Maggie Shayne – Kill Me Again (страница 8)

“I’m lonely? Don’t you mean that Harvey’s lonely?”

“I think I mean both.”

“And what makes you think that, Olivia?”

She thought that, she mused, because she was lonely, too, and for the very same reasons. She recognized it in him. Had done, even before she’d met him, just by reading his books. She had felt it coming through the pages. But she couldn’t very well say so. “I guess it’s because Harvey always ends up alone at the end of every book.”

He nodded slowly. “What if I’m nothing like my books?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I suppose that’s possible, but it just doesn’t seem very likely. How could you write the way you do if you didn’t feel it on some level?” Then she made herself stop, deciding it might be best if she left now, before she made a starstruck fool out of herself. “I should probably go. I’m starting to sound like a gushing fan, and I’m not that. If you need anything, call me, okay?”

He lifted his brows. “You said that before, but honestly, you’ve done enough already.”

“No. I’m the one who agreed to take care of you while you were in town. And I intend to keep my promise, even though we have to cancel the fundraiser.”

His lips thinned. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“You were shot,” she reminded him. “My card’s on the nightstand. Call me if you need me. I mean it. And I’ll be back in the morning.” She got up and moved toward the door, then turned back once more. “Are you going to stay the night here?”

He looked at her a little strangely, but he nodded. “I’m going to try. If I start to feel too antsy, though, I’m going to trust my gut and check myself out.”

She didn’t want to leave him—it felt like abandoning a lost boy, somehow. But he wasn’t a boy, and it would go beyond the bounds of their very brief acquaintance for her to stay. She forced herself to turn and walk out the door.

The house was dark when Olivia arrived home. The Expedition’s headlights illuminated the front entrance, probably burning through a layer of paint while they were at it. The thing was huge, and beyond macho. It screamed big, rugged, sporty, manly man, and it was the polar opposite of what she would have expected a bookish little man like Professor Mallory to own. She guessed you never could tell about people. She would need to move some things before putting the SUV in the garage, she realized. It would have to be okay outside for now.

The overbright headlights lit up the front steps with their wrought-iron railing. She’d rushed out in such a hurry that she hadn’t bothered to turn on an outdoor light. No matter, she wasn’t too worried with Freddy around.

She shut off the engine, which had a deep growl to it that she was unused to, and took the shopping bags she’d procured on the way home from the passenger seat, then slid out of the SUV to the pavement below, landing with a jarring thud. Then she ambled up the walk while fumbling in her bag for the house keys and thinking she ought to consider trading up. The thing had tons of room for Freddy in the back, and it was fun to drive.

After a successful search, she stuck the key in the lock and, with the ease of long practice, stepped inside, flipping the light switch as she went.

“Freddy!” she called. “I’m home!”

He didn’t answer. And that was not like him.

“Freddy?” She walked through the house, checking every room. It wasn’t that big a place, so searching it was neither difficult nor time-consuming. The dining room and kitchen were one large, open room, separated only by a countertop, with French doors on the far side leading to the deck and fenced-in backyard.

She headed in that direction when there was no response from inside the house, turning on lights as she went along. She hated being in the dark. And she especially hated being alone in the dark. It was just too creepy.

There was a very large doggy door—she’d had to have one custom-made to accommodate Freddy’s bulk—just to the side of the French doors. But it was very unlike him not to hear a car pulling in, and come bounding from wherever he might be to see who was at the door, much less come at her call. Something about this was off. And something about the house felt off, too.

An icy chill danced up her spine and along the back of her neck. She shivered, and quickly unlocked and opened the French doors, eager to be with her dog, and feeling the earliest warning signs of impending panic. If anything ever happened to him…

“Freddy!” she shouted as she stepped out onto the redwood deck. “Freddy, come!”

She used her most commanding tone, but even to her own ears, there was a hint of fear wrapped within it. And then, quickly, fear was overshadowed by relief. Freddy came bounding toward her, appearing out of the darkness like a ghost from the very farthest part of the back lawn. His brindle markings made him all but invisible in the dark. But there he was, running toward her and chomping away on whatever was dangling from his jowls.

