Naughty Neighbor

Chapter 4

Louisa awakened to the aroma of bacon frying and the unpleasant sensation of having a crushing weight on her chest. The weight turned out to be Spike. He opened his yellow cat eyes and stared at her for several seconds before his lids dropped closed. Louisa shifted under him, and he growled low in his throat. Two masculine hands reached over Louisa’s head and lifted the cat off her.

“Morning,” Pete said.

Louisa tilted her head back to see him. “What happened?”

“You had a glass and a half of wine and fell asleep.”

She took a fast survey of her condition. She was on his couch, fully clothed, under a quilt. “Have I slept here all night?”

“Yup.”

She sighed. “I’m not very good at drinking.”

She tugged at her skirt and swung her feet onto the floor, still swaddled in the quilt. “I make up for my alcohol intolerance with my temper. I inherited the belligerent gene.”

He handed her a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a plate heaped with bacon and scrambled eggs.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

He slouched in a chair across from her. He wasn’t feeling especially maternal. He was feeling sexually frustrated and emotionally unstable. He’d spent the better part of the night staring at his bedroom ceiling, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life, wondering what it was about Louisa Brannigan that had him suddenly feeling dissatisfied and lonely.

He could easily have awakened her and shuffled her off to her own apartment, but the simple truth was, he liked having her in his living room. Spike was a good friend, but he was small. He didn’t fill the apartment the way Louisa did. Pete liked the way Louisa sighed and rustled when she slept. It was a comforting sound…like a crackling fire on a cold day, or rain against a windowpane.

She drank the juice and munched on a strip of bacon. “It feels strange not to have to rush off to work.”

“What’ll you do today?”

“Get my car fixed. Then I suppose I should start thinking about getting another job.”

“I have a deal for you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s a good deal.”

“I bet.”

“I want to stick with this pig thing, but I’m running low on time. I have rewrites to do on a screenplay that’s going into production next week.”

She took a bite of egg. “And?”

“And I’ll give you a month’s free rent, if you’ll hold off taking another job for a few days. I have my own file on Maislin. I’d like you to go through it and see if you can find a connection between him and Nolan Bishop. Then I’d like you to go to the Post building on L Street and read back issues on either side of the pig story. See if you can talk to any of the reporters that covered the story.”

The offer appealed to Louisa. The detecting part sounded like fun, and she couldn’t turn her nose up at a month’s free rent. Her savings account was going to be fast depleted without a job.

“Okay, it’s a deal. What am I searching for at the Post?”

“I don’t know. Keep an open mind.”

She finished her breakfast and stood to leave, groaning when she looked down at her rumpled suit. “I’ll take a fast shower and get right to work.”

It was almost noon when Louisa finished reading Pete’s file on Stuart Maislin. Spike was back to sleeping on the kitchen table, amidst the piles of news clippings and handwritten notes. Pete was slouched in a padded office chair, staring at the computer screen. He leaned forward and began typing. The soft click of computer keys carried across the room.

Louisa crossed her arms on the table in front of her and watched him, thinking writing was a very quiet, very solitary profession. She’d expected the creative process to be more flamboyant, but Pete Streeter went about his rewrites in an orderly businesslike fashion. There was no hair pulling, no ranting, no empty whiskey glasses littering the work area, or balled-up, discarded sheets of paper spread across the floor. Sometimes his lips moved, but the sounds he made, if any, were soft, polite murmurings as he listened to the music of his written word. All this was very much at odds with the image she’d formed of him, and she found herself fascinated by this serious, introspective piece of his personality.

He finished his typing, stood, stretched, and looked over at Louisa. He raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“I’m done,” Louisa said.

“Find anything?”

She tore the top two sheets off a yellow legal pad. “I have two pages of possible connections between Maislin and Bishop. Most of the connections are pretty obscure.”

He moved behind her to pour himself a cup of coffee. “What looks good?”

“Actually, nothing looks good. It’s possible that Nolan was just bowing to Maislin’s wishes.”

He looked at her over the rim of his coffee mug. “Is Nolan that much of a wimp?”

