All She Wants...: Oh, Naughty Night! / Nice & Naughty / Under Wraps

“Well, I don’t see any toilet paper or eggshells, so I guess the trick-or-treaters didn’t punish you for not being home to give out any candy.”

“A few knocked before I went to the bar. I handed out a couple of bags of airplane crackers and some Altoids.”

“They should’ve egged your house just for that.”

She was probably right. Fortunately, no angry, deprived-of-candy ghosts or goblins had played tricks after he’d left.

Yanking her hand from his, she suddenly stopped. “Who’s that?”

“Huh?”

“The woman sitting on the car over there.”

Realizing she was looking toward one of the reserved parking spaces directly in front of his house, he followed her stare. A bright yellow Beetle was parked beside his own car, and on the hood of it sat a woman. She was draped in gauzy white fabric that might have been a toga or might have been a ghost-sheet like the one he’d worn.

Chaz scrunched his brow for a moment, wondering why some stranger was sitting alone on the hood of her car at this time of night. Then he spotted the hair, as yellow as the vehicle, and realized who it was.

“Shit.” He turned to his mystery witch. “It’s my sister.”

“Sarah,” she whispered.

Taken aback for a moment, he suddenly remembered he had mentioned his sibling’s name at the club. “Yes. I have no idea what she’s doing here.”

“She looks upset.” There was a hint of coldness in the tone that hadn’t been there all evening. It appeared he wasn’t the only one disappointed that someone had delayed them from getting inside for their promised up-against-the-wall adventure. His sister had the worst timing in the universe. Well, second worse. That car honking was number one.

“There you are,” Sarah said, sliding off the car and sniffing audibly. Definitely a toga. Roman goddess? “Mom said you got back to town today and I just had to see you and you weren’t he-re when I neeeeded you! Where have you be-en?”

“Have any cheese you can give her to go with that whine?” his companion muttered.

Chaz smothered a laugh, because, yes, Sarah had sounded like a whiny brat. Which wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence. She was the baby of the family and relished the role, getting her way in just about everything she’d ever wanted.

“Don’t move,” he said, reluctantly dropping his companion’s hand. “I’ll find out what’s going on and be right back.”

He strode toward his pain in the ass of a sister. “Hey, kid, what’s up?”

“I’ve been waiting for you, big brother. I feel like I’m going crazy!” Sarah threw her arms around his neck, buried her face in his chest and began sobbing loudly. “I’m so miserable!”

So much for Welcome home. How’s it going? I’ve missed you.

He returned the hug, smoothing her hair, wondering what on earth the big drama was this time.

“I can’t believe you didn’t let me know you were home and ask me if I wanted to do something tonight,” she said.

“I figured you had plans with your friends.”

“I did. I mean, I do.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Everything fell apart.”

Maybe for her. But things had fallen into place for him, and he didn’t want anything to change that. “I intended to call you tomorrow. Now what’s wrong?”

“You will not believe who I ran into today.”

“The president?”

She pulled away and scowled at him. “No! Can you believe Lawrence Vandenberg is going to A.U. for his master’s degree and he lives right beside the campus and Mom never warned me?”

Oh. That. “I heard. Lulu mentioned it in an email.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You keep in touch with her? After what her stupid brother did to me?”

“Not regularly, that’s for sure. She moved here. Mom gave her my email address so she could get some information on housing and stuff.”

That was the full extent of his contact with the girl-next-door, and he wanted to keep it that way. Lulu Vandenberg had been the most annoying next-door neighbor any geeky kid should have to endure, and he was lucky he’d made it out of his childhood with his sanity—and his tailbone—intact.

He did vaguely wonder how she’d turned out. Lulu had, after all, been one of the prettiest girls he’d ever known, not that he would never have told her he thought so in a million years. Maybe she’d grown up to be a hag, though he doubted it. Her emails had been friendly and chatty, brimming with self-confidence. Of course, Lulu had been that way, too. Always talking, always ready to hand out advice. She’d been a real know-it-all.

Nah. He didn’t really want to see how she’d turned out.

“She had the nerve to ask you for help after the way she always treated you when we were kids?” Sarah said, finally thinking of someone other than herself.

To be fair, Lulu hadn’t been all bad. They’d actually gotten along fine much of the time, usually by ignoring each other. It was just that she was so damned bossy, and good at everything. She’d out-played him on the basketball court, had ridden her bike in circles around him while he still struggled with his first ten-speed. She was the bravest and the toughest when it came to playing truth-or-dare. She was also dangerous—he’d been a witness to the great playground fight, when she, at age eight, had slugged an eleven-year-old boy who made fun of six-year-old Lawrence for still having a teddy bear.

And of course there was the ladder incident. Sometimes, when he sat down just the right way, he still got a twinge out of that forever-cracked tailbone.

“It’s no big deal. Mom asked me to help out. Lulu’s her best friend’s kid. What was I supposed to do, say no?”

“Well, hopefully you told her the safest place in the city to live is Anacostia,” Sarah said with a heaping helping of spite, since that neighborhood was one of the most dangerous in the district.

Chaz grunted. “Let it go, little sister.”

It was kid stuff, and he’d tried to forget it. That said, he did hope his Realtor had found Lulu an apartment far away from his own neighborhood.

“What, exactly, did Lulu tell you about Lawrence?” she asked.

“Just that he was coming here to go to school, too.”

“Did she mention that he was doing it so he could be close to some girl?”

Chaz stayed quiet, sensing a trap in the question.

Eventually Sarah continued. “Because he happens to have a girlfriend! And I think they might be living together!”

From several feet away, where he’d left his sexy witch, he heard a cough, but he stayed focused on Sarah, knowing he had to hear her out, give her a brotherly word of wisdom, and then send her on her way. “And that’s your business...why?”

She sputtered. “Well, he had to have been aware I’m at A.U. He did it on purpose, came here just to get close to me and try to make me jealous.”