Mr. Right Next Door (2 page)

The way she laughed.

The pretty smile she so often flashed.

The twinkle in her pretty blue eyes.

And yes, the way she’d looked in that little, yellow string bikini.

Contrary to popular belief, he was not inhuman, just disciplined and focused most of the time, better than most at hiding any feelings he might be unfortunate enough to have and suspicious as hell of almost anyone he met, especially a pretty woman who might or might not be innocent of whatever crime he happened to be investigating.

Okay, there it was, the tape of the conversation she’d had not thirty seconds ago, playing in his head, the way her voice had been doing for the last forty-eight hours already.

“I think…” she said. “No…” The tape cut in and out. “Sure…” Come on. Let ’em hear it. “I’m in love.”

“Oh, great,” Nick said.

“Yeah, baby,” Harry said. “What do you think? From the way our guy was hanging all over her the last few days, it’s gotta be him, right?”

“Hell, I don’t know. You know how women are, Harry.”

Nick had to hope one Eric Weyzinski didn’t feel the same way. That he wouldn’t have a little fling with someone like her on a ship and just walk away from her when it was over. He had to hope Weyzinski was either coming here, or she was going to him, so Nick could follow her and find Weyzinski again. Because they’d screwed up as the ship’s passengers left, lost Weyzinski and they still hadn’t figured out whether he was their bad guy or not.

That was Nick’s job.

Catching the bad guys.

Catch ’em and move on.

That was his motto, his life, and it suited him just fine.

One crook after the next.

Bring ’em on.

“Okay,” Harry said through his earpiece. “The guy with her did flash a badge to get through security. From a police force in a little town north of the city called Magnolia Falls, which is where our pretty blonde claims to live. We’ll check with the cops there and get back to you to tell you for sure if he is who he claims he is. And from the information I’ve got now, looks like he and our blonde have the same last name. Cassidy. His name is Jackson Cassidy.”

“Tell me she’s not his wife,” Nick said.

Because the thing people thought was love, coupled with a marriage license and a wedding ring, mixed in with jealousy and another man who happened to be a crook…That was sure to be a disaster in the making.

“If the cop’s her husband, she wouldn’t come home from vacation alone and announce to him that she’s in love with someone else,” Harry reminded him.

“Oh, she just might.” He’d seen more than one unhappy wife throw something like that in her husband’s face.

“Hey, buddy, remember that little problem of yours we’ve talked about before? The woman thing?”

“I don’t have a problem with women,” he claimed. “I just have women who happen to cause me problems quite often.”

Her being merely the latest in a long string of problem-causing women.

“But I don’t have a problem with women,” Nick insisted.

“All right, buddy. Whatever you say. What’s your pretty blonde doing now?”

“Well, the cop looks unhappy about her little announcement, but not pissed off. So I’d say he’s not her husband.”

One thing to be grateful for.

“Okay,” Harry said. “Didn’t think so.”

“Hang on. We’re moving again,” Nick said, putting down the newspaper he’d picked up moments ago and falling into step behind them, blending into the crowd as best he could.

They made it to the escalator and he managed to get a spot right behind her by rudely cutting in front of an older couple and a woman with a baby, jostling his sore shoulder as he went.

Oh well.

A guy had to do what a guy had to do.

So what if the shoulder still hurt when all he’d done was taken a fall and rolled through it? So what if he didn’t roll as well as he used to and he grew more cynical by the moment?

He could still do the job better than most.

And he was not old.

Thirty-eight was not old for an agent.

Thirty-eight meant he was simply more experienced and therefore smarter than most.

Knew all about women and love.

And this was nothing but another job.

With the kind of discipline his job demanded, he put his focus firmly back on his case. They had a band of modern-day pirates based off the northern coast of Africa preying on passing vessels. Private boats at first, the crooks stealing to fund whatever other things they might be doing. Then they’d moved on to bigger and better things. Luxury yachts and, now, cruise ships.

How the hell did they expect to actually board a cruise ship?

Nick didn’t know, but if they ever did, the potential consequences were enormous.

Hostage-taking? Massive ransom demands? Terrorism?

Nick didn’t even want to think of what they might do if they weren’t stopped soon.

