Mr Right Next Door

Which, he realized, meant he had a lot in common with the crook who was about to break her heart.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” he told Harry once he got back to the B&B.

Kim had walked.

Nick had followed her very, very slowly.

Watched her stroll along like a woman without a care in the world, smiling, stopping to talk to a dozen people along the way, staring up at the blue sky, stopping to smell the flowers.

It was like something out of one of those sickening long-distance commercials.

They were all so happy.

Nick didn’t know what to make of it.

“What’s the problem?” Harry said agreeably.

He said everything in that same I’m-your-buddy tone and it wasn’t natural to be that happy. Nick tended to be suspicious of happy people. Harry and Kim and most people in this town were way too happy.

“I have no idea what’s going on. That’s the problem,” Nick said, deciding to ignore the too-much-happiness thing for the moment. He had other more pressing concerns.

“You didn’t hear anything at the diner?” Harry asked.

“No, I heard everything at the diner. That she might be engaged. That the guy was coming here, either the next day, the next week or the next month. Take your pick. That he’s from Colorado or Cleveland or maybe Pittsburgh. What the hell?”

Harry laughed.

It was starting to annoy Nick every time Harry made that sound and Harry made it quite often.

“It’s a small town,” Harry said.

“So?”

“So people talk. All of them talk. All the time. But only about twenty percent of it’s true, and that’s just a guess. It might be less than twenty percent. I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were trying to confuse me,” Nick said. “That all of them are in on it and they’re deliberately trying to confuse me.”

“No, they’re just talking. They gossip. All about each other. Trust me, this is normal.”

“Then how the hell am I supposed to figure out what’s going on?”

“You follow her, Nickie. You stay really close to her. So close you can smell her pretty perfume. And you don’t trust anything except what comes out of her sweet, little mouth and maybe not even that. Meanwhile, I’ll look for your guy in Colorado, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the guy’ll show up tomorrow.”

“Or maybe we won’t.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Harry chuckled. “Hey, I got the blueprint from the conversion they did on her house, when they cut it up into apartments. Am I crazy or is your view even more spectacular than we thought it might be?”

Nick said nothing.

“I mean, I don’t have the same vantage point as you. But looking at it from street level, I’d have to say the angle is highly favorable. You could look into her living room and, off to the right, see through the doorway into her bedroom—”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“You know you don’t deserve perks like this, right? No man could be that lucky—”

Nick cut him off again.

He had hours before it got dark. Before she turned on the lights in her apartment and closed the blinds a little more tightly.

Would she do that? Or would she think she was far enough off the ground that no one could see in?

Maybe she wouldn’t bother. After all, glancing around, he thought his was the only window with the perfect vantage point to be spying on her this way and if the B&B had been empty for some time while it was being renovated… Well, she might not have worried about anyone looking in on her.

Please let her close the blinds, he thought.

And please don’t let her be in love with a crook who wasgoing to break her heart.

Chapter Four

She made a few phone calls while sitting on the floor of her apartment doing some stretching moves that looked like yoga. Nick knew because he watched her every move. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, looking down into her apartment from what was, as Harry guessed, a perfect vantage point and watched nothing but her for hours.

She had the light on, as light was fading outside, and he kept his light off, his window blinds angled downward, his own private pipeline to her living room and tiny kitchen and, off to the right—yes, indeed—was the open door to her bedroom and bathroom. Not a great view into those rooms, but a view.

Nick listened in on the calls as she made them.

Two friends from high school, another from college. Fellow teachers at the elementary school where classes had ended only two weeks before. All wanting to know the same thing—what had happened on her trip?

Was he mistaken or did she sound less excited with each recitation of events? Did she sound a little sad? Maybe a little worried?

He thought she did.

And he had a name the guy had given her.

Eric Daniels.

An occupation. Something vague having to do with investments.

Yeah, right.

The place? Apparently, the guy moved around a lot because she did indeed mention the guy being in Colorado and Cleveland. No Pittsburgh. And apparently, his home base was California. She didn’t mention a city. So half of what Nick had heard at the diner had some basis in reality? How was he supposed to function in this town?

She vacuumed and dusted her apartment, and he watched. She cleaned out the refrigerator and wiped down the counter-tops, and he watched. She went into the bathroom and, judging from the time she spent in there and the way she looked when she came out, she must have taken a bath. Nick, thankfully, saw nothing but the closed bathroom door and a view of her that made him groan out loud when she emerged, hair wrapped in a towel with a few damp curls escaping down her pretty neck, a flimsy, shimmering robe—God help him—clinging to what had to be still slightly damp curves, bare legs peeking out from the slit in the ends when she walked. Bare feet, he thought. Bare toes. With his high-powered binoculars, which he’d gotten out and used out of sheer curiosity, he caught a hint of bold color on her toenails and felt like a complete voyeur.

Which he was.

He was a damned Peeping Tom.

Night had fallen.