“I heard what you said to Mrs. Jeffers,” Ginger said, her voice shaking. “Do you really think you can convince Luke to back down?” Tears formed in her eyes. “I don’t want to have to leave, Katie. The boarding house is home to me.”
“And it will stay your home,” Katie said, biting back the first sharp retort that had come to mind. “It’s my boarding house. I set the rules.”
“But Luke...”
“Luke may understand big business, but he doesn’t know a darn thing about my business,” Katie snapped. “I think it’s time we cleared that up.”
“But he told me that if I didn’t pay my rent, he would evict me.”
Katie saw red. “He told you that?” she said incredulously. “He actually used those words?”
Ginger nodded. “He as much as said it before you showed up yesterday. It’s not like I don’t see his point,” she whispered, choking back a sob. “I really do, but Katie, you told me school was important. You made me see that. I can’t go to school and work a full-time job to pay the rent. The hours here are about all I can manage and I’m putting that money away for college.”
“Stop worrying about it. You’re doing exactly what I want you to do. I’ll settle this with Luke.”
Ginger didn’t look particularly reassured by Katie’s declaration. If anything, she looked even more concerned, but whatever doubts she had she kept to herself.
Amazingly enough, so did Peg, who had come through the swinging door just in time to hear most of the conversation. Other than the inscrutable expression on her face, she might have been deaf to the obvious storm her niece intended to stir up. Katie was grateful that for once her aunt intended to let her handle her own problems.
Mr. O’Reilly, however, wasn’t nearly so reticent. He caught Katie on the front porch when she returned to the boarding house later that afternoon.
“I think it’s time we had a talk,” he said, indicating the rocking chair next to him.
Katie sank into it gratefully. After more than six hours on her feet, she was ready to sit down. She looked over at the retired fireman, whose expression was combative, and realized this wasn’t going to be one of the friendly little chats they usually had in the afternoon. She suspected there would be no anecdotes about his heroics as a fireman in Charleston and probably not even the lecture on fire safety that she’d come to expect. The man turned positively rapturous over smoke alarms. He’d personally seen to it that the boarding house had the most technologically advanced ones on the market and he’d done it at his own expense.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Too many rules.”
“What rules?” she inquired warily.
“These rules,” he said, waving a sheet of bright canary yellow paper in front of her. “I found it under my door when I got back to my room earlier. Then your husband made it a point to let me know that he planned to enforce each and every one of them.”
With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Katie reluctantly accepted the piece of paper. “Rules of the Clover Street Boarding House” headed the page. First on the list was the deadline for paying rent, with appropriate penalties for late payment. That was followed by a schedule for using the downstairs rooms that included a 10:00 p.m. curfew on weeknights, 11:00 p.m. on weekends. There were more, but when she came to rule number nine, Katie knew she’d hit on the one that Mr. O’Reilly was most upset about.
“No boarder may raid the refrigerator for between-meal snacks.”
Katie groaned. What the dickens had Luke been thinking of? If he had his way, the boarding house would soon seem no friendlier than a prison. She balled the paper into a wad and said, “I’ll handle this.”
Mr. O’Reilly’s disgruntled expression suggested he didn’t have a lot of faith in her handling her husband. “If you can’t,” he warned, “I’ll be moving out at the end of the week. Life’s too short to be staying where I’m not wanted.”
“Nobody will be moving out,” Katie promised. Unless it was her new husband, she amended, and she might very well be chasing him out with a broom.
Katie couldn’t find any sign of Luke anywhere in the house. All she found were more of those damnable colored sheets of paper, posted everywhere and shoved under every door. He’d probably placed an ad in the Clover weekly as well.
She hunted through the pile of papers on her desk until she found his new business card with the office number on it. She dialed, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for him to pick up. When he finally did, she heard the unexpected sound of a guitar accompanying Tommy’s unmistakable, sexy voice. If she hadn’t been quite so furious, that might have silenced her.
Instead she said in a slow, measured voice, “Get home now, Luke Cassidy, or I won’t be responsible for what you find when you get here.”
Before he could say one way or the other whether he would come, she slammed the phone back into its cradle.
* * *
Luke winced as the sound of the crashing phone reverberated in his ear. Tommy must have caught his reaction, because he stopped strumming his guitar and regarded Luke worriedly.
“Everything okay?”
“Katie seems anxious to see me at home,” he said in what had to be the most massive understatement he’d ever uttered. He’d never heard that particular tone of command in her voice before. He found it exhilarating...and perhaps just the slightest bit worrisome.
Tommy grinned. “Well, well, things must be heating up.”
“You could say that,” Luke said dryly. “Look, I’d better run. We’ll talk more about this music career you want later. Give me a call tonight.”
Tommy’s knowing smile broadened. “Maybe I’ll wait till morning, big brother. Your mood