His agency had gotten a tip that the luxury liner
The Paradigm
was the group’s next target, and he’d been on board since the ship docked in Rome eight days ago.

There’d been more than a thousand passengers, plus a crew of over six hundred on its maiden voyage. The pretty, young blonde he was following had been one of them. The guy she’d been hanging out with might have been in league with the pirates—on board in advance to help them take control of the ship—or he might not have been. Nick didn’t know yet. They hadn’t focused on Weyzinski until very late in the game. There’d simply been too many possible suspects to check them all quickly. By the time they’d grown suspicious of Weyzinski, the cruise had been nearly over. Then Weyzinski had managed to give another agent the slip as he’d left the ship.

Which meant one of the few leads they still had to Weyzinski was the pretty blonde, supposedly one Kimberly Ann Cassidy of a little town called Magnolia Falls, Georgia.

They’d been scrambling just to follow her, to get Nick on her plane for the States and get agents in place waiting for her in the Atlanta airport when she arrived. They didn’t even know yet if Kim Cassidy was her real name. They didn’t know if she was working with Weyzinski or just an innocent victim.

Nick had to find out.

He followed her and the cop through the baggage-claim area until they stopped at an empty carousel. He hoped he’d at least have time to grab his checked bag before she found hers and took off.

“My car’s waiting at the curb?” Nick asked, knowing Harry would have tried to arrange things that way.

“It’s there. Bright red Lexus convertible. Sorry about the color, but the car will flat-out fly if you need it to. Try not to hurt it, okay?”

Nick sighed. “That was not my fault, Harry.”

A car chase on a freeway near L.A. six months ago had ended badly and he was still catching hell for it. Nick’s right knee had plowed into the dashboard. It still bothered him at times, usually when it rained.

“I don’t suppose you can get someone to hold her bag in the back for a while?”

“We’re working on it. Sorry, buddy. I didn’t get here until fifteen minutes before her plane touched down. But I’m getting a sheet on the cop right now. Okay…Looks like he is her brother.”

“Okay. So she wasn’t two-timing him with the guy on the ship.”

One point in her favor.

And if she was announcing that she was in love like that, as she arrived home from her trip, odds are it was with Weyzinski.

“Yeah, here’s the brother’s driver’s license photo and hers. Definitely the same guy who’s with her now. Looks like he’s been on the force for seven years now. Somebody talked to his supervisor in Magnolia Falls. Tried to make it all sound routine, but I don’t know, Nick. Maybe the department just didn’t like the idea of him flashing his badge around the airport without them knowing anything about it. Could be that. Could be something else. But they definitely didn’t like someone asking questions about one of their guys.”

Okay, so it looked like he wouldn’t be asking for cooperation from the local law enforcement agencies anytime soon. And he was going to be tailing a cop’s sister.

No problem.

“Don’t see any red flags on his service record, except something about a brawl in a bank a couple of years ago,” Harry said. “Wait…Damn.”

“What is it?”

“Their father was a cop. Shot and killed trying to stop a convenience-store robbery when our blonde was just a baby.”

Great.

Cops took care of their own. They took care of the families of cops. And more than anything else, they took care of the families of fallen officers.

Harry started laughing.

“Oh jeez, Nick. Are you ready for this? The town is all of twenty-four-hundred people. You’re entering a different world, my friend. You will not fit in well.”

“You don’t know that,” Nick argued. “I can fit in anywhere.”

Small-town America.

How hard could it be?

He’d blend with the best of ’em.

“She’s lived there her entire life,” Harry continued.

“So everybody knows her. Should be easy to get information on her.”

“If you can get ’em to talk.”

“I can get anybody to talk,” Nick boasted.

“She has not only the brother, but two sisters. Our pretty blonde is the baby of the family.” Harry laughed. “Looks like she’s been babied her whole life, doesn’t she?”

Nick felt an odd little kick in the gut at that.

A pretty, impossibly young pampered blonde who looked like a million bucks in a yellow string bikini, and who was probably used to getting her way in everything, indulged in every whim. God help him.

“Oh, man. All three of her siblings are married and living right there in Magnolia Falls,” Harry said. “This will not be good.”

Nick sighed.

Okay, so it didn’t sound good.

A cop for a brother, dead cop for a father.

A ton of relatives.

