Mr. Right Next Door (16 page)

That was Nick’s plan.

Wait and be ready.

Piece of cake, he decided.

This would all be over in no time.

He could go back to Kim and…explain.

Nick frowned.

Explain?

How did he explain?

What did he say?

He was stuck, trying to figure out anything in the world he might say to her when she came running into the room.

“Nick? I remembered. I got Mrs. Baker…” She came to a halt when she saw him and Harry beside Mrs. Baker, tied to a chair.

Nick held up his hand to tell her to stop, right there where she was.

He didn’t want her making any sudden moves, didn’t want Eric doing anything he’d regret and Kim getting hurt in any way, and he really, really wanted to kill the man right now. Nick should have found him days ago, should have jumped him a minute ago, so that it never came down to this.

To Kim being in a room with this man while he was holding a gun.

“You sent her a wind chime,” Eric said, the gun leveled right at her.

Kim whirled around to face the man, a look of pure fury on her face. “You—”

Nick took two steps forward and grabbed her by the arm.

“Hold it right there,” Eric said, aiming at Nick again, thank goodness.

“You rat! You snake!” Kim yelled.

“Just hang on,” Nick told Eric, then slid an arm around Kim’s waist, picked her up off her feet and didn’t set her down until she was behind him, her body shielded by his.

She was so mad she was sputtering, mad about Eric being here and about Nick manhandling her, but he didn’t care.

“Stay there, right behind me, and don’t move until I tell you to,” he told her, as furious as he remembered being in his entire life.

What did she think she was going to do? Take down a man with a gun? While Nick was in the room?

Like he’d ever let that happen.

“I will handle this,” he said. “You sent Mrs. Baker a wind chime?”

“Yes,” Kim said. “For the B&B.”

“In the mail?”

“Yes. I was afraid it would get broken in my suitcase, so I had it mailed.”

“To your apartment or her house?”

“Her house. I forgot all about it until this morning. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Nick said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

He turned to Mrs. Baker. “You don’t remember getting a package from Kim?”

She shook her head. “But we’ve had so many things delivered in the last few weeks.”

“Okay. The things that came that you haven’t opened yet? Where are they?”

She looked like she was going to cry then. “All over the place.”

Nick sighed. It was true. There were boxes here and there, in the corners of most every room downstairs. He could see four unopened packages in this room alone.

“Try a little harder to remember,” Eric told Mrs. Baker, taking a menacing step toward her.

She started to cry. Kim yelled at him in outrage.

“Okay, okay. Just relax,” Nick said. “Everybody relax. We’re going to figure this out. He’s going to get his package and leave, okay?”

“You,” Eric said to Kim. “You’re going to look, and you’re going to find it and bring it to me. Everybody else is going to stay right where they are.”

“No. I’ll do it,” Nick said.

“No, you won’t. Kim will.”

“No,” Nick said.

Nonnegotiable.

Every situation like this had certain points that were nonnegotiable and one of his was that Kim was staying behind him, out of the way of that gun.

“Now, the thing you need to understand,” Eric told him, “is that I’m the one with the gun. That means I’m in charge here. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to tie you and the other guy up and you can sit in the corner with the old lady while Kim helps me find my package.”

“No,” Nick said.

“Nick, it’s okay. I can do it,” she said.

“No.”

He was going to jump the guy. He’d have to. That was all there was to it. He turned to Harry, to tell him it was time, to cover Mrs. Baker. Nick was going to shove Kim down onto the floor. It was the safest place for her. The gun would have to be pointed up toward the ceiling, but that was fine, too.

He could do it.

He had to.

“I told you,” Eric began, laying out his terms again.

Nick focused on the tip of the gun barrel.

That was the key.

Point it up. Point it away. Anywhere but here.

All he needed was a split second.

Then he saw the cat lurking halfway down the stairs behind Eric’s head.

Nick was so surprised, he gave it all away in his face.

“What?” Eric said, worried at the last minute.

The cat had slipped between the railings and was on the edge of a step, nothing between her and Eric’s back.

The hair on Cleo’s back was standing up on end and she had that look on her face

That attack-cat look.

Her claws came out and she gave a roar of pure outrage.

Next thing Nick knew, the cat took a flying leap, landing on Eric’s head, claws sinking in.

He screamed, either in surprise or outrage or pain, Nick didn’t know.

Pain, he’d bet.

He remembered those claws.

And it was all the time Nick needed. He shoved Kim down hard, heard Harry moving to cover Mrs. Baker, and lunged toward Eric. Taking his gun away proved to be easy as could be, thanks to the cat.