“He’s that much of a politician. There’s a lot of information here on Maislin’s finances and business associates. Why?”

“I have an option on Judd King’s book, Power Players. It suggests misconduct among some of the most influential members of Congress. The book is fiction, but supposedly King knew what he was talking about. He died three weeks after the book hit the stores. Brain tumor…maybe. When I took the option on the book, I decided I needed to gather background information. Maislin’s profile fits one of the men in King’s book.”

“How does the pig figure into all of this?” Louisa asked.

“I haven’t a clue.” He took a jar of chunky peanut butter and a jar of marshmallow fluff from the refrigerator. He set out a couple plates and a loaf of white bread.

Louisa slid a glance at the gooey marshmallow and peanut butter.

“Lunch,” Pete said, smearing a thick coating of marshmallow onto a slice of bread. “This stuff is great. You can use it in everything.” He added a slice of peanut butter bread and slapped the two halves together. He put the sandwich on a plate and set it front of Louisa. He poured her a glass of milk and gave her a banana.

Louisa bit down on her lower lip to keep from laughing. She felt as if she were back in grade school with her Snoopy lunch box and red plastic thermos. “Thank you,” she said politely.

Pete gave a sandwich to Spike. Then he made another for himself, settling into the chair across from Louisa.

“This is an interesting sandwich,” Louisa said, struggling to keep her tongue from sticking to the roof of her mouth. She drank half a glass of milk and secretly felt her fillings to make sure they were intact.

“If I get bogged down in a script, peanut butter and marshmallow always picks me up. It’s sort of inspirational.”

Louisa continued to chew. It wasn’t bad, but it needed chocolate. “So, did you eat this all the time when you were a kid?”

“Never. I was too tough to eat this sissy food. I ate burgers and beer and bologna sandwiches.”

“I mean when you were seven.”

He stared at her and for a moment his face lost its usual animation. His eyes seemed flat, his mouth tightened. Then the humor returned. “I was talking about seven.”

“You’re serious.”

“Pretty much. My mother died when I was five. I was raised in an all-male household.”

He thought back to the ugly yellow clapboard house on Slant Street in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. It hadn’t been a terrible childhood, but it hadn’t been great, either. Mostly, it had been lonely and lacking the soft touches a woman brought to a home. By the time he was in first grade, his two older brothers had already quit school and gone to work in the steel mill with his dad.

Back then, in his neighborhood, nobody cared about latchkey kids. Kids grew up fast on Slant Street, and it didn’t matter that no one was home to supervise homework. The future was preordained: The men worked in the mill. They married young, and there were no subtleties to the mating process.

It was a matter of personal pride and masculine obligation for every Slant Street male past the age of puberty to get his hand and whatever else he could manage under as many skirts as possible. When a girl got pregnant, she singled out her best prospect, they got married in full regalia at St. Stanislaus, had the reception in the firehouse, and settled into the tedium of premature old age.

And that would have been his future, Pete thought, but thanks to his good luck, none of the women who’d gone past his doorstep had gotten pregnant. And by the time he was eighteen, his reputation was so bad, his police record so lengthy with misdemeanors that he couldn’t get a job in the mill. Take it to the limit. Never do anything halfway. He’d been a truly rotten kid. Even his own brothers, who’d been pretty bad in their times, couldn’t touch him.

Louisa finished her sandwich and ate her banana. “You ever been married? You ever live with anyone?”

“Only Spike.”

That explained it. She was beginning to understand the origin of some of his more annoying habits. He was severely lacking in female guidance. He didn’t know any of the niceties of life. Dollars to doughnuts he left the toilet seat up.

She put her dishes in the dishwasher and stacked the files in the cardboard box. “I’m off to the Post.”

“Be careful.”

“Of what?”

“Mean dogs, dirty old men, drunk drivers…” He sighed with disgust at his own foolishness, grabbed hold of the front of her baggy University of Maryland sweatshirt, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

She tasted like dessert. Life didn’t get much better, Pete thought. This was the filet of existence. He opened his eyes and realized she was staring at him.

