Teresa Hill - Mr Right Next Door

She’d really have thought he was something then.

Let her try to tell herself she was in love with the jerk then!

Of course, she didn’t know that, poor, silly, naive woman that she was.

Why were the gorgeous ones always so…senseless when it came to men?

He’d wanted to say stupid. He’d normally say stupid. How could women be so stupid?

But he thought she was a nice woman, and not just because she had a great body, so he couldn’t bring himself to call her stupid. He was already worrying about how she was going to take it when her lover boy turned out to be a crook.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her, but since it was his case, he’d probably have to do the deed.

She’d probably slap him. She’d cry. She might squeal, a really unhappy, awful squeal that wouldn’t make him think of anything like taking her to bed with him. Not that she’d be getting anywhere near him once she knew what he was doing here.

Still, he didn’t want her to cry.

He just wanted her to be smart and not get involved with jerks or pirates or international terrorists.

Was that too much to ask?

Nick watched, waited and listened as best he could as Kim chattered on.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she’d said her new boyfriend was coming here…soon? Somebody had squealed again at that point in the conversation, so he just wasn’t sure.

Maybe she’d call someone tonight and they’d have the phone tap in place and no one would squeal. Did women squeal on the phone, too? He hoped not. It was starting to make his head hurt.

Nick had finished his meal and the lunch rush was in full force. He ordered dessert to have an excuse to stay. It seemed half the town was there and that all of them knew Kim Cassidy and wanted to know about her adventure with the pirates. They all stopped at her table. She hugged quite a few of them, grinned broadly at others and gave them all a condensed version of the story.

Nick became aware that everyone in the place seemed to be talking about her.

He kept catching bits and pieces, none of which made sense.

“Engaged—” That from the guy in mechanic’s overalls, heading to the cash register to pay his ticket.

Were they engaged? Surely not. Surely she wasn’t that stupid.

Nick fought the urge to close his eyes and swear.

“From Colorado—”

So, the guy was from Colorado? That was something they could check. Nick made a mental note to tell Harry. Check Colorado .

“Cleveland—”

The guy in the dark blue suit said Cleveland?

Okay, check Colorado and Cleveland .

“Pittsburgh—”

What the hell? How could three different people in the same diner at the same time as her all think the guy was from three different places?

“Next week maybe—”

This from one of the waitresses who’d just been at Kim’s table.

That was promising.

“Next month—”

No, no. Not next month . He would not make it until next month. Not here. Not with her.

“Huge party for them—”

“Soon as he gets here—”

“Falls Park—”

“Hold the crowd—”

“Award—”

Someone wanted to give the damned guy an award? For saving Kim?

Nick groaned.

“Great idea—”

“Talk to the mayor—”

“Talk to her sisters—”

“Award and engagement party, all at once—”

Nick hoped his head didn’t explode and that he didn’t blurt out something outrageous, like the truth of the matter, to everyone present at the Corner Diner that day.

Couldn’t any of them get their stories straight?

Wasn’t there one, solid, reliable piece of information in the whole place?

Other than the possibility that she might be engaged to the criminal?

Surely not.

Surely she wasn’t that stupid.

He was thinking it now. Maybe the woman was just stupid. Nice but not very smart. From his experience, a frighteningly large number of women fit into that category. Maybe it wasn’t their fault. Maybe they couldn’t help it. Maybe men like Eric Weyzinski had some strange power over them and they just couldn’t tell a jerk from a nice guy.

God knows Nick fooled enough of them into thinking everything he said was genuine, when hardly anything that came out of his mouth was.

Which, he realized, meant he had a lot in common with the crook who was about to break her heart.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” he told Harry once he got back to the B&B.

Kim had walked.

Nick had followed her very, very slowly.

Watched her stroll along like a woman without a care in the world, smiling, stopping to talk to a dozen people along the way, staring up at the blue sky, stopping to smell the flowers.

It was like something out of one of those sickening long-distance commercials.

They were all so happy.

Nick didn’t know what to make of it.

“What’s the problem?” Harry said agreeably.

He said everything in that same I’m-your-buddy tone and it wasn’t natural to be that happy. Nick tended to be suspicious of happy people. Harry and Kim and most people in this town were way too happy.

“I have no idea what’s going on. That’s the problem,” Nick said, deciding to ignore the too-much-happiness thing for the moment. He had other more pressing concerns.

“You didn’t hear anything at the diner?” Harry asked.

“No, I heard everything at the diner. That she might be engaged. That the guy was coming here, either the next day, the next week or the next month. Take your pick. That he’s from Colorado or Cleveland or maybe Pittsburgh. What the hell?”

Harry laughed.

It was starting to annoy Nick every time Harry made that sound and Harry made it quite often.

“It’s a small town,” Harry said.

“So?”

“So people talk. All of them talk. All the time. But only about twenty percent of it’s true, and that’s just a guess. It might be less than twenty percent. I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were trying to confuse me,” Nick said. “That all of them are in on it and they’re deliberately trying to confuse me.”

“No, they’re just talking. They gossip. All about each other. Trust me, this is normal.”

“Then how the hell am I supposed to figure out what’s going on?”

“You follow her, Nickie. You stay really close to her. So close you can smell her pretty perfume. And you don’t trust anything except what comes out of her sweet, little mouth and maybe not even that. Meanwhile, I’ll look for your guy in Colorado, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the guy’ll show up tomorrow.”

“Or maybe we won’t.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Harry chuckled. “Hey, I got the blueprint from the conversion they did on her house, when they cut it up into apartments. Am I crazy or is your view even more spectacular than we thought it might be?”

Nick said nothing.

“I mean, I don’t have the same vantage point as you. But looking at it from street level, I’d have to say the angle is highly favorable. You could look into her living room and, off to the right, see through the doorway into her bedroom—”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“You know you don’t deserve perks like this, right? No man could be that lucky—”

Nick cut him off again.

He had hours before it got dark. Before she turned on the lights in her apartment and closed the blinds a little more tightly.

Would she do that? Or would she think she was far enough off the ground that no one could see in?

Maybe she wouldn’t bother. After all, glancing around, he thought his was the only window with the perfect vantage point to be spying on her this way and if the B&B had been empty for some time while it was being renovated… Well, she might not have worried about anyone looking in on her.