Eric howled and tried to shake the cat off, but Cleo had a grip on Eric’s neck and face that made Nick wince.

Who’d have ever thought?

Nick, super-secret agent, bested by a cat.

They got the cat off Eric finally, got Eric tied up, and a shaken-up Mrs. Baker untied. She really didn’t understand what had just happened, despite Kim’s best efforts at explaining.

Three armed agents burst through the door about ten seconds after Nick disarmed Eric. That really shook Mrs. Baker up.

The cat wasn’t too happy about it, either.

But everyone was okay.

They had the bad guy.

He hadn’t hurt anyone.

And for the moment, Nick had Kim in his arms.

“You sure you’re all right?” he said, not caring who saw him or what the hold he had on her said about anything that might have happened between them.

He just didn’t care.

She was still shaking and had a reddish spot on her cheek, where she’d hit the floor after he shoved her down, but she was okay.

“Sorry about this,” he said, fingering the spot on her cheek.

“It’s okay.”

“I just had to make sure you were out of the way. I couldn’t take any chances on that, and the floor’s the safest spot when someone’s shooting.”

“Okay,” she said.

And then he kissed her, just in case he never got another chance to do that.

“God, Kim,” he whispered, his mouth against hers.

His head was still spinning from all that had happened. “I’m sorry we let him get this close. It should never have happened.”

“It’s okay,” she insisted. “Everything’s okay.”

Nick heard a commotion in the other room, shoved Kim behind him again, just in case. Damn, he was jumpy, and he never got jumpy on assignments.

It was probably the local cops. His guys blew their cover when they charged in here in the middle of the morning with guns at the ready.

Time for a lot of explaining.

“You can shoot me or you can let me through right this instant. Those are your choices,” someone called out, then roared, “Kim?”

Nick looked at her. “Your brother?”

She nodded.

“Let ’em in, guys,” Nick said, then turned to Harry. “Her brother’s probably going to kick my ass. As long as he doesn’t pull a gun on me, let him do whatever he needs to, okay? I figure I deserve it.”

“Nick,” Kim said, coming to stand beside him.

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, which was only going to make her brother even madder, but Nick didn’t care. She was still shaking. They’d face her brother together.

The guy was as big and mad as Nick had feared.

“Kimmie?” he said, taking her right out of Nick’s arms and looking her over from head to toe. Then he turned to Nick. “Is she okay? If you hurt a hair on her head, I swear, I’ll—”

“Jax, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Somebody hit you,” he said.

“No, I hit the floor when Nick shoved me out of the way, when he jumped Eric.”

“Eric? Eric, the love-of-your-life Eric? That guy?”

Kim nodded.

Her brother turned to the guy currently lying on the floor, tied up. “That guy is Eric?”

Kim nodded.

Nick pulled her back to his side, holding her close.

“The guy you were so sure you were in love with, Eric?”

“Yes!” Kim yelled.

Her brother looked like he was ready to explode. “Eric, the one you wouldn’t even let your own brother check out for you?”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“She didn’t need to have anyone check him out,” Nick jumped in. “Because she knew who he was the whole time. She was helping us catch him.”

Kim made a face at that.

Her brother shot Nick a look, an I-will-kill-you-now-if-you-really-put-my-sister-in-a-position-like-that look. But he’d stopped yelling at Kim and Nick figured that was the least he could do, to try to help her save face with her family and the town.

“Nick—”

“It’s okay, Kim. You can tell them now. This is all over.”

“Who the hell are you?” her brother said, then did a double take. An I-can’t-believe-it double take. “The idiot who shot the cat?”

Nick pulled out his badge and held it up for her brother to see. “Yeah, I’m the idiot. Department of Homeland Security,” he said.

Her brother swore. “I’m still gonna kick your ass.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Nick said.

K
im’s sisters were still hovering around her four days later, still worrying and taking care of her and offering advice and love.

“You were so brave,” Kathie said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

They had to suspect the whole she’d-been-helping-all-along story was a lie, but they’d let it be, telling the whole town that she was a hero. That’s what sisters did when you’d done something stupid, like fall in love with a pirate/terrorist and told the whole town about it. Any opportunity to help, they’d use. Like claiming she’d never been in love with the guy at all, just trying to help catch him. And she loved her sisters for that and everything else.

Her brother was still a little crazy and he’d given Nick a huge black eye, but the X-ray showed Nick’s nose wasn’t broken, so things weren’t as bad as they could have been.

They’d found the package with the diamonds, all there, safe and sound, and Eric was somewhere in federal custody. Things had gone really well, all things considered.

So what if Nick hadn’t touched her since that day at Mrs. Baker’s.

