Rachel Lee - No Ordinary Hero

But she caught his hesitation, and he saw her fair cheeks color faintly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You just got home and I’ve already taken too much of your time.”

This time he didn’t hear a dismissal. Far from it: this was genuine courtesy. And it warmed him.

“I’d love that coffee if it’s not too much trouble.”

She hopped up from the bed, clearly pleased. “No trouble at all. In fact, I need to make dinner for myself, so why don’t I just make it for both of us.”

She hurried from the room, apparently intent on doing just that. He remained a moment longer, wondering if he’d just put his foot in it for both of them.

But the sadness in the house called to him, and he couldn’t help thinking that, in her own way, Del was probably as lonely a soul as he was.

And that called to him, too.

In the big scheme of things, impulsively inviting a neighbor to stay for a cobbled-together dinner probably didn’t amount to much. But for Del it was a big step. She liked to know her neighbors, yes, but rarely socialized beyond the most casual conversations. Not since the accident.

Once she’d been quite engaged with friends and a social life, but since Don’s death she had begun to note how she had narrowed her world and limited the people she allowed to become close. In fact, she had even let close friends go, slowly, simply by not keeping up with them.

Afraid to make new connections because she was afraid of more pain? Yeah, and she knew it. But it didn’t bother her. She had more than enough to occupy herself, and she could justify narrowing the scope of her life by the need to take care of Colleen.

So in the big scheme of things, asking Mike Windwalker to join her for dinner was nothing. In her scheme of things it seemed like a huge step. But, she assured herself as she began to pull things from the fridge and cupboards, it really was a minor thing. He’d offered to help her get an appropriate kitten for Colleen. Asking him to stay for a run-of-the-mill dinner hardly seemed out of line.

And maybe it was time for her to pull at least one foot out of her self-imposed rut. She wasn’t opposed to healing—she just didn’t seem to have time for it. Maybe she needed to make time, for the sakes of both her daughter and herself.

“What can I do to help?” Mike asked as he entered the kitchen.

“Have a seat and keep me company.” She looked over her shoulder at him and said frankly, “I’ve turned myself into a hermit. It would be good for me to start practicing my social skills again.”

He smiled as he pulled out a chair at the small table and sat. “I probably could use some of the same myself.”

“I doubt it. You deal with people all day long. I deal with wood, plaster, paint and noxious chemicals. They don’t talk back.”

A chuckle escaped him. “You picked quite a profession.”

“I enjoy it. I like working with my hands and solving the problems that go along with restoring a house.”

He was silent a moment, then asked carefully, “Why’d you turn into a hermit?”

She faced him then, folding her arms and leaning back against the counter. “Truth or social quip?”

“I vastly prefer the truth to social ice skating.”

At that she felt a smile tip up the corners of her mouth. A smile she hadn’t expected. “Truth it is, then. My husband was killed in the accident that paralyzed Colleen. You know what they say about once burned, twice shy? I seem to have applied that lesson to everything except Colleen.”

“I can definitely see how that might happen. I have a similar story, but I’ll leave that for another time.”

She could see his barriers snap into place, and her curiosity itched. But okay, she was willing to observe his boundaries. She expected the same courtesy for herself.

“Fair enough,” she agreed and turned back to the counter. But she couldn’t help wondering what his story was. “I hope you like salad.”

“Any way it’s made.”

“Good.” Because that was all she had planned tonight, a green salad with some leftover grilled chicken breast and a choice of bottled dressings. Her time was so limited these days that she stuck with basics, the quicker and easier the better, her only nod being to the healthfulness of what she prepared.

As she was standing at the counter slicing tomatoes, a bang sounded through the house.

She whirled around, her heart accelerating, and found Mike looking upward. “Door slamming,” he said. “Do you have windows open or a fan on?”

“Not right now. I didn’t open anything when I came home.”

He rose. “Stay here. I’ll go look.”

“Like hell,” she answered. She’d been using her chef’s knife to slice, and she seated it more firmly in her grip. A weapon.

He didn’t argue with her as she followed him. For that she gave him points.

“Sounded like it was from upstairs,” he remarked quietly.

“It did,” she agreed. In the hallway it was easy to see at a glance that all the doors stood wide open, the way they’d been left. Mike glanced at her, acknowledging that he’d noticed, too.

And then he started up the stairs, stepping to the outside of the risers so as not to make noise. She followed his example.

But at the top of the stairs, they could see all the doors were open, just as they’d been left.

He spoke. “Could something in the attic have made that sound?”

“There’s nothing up there. Not so much as a box.”

They both stood for a minute, listening, but no other sound disturbed the utter silence of the house.

“It must have come from outside.” But even as Del spoke the dismissal, she knew she was lying to herself. That noise had come from inside, not from without. And there was no mistaking the sound of one of these solid oak doors slamming.

“Well,” said Mike slowly, apparently agreeing with her thought if not her words, “if one of those doors slammed open it would have been hard enough to leave some evidence.”

Del watched as he checked in every room. She didn’t need to look for herself because she knew exactly what the sound was, and it wasn’t a door opening. As often as she had the windows open and fans going, she absolutely knew how these doors sounded when they slammed shut, and it wasn’t the same as when they got caught on a gust and were pushed open. Not the same at all.

Mike returned in only a few moments. “Let me check the attic,” he said.

She looked at him, realizing he wasn’t criticizing her, understanding that he was genuinely concerned someone other than the two of them might be inside the house. Heck, the back of her own neck was prickling with that suspicion.

But surely if someone were in the house, they would have discovered it on their walk-through. Unless, as Mike apparently feared, someone was in the attic.

God, the idea made her skin crawl. She waited with forced patience as Mike pulled down the overhead ladder to the attic and climbed up. She heard him flip the switch which turned on three bulbs that hung from the rafters from one end of the attic to another. He reappeared only a minute later.

“Nobody could hide up there unless they’re six inches tall.”

“I know.” And somehow that only made this worse.

Noises for no reason? She’d lived in this house for over two months now, and she knew its sounds as intimately as she knew her own heartbeat. That had been the sound of an oak door slamming. Hard. And in the usual way, they wouldn’t do that even with the windows open and the fans blowing, even with a relatively strong breeze in the house.

Inevitably, she thought about the sounds Colleen had been hearing and tried to put it together. But it made no sense.

Mike closed the attic trapdoor and looked at her, his gaze trailing down to the knife she held. “Loaded for bear?” he asked lightly.