Neck & Neck (19 page)

That was beside the point.

The point was that it had been Finn, not Dean, who had been concerned enough about her well-being to follow her; Finn, not Dean, who had taken care of her. And where Natalie should have felt, at best, embarrassed about that and, at worst, angry, what she really felt was kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

Finn didn’t answer for a moment, then told her, “I’m sure he did eventually.” And amazingly, he said it with a straight face.

Natalie nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure he did, too. That’s Dean. Always putting me ahead of everything else in his life.” Except for himself. And his personal wealth. And his condo. And his car. And, possibly, the jar of mayonnaise in his refrigerator door.

Finn didn’t seem to realize she was being sarcastic, because he was looking at her like she was the most self-deluded creature on the planet. She started to explain her situation with Dean, then decided not to bother. Why waste that much time on something that was in no way important?

“If you still insist on taking me home,” she said, “then we should probably get going.”

Again, Finn hesitated before replying, and again, she thought he was going to say something other than what he did. “Just let me get my keys, and you’re as good as there.”

NATALIE BECKETT’S NEIGHBORHOOD WAS EXACTLY what Finn had suspected it would be: warm, inviting, even—and, as a manly man, he really hated to used this word—cozy. The street down which she’d directed him to turn was cobbled and hilly, and the streetlamps were old-fashioned, probably original to the area. The houses varied in style and size, but all of them had clearly been built before or not long after the First World War. The trees were huge, their branches canopying the road, and the yards were lush with bushes and shrubs and recently planted flowers. He knew they were recently planted because, driving along with the window down, he could smell the freshly turned earth mingling with a hint of honeysuckle. In the distance, a dog barked once, lazily, as if he’d heard the approaching car but felt in no way threatened by its occupants and wanted only to reassure his owners that he was doing his job. This was a quiet place, a peaceful place, the sort of place where nice girls like Natalie Beckett blossomed.

Then Natalie was telling him to turn into the next driveway on his left, and there was her house, looking even warmer and more inviting—and, dammit, even cozier—than the neighborhood. The car’s headlights swept over a facade that was, to Finn, the epitome of the word
cottage
, something stony and woody that was even better landscaped than the other houses on the street. After he pulled the car to a halt and killed the engine, a good part of the house remained bathed in pale amber from the porch lights and driveway lamp, seeming to almost glow from within.

Jeez, it was like something out of one of those fairy tales his mother had never read to him when he was a child. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Snow White herself was in there sweeping the floors and singing tra-la-las to Bambi. Well, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it wasn’t almost four in the morning, anyway. Snow White was probably sawing logs at the moment, with Bambi curled at her feet.

For one brief but not especially satisfying moment, Finn was transported back to his childhood, when he used to ride his bike the seven miles that separated his neighborhood from a Seattle suburb where houses like Natalie’s were crowded nearly one on top of the other. A girl from his class—Becky was her name, just like in
Tom Sawyer
—had lived in one of those houses, and he’d told himself he only made the trip because he liked her and wanted to catch a glimpse of her outside of school.

But in truth, he’d been more attracted to the neighborhood than the girl. On school days, he would ride his bike up and down the streets of that neighborhood until dusk, watching the families arrive home to their cozy houses in shiny minivans and SUVs, the dads in dress shirts and ties that still looked professional at day’s end, the moms toting bags filled with fresh produce from the market for dinner. The kids would all be wearing their soccer or hockey or scout uniforms, bickering halfheartedly the way siblings did when each wanted the other to think they were annoying, or the whole family would be talking about how they wanted to spend the weekend, no doubt together.

Finn’s plans for the weekends back then had mostly consisted of escaping from his own neighborhood and returning to that one, this time to watch the dads as they mowed the lawns and the moms as they planted flowers. The boys would always be playing street hockey, and Finn would deliberately plow right through their game, because none of them—even the ones he knew from school—ever invited him to join. And he’d do his best to ignore the girls who were invariably chatting on their porches or walking their dogs because they always ignored him, too. Including Becky.