So what if he was supposedly leaving town tomorrow and hadn’t said so much as three words to her in days?

Kim blinked back tears.

“Oh, honey,” Kate said. “You’re really crazy about that guy Nick, aren’t you?”

Kim nodded miserably.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Kate, ever the practical one, asked.

“I don’t know,” Kim said. “I can’t even get him alone long enough to talk to him about anything.”

“Well, you can’t just let him leave,” Kathie said.

“I know, but I don’t know what to do,” Kim said, then happened to glance out her window and catch a glimpse of Nick.

Nick, who was still in his room at the B&B. He’d been watching her. When she looked up at him, he looked guiltily away. It was almost nighttime. Darkness was falling.

And he was leaving tomorrow?

“Okay, maybe I do have an idea,” Kim said, standing up. “And you guys have to leave. Right now.”

“Huh?” they said. “What?”

“Now. You have to go right now, before I lose my nerve and chicken out.”

She hustled them out the door, deliberately left the door unlocked and ran into her bathroom, wondering if she had the nerve to take this as far as she might have to take it.

She supposed she had to.

Or risk losing him forever.

And Kim wasn’t losing him.

Nick had packed his things, smoothed things over as best he could with the locals, considering her brother could have cheerfully killed him for involving his sister in anything this dangerous.

Mrs. Baker was hovering, grateful and apologizing for misplacing the package and telling everyone who would listen what a hero her cat was, that it was the cat who’d saved the day, not Nick. She still didn’t quite comprehend that Nick had shot the cat and Nick hoped she never did.

Cleo, for her part, had developed what Nick would swear was a smirk, an I’m-so-clever, I-made-you-look-like-a-complete-idiot-and-everyone-loves-me smirk that she wore only around Nick.

And she was around Nick a lot, stretched out on his bed at the moment, purring and grooming herself like the silly, pampered creature she was.

Still, Nick had to admit, she made a great attack-cat, and you had to respect that in anybody. Especially one who saved a woman like Kim from scum-of-the-earth Eric Weyzinski.

So he sat down on the bed by the cat, who seemed willing at the moment to grant him an audience, queen-like creature that she was.

Yes
, her look said.
You may admire me now, and you definitely owe me an apology.

She stretched, showing him her still-bandaged paw, laying the guilt on thick.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Really, I am,” Nick said. “And you have to know I will never, ever, ever hear the end of this. I will go to my grave with people laughing behind my back and probably to my face, telling everybody about the night I shot a cat. So…you know, I’m suffering here, too.”

Cleo held up her paw, as if to point out that her suffering had been much greater than his.

“You’re right,” Nick said, surrendering completely. “You had it worse. You were completely in the right and I was in the wrong. And that takedown on Weyzinski? It was a thing of beauty. Perfect timing and an absolutely gorgeous move. The guy didn’t stand a chance. And what you did to his head?”

Nick laughed just thinking about it.

The guy had claw marks all over him. When they’d taken him to the federal building in Atlanta for questioning, the agents in charge didn’t believe them for a second when Nick claimed they hadn’t roughed up Weyzinski or even tortured him, that the cat was the only one who touched him.

“So yeah, you’re all right,” Nick said. “For a cat. And…maybe cats are far superior to human beings. Who knows? I wouldn’t argue with you about that right now. I’m just glad you were there to help.”

Cleo gave a little purr that sounded supremely self-satisfied.

Nick patted her gingerly on the head. “Nice kitty,” he said.

She let him, not even trying to claw him or looking haughty or scary, simply a bit dismissive, then rolled over and went to sleep right in the middle of Nick’s bed.

He considered that a victory.

He and the cat were buddies, of sorts.

He looked up and saw Harry standing in the doorway to his room, an odd look on his face. “Were you just talking to the cat?”

“What if I was?” Nick said.

“Okay,” Harry said. “Fine. Whatever. You packed?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, trying not to sound too miserable about it.

“Still haven’t seen her?”

Nick shook his head. “What’s the point?”

How much could one man apologize?

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “You could at least talk to her.”

“Nothing left to say,” Nick said.

Harry nodded, eased into the room and then did a double take as he looked out the window.

“Let me guess,” Harry said. “She wants to talk to you, but you’ve been refusing?”

“Yeah? So?”

“I think she’s done asking nicely, Nickie.”

“Huh?” Nick said.

“I think, she’s not taking no for an answer this time. Jeez, you are one lucky son of a bitch.”

“What?” Nick came to stand by the window, looking out at whatever Harry was looking at.

Looking at Kim, he realized.

