LITMIR.BIZ

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the matter, Steffan?” Mr. L. asked when Steve returned.

      “Not a blessed thing,” Steve grumbled, screwing on the new plate. Then, scowling, he gathered his toolbox and headed up the stairs, fighting off a herd of wriggling cocker spaniels…and even the slightest suggestion that the old man was right.

      Like he didn’t have enough stress in his life, what with worrying about the kids, trying to figure out how to balance a million and one obligations. The last thing he needed was some woman who wanted him to make her happy, too. And no, he didn’t feel this way just because love had dragged him into a back alley and left him for dead. He was over Francine. Had been for some time. It was just…well, he just didn’t have time for lonely.

      Let alone the aggravation that invariably accompanied the opposite.

      “Steffan?” wafted up the stairwell a few minutes later, “I need to run to the store. I should be back in plenty of time for my student, but if I’m not, would you mind letting her in?”

      “No problem,” Steve called back, watching out the window a minute later as, like an overfed hamster, the old brown Datsun stuttered out of Mr. Liebowicz’s driveway and crept down the street.

      He’d just finished changing out the fixture when the doorbell’s chime made him jump. Before he could move, though, it rang again, accompanied by a faint, frantic, “Hello? Mr. Liebowicz? It’s Lisa Stone!” followed by the bell being leaned on until Steve thought his head would explode.

      He barreled down the stairs and jerked open the door, only to be nearly knocked over by a streak of overly perfumed blonde shrieking “Bathroom!” on her way past.

      “Straight back, first door to the—”

      “Found it!”

      The bathroom door slammed hard enough to shake the whole house.

      Chapter 2

      Steve and the dogs stood in the open door, staring down the hall, waiting until the aftershocks died down. The blonde wasn’t the only thing that had to go. So did that perfume. Whew.

      “Hey!”

      Distracted, Steve finally noticed the taxi waiting at the curb, the mastifflike driver glowering at him from his window. In what could only be called a daze, Steve wandered out onto the porch, allowing an oblique, disinterested glance at the stuffed shopping bag and canvas tote lolling against one of Mr. Leibowicz’s Kennedy rockers. “You payin’ the fare?” the driver asked.

      But before he could answer, the blonde whooshed back past him and down the porch steps, trailing the scent of about a million flowers in her wake. Shoot, Steve didn’t know a woman could use the bathroom that fast.

      “Of course he’s not paying the fare! Keep your shirt on!”

      For some reason, Steve became transfixed with the way her short hair, like feathers, shifted and twisted in the breeze as she sailed past. The way the soft, sparkly sweater and black pants molded to her figure without strangling it.

      The way she was about to fall off her shoes.

      She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, then blinked a pair of the deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen on a human being, the color of the evening sky just before it swallows the sunset…

      “Miss?”

      “What?” Her head jerked back to the waiting driver. “Oh, right.” She shifted, clumsily, to balance the tote on her knee—when had she picked it up?—in which slender hands, tipped in ruby red fingernails, rummaged for several seconds before extracting a wallet.

      Hel-lo…major ephinany time: long red nails made him hot.

      He felt his brows do that knotting thing again.

      For crying out loud, she wasn’t even pretty, not in any conventional sense—deeply set eyes with thick, natural brows, a high forehead, squarish jaw with a dimpled chin, a wide mouth. But what Steve saw—underneath several strata of makeup—were the unapologetically strong lines of good, solid peasant stock, a handsomeness he’d seen innumerable times in the faces of the women with whom he shared a common ancestry. He told himself the hitch of interest in his midsection stemmed purely from aesthetic considerations, a desire to photograph her, to catch the light playing across those compelling features.

      She yanked out a wad of bills, then crammed the purse between her arm and her ribs. “Now…how much did you say?”

      The driver glanced at Steve, then the blonde, knuckling up the bill of his ball cap. He cleared his throat, then mumbled something. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t counted on Steven having hearing like a hound dog.

      “A hundred?” Steve was down the stairs in two seconds flat, in full macho protective mode. “Where’d you pick her up? Cincinnati?”

      “It doesn’t really mat—” whatever-her-name-was began, but the suddenly obsequious driver stepped in with, “Ya know, come to think of it…it wasn’t as hard to find the place as I thought. Whaddya say we make it—”

      “Fifty,” Steve supplied, just for the hell of it. For all he knew, maybe the man had picked her up in Cincinnati. Judging from the driver’s reaction, however, he’d apparently called the man’s bluff. There were, at times, definite advantages to having been a linebacker in a previous life.

      A bunch of folds rearranged themselves into something like a smile. “Just what I was gonna say. How ’bout that?”

      The woman looked from one to the other, her mouth open. When it finally snapped shut, Steve noticed her narrowed gaze had come to rest on him.

      Huh?

      Her mouth twisted, she peeled off five tens and handed them to the driver, who, with a wave and a impressive squeal of the tires, left.

      Steve turned to introduce himself, extending his hand. “Hi, I’m—”

      “Excuse me, but do I strike you as being a complete air-head?”

      Somehow, Steve figured pointing out that she wasn’t exactly dressed like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wouldn’t go over so good. “Hey—that guy was about to take advantage of you!”

      “And you don’t think I knew that?” One hand swiped back a feather. Underneath five-pound eyelashes, heat smoldered. And what was with that accent? “I knew what the taxi should cost.”

      “Then why—?”

      Oh, he’d seen that look before. His mother was a master at it.

      “Look, Mr. Liebowicz—”

      Steve shook his head. “Koleski. Steve Koleski. Mr. L. had to go to the store. I was doing some electrical work for him.”

      A flicker of what Steve could only assume was relief passed over her features before she wagged one hand, dismissing his unwanted explanation. “Look, Mr. Koleski, it was no easy feat finding a taxi willing to come all the way out here, so when I finally got this one, I would have bloody well promised the man my firstborn child if it meant getting me where I wanted to go. But I’m not stupid, believe it or not. The plan was, I’d pretend to agree with this man’s ridiculous fee, wait until I was here, then tell him he was full of it.”

      The laugh fairly burst from his lungs. “Full of it?”

      She glared at him for a millisecond before twirling around, unsteadily, then taking off toward the house, feathers bobbing, fanny twitching.

      “Hey!” Steve bounded after her and up the porch steps just as she made a grab for the listing shopping bag, inertia propelling him into her as she attempted to shoulder her way inside. Bodies and bags tangled for a sizzling two or three seconds, during which Steve found himself seriously reconsidering his earlier position on women and loneliness and aggravation.

      “Do you mind?” she said, wrenching herself, and the bags, inside.

      “I

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