LITMIR.BIZ

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clear. There had been one moment when Joe had looked into her green eyes and thought she had, but then it had quickly become apparent that it was just her fight-or-flight-or-scream-holy-murder mechanism kicking in.

      Not that he would have blamed her for doing any of the above, the way he’d been lurking in her yard. And the thing was, he didn’t even know how he’d gotten there. One minute, he was getting into his rental car—a sweet Honda S2000 with a convertible top, a 6K VTEC engine that went from 0 to 60 in 5.2 seconds, and a roar like a topless rocket—and heading for the Convention Center; the next, he was standing in the yard of an old house doing his best impersonation of Rain Man and scaring some poor woman to death.

      Maybe he needed a vacation.

      Maybe he just needed to get away from that damned house.

      As he approached the rental car, Joe fished his keys out of his pocket, then aimed the remote key chain in the Honda’s general direction. A shrill beep signaled that the doors were now unlocked, and he was only too happy to crawl inside and slink away. As much as one could slink inside a fire-engine-red sports car.

      That was twice now that he’d been out for a drive, minding his own business, only to find himself several minutes later standing in front of that woman’s house.

      That house. He’d dreamed about that house.

      “Concentrate, Lopez,” he muttered to himself, whipping a right onto Figueroa, which would take him straight to the Holiday Inn he was staying at near the Convention Center. The last thing he needed was to slip into another driving coma and boomerang back to the house like some sort of Mexican lemming.

      The drive back to the convention was a smooth one—light traffic, sunshine and warm breezes, and a killer ride, if he did say so himself. He parallel parked the Honda near the curb in record time, then cut off the engine and opened the car door. Maybe he’d have time to hit In-N-Out Burger before…

      Holy Mexican lemming.

      With one boot on the pavement and the rest of him still inside the Honda, Joe turned his head slowly, taking in his surroundings in what had to be the most surreal moment of his life.

      He was back in front of that freakin’ house.

      Chapter Three

      “Look.” Emma yanked open the door of the flashy red sports car with such force, a few locks of her hair flipped forward into her face. With one no-nonsense flick of her neck, she sent them all flying back out of harm’s way. “I don’t know what you’re doing here—again—but you have exactly one minute to explain yourself.” As if barely escaping a violent attack and turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, weren’t enough, now she apparently had a stalker on her hands. Or her house had a stalker. Either way, it was bloody uncomfortable finding some unforthcoming stranger in her personal space every time she stepped outside, and she was determined to find out what on earth it was he wanted, even if she had to keep him from driving off by taking a screwdriver to that flashy car of his. Which probably got terrible gas mileage and had a poor emissions record.

      The man she knew only as “Joe” scrubbed a hand across the side of his face, pushing his glossy black hair briefly off his temple. Wearing what appeared to be his trademark dazed and confused expression, he rooted his attention firmly on the house. Even when she stepped directly into his line of vision, he gave the impression that he hadn’t noticed and was looking right through her. She wasn’t sure what was more unforgivable—his lack of manners or his lack of fear in the face of her anger. She scared the St. X football team into doing their homework, for heaven’s sake. Without Cliff’s Notes.

      But still he refused to even look at her. His mouth had dropped open slightly, and for a moment he reminded her vaguely of that young guy Diane Lane had had an affair with in that Unfaithful DVD Celia had made her rent a while back.

      Narrowing her eyes, Emma rattled the house keys she held in one hand. Just because he looked like a hedonistic foreign guy with a thing for older women stuck in ruts didn’t make him any less of a potential threat, but she was determined to get to the bottom of his behavior.

      “Sir,” she said, “I am speaking to you. What are you doing here?”

      He unfolded his tall, lean frame from the front seat of the sports car. She stepped back instinctively. “I don’t think I have an answer for you,” he said slowly, his gaze remaining on her mango-and-burnt-orange Victorian home.

      Emma’s keys jangled as she looped the key ring around her forefinger. “Then perhaps you’d best concentrate until you come up with one.” She raised her hand until a small canister attached to the key chain dangled before his whiskey-colored eyes. “This is pepper spray—the kind with UV dye in it, which will brand you as a marauding psychotic while the police track you down,” she continued. “And if you don’t answer my question soon, I will spray the whole canister on your head, and then I will beat you with its empty metal shell.”

      He blinked, then finally turned to look at her. For the second time that afternoon, his shuttered, cool facade snapped back into place, leaching the warmth and vulnerability out of his light eyes. “Look, lady,” he said. “There is no marauding. Do you see any marauding going on?”

      Emma’s teeth clenched tightly with an audible click. She was just dying for an excuse to spray him.

      “And furthermore—” He cut himself off, narrowing his eyes at the can of pepper spray she held. “You know, that’s not a good brand.”

      She felt her anger slip a bit. “What?”

      “That pepper spray. Sure, they say it doesn’t wash off for three days, but in field tests, they found that a little peroxide will do the trick in about five minutes.”

      “But—”

      “You want the good stuff, you really ought to order through the Spies-R-Us catalog.” He closed the car door behind him and leaned back against it. “That stuff lasts for a week. At least. Can’t even sandpaper it off.”

      Feeling out of sorts, Emma double-checked the safety lock on the pepper spray to keep from shooting herself in the eye and stuffed it in the cargo pocket of her beige silk pants. What kind of stalker gave you self-defense tips? Maybe she should have been more patient. Maybe she should stop behaving like a paranoid jerk and figure out whether the man needed help. After all, if he’d wanted to harm her, he certainly could have done so last night, after he’d gone all Bruce Lee on her would-be attacker.

      “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I apologize for threatening you with this inferior brand of pepper spray. Despite your penchant for skulking in my yard, you saved my life in that alley last night, for which I never got a chance to properly thank you. So. Thank you.”

      “I don’t skulk,” he muttered under his breath.

      “What are you looking for, Joe?” she asked quietly. He looked up then, and something vulnerable and hurting flashed across his face. Maybe her asking was a reckless move, but he looked like he so desperately needed…something.

      “You!” a deep voice boomed behind them.

      Both of them turned their heads simultaneously toward the sound. A few feet away stood her neighbor, Louis Bernard, known to the neighborhood kids as Crazy Louie.

      “Louis.” Emma padded across the lush grass toward where Louis was half-hidden behind a spray of night-blooming jasmine. “Is everything okay?”

      But he wouldn’t even look at her. His entire being was focused on Joe. Jeez, no one paid any attention to her anymore.

      Louis drew his silver caterpillar eyebrows together and rocked back and forth on bare, eggshell-white feet, which poked out from the hems of his brown knit pants. He’d missed a button on his shirt, so the right side of his collar stuck upward a little higher than the left, giving him a slightly hunchbacked look. His fingers were curled into the pages of the latest L.A. Times, which he crumpled against his chest.

      “You go home!” he

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