Kim standing by her window, perfectly illuminated, in her robe fresh from the bath, looking up at him, smoothing lotion on her neck, then down, inside the edges of her robe as it slipped lower and lower and lower.

“Holy—”

Harry got nothing more than that out before Nick shoved him away from the window, then out the door, Nick jamming the lock on the door once it was shut.

“If you get back in this room and look back out that window, I’ll strangle you dead. Got it?”

“I don’t think I’d survive another look out that window,” Harry said. “My heart isn’t all that good and my cholesterol’s way too high.”

“I’d still kill you. I’d kill you again. Understand?”

“Understand,” Harry said. “You lucky son of a bitch.”

“Don’t I know it,” Nick said, taking off running out the side door, across the yard and into Kim’s building.

He was breathing hard once he got there, slamming her door behind him once he got in, then locking it. He went to the window and closed the blinds tight, while she stood there in front of him smiling, with her hands all over herself, the robe sitting precariously low on her pretty shoulders.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Inviting you over,” she said.

Nick threw his head back and groaned.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said.

“Sure you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Kim—”

“I mean, if none of this really meant anything to you and you don’t really care about me and you can just walk away and not look back, then fine. Go. But I don’t believe you really feel that way. I don’t think I’m wrong this time. I think I’m right. I think you care about me.”

“Of course I care about you.”

“I think you’re crazy about me,” she claimed.

To which, he had no idea what to say.

“Your brother hates me,” he said finally.

“So? He hated both my two sisters’ husbands when he first met them. It’s kind of a tradition. And he threw Kathie’s husband through a plate-glass window once, so a little black eye is nothing.”

“I’m…my knee hurts. A lot,” he said.

“Awww.”

“Not from anything your brother did. It just hurts. And my shoulder. And sometimes, my back.”

“Poor baby.”

“I’m old,” he said, in case she just didn’t get it.

“No, you’re not.”

“Fourteen years older than you.”

“So? You’re funny and you were so nice, telling everybody I knew all along what Eric was and was just trying to help. That was really nice, Nick. You have a gorgeous body, you’re great in bed and you took good care of me when I needed it.”

“Danger,” Nick said. “Big aphrodisiac, danger.”

“Okay. Prove it. Come to bed with me, now that it’s all over, and let’s just see how it goes.”

He groaned, like the idea really, really hurt him.

“I mean, if it was all a mistake, let’s figure it out now,” Kim said. “If you don’t want to be with me—”

“I want to be with you more than I want my right arm to stay attached to my body,” he said. “I’d fight off hordes of angry cats to be with you, face down an army of pissed-off overprotective brothers, if that’s what it took. I just…Are you sure this is what you want?”

She gave him a look of pure joy. “Do you think I’d practically strip in front of my window for just anybody?”

“I hope not,” he said.

“I think, and I’m scared to even say it, because I was so wrong before and it all happened so fast and maybe you think I’m ridiculous and silly and stupid—”

“I would never think that about you.”

“But, well, I think I might be in love with you,” she said.

“Oh, Kim—”

“And if that’s not what you want, you have to say so, right now.”

“I can’t say I don’t love that whole idea and all the possibilities that come along with it. But wanting it and thinking it will work are two different things—”

“Well, you could just stay here for a while. We could…get to know each better, see how you like it here, see how things go. You know? It doesn’t have to be a whirlwind thing and it’s not a vacation fling, because I’m not on vacation anymore. And you’re not on vacation, right?”

“No. I mean, I could be. I could take a vacation, if I wanted to. I never take a vacation.”

“Just take some time off,” she said. “Nobody has a time-off fling or a time-off romance, right?”

“Right,” he said.

“And there’s no more danger, right? So it’s not the danger thing. We could just stay here and have a plain, old-fashioned, boring, getting-to-know-you kind of relationship.”

“I don’t think you could ever be boring,” he said.

She grinned at that, put her arms around him, kissed him with her soft, sweet mouth.

“And you think you might be falling in love with me. Go on. Say it,” she told him.

“I’ve never been in love before, Kim. How would I—”

“Say it,” she insisted. “If you think you might feel it, just say it.”

“Okay, yeah. I think I might be falling in love with you.”

She grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I’ve never stayed anywhere in my life for long. I’ve never had anything that lasts.”

“Well, I’ve been here my whole life. I know all about staying. All about things that last. I could teach you all about it,” she offered. “If that’s what you want.”

“I want,” he said, putting out a hand, touching her cheek, her hair, pulling her closer. She was real and she wanted him.

“Good,” she said. “Then I think you should take me to bed, so we can start figuring out exactly how we feel about each other.”

And that’s what he did.