“Something wrong?”

Her face had turned scarlet. She looked down at the sweatshirt still bunched in his hand. “You’ve accidentally unhooked the front closure to my bra.”

His grin was lazy, his eyes soft with a mixture of sensuality and amusement. It had been no accident. He had one of the most talented thumbs in the country…maybe in the world.

“Sorry,” he said, releasing the shirt. “Guess I got carried away.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. He was finally in love. No doubt about it.

Louisa buttoned her navy pea coat up to her throat as she left the Post building and walked west to the Farragut North Metro station. She would have been done with the papers a lot sooner if Pete hadn’t kissed her after lunch, she thought. Her mind had been stuck on it all afternoon. The kiss had been warm and friendly with just a suggestion of passion. In fact, it had been almost playful. Just what you’d expect from a man who ate marshmallow goop for lunch.

Still, it had surprised her. She’d been mentally prepared for a different sort of kiss…a much more aggressive sort. She’d been ready to firmly reject his advances, and it hadn’t been necessary. She reluctantly admitted she was experiencing an emotion that felt a lot like disappointment.

She took the escalator to the underground lobby, bought a fare card, and passed through an electronic gate, telling herself there was no reason to be depressed just because she didn’t inspire flaming passion in the man. After all, she’d told him on several occasions how much she disliked him. And she’d warned him against groping. It was just that she didn’t know what to make of the kiss, she told herself. It had been so…happy.

She was still thinking about the kiss when she knocked on his front door a half hour later.

“Reporting in on the newspaper assignment, sir,” she said when he opened the door, the theory being when discombobulated over a sexual attraction, resort to juvenile behavior.

He closed his front door behind her, unbuttoned her jacket, pulled her to him by her lapels, and lowered his mouth to hers. It was a hello, welcome-home kiss. It was an I-like-you kiss. It was pretty damn happy. It was grossly disappointing. All lips and no tongue and much too short. Louisa swayed a little when he stepped away from her. “Darn,” she said.

“Something wrong?”

“You unhooked my bra again.”

“Must be a faulty clasp.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t trust you.”

“Boy, Lou, that really hurts. Here I’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day, making a nutritious home-cooked meal for you, and I get nothing but insults.”

Louisa sniffed the air. It smelled wonderful-like spaghetti sauce and garlic bread. She trudged up the stairs and crossed to the kitchen area. The table was set for two with a white linen tablecloth, wineglasses, and lavender candles. There was a daisy on her plate. It only had one petal left. Without thinking, she automatically played the game and plucked the remaining petal, silently chanting “He loves me.”

“It’s true,” he said.

She rolled her eyes.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Not for an instant.”

Smart woman, he thought. He could hardly believe it himself. He dropped spaghetti into a pot of boiling water, took two salads from the refrigerator and garlic bread from the oven. He filled the wineglasses with sparkling water. “Did you find anything interesting in any of the papers?”

She hung her coat on the coatrack and took a seat at the table. “No. There was just that one little article about the pig. Nothing about Maislin. Nothing I could pick up about any of his related interests.”

She watched him work at the stove, and thought it was nice that he’d gone to some trouble for her. He’d bought a daisy and set the table with linen and crystal. She wasn’t sure of his motives, but she appreciated the effort all the same. And she had to admit, she enjoyed the companionship.

Her gaze drifted the length of him, and desire rushed through her in a scalding wave. She shook her head and muttered a warning to herself.

The intensity of the attraction was inappropriate. She didn’t take sex lightly, and he wasn’t a man she’d choose for a serious relationship. It was a waste of perfectly good hormones, she thought. She’d waited all these years for her body to respond to a man, and wouldn’t you know it would be to a wrong number like Pete Streeter. There was no justice in the world.

Pete noticed she was muttering again. He brought the hot food to the table and watched for a few seconds while she conversed with herself. She was a little crazy, he decided. A jillion women in the world, and he had to fall in love with one who was crazy. It figured.

She smacked herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Unh!”

“Now what?”

“And another thing,” she said. “I’m not going to sleep with you, so you can just forget it.”