“What in the world? Freddy, what have you got? Give it to me. Give it to me, come on.” She tried to wrestle the wet thing—a piece of meat, she realized—from his jaws, but he got a better grip and then swallowed it whole.

“Freddy! Was that a steak? Where on earth could you have gotten a steak?”

Freddy belched loudly, then jumped as if startled by the sound, and looked around him to locate the source of it.

“Where did you get that?” Olivia demanded. “Where, huh?”

Freddy sat, his tail thumping the wood.

“I swear, Freddy. You didn’t kill something, did you?” It would be alien to him to harm anything, she thought. When he spotted wildlife, he wanted to play with it, not eat it. He was a gentle giant. Besides, it really had looked like a good cut of meat to her, not a mangled woodland creature.

This was just bizarre. She stepped back inside and reached for the little wine rack, where she kept a large flashlight, just because it fit so nicely there. Then she went back outside and across the deck, the flashlight’s beam guiding her way. She’d turned on the outside lights now, and they helped, too, as she walked from the deck to the lawn, and then followed the fence all the way around the backyard. She didn’t see anything. No meat lying around, and no sign that any small animals had been devoured.

Freddy circumnavigated the lawn right by her side, but he didn’t give away a thing.

“Well, go figure, pal. Apparently you have yet another fan,” she told him. She wasn’t all that surprised. Freddy was something of a local celebrity. Everyone who met him loved him, and well-meaning neighbors sometimes left him treats, despite Olivia’s softly spoken objections. Crouching, she set the light aside and took his face in her hands. “Don’t you ever take candy from strangers, Frederick. Do you understand me?”

“Woof!” said Fred, and then he turned and galloped back toward the house, as if daring her to race him, his long ears flapping in the breeze.

Olivia declined the challenge and walked back more slowly. She took one more look around, but by then she was feeling a little sheepish about her case of nerves. Okay, a lot had happened today. A man had been shot. But that didn’t mean that her own ghosts were going to come floating out of the distant past tonight. No one had tried to kill her. And Aaron’s situation had nothing whatsoever to do with her own.

She locked the house up tight, took a quick shower and went to bed. But sleep didn’t come easily. She kept thinking about Aaron, and how different he was from what she had expected. And she kept wondering if he was lying awake, frustrated and alone.

It wasn’t like her to spend so much time thinking about any man. But she couldn’t seem to help herself where he was concerned.

She’d spent most of her adult life in hiding from the violent man she’d narrowly escaped so many years ago. She’d avoided romantic relationships ever since. But she had allowed herself, in her weaker moments, an imaginary one in her mind, because it was harmless and next to impossible. Aaron Westhaven wasn’t real to her. He was an ideal. He stood for the antithesis of violence. He was tender, sensitive, affectionate, wonderful. She knew he couldn’t be as perfect a human being in real life as he had become in her own mind. But it hadn’t mattered, because there had never been a chance she would meet him in real life anyway. And she had imagined that, if she did, he would be a huge disappointment.

But now she had met him. And he was far from disappointing. Something inside her seemed to have broken loose and started all kinds of silly chemical reactions. He wasn’t what she’d expected him to be, personality-wise. But physically, he was far, far more. He was one of the most incredibly handsome men she’d ever set eyes on.

What if he wasn’t too good to be real? What if he turned out to be all the things she had allowed herself to imagine he was? What then?

She sat up in the bed, scowling hard and wondering just who the hell had taken over her brain. Professor Olivia Dupree was not a giggling sorority girl with a crush. And besides, no matter what the psychiatrists and anthropologists said, she firmly believed that human beings were not designed to fall in love. Romantic love was a made-up idea with no real basis. It was what people wished they could feel. But it wasn’t real. She knew that. And Aaron knew it, too, depicted it powerfully and repeatedly in his novels. That was why she connected so strongly with his work. So what was wrong with her now?