“Your puppies are cute.”
Natalia watched the dogs collide, then tumble across the grass, legs tangled together, and almost smiled. “They’re not mine. I found them.”
“Finders keepers doesn’t apply?”
“Mrs. Wyndham says no.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“Joe’s gonna keep them. First he said no, but then he got distracted and said okay.” Natalia gave a tiny grimace of a smile and grudgingly added, “Thanks.”
So Liz’s appearance had been enough of a distraction to make Joe agree to take two dogs he didn’t want. It wasn’t a warm welcome; she never expected those.
But it was something.
Raven was late coming into the shop. Joe waited on a few after-work customers, hiding his impatience to leave. Usually when he got antsy, he went for a bike ride. A fast twenty-five miles could work it right out of him. This evening he didn’t have that option, at least not until he went home and faced Natalia, her puppies and her questions about Liz Dalton.
He couldn’t believe Liz had tracked him down. When he left Chicago, he’d cut off contact with pretty much everyone but his parents, and they’d moved away, too, soon after. A few aunts and uncles knew where he’d gone, but most of them wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Josh. Especially not Josh.
Besides, he didn’t want to think that Josh was important enough to Liz that she’d bothered to track him down.
There’s no accounting for taste, his grandmother used to say.
A muffled thud from the storeroom indicated Raven’s arrival. He walked into the room, stopping so suddenly he practically toppled over. If he didn’t know she was the only other person with a key to the shop, he would have thought a stranger had wandered in.
Gone was the jet-black hair that looked like it came straight from an ink bottle, and in its place was a warm, natural-looking brown. He’d never seen Raven with a hair color even close to natural. All the excess holes-lip, nose, brow, ears-were empty, and her makeup actually flattered her instead of making her look like a walking corpse. Add a green shirt and faded jeans in place of her usual black, and she looked normal. He’d never seen her looking normal.
First Liz Dalton showing up, then Raven transforming into the girl next door…This couldn’t be good.
“What?” she asked hostilely, snapping Joe out of his shock. Hostility he was used to.
“Nothing. I’m out of here. Call me if you need anything.” He wheeled his bike into the alley. As he tightened the strap of the helmet and swung one leg over the bike frame, he wondered what was responsible for Raven’s new look.
Love or, at least, lust.
Look at Liz. She hadn’t changed her appearance for Josh, but she’d surely lowered her standards. Women like her just didn’t get involved with men like him. She was too smart, classy, law-abiding. At least, she had been. Who knew what all those months with Josh had done to her?
Now that he was gone, why was she looking for him? To renew the relationship? To punish him? To reclaim something he’d taken of hers?
Joe regretted not asking.
His edginess still sharp, he rode onto Oglethorpe, then made a left onto Calhoun. Too soon, he braked to turn into the Wyndham gate and bumped along the gravel road until he reached his house. Natalia’s lime-green bike was parked next door, but there was no sign of her or the dogs he’d agreed to take in the stupidity of his fog over seeing Liz. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d decided that trying to hide them from Miss Abigail was worth a shot…though he couldn’t imagine anything escaping the old woman’s attention.
He’d reached the top of the steps when a screen door thumped shut. He was accustomed to neighbors on either side, but this sound had come from the other side of the yard. It was only Tuesday, so neither granddaughter would be home from college, and the middle house had stood empty longer than he’d lived there.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He’d done too damn much of that in the first six months out of the hospital; a balloon popping had been enough to make him dive for cover. But once he’d come to Copper Lake, the uneasiness had faded. He’d felt safe here.
But if Liz could find him, so could the Mulroney brothers, the Chicago businessmen who’d proven once that they couldn’t tell the difference between him and Josh. Maybe if they did come around, he’d have time to show them the scars left from their previous run-in as proof. If they didn’t kill him first and look later.
Slowly he turned. And stared.
Oh, man, hadn’t he thought on seeing Raven that life was taking a turn for the worse?
Liz was seating herself on the top step of the cottage directly across the lawn. She’d changed into really short denim cutoffs that made her mile-long legs look two miles long, and topped them with a plain white T-shirt like those that filled his top dresser drawer. His had never looked that good.
Her olive skin damn near glowed in the late-afternoon sun, and her hair gleamed blue-black. She’s Italian, Josh had said with a wink and a leer. You know what that means. Hot-blooded as hell.
Just looking at her made Joe’s blood hot.
He should go inside his house. Lock the door. Pull the shades. Do his best, damn it, to pretend that he hadn’t seen her again, that she wasn’t sitting fifty feet away, that she’d never been Josh’s girl.
Instead he slowly walked down the steps and across the yard. The grass was thick and smelled sweetly of spring and the promise of summer. He stopped ten feet from the porch and watched as Liz took a drink of bottled water.
Big mistake. He shouldn’t be watching anything involving a mouth as sexy as hers. The plumping of her plum-colored lips as they closed around the bottle neck, the movement of muscles as the cold water flowed down her throat, the slight grip of pink-tipped fingers around the bottle’s sweaty plastic…
Finally-thank God-she lowered the bottle and met his gaze. “Hello, neighbor.”
He swallowed hard, his own mouth suddenly dry. “Do you know how many millions of those bottles wind up in landfills and how long they take to decompose? The least you could do is buy a gallon jug and drink it from a glass. Better yet, buy a filtering system, or hey, here’s an idea-drink from the tap. It won’t kill you.”
She blinked, then looked at the bottle. “Sorry my drinking habits offend you.”
Heat flushed through him. He wasn’t a crusader. He did what he could to be environmentally responsible, but he didn’t push it on others. But instead of apologizing, he asked, “Why are you here?”
“I told you. I’m looking for Josh.”
“And I told you, I haven’t seen or heard from him.”
Her smile was small and tight. She didn’t believe him. She thought he was protecting his seven-minutes-older brother. That just proved how little she knew him.
Of course, they didn’t know each other at all. He’d seen her four times before the Mulroneys had tried to kill him in Josh’s place. Four excruciating evenings with Josh between them.
Except that last time. For a few short minutes they’d been alone in the room, and the tension between them had been unbearable. They had almost touched that night-had almost kissed. But she had whispered exactly the right words to stop him, and he’d bolted from the room before his brother had returned.
Remember Josh.
That was probably the only time in his life he’d managed to forget him.
“So what do you think? That if you hang around here long enough, Josh will show up and prove me a liar?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve mistaken me for my brother. I don’t lie.”
“Never?” she asked, one brow arched.