—one with long, reddish-gold hair tucked up under a silly straw hat. “Good idea,” he said. “She’s probably got the tour schedule tattooed on her wrist, underneath a watch that tells the time in ten foreign capitals and the research headquarters in Antarctica.”

“She’s not that bad.”

“You’re right,” said Nick. “She’s worse.”

“She just likes to be organized. At least she’s paying attention.”

“She takes notes on Edward’s jokes, for cryin’ out loud.”

“Admit it,” said Joe. “You’re attracted to her.”

Nick spied the lady in question and shrugged at the obvious: willowy build, interesting curves, Nicole Kidman coloring. He wished it were as easy to shrug off the less obvious something about her that kept registering on his radar, but that was a much tougher trick. “What’s not to be attracted to?”

“Ha,” said Joe. “I knew it.”

While they watched, something that looked like a city map and a fistful of tube tickets spilled out of Sydney’s oversize tote and fluttered to the pavement. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Damn,” said Nick.

NICK STARED AT Sydney’s things littering the ground, and he knew he should go over there and help her out. But he froze in place, letting his overwhelming urge toward chivalry duke it out with an eerie sense of déjà vu—not to mention the instinct for self-preservation.