going to need some help.”
“You sound sure of that.”
Whatever she answered, Cord missed. He wasn’t used to feeling thrown off balance, but she was sure as hell doing it to him. Nothing about her was what he’d been led to expect-particularly once he saw her moving around with her jacket off.
She was still wearing clothes that would work on a nun’s runway. Baggy blue sweater, hanging way past her hips. Skinny jeans. Sloppy socks. Her blond hair was clipped out of the way, wisping all over the place. But…when she walked, when she moved, he could see there were no extra pounds under the sweater.
She had a slim waist. Serious breasts-not huge, not blatant, but she couldn’t totally conceal a downright arresting figure, even under those clothes. The legs weren’t long-she was shorter than a shrimp-but the proportions were right. And maybe she wasn’t into face paint and all, but her skin was irresistibly soft, her mouth as kissable as any he’d ever seen, her eyes expressive and gorgeous-at least until she smashed a pair of black-rimmed glasses on her nose.
She wasn’t Jon’s type of woman, for damn sure. There was no shine, no dazzle, no trimmings on the surface. She clearly wasn’t remotely embarrassed about her cluttered place, nor was she running around to fix her hair or smack on lipstick.
She just seemed…real.
Cord wished he could shake off the foggy confusion in his head. He hadn’t thought of Zoe in over a year, but now he did-because she was such an elegant example of his poor judgment of women. He’d thought she was the real thing once upon a time, too.
He knew better than to trust anyone too fast-much less to trust his own instincts.
“Cord?” Sophie had clearly been trying to snare his attention for a good minute or two.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about my brother.”
“Of course you were.” Her eyes softened in sympathy. “I’ll quit babbling, just give you the box of mail. And you can tell me what you decide about Caviar, whenever you get around to it. Right now I assume you’re going across the hall to Jon’s-”
“Yes.”
“So bang on the door if you need anything.”
Sophie started humming the minute she closed the door.
For a few moments there, Cord had made her feel uneasy. He just seemed to, well, look at her. Really look. As if he were interested. As if he saw something beyond the black-framed glasses and sisterly smiles and ordinary person.
She retrieved her coffee and plunked herself down at the kitchen table, determined to get an hour or two of translating work done. Naturally, Caviar immediately leaped onto the tabletop and sank, purring, on top of the files she was trying to read. She stroked him absently, musing that probably her restlessness around Cord had an entirely different reason.
Cord was a hunk. Naturally, he’d made her blood spin a little. He had that all-guy walk, the biceps, the crooked smile. He was way beyond adorable. He was sharp, smart, dangerous-looking.
As worrisome as that observation should have been, she yawned as she batted Caviar’s paw from the computer screen. Her avatar shot up with the familiar adage: “There’s no such thing as being too safe.”
Her sisters claimed it was her mantra, which was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men. One of the reasons the traveling in her job had started to nag was that she really wanted a chance to find a guy, settle down, have some kids. But she wanted a man like…well, like her dad. Too many men out there today were all about themselves, treating sex with the casualness of an after-dinner brandy.
She grabbed a pen, scooched Caviar another inch off the papers and heard the phone ring. She picked it up.
No one there, just a hangup.
She settled back down for a solid twenty minutes, when the landline rang again. Again she picked it up.
Again, there was no one on the other side.
Abruptly she stood up, rubbed her hands down her thighs. Not that she spooked easily…but she spooked easily. She had from the time of her parents’ death, but her next-door neighbor’s death had certainly brought her nerves out of storage. No matter how certain the police were that Jon’s death was an accident, Sophie still felt something more had happened.
As if to punctuate her edginess, she jumped when she heard the sudden rap on her front door.
Cord stood on the other side. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…” Caviar shot between her legs, through his and into the open door of Jon’s apartment. Cord stared after the loose feline, then back at her, frowning at her expression. “What’s wrong? I mean, besides the cat.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“Too much rain. Not enough sun.” It was a dumb thing to say, but abruptly she realized her heart had picked up a new, exuberant pounding-not from fear this time. It was from being inches too close to Cord. That problem, thankfully, was readily fixable. “I’ll chase after Caviar. The thing is, he’s used to being able to shoot back and forth between the two apartments-Oh.” Midflight, she stopped abruptly. “I forgot to ask why you knocked on the door. What do you need?”
“Do you know anything about the fancy technology my brother set up in his place?”
“Like what?” She forgot being spooked. The groan in his voice was just funny. Pretty clearly, Cord wasn’t the kind of man who tolerated frustration well-or enjoyed asking anyone for help.
She identified the crisis two seconds after entering Jon’s apartment.
She’d encountered precisely the same problem the first time she babysat for Caviar. The light switch on the living room east wall didn’t turn on lights. It had been rewired to turn on Ravel’s “Bolero,” close the living room drapes, and start the gas-lit fireplace.
She hiked across the room to the light switch by the drapes, hit it.
The seductive music quit. The gas-lit fire fizzled out. Only the drapes stayed closed.
“What the hell was that?” Cord murmured.
“You don’t recognize a staged seduction scene when you see it?”
He scraped a hand through his hair. “Um…to tell you the truth, no.”
The thought seeped into her mind that Cord really wouldn’t stage anything artificial or contrived with a woman. He wouldn’t need to. But she shifted her attention back on track. “You had to know your brother loved gadgets. I always wondered why he didn’t make his living as an inventor. Good grief, what’s that smell?”
Normally, she’d have waited for an answer before charging into someone else’s space, but it was fairly obvious that Cord-no matter how smart-was way, way over his head. No one had been inside the place since the police investigation, and naturally their prime concern hadn’t been housekeeping. She had a key, but since Caviar was already safe at her place, she figured she didn’t have a reason-or right-to use it.
The bottom line, though, was a symphony of ghastly smells emanating from the kitchen. The sources were easy enough to identify-an uncleaned litter box, some garbage rotting in the disposal and trash, and then there was the opened refrigerator door, which Cord had obviously been trying to clean out.
“That was where I was working,” he said. “Obviously, I couldn’t do anything else until I cleaned out the rotten fruit and meat, and it was pretty disgusting, so I threw open the window and then walked into the other room for some fresh air. Only, I turned on the living room light-”
“And immediately got stripper music,” she said wryly.
He washed a hand over his face. “Look. The smells have to go. And then the place has to be completely aired out before I can pretend to tackle anything else. I don’t suppose you’d be up for a walk somewhere? Lunch?”
“I don’t think…” But she hesitated. “You want to talk about your brother,” she murmured compassionately.
It was his turn to hesitate. “Yeah. Of course I do.”
“Okay then. We’ll just take a quick break, all right?”
“Right.”
