LITMIR.BIZ

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door.

      That was okay. Steve could wait. He’d done plenty of that in combat. Sometimes a mission required patient surveillance in order to get good intel.

      Yes, sometimes waiting worked out just fine. It made the ultimate confrontation all the more satisfying.

      Switching on the coffeemaker Saturday morning, Chloe’s gaze lifted to the vintage hand-painted wooden sign she’d put over the sink. Home * Sweet * Home.

      Chloe loved her brick bungalow. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank the Realtor gods for her good fortune in finding it. The instant she’d spotted the For Sale sign planted in the scrubby lawn, she’d immediately called the number listed. Once inside, she’d been won over by the generous rooms and abundance of natural light. She’d envisioned the possibilities instead of being turned off by the negatives, like the dated kitchen in garish green and maroon.

      Nothing, not the chipped molding, scarred hardwood floors or the other blemishes around the house had deterred her. Those were cosmetic things that could be corrected by someone with the ability to look beyond the dull surface to the sound heart beneath it all.

      In the thirties, these homes were the dream houses of working-class Polish, Bohemian, German, Irish and Italian families. Now this one was Chloe’s dream house.

      Some might find the architecture unappealing. She’d heard plenty of people say that the bungalows in this neighborhood all looked the same.

      Chloe found comfort in the dependability of that sameness. Because you knew what you were getting.

      But what you did with it, ah…that’s where the creativity came in.

      Chloe had done plenty with her bungalow. Not as much as she’d like, but she’d made some inroads on her to-do list in the three years since she’d bought it. And she’d done her research with the help of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative. Thousands and thousands of the one and one-half story residences had been built in a semicircle around the city, sometimes called the “Bungalow Belt.”

      Compact in size, well-crafted, efficiently laid out, the house had only needed a bit of rehabbing. Okay, maybe more than a bit. She’d replaced the cracked linoleum floor in the kitchen with black-and-white tile before moving on to the rest of the house, going from the back of the house toward the front, through the dining room and then the living room.

      She hadn’t done it alone. Lynn’s husband was a handyman and he’d done a great job working on Chloe’s house. She’d done a lot of the work herself as well, like stripping the avocado-green paint from the Arts and Crafts-style glass-fronted cabinets in the living room and restoring the natural wood.

      Ditto for the built-in china cabinet in the dining room. The floral-patterned Staffordshire set she’d picked up at a garage sale for ten dollars looked perfectly at home on the cabinet shelves. She paused to straighten the large serving dish next to a delicate teacup and saucer.

      Chloe loved order. No doubt that was a result of the emotionally chaotic circumstances of her childhood. Janis had made it clear to the eight-year-old Chloe that she wasn’t to mess up anything—Janis’s schedule, her austere condo, her plans.

      That wasn’t the kind of order that Chloe wanted. She liked the kind that was warm and welcoming, but had a place for everything. Because that kept things from getting out of control. And Chloe had learned early on not to rock the boat, to fly under the radar and not to get wild or out of control.

      Thinking about wild naturally led her thoughts to Steve and her reaction to his simplest touch last night. Racing hearts were not in her plans. She’d taken a chance with Brad and look how that had ended up. Not good.

      No, it didn’t pay to depend on others for your happiness. A house was a much more reliable thing.

      Her thoughts returned to her bungalow. The living room and dining room were completed but now she had to focus on the kitchen. She’d downloaded information from the Internet about proper restoration, replacing fixtures that didn’t match the period or design of the house was a no-no. Someone at work had told her that one of the home-improvement stores had a big sale coming up, so Chloe was eager to check the sale flyers in her Saturday newspaper.

      Chloe was thinking about kitchen faucets when she opened her front door to grab her newspaper, as she did every Saturday morning. In some places the newspaper was dropped at the sidewalk near the street, but here it was still delivered to the front porch.

      Since she was only wearing her Chicago Bears nightshirt, she let the door provide cover for her while she leaned down to reach…nothing.

      She reached farther…and touched warm flesh.

      “Ahhh!” Startled, Chloe fell backward, ending up in a heap on her foyer floor.

      “Hey, are you okay?” Steve inquired from above her.

      She frantically tugged on the hem of her nightshirt, trying to cover what she could. “What are you doing here?”

      “What are you doing down there?”

      “Looking for dust bunnies,” she retorted tartly before scrambling to her feet.

      “Dust bunnies, huh?” He grinned at her. “Find any?”

      She reached behind her for the afghan Wanda had crocheted for her last Christmas, yanking it from the reading chair and wrapping it around herself. “I did not invite you in,” she pointed out.

      “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

      “I was until you grabbed my hand on the front porch.”

      Steve shrugged, drawing her attention to the broad shoulders beneath his dark pullover. “I thought you were reaching for me.”

      “I was reaching for my newspaper. I didn’t know you were out there. What were you doing out there?”

      “Like I said, I came to talk to you.”

      “About what?”

      “About this disguise of yours.”

      She blinked at him and lifted her chin before tugging the afghan a little tighter around her shoulders, like Queen Victoria gathering her royal robes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

      “Sure you do. I want to know why you were dressed the way you were last night.”

      “And what way might that be?”

      “You know very well what way. Like a frumpy librarian.”

      “Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

      Steve hadn’t expected her to turn the tables on him and put him on the spot. “It doesn’t matter what I was expecting.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because you’re the one who was being deceitful.”

      “In what way?”

      “By making me think you were…”

      “Yes,” she prompted him. “Go on.”

      He sensed dangerous foot-in-mouth quicksand ahead. “That you were something you’re not.”

      “I can assure you, I am a librarian. You saw me at work last night.”

      “I also saw you raiding your fridge at midnight. And I’m seeing you right now.”

      “So?”

      “So you don’t look the same way you did when you came knocking on my grandmother’s door last night. And I want to know why. Why the deception?”

      “It wasn’t a deception. I was merely wearing my costume for the library program last night. The whodunit mystery program, remember? You were there.”

      “Yes, I was there.”

      “Then what’s the problem?”

      “The problem is that

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