He grinned and passed her the spaghetti. She was crazy all right, but it was kind of cute. “Of course you’ll sleep with me.”

A look of astonishment appeared on her face, and her mouth fell open.

He sighed and forked spaghetti onto her plate. Probably he shouldn’t have said that, he thought. Sometimes it didn’t pay to be entirely honest with women. He helped himself to the spaghetti and realized she was still sitting there in dumbfounded apoplexy so he spooned sauce over both their plates and added grated cheese.

He didn’t know why she looked so disconcerted. It was obvious they were going to be lovers. It was just a matter of time. True, she didn’t think he was all that great right now, but he was sure she’d come around.

Louisa snapped her mouth closed and stabbed her fork into her spaghetti. Of all the nerve! If she wasn’t so hungry, she’d get up and walk right out of there, she told herself, but no sense turning her back on a good meal. She tapped her fork against her plate and narrowed her eyes. “How can you be so sure we’ll end up in bed?”

How could he be sure? Every instinct he possessed told him so. Being next to her was like getting trapped in a force field of carnal electricity. Every molecule in his body hummed with desire. And when he kissed her, he could feel her need for him. It was there. He was sure of it. Did she want to hear any of that? Probably not. He shrugged and took a piece of warm bread. “I like to think positive.”

Another whack on her forehead. “Unh!”

“I guess that means I said the wrong thing again.”

“You have much success with women?”

“Well, I don’t like to brag…”

Louisa held her hand up. “Stop. Forget I asked.”

It was a dumb question, anyway, she thought. Women probably threw themselves in front of his car for five minutes of attention. Probably, he had so many women following him around that he had to beat them off with a stick. Of course, that was because they didn’t know about his laundry habits.

“Maybe we should change the subject. Maybe we should get back to the pig problem.”

“I’d like to take a look at the guy who delivered the pig. His name’s Bucky Dunowski. He works at the pig farm as a security guard, and he lives a few miles south of the facility, just over the state line.”

“You think he became attached to Miss Piggy and took her home?”

“Anything’s possible. The pig farm is about an hour’s drive from here…maybe a little longer. How about if we go to Pennsylvania tonight and check out ol’ Bucky.”

“Tonight?”

“Sure. It’s perfect. We can skulk around in the dark, looking for pigs. No one will ever see us.” He didn’t really think he’d find a pig in Bucky’s backyard, but skulking around in the dark with Louisa sounded like a good idea.

“No! Definitely not. It was bad enough lying to Amy Maislin. I am not going to Pennsylvania with you. And I am absolutely, positively not going to skulk.”

Two hours later, Louisa slouched low in the Porsche as she looked for house numbers painted on mailboxes. They were in a mixed neighborhood of small, not especially well-kept bungalows and larger, newer homes. The houses were set on heavily treed lots, frequently separated by patches of woods. The street was dark and windy. Louisa shook her head in disbelief. Against her better judgment she was about to spy on Bucky Dunowski.

Her mouth tightened into a grimace as she glanced over at Pete. His profile was outlined in moonlight, all mysterious shadows and hard, masculine planes. He was obscenely handsome and hopelessly well adjusted. He also had brass doodles and didn’t know the meaning of the word no. Not the sort of man she wanted to become romantically involved with, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time.

Unfortunately, that was an intellectual decision and had little bearing on her emotions. The truth was, Pete Streeter was looking better with each passing second. It was one of those miracles of nature-romantic dementia. And it occurred whenever she was within arm’s reach of Streeter. His laundry habits were seeming trivial. His inability to find his own parking space was becoming endearing. The fit of his jeans overshadowed all else.

She rested her forehead against the side window and sighed.

“Something wrong?”

“Only everything.”

He patted her knee. “Good to know you’re not one of those sickening optimists.”

She noticed his hand was lingering on her leg. She should call his attention to it, she thought, but she wasn’t sure she wanted him to remove it. His hand was warm and reassuring, and it was sending pleasurable sensations to other parts of her body. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed those kinds of sensations. Now that she gave it serious thought, maybe she’d never experienced them. Certainly the feelings were beyond her memory.