A tiny town.

A whole police force that would be looking out for her if anyone got wind of what Nick was doing in town.

Harry laughed some more.

“Guess what she does?”

“No clue,” Nick said, but he wasn’t going to like it. He could already tell.

“Elementary school art teacher. Isn’t that sweet?”

Nick swore.

He had a nice, maybe sweet, definitely innocent-looking elementary school teacher, the baby of a family of four, the daughter of a slain police officer, in love with a guy Nick was sure was a crook.

And Nick had to use her to find the crook.

“She’s gonna love you before you’re through,” Harry said.

“Yeah.”

This was why he got the big bucks.

Making nice, innocent women like her hate him.

N
ick’s bag showed up before hers, which meant he wouldn’t have to live out of his carry-on.

He could have managed, of course. He could have made it for weeks with nothing more than he could carry in a baggie if he had to. But life was more fun with all his nifty surveillance toys and a man couldn’t carry a loaded gun on a plane anymore without a ton of paperwork, which he hadn’t had time to produce in his rush to get on the flight. Fortunately, checked baggage was another story.

He grabbed his bag, shouldered his carry-on and tried not to wince at the added pressure to his wounded knee.

Harry must have been close enough to see his expression, because Harry started chuckling and said, “God, you’re old, Nick.”

Nick suggested several things Harry might do, all of which were probably illegal in this state, then got back to business.

“Tell me you have her, because if you do, I’m going to find my car.”

“You’d better because we spotted the brother’s patrol car parked illegally at the curb. You need to be ready to move, my friend. We’re trying to get another car in place in case you lose ’em.”

“I’m not going to lose a small-town cop who doesn’t even know I’m following him,” Nick protested.

“Yeah, yeah. Just trying to back you up, Nick. That’s all. That’s my job. To make your job easier.”

Nick swore softly then spotted a tiny, expensive-looking convertible that gave the appearance of being capable of flying, and produced his government ID for the young agent standing by the car.

“Here you are, sir,” the kid said, holding a briefing report, what little they’d been able to prepare by the time Nick landed.

“Thank you.” His bag went into the tiny trunk, the carry-on onto the passenger seat and then, with a kind of exaggerated care that irritated him greatly, Nick managed to fit himself into the driver’s seat without crushing his sore knee on the steering wheel or the dashboard, while Harry started laughing again.

“Son of a bitch,” Nick said. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“I just figured you’d be happy to sacrifice your own comfort, if necessary, for speed and maneuverability. Was I wrong? I mean, we could look for one of those cars outfitted for special-needs drivers, if we need to. Do you need one of those, Nick?”

“I’ll put this sore knee of mine in your gut, Harry, if you need to know how well it still works,” he said, though it might have been a pure bluff.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could manage it. Hours on a plane had left his knee stiff and sore beyond reason. He could just imagine Harry’s glee if he called room service that night and asked if they could provide a heating pad for him.

If his pretty blonde gave him any time to relax.

She could have a string of men waiting for her. Weyzinski could already be here, waiting for her. She could be up to all sorts of things that didn’t involve teaching little children how to finger paint.

Honestly, how innocent could a woman who looked like that in a bikini possibly be?

Nick started the car and moved the seat all the way back to accommodate his length. He adjusted his mirrors, spotted the small-town cop car, just where Harry said it would be, then checked the car’s satellite navigation system, preprogrammed for the destination of Magnolia Falls.

It shouldn’t be hard to follow the blonde and her brother. After choosing whether to take the freeway loop around Atlanta or plow straight through downtown, it looked like there was only one real choice of roads that went from the other side of the metro area to Magnolia Falls.

Nick didn’t think he’d ever been to a town this small.

“Okay, here they come,” Harry told him.

Nick didn’t turn his head, following them out of the corner of his eyes. The pretty blonde was laughing, looking as relaxed and happy as could be. Her brother looked like he could cheerfully spit nails.

Nick wondered why.

Of course, if he had a little sister who looked like her, Nick could imagine her giving him headaches. And he’d be none too happy to have her go off on vacation and get attacked by pirates.

The brother’s expression could be nothing but that.

And it could be so much more.

She could be a woman constantly getting into trouble of one sort or another. Man trouble. The kind that came from making really bad decisions and not thinking things through. Or from just being young and impulsive.