But then, what kind of self-respecting parent would allow their offspring to associate with a kid from the part of town Finn called home? One that had crumbling sidewalks, spray-painted profanity, pockmarked cars, and a remarkable dearth of cottages.

“Thanks for driving me home,” Natalie said from beyond the driver’s side window.

Only then did Finn realize she’d already gotten out of the car and circled to his side of it while he’d been sitting there staring at her house and remembering things he hadn’t remembered for a very long time. Things he wished he hadn’t remembered tonight. With a sigh that he told himself did
not
sound yearning, he pulled the keys from the ignition and, after only a small hesitation—which he told himself was
not
the result of yearning—pushed open the car door. He started to hand Natalie her keys after emerging, but something made him hesitate. He noticed again the keychain and smiled, not having appreciated the significance before now of the Disney Cinderella all dressed for the ball.

Natalie really was a fairy-tale princess, he thought. And just like Cinderella, she’d found her Prince Charming in one Dean Waterman. She didn’t need to worry about cozy ing up to frogs like him. Just because he thought Waterman was more suited to the role of the Wicked Queen didn’t mean Natalie wasn’t looking forward to playing cottage with him.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” he said, sounding like a high school senior bringing his date home from the prom. Not that Finn had attended his own prom. Hell, he’d been lucky to even make it through his senior year.

This time Natalie was the one to hesitate, as if his offer had surprised her. “Thanks, but you don’t have to,” she finally said. She pulled her cell phone out of her bag. “You want me to call a cab, or would you rather do it yourself?”

In other words, Finn translated,
Beat it
.

“I’ll call,” he told her. “After I walk you to the door.”

“Really, Finn, it’s not—”

“I know. But I want to.”

She looked at him like she wanted to keep arguing but couldn’t come up with anything to counter his proposal. Ultimately, she said nothing, neither accepting nor rejecting it. She only turned and began to make her way up the front walk. So Finn followed, closing his fingers carefully over the keychain as he went.

The moment she had both feet on the front porch, she spun around and said, “Okay, I’m at the front door.” She held out one hand, palm up, in the internationally recognized body language for
Hand over my keys, man
.

Finn stopped abruptly before following her up, mostly because she’d situated her body in a way that made it impossible for him to do anything else. But even when she extended her hand closer to him—in the internationally recognized sign language for
I said, Hand ’em over
—he couldn’t quite make himself release the keys. Even though he was a full step below her, he still had to look down to meet her gaze, something she must have noticed, too, because she straightened and tilted her head back, as if trying to make herself taller.

When Finn still didn’t give her the keys, she repeated, “Thanks for seeing me home.” And when he
still
didn’t release her keys, she added, a little nervously, he couldn’t help noting, “Good-bye, Mr. Guthrie.”

It was the
Mr. Guthrie
, he decided, that made him do what he did next. All evening, he’d been Finn to her, and he’d liked the way his name sounded rolling off of her tongue. Even more, he’d liked the way she’d talked to him, the way she’d smiled at him. As if the two of them were . . . well, friends. Or something. Something more than Mr. Guthrie and Ms. Beckett.

He lowered his head to hers, until his mouth hovered scarcely a breath above her own, taking a moment to enjoy that soft scent of her that continued to tantalize him, even hours after she must have put it on. He enjoyed, too, the way she gasped softly and how her eyes went wide at his approach, because there was something in the two gestures that was more hopeful than fearful. He noticed how the tawny lighting made the hair sweeping near one of those eyes seem even golder, and how it ignited tiny fires in the blue green of her irises. Or maybe something else had ignited those fires, he thought hopefully. He dipped his head lower still, until his mouth was nearly brushing hers. Maybe . . .

“Maybe I ought to go in first,” he murmured. “Just to be sure there’s no one inside who might be a danger to you.” And then he pulled back again, hoping the look in her eyes as he did so was disappointment, not relief. Nevertheless, he told himself he just imagined the way she seemed to sway forward as he retreated, as if she were trying to follow him.

