LITMIR.BIZ

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how I got in the house. The screen wasn’t even attached to the frame.”

      From the top of the stairs she stopped to look at him. “That’s ridiculous. I sleep with the window open, and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed—”

      “Like the toilet seat being up.” He followed her up the stairs. “Just in case, maybe you should take a look around and see if anything is missing.”

      She disappeared inside the bathroom, and he heard the seat plop down. She came past him, her eyes snapping. “I don’t like you very much. I don’t care who hired you, I want you gone.”

      “So you’ve said.” He didn’t intend to leave, but there was no point in arguing with her.

      His agreement seemed to surprise her, and she turned around to look at him. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

      “Every now and then.” He hadn’t stayed alive through numerous skirmishes and operations that were still classified without being sure of himself. “Just check around, okay?”

      Watching her in her own room was too intimate, he decided a moment later, unable to take his eyes off her. He’d grown up around women who flaunted their bodies, including his ex-wife. She had known exactly how to play him, to the point where he’d followed her like a junkie after a fix and suspended his judgment in the process. Being around Dahlia brought back all those same feelings. No other woman he’d ever known had Dahlia’s presence. It went beyond being stacked or being tall, but something intrinsic within the woman herself.

      Her shoulders slumped, accompanied by “Oh, damn.” Next to the nightstand she bent over and picked something up from the floor. In her hands were pieces of blue ceramic. What it might have once been, Jack couldn’t tell.

      She turned on him, her mouth drawn in a straight line of anger despite the tears that shimmered in her eyes. “You swear you didn’t do this.”

      He lifted his hands, palms toward her. “I didn’t touch a thing.” Her sudden vulnerability drew him toward her.

      “Because if you did—”

      “I didn’t.”

      “—I’d never forgive you.”

      “I didn’t touch anything.” He took a step closer toward her. “Your dog could have accidentally—”

      “No.” She knelt and carefully picked up the pieces. “My grandma brought this angel from Norway when she came to this country. It’s all I have left of her.”

      Her fingers caressed the fractured pieces of glass, her expression giving him some idea of how much this meant to her. In his mind’s eye it was a short step from destroying her belongings to harming her.

      Stuffing the tips of his fingers into his pockets, he moved to the window and looked out, liking what he saw from here even less than he had while climbing the tree. All an intruder had to do was make it across the yard without being seen. After he was in the tree, he wouldn’t be seen—not even by the old man next door.

      “If you’ve got some nails and a hammer, I’ll fix your screen.” What he really needed were hinges and a hook and eye, but he could at least do a temporary repair.

      “I can fix my own damn screen,” she returned.

      “I didn’t say you couldn’t.” He headed out of the room, pausing at the doorway, glancing back at her. Prickly he could handle, tears would just about do him in.

      He knew the feeling that came after a break-in. Somebody else going through your things, taking what they wanted. As a kid, it had happened all too often.

      Somebody would come in and steal anything with pawn value—often as not, only their TV—and leave a generally big mess behind. As soon as his mom had the money saved again, she’d buy another. Replaceable—which the broken ceramic clearly was not.

      Dahlia went back to the kitchen, and Jack found himself once again following her. She picked up the telephone receiver, then swallowed as if giving herself courage, then dialed. Calmly she asked for the officer she had spoken with earlier, then waited when she was put on hold. She wrapped an arm around herself as though to ward off a chill.

      While she was on the phone Jack prowled through her house, checking the windows and locks on the living room on one side of the hall and her office on the other. Security was nonexistent, and the locks wouldn’t keep out a kid much less a professional. Boo followed him through the two rooms while Jack absently listened to Dahlia’s one-sided conversation with the police.

      The gist was that she didn’t know the make or model number of the panel van that delivered the plant. Nothing was stolen, just broken. Nobody was hurt. She agreed a toilet seat being up wasn’t exactly hard evidence, and no, dusting it for fingerprints wasn’t warranted. She would let them know if anything else came up.

      He came back into the kitchen when he heard her set the receiver down.

      “You’re still here,” she accused.

      “Yep.”

      “Since this isn’t an emergency and nothing was stolen, they aren’t sending an officer out.”

      She surged to her feet, and he recognized the nervous energy for what it was when she paced to the sliding glass door and returned.

      “Lock my windows. Lock my doors. I might as well fix the screen.” She pulled open a drawer and rummaged through it, then took out a screwdriver and three-inch long screws, way more than she needed to attach the screen to its frame.

      “Are you sure you don’t want help?”

      “Positive.” She disappeared through a door and clattered down the stairs. After hearing a couple of thumps accompanied by her muttering, she returned carrying a ladder.

      Jack opened the sliding glass door for her.

      She gave him an accusing glance as she went past him. “You don’t have to stay.”

      “So you keep saying.” He picked up the screwdriver and screws, closed the door and followed her across the patio.

      After she leaned the ladder against the edge of the patio roof, she took the tools from him without saying a word and climbed the ladder. Not even a minute later she swore, which didn’t surprise Jack a bit.

      He followed her up the ladder, then stopped as soon as he could see her. The view was great. From here not only could he see her long tanned legs that gleamed in the sunlight, but the edge of her panties revealed by the wide leg of her shorts. Turquoise became his new favorite color.

      As though she was aware he watched her, she turned around and frowned at him. “Are you going to stand there and ogle me all day? Or are you going to be a gentleman and offer me some help?” She pointed at him with the screwdriver. “One crude remark, and I’ll push you off the roof.”

      He believed her. Stepping onto the roof, he grinned. “Sure, I’ll help you.” Coming to stand next to her, he held out his hand. She slapped the screwdriver into his palm along with the screws.

      Very aware of her scent that teased his attraction into full alert, he set the first screw despite it being more than double the length to do the job and despite the screwdriver being the most awkward she could have chosen.

      “It’s irritating that you make that look so easy,” she said.

      “I’ve had a lot of practice—”

      “Screwing?”

      He laughed. “Yeah.” He set the next screw. “When I was a kid, I used to help my grandpa. He could build anything.”

      “Like what?” she asked.

      “We made a coffee table out of a pallet once. One summer, we tore down his old barn. He recycled most of the lumber. Then we rebuilt it, putting the old wood over a new frame.” He found himself thinking about the cradle they had built

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