Innocent.

She could be completely innocent, a victim in all of this.

Nick frowned.

He’d watched her on the ship in a way that had nothing to do with his job, simply hadn’t been able to help himself.

The older and more jaded he got, the more he needed to believe that there were still people like her in this world or, at least, people like she appeared to be. Young, innocent, carefree. Happy. Sexy in a sweetly inviting way, nothing cold or calculating in the least about her.

Not that he could imagine her giving him the time of day or him accepting such an offer.

She was not a creature of his world and he wasn’t a man of hers. And he’d bet she wasn’t the kind of woman to have a quick, thoroughly satisfying fling with a man like him, despite what he’d seen on that ship.

She and her brother got into the police cruiser and pulled out into traffic. Nick followed them, all the while telling himself to treat her as he would any other woman he met in the course of an investigation.

No, to treat her better than that.

To try to stay the hell away from her and not break her heart too badly when he showed her how foolish it was to fall in love with a man she knew nothing about.

Atlanta traffic turned out to be brutal and the cop drove like a bat out of hell. If Nick didn’t know better, he would have sworn half the drivers on the freeway had gone through the same defensive-driving training he had.

No, more like offensive-driving training. He’d had that, too, but maybe not as much as the other drivers on the road had.

Damn.

He’d been cut off ruthlessly more times than he could count and when traffic got really annoying, the brother wasn’t shy about applying his siren to get out of it, a luxury Nick didn’t have.

If Harry had seen him, he’d have howled.

Honestly, the day he couldn’t manage to follow a small-town cop successfully was the day he gave up government work and started fishing for a living or contemplating his navel or some other ridiculously worthless form of life.

They made it to Magnolia Falls in an hour and twenty-seven mind-boggling minutes on the road. Truth was, Nick wasn’t absolutely sure the brother hadn’t picked up on the fact that he was being tailed.

It was sad really, the depths to which Nick’s life had sunk.

His knee hurt. He hadn’t slept for more than a few hours in two days, and he was as grumpy as…well, as an old man, much as it pained him to admit it.

His pretty blonde was delivered to the address Harry had given him, the one listed on her driver’s license.

It turned out to be an old monstrosity of a house that, from her address—2B—he’d guess had been cut up into apartments. Either that or the blonde was clearly not living on a beginning teacher’s salary.

Nick parked half a block down the road and watched the brother carry in her bags and then leave. Harry, he knew, would be working on getting a tap on Ms. Kim Cassidy’s home phone. With luck, they could zero in on some of her cell phone calls, too. Nick would have backup from a team of agents as soon as they could be put into place, but for the moment, the blonde was all his.

He frowned, thinking about virtually living out of a car this small and what that would do to his screwy knee, thinking of nosy small-town neighbors and being pestered by small-town cops.

Already, he thought a little old lady from the house across the street was staring at him through her front window.

Did these people have nothing else to do other than monitor traffic on the street?

“Harry,” he said into the mike in his headset, “I think the old woman across the street’s made me. I’m going to have to move.”

His knee said so clearly.
Move, move, move.

“You’re in luck. The house next door to the blonde has just been converted into a bed-and-breakfast. I called to try and book a room but they said they’re not officially opening until next week. I bet if you’re sweet, you can show up at the door and talk them into giving you a room now anyway.”

Nick offered up a quick thanks to the universe on behalf of his knee, hoping he hadn’t entirely lost his power of sweet-talking. It had never been his strong point and he wasn’t feeling even remotely syrupy at the moment. Hell, he never did.

“Tell them you’re an early riser and that you’d like a room that gets morning sunshine,” Harry said.

“Do I look like a guy who gives a crap about morning sunshine?”

Harry just laughed. “That’ll put you on the side of the house facing our pretty blonde’s apartment. Get a room on the second floor and you might be able to look in her windows.”

No way Nick wanted to look in her windows. He was starting to sweat just thinking about it. And he wondered how long Harry’d known about the B&B but left him sitting in the cramped car. He fought the urge to bang his head against the steering wheel in a general expression of dismay about most everything in his life at the moment, most of all this assignment and the woman upstairs with the innocent eyes and the body that just wouldn’t quit.