They rolled past two mailboxes before Louisa realized one of them must have been Bucky’s. “Hold up,” she said. “I think we just missed it.”

Pete pulled onto the shoulder a few yards down the road. “This is a good place to park. It’s dark and fairly secluded.” He slid his arm across the back of her seat. “We don’t want to park where we can be seen,” he said, trailing his hand over her shoulder, down her coat sleeve.

He felt like Goldilocks, settling in to eat Little Bear’s bowl of porridge. After all that previous sampling, he’d finally found a woman who was just right. The knowledge was more intuitive, more emotional than rational, but he’d always trusted his instincts, and he saw no reason not to trust them now.

He saw that she was very still, not moving from his touch. She was making decisions, he thought. She was trying to come to terms with her own feelings. He hoped she decided on positive action.

“You know, maybe we were hasty about this pig business. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to go chasing around at night,” he said. Maybe it would be better to stay here and take our clothes off, he thought. Disrobing in a Porsche wasn’t his idea of the perfect prelude to lovemaking, but he was willing to sacrifice comfort for the good of the cause. Besides, there was something to be said for spontaneity, right? And there was something to be said for sanity, and the fact that he was going to lose his if the cause didn’t get served soon.

He tentatively caressed a silky tendril of her hair, and the contact sent affection surging through him. The affection tempered lust and provoked an attack of conscience. He knew he was rushing things. They’d only known each other for a few days, and she was still laboring under the delusion that she didn’t like him. Encouraging her to take her clothes off probably wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t want to be accused of being pushy and of only having one thing on his mind…especially if it was true.

His fingertip followed the curve of her ear down to the line of her jaw, and the contact sent out another shot of desire. He was engaging in self-indulgent torture, he thought. He’d be better off not to touch her at all, but he was incapable of exercising that much self-control. Nothing short of cutting off his hands would keep them from reaching out for Louisa. He skimmed his thumb over the pulse point, and his fingers curled around the nape of her neck.

He had wonderful hands, Louisa concluded, strong and sensual. She watched the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing was slightly labored. She knew she was the cause, and the knowledge excited her. She was succumbing to the intoxication of the moment, she thought dimly. She was falling victim to the physical attraction, and she was undoubtedly making a big mistake.

She considered her surroundings and decided the mistake would most likely be little as opposed to big. It would be incredibly uncomfortable and next to impossible to make a big mistake in a Porsche. Actually, his Porsche was sort of an automotive chastity belt, she decided. It was the ideal setting to indulge in an exploratory kiss and not have to worry about losing control of the situation.

“Well,” she said.

Her voice was husky and slightly breathless, and Pete felt the single word hanging in the air between them, fat and pregnant with erotic potential. “Well,” he said back, unsure what to do next, afraid if he moved too fast, his fantasy-come-true would pop like a soap bubble.

Louisa curled her fingers into Pete’s jacket and pulled him within inches. He looked like a kid who’d been told he could have ice cream for supper and didn’t believe it.

“So,” she said, “all smoke and no fire, huh?”

“I was under the impression you didn’t want fire.”

She leaned forward until their noses almost touched. “I was under the impression you didn’t care what I wanted. This is a heck of a time to get sensitive.”

He had his seat back, and Louisa on his lap faster than she could formulate a protest. His hand moved under her coat, under her shirt, flesh to heated flesh, and his mouth covered hers in a kiss that made no effort at restraint.

There was fire there, all right. More than she’d expected. Much more than she’d actually wanted. Their tongues tangled, his hand moved higher, and in a flash of panic, Louisa realized this wasn’t the first time Pete Streeter had made a mistake in his Porsche-and the size of the present mistake was much larger than she’d originally anticipated.

It was the last coherent thought she had before passion took over. After that moment there was only heat and need and aching desire. She writhed in his arms as his fingers stroked and inflamed her. She struggled with her clothes and whimpered in despair and delight when his mouth left hers to move lower. But she’d been right. Union was awkward in the cramped quarters.