Teresa Hill - Mr Right Next Door

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I was going to say hi, and then you turned around and…well… Hi.”

“Hi,” he said, nearly incoherently.

“Oh, yeah. Forgot to tell you,” Harry said into his ear. “She’s on her way over there.”

Harry was such an ass and Nick could not for the life of him figure out where the man was, what possible spot could give him the vantage point he needed to see everything that he’d seen.

The jerk.

In front of him, the pretty blonde’s smile faltered, no doubt because of the scowl on Nick’s own face.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said.

“No. No. It’s not that,” he said, making himself let go of her. If she wanted to run away from him, he wasn’t going to stop her. Hell, he’d probably thank her, despite the job he had to do. “I was just distracted. That’s all. Sorry I almost plowed into you.”

“I’m fine. Just surprised. I thought you were Sam.”

“Sam?”

“Mrs. Baker’s nephew. I saw you from the back and you’re about the same height and he has brown hair like yours. Although I would have been surprised to see Sam in a suit. Still… Sam’s been working in the backyard for weeks, helping to get the B&B ready. I was just going to say hi to him before I went inside to see Mrs. Baker.”

She smiled again, stood there with the full light of the sun glinting off her blond curls, her legs bare, her arms, all that golden sun-kissed skin. Not as much as she’d shown off in the yellow bikini, but more than enough to give a man all sorts of ideas.

He’d kept thinking on the ship, as she’d sunned herself, of how warm her skin must be after she laid in the sunshine for so long. How hot she’d be to the touch.

Nick made a face, then tried not to. He’d already nearly scared her away. He just had to stop thinking about her and her skin and touching her. He just needed to spy on her without thinking of her.

How the hell was he supposed to do that?

Into his head came that old Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones song.

You make a grown man cryyyyy-eeyyyyyyee . Do - do - do - do . You make a grown man cryyyy-eeyyyyyee .

She could definitely make a man cry.

“So…” she said, still looking way too friendly despite his Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde act. “Did Mrs. Baker open up the B&B while I was gone?”

“She didn’t plan on it, but I convinced her to take me in early.” He tried to gather up enough scattered brain cells to put together another sentence. Come on, Nick. She’s just a woman, one who’s likely in love with a crook at that . “I’m Nick. Nick Cavanaugh.”

He had no choice but to offer his hand and, despite his every wish or maybe because of things he wouldn’t even let himself admit he wanted, she took it. He didn’t think he was standing there with his mouth hanging open, thinking way too much about having her hand in his, but he couldn’t be sure. And yes, even her hand was hot to the touch. Had she been sunning herself and he’d missed it?

“Down, boy,” Harry said.

Sweet hell .

This assignment was going to kill him.

“I’m Kim Cassidy. I have an apartment next door. Welcome to Magnolia Falls.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you staying long?”

“I’m not sure yet. Depends on how long my business takes, and then… Well, they owe me some time off. Seems like a nice, quiet place.” He shrugged. Damn, his shoulder hurt. He was falling apart. Whereas she seemed perfectly put together.

“It is a nice place. And friendly,” she said.

Friendly? Was she going to be friendly? And just what did she think being friendly entailed?

“I might stay awhile,” he said.

Please, please don’t let this take a while. Please don’t let her get all that friendly. He couldn’t take it.

Let her crook of a boyfriend show up tomorrow. Let him get this over with and get out of here and forget all about her and the way he feared she’d look once he was done here.

“Well, I hope you like it. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” he said, then couldn’t let it go at that. He did have a job to do. He couldn’t stand to fumble around gawking over her, not if he was going to get the job done. “Actually, I need lunch. A place to have lunch. What’s good here in town?”

“That’s easy. The Corner Diner on Main. Just go that way.” She pointed off to the left. “It’s about eight blocks down. You can’t miss it. I’m meeting my sisters there in a few minutes, trying to beat the lunch crowd.”

“There’s a crowd?”

She nodded. “Just about the only one you’ll ever see in town. If you want lunch without having to wait, you should go now. I’m going inside to say hello to Mrs. Baker before I head that way myself.”

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you there,” she said, heading up the steps and inside, calling out Mrs. Baker’s name and knocking only as she went through the doorway.

So, he was going to lunch and she was going to be there. Hopefully telling her sisters all about her little trip and the guy she’d met.

Nick sighed.

Maybe this would be easy.

Maybe it would be easy and he could finish it up and go home.

“Not bad,” Harry said. “Not as smooth as I’ve seen you, but still…not bad.”

“Where the hell are you?” he barked.

Harry just laughed.

Nick headed off to lunch.

To spy on her.

Chapter Three

Nick was happily eating his lunch—meat loaf and mashed potatoes smothered in heart-clogging gravy—when people started screaming.

At least, at first he thought they were screaming.

He nearly pulled out his gun before he realized it wasn’t really screaming.

It was more like…squealing.

Happy squealing?

Sounds he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard come out of a woman’s mouth before in public, maybe not even in the privacy of his own bedroom, and here he was thinking that he could make women make some really interesting, happy sounds.

But there he was, in the Corner Diner in Magnolia Falls, and his prime lead in the case of the pirate ring had just entered the establishment in a rush, thrown open her pretty suntanned arms, embracing three different women at the same time, and all four of them were doing something that could only be described as squealing for joy.

“Good God,” Nick muttered, just loud enough for Harry to hear, apparently.

Because the next thing he heard was Harry in his ear saying, “It’s a Southern thing. Southern women do that.”

“Do they do it in bed?” Nick asked, unable to help himself.

Harry laughed. “If you do it right, Southern women can make all sorts of little sounds like that in bed.’ Course the way you’re limping along right now and with that bad back of yours—”

“I don’t have a bad back. A shoulder. Just a shoulder—”

“Okay. Shoulder. I don’t think you should attempt a move like that, Nickie. I don’t want you to hurt yourself, you know?”

“In bed?” he muttered. “The day I can’t take a woman to bed without hurting myself is the day I—”

Nick looked up into the half-disapproving, half-amused face of the woman who’d seated him at the diner, the owner herself, Darlene Hodges.

“Sorry,” he told her. “I was just…” He gestured feebly at the headset he wore and shrugged.

“No problem, honey. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself, either.” She nodded understandingly. “But just in case, you should know, a man gets to a certain age and all sorts of things just start to go. Women understand these things. At least, some women do. Not that I think you really need to worry all that much.”