The one who made him feel about a hundred and sixty years old.

He started his toy of a car and tried to prepare himself for what might pass for sweet talk to the owners of the new B&B.

Nick finger-combed his dark brown hair, which had grown too long for him and was desperately in need of a trim, then ran a hand along his jaw. A shave was definitely in order. Clean clothes, a shower, a real bed…these were the things of his dreams.

If he could just knock out the blonde and ensure that she’d be unconscious for a few hours, he could take a nap, but he really didn’t want to try to sneak up behind her and do the Vulcan neck-pinch thing and get caught. Plus, it would definitely put her on the defensive when she woke up and he didn’t want that. He wanted her to relax and tell him everything—or at least tell someone in such a way that Nick could eavesdrop on the conversation.

Which meant no Vulcan neck pinch.

No nap anywhere in his near future.

He was grumpy as an old bear.

He grimaced as he started his toy car and peeled off down the street and into the driveway of the B&B.

“Harry, you there?” he said into his headpiece.

“Yeah. Try not to scare the nice people with the nice, soft bed and the hot shower, Nickie.”

“Why would I scare them?”

“’Cause you’re a scary guy,” Harry quipped.

Nick got out of the car, scanning the area even more carefully than before. “Are you looking at me right now, Harry?”

“Why? You see me?”

“No, I haven’t spotted you.”

“Then I’m not looking at you, Nick.”

Shaking his head and swearing, Nick gabbed his carry-on, popped the trunk and pulled out his suitcase, trying not to grimace at the way it pulled tight something deep inside his sore shoulder.
Dammit.

“So before, you were just guessing about the expression I might have on my face?” Nick asked.

“Nah, just knowing your sweet disposition and thinking about how much we need this room next door to the pretty blonde, that’s all. Trying to look out for you, give you some helpful hints to make the job easier.”

“Gee, thanks,” Nick grumbled, making his way to the front door.

It was made of leaded glass and highly polished oak. A discreet aged-brass plate to the left of the door said, Baker B&B, Main & Vine, Magnolia Falls, Ga.

Okay, he was going to make nice with the Bakers of Baker B&B if it killed him; beg for a shower then spy on their nice neighbor next door.

He put on what he hoped was a mild-mannered but tired-to-the-verge-of-exhausted, plain-old-businessman smile, trying to look nonthreatening and ordinary, definitely not grumpy. Like he’d be no trouble at all as a guest of a not-quite-open B&B.

A woman in sweats, a T-shirt and holding a dust mop answered the door.

Cleaning lady or Mrs. Baker?

He had to decide quick.

He’d insult her if she was Mrs. Baker and he thought she was the cleaning lady and he couldn’t insult her and get a room.

“Ma’am,” Harry said. “Just say ma’am. It’s what all good Southern boys do.”

So Harry was watching. The rat.

Still, Harry wouldn’t steer him wrong when it came to spying. Nick went with it.

“Ma’am,” he said, respectfully tipping his head to her. “Am I too early to get a room?”

“Oh, my.” She frowned, then started trying to dust herself, succeeding only in creating a cloud of dust between them. “We’re really not open yet. Not until next week.”

“That’s what I heard in town, but I was hoping I could change your mind. I love old houses. So much charm and character.” He managed not to choke on the words. He even, he thought, sounded remotely sincere. “And yours looks so inviting.”

“Thank you,” she said warily. “It’s just that we have so much to get done before we actually open…”

“Oh, I won’t get in your way. Not in the least. I’m very self-sufficient. And I don’t even eat breakfast—”

“You don’t?”

Nick fell silent, not used to strangers asking about his eating habits. He’d only said that to be nice, to make her think he would cause no trouble at all as a guest. Did she expect an answer?

He gleaned from her expression that she did.

“Well…no,” he said. “Not usually.”

“We all need a good breakfast,” she said, taking on a tone he might expect from a maiden aunt, if he had a maiden aunt.

Nick frowned. He might have a maiden aunt. He couldn’t quite remember. There were all sorts of relatives on his mother’s side of the family who he hardly ever saw. He was doing good if he saw his mother every now and then, let alone anyone else he might be related to.

“We can’t have you running around without breakfast all the time. No wonder you look so. Well, so…”