No one inside who might be a danger to you,
he repeated to himself. Hah. Like there was anything inside that house that could pose a greater danger to Natalie at the moment than Finn himself. Not that she wasn’t plenty dangerous herself, looking all soft and luscious on the porch of her cozy house, gazing at him the way she was, as if she’d expected him to kiss her and maybe, just maybe, wouldn’t have tried to stop him, making him feel like maybe if he did kiss her, he wouldn’t turn out to be such a frog, after all.

Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Any of it.

“I mean, the place is dark,” he pointed out when she only continued to look at him in silence. Soft, luscious silence. “You really should leave a light on inside before you go out.”

After one more taut moment, she shook her head once, as if to clear it. “The, uh . . . the outside lights are, um . . . activated automatically,” she stammered. “When the sun goes down, I mean. By the darkness. Or rather, twilight. Um, lack of sunlight.” She gave her head another shake and pulled her body back a bit. “Besides,” she added, still sounding a little flustered, “I’d planned on being home before dark.”

Finn nodded. “I guess tying one on the way you did makes you forget good intentions like that, huh?”

Oh, yeah. That seemed to crystallize her thinking. Her eyes flashed fire again, but not the kind they had before. This was way hotter and way more dangerous. She opened her mouth to say something in retort, then seemed to think better of it and simply gritted her teeth at him instead.

He wasn’t quite able to help the smile that curled his lips in response, and he hoped he didn’t look too smug when he said, “Humor me with the seeing you inside. I’ll feel better knowing you got home safely.
Totally
safely,” he clarified before she had a chance to point out she’d already done that. “Inside
and
out.”

“Fine,” she said tersely.

She held up her hand for the keys again, but Finn nudged her gently aside and joined her on the porch, reaching for the storm door before she had a chance to get in his way. Cinderella twinkled in the lamplight as he inserted the key into the dead bolt and turned it, then he pushed the door slowly open. He reached blindly inside for a wall switch, but found both it and the one on its other side already flipped up in the On position, indicating they operated the outdoor lights.

“There’s a lamp not far from the front door,” Natalie said from behind him. She nudged him aside the way he had her only seconds before. “Allow me.”

Even though it defeated the entire purpose of making sure she got in safely, since Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers—or both—might very well be standing between her and that lamp, Finn let her go. Who was he kidding, anyway? He didn’t fear for Natalie’s safety. Not in a neighborhood as warm and inviting and—dammit—cozy as this one. He just wanted to see what the inside of a fairy-tale princess’s house looked like, that was all.

Cozy, he realized when pale light flowed over the living room. And warm. And inviting. Wow, there was a shocker.

The room was painted the color of creamed coffee, its furnishings curvy and fat, in colors that reflected the rich jewel tones of the Oriental rugs spanning the hardwood floors beneath. Beaded, tasseled throw pillows swarmed over the overstuffed sofa cushions and chairs, and built-in shelves were strewn with books and plants and exotic-looking paraphernalia. The room, like the house, wasn’t large, but its layout gave the impression of such. It was airy and open, with broad doorways and windows. To his left, a stairway led up to a second floor, and he could see just enough of a room at the top to know it was her bedroom. She had left a light on in there, he saw, and it afforded him enough light to see that the room was ridiculously feminine, with sage-colored walls and a bed that sported a fili greed brass headboard and fringed bedspread the color of a ripe pomegranate. It was the sort of room in which a man would never feel comfortable. Hell, even from this distance, it was already making him use words like
ripe pomegranate
.

And damned if he didn’t want to finagle an excuse to go right up there with Natalie in tow and find out what other ways it—and its owner—might make him even more uncomfortable.

On the other side of the living room, through wide French doors, was a dining area that housed a square, bare wood table and four chairs covered with some kind of embroidered fabric. Through a door to his right was what looked like a home office: the glow of a computer screen was just bright enough to illuminate an open rolltop desk and a leather chair on wheels. To his left, beyond the stairs, he could see an entrance to a room that was bathed in the soft white light of a small appliance. The kitchen was nothing but shadows at the moment, but he’d bet it was just as inviting as